rest and recreation

One of the most important things to consider, if you are in this business or are considering entering this field, is to take care of your mind and body. You must un-plug once and a while and get out in the fresh air. Take up a hobby and enjoy life. To that end, I'm spending the week up on the ranch getting a little exercise.

Enjoy.

The flip book gets a new home

His just in from The Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office:

"The Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) has updated their website and I just wanted to let everyone know because if your looking for the electronic version of the Best Practices for the Retrieval of Video Evidence from Digital CCTV Systems (the little red flip book), it has moved to this website. http://www.cttso.gov/

In the upper right hand corner is a link to publications and software.

Take some time to check out this website, its a valuable resource for LEO."

Ed. note: ViPR is also listed on this site.

Digital Automotive Image System has been updated

The commission of crimes and terrorist acts frequently involve a motor vehicle. Having photos or images quickly available of all known vehicles with their accompanying data improves the chances of successful eye witness identification. Southwest Research Institute has updated and improved its last version of the Digital Automotive Image System (DAIS) that provided a front, side, and rear-view image of nearly every make and model of motor vehicle commercially manufactured in the last 20 years. The new system includes those cars made since the last version was produced three years ago. Investigators can search the database by vehicle category, body style, number of doors, and other traits besides the make and model. DAIS can produce photo lineups and “Be on the Lookout” type posters. DAIS, which was produced with the assistance of the FBI, fits on one DVD and is easily downloaded to a computer hard drive. In 2012, Southwest Research Institute distributed one DAIS DVD to each law enforcement agency in the United States. In the past, DAIS has played a significant role in a number of major cases. Law enforcement agencies may seek further information about DAIS by contacting DAIS@leo.gov.

Creative Cloud apps are now available

The CC apps are finally here. If you are a Creative Cloud member, all of these new apps and services are available to you today, available on a completely redesigned app center on the Creative Cloud website. For enterprise and education customers, Adobe expects to make everything available on June 21 and government customers will see the updates in July. To learn more about Creative Cloud for enterprise, go here.

6 Persistent Challenges with Smartphone Forensics

Here's a Cellebrite-centric piece on the challenges with Smartphone Forensics. I say Cellebrite-centric as those processes not directly supported by Cellebrite hardware/software (like JTAG and chip-off) are declared suspect.

Enjoy.

Closed Captioning in Premiere Pro CC

Here's a link to the new workflow for using closed captioning in the new Premiere Pro CC.

You now have the ability to work with closed captioning directly in Premiere Pro CC. The Captions tab in Premiere Pro CC lets you make word-level edits of the closed caption clips. You can also make changes to the timing and formatting, text alignment, text color, and etc ...

License, registration, and cell phone

This just in from NJ.com: "License, registration and cell phone, please.

Police officers across New Jersey could be saying that to motorists at the scenes of car crashes if new legislation introduced in the state Senate becomes law.

The measure would allow cops — without a warrant — to thumb through a cell phone to determine if a driver was talking or texting when an accident occurred. It requires officers to have "reasonable grounds" to believe the law was broken.

Supporters say it could be an important tool for cops investigating crashes in a state where distracted driving causes lots of accidents and driving while using hand-held cell phones is illegal.

Opponents say it could touch off a contentious legal debate over whether giving officers such access violates a motorist’s right to privacy or protections against unreasonable search and seizure."

The question that it brings to mind is this, if the person has a locked phone, and refuses to unlock the phone, what will be LE's response? Even if the phone is later seized and given to a mobile forensics crew, not all the available tools can crack locked phones. While civil liberties folks will likely focus on the 4th Amendment issues - it's the 5th Amendment that will bring the most fireworks when people refuse to help and divulge their pass codes.

Speaker recognition on trial in Florida.

Dr. Hirotake Nakasone, of the FBI, testifies in the Zimmerman trial.

A rather interesting turn of events, I would think.

See what's coming in Premiere Pro CC

Adobe's Jennifer Kremer shares 10 tips to help you get the most out of the new version of Premiere Pro. Check them out by clicking here.

Create a time lapse movie from a bunch of still images in Premiere Pro

I know many LE photographers who set up automated camera installations to take surveillance photos. As cool as this is, assembling them into a video can sometimes be a pain. Here's a handy step-by-step guide to creating a time lapse video in Premiere Pro.

Enjoy.

What are you missing?

As I head home from an amazing conference (Techno Security / Mobile Forensics World), I'm still thinking about one of the presentations given there - "What are you missing?"

The topic was technology neutral - but asked a simple question of the audience, do you know what your chosen tools don't get, aren't doing, and other weak points? Essentially, part of knowing your tools is knowing what your tools don't do or when it's not appropriate to use them. The presenter took a specific case, involving a specific mobile phone, and used the many tools available to show which tools fell short and which shined. If you don't know what you're missing, how will you prepare a case and how well will you defend your findings against a better prepared opponent.

Unspoken, but known to users based on screen-shots, the star of the talk was FINALData's FINALMobile Forensics. Where FINALData beats their competition, hands down, is by not attacking the mobile handset - but by focussing on the chips that are common to all phones. It does either a logical or physical download, parses the data accurately, and displays the results in an easy to understand format. Better still, it'll parse the physical downloads from the competition, often finding more information than their competition. Best yet, it's about a third of the cost of it's next nearest competitor. It was the real star of the Mobile Forensics World show.

But, no matter the discipline, do you know what your tools miss? Do you know where it's not appropriate to use them? If you don't, does it worry you that your opposing expert does? It should.

Photoshop updates

This just in from Adobe's John Nack: "The Photoshop team has just made a Photoshop CS6 update (13.0.5 for Mac, 13.0.1.2 for Win) available for perpetual-license customer (non-Creative Cloud subscribers). It addresses a small number of bugs on each platform. CC members can sit tight: Photoshop CC will be released on June 17th and will include any fixes that aren’t already in the current version (13.1.2) along along with all the new features.

About Those Audio Forensic Experts…

Dan Linehan attempts to unravel the truth behind the "expert" analysis of the recordings in the George Zimmerman case in Florida. His review of the work is far from complimentary. "I’m sure we’ll hear more about this in the upcoming weeks, since both of these “experts” have sparked a lot of controversy with their statements and placed their reputations on the line."

He also calls into question the American College Forensic Examiners Institute, a now famous "credential mill," "Sadly, it turns out there is an entire suite of these “American Forensic Board” sites, on almost any topic you can think of, which all seem to be ran by the same person, a gentleman named Dr. O’Block who claims to have nearly a dozen degrees himself."

Analysis or demonstratives?

In response to many of my recent posts, I was asked "Amped FIVE or Avid MC or Photoshop or Premiere Pro or ImageJ or MATLAB or ... which is your favourite tool?" My answer, it depends. It depends on what's requested and how the investigator or customer wants the final product delivered.

Photoshop's analysis tools are very limited, so I was thrilled to find FIVE on the market. FIVE isn't a tool for creating demonstratives, so I'm a happy Creative Cloud subscriber. I may be asked to repeat another expert's work, so I try to have all the latest tools out there (I know, I'm a bit spoiled). For images: Photoshop, FIVE, ImageJ, MATLAB, Gimp, and etc. For video: Photoshop, FIVE, Premiere Pro, Avid MC, Vegas, iMovie, Final Cut, and etc. For audio: Audition, DC Live, Audacity, Sound Forge, and etc. For mobile devices, FINALMobile, Cellebrite, XRY, and so on.

What I've found is that results often vary by the tool. Can I reproduce the results of an Avid MC project in Sony's Vegas? Can I follow a Photoshop project's notes exactly in FIVE? Sort of. But, will sort of work for your case and your court? Maybe.

These are some of the issues that I'll bring up when I present Forensic Image & Video Analysis at this year's LEVA Conference in September.

Our juries are becoming more sophisticated. They’re demanding deeper responses and better explanations to questions about your clarification / enhancement / analysis techniques. What did your program do? What’s the scientific basis for your work? Can you cite published references for the tools that you employ in your workflow? Remember, part of your testimony (telling your story) now involves framing the science of your analysis in a way that your jury can understand.

In this session, we'll move beyond workflows and checklists and enlist the help of some of the legends of mathematics to focus on the science that lies beneath the surface of the filters that we use every day. Unlike your use of other tools (which are largely used for creating demonstrative exhibits), in this 16-hour class, we’ll approach forensic image & video analysis from a scientific perspective, relying on the scientific method to guide our path to discovery. Along the way, will discover whom Joseph Fourier and Carl Friedrich Gauss were and what do they have to do with our work as analysts.

Playing well with others

Here's an interesting scenario that I came across today.

One of the leading manufacturers of body worn audio/video recorders for law enforcement outputs AVI files from it's software using an MJPEG codec. Their proprietary video's frame rate varies - so the frame rate in the resulting file tends to vary too.

In general, our edit bay technology was designed for the broadcast industry (Avid, Adobe, Sony, etc). They don't like variable frame rate media. Thus, dropping these videos on a timeline, making corrections and other edits, then outputting to some MPEG file for inclusion in a detective's PowerPoint becomes problematic. Frame counts don't match. Frames get dropped/added according to the output codec. Ghosting can happen.

A discussion ensued. Edits were being done to the AVI transcoded copy that was being used for demonstrative purposes. The original files were unchanged and remain in their proprietary format - available for the court if necessary. So ... the question - does it make a difference if the frame counts don't quite match (demonstratives vs. originals) as long as the essential details of the case are preserved?

Creative Cloud: an Update

I'm not sure if folks are not understanding all the issues with Adobe's Creative Cloud scheme, or they do understand it and don't necessarily like what they see. Here's the latest answers to questions, from the Creative Cloud blog.

Enjoy.

Pantone celebrates it's 50th anniversary

Anyone working in the design business knows the Pantone name. It's hard to think of any customer service aspect of the design business where Pantone hasn't made life a bit easier. This year, Pantone celebrates it's 50th anniversary. To help celebrate, they've created this cool infographic examining color by decade. It's worth a look.

Spirit of Blue helps Revere PD

This just in from Spirit of Blue: "Events in the Boston area in April underscore the importance and critical role that this type of software can play. Just days after the bombing, law enforcement had tens of thousands of hours of cell phone and CCTV footage to comb through. Without a tool like Amped FIVE Professional, that footage could have been rendered unusable. As we know now, law enforcement’s ability to enhance and analyze that footage brought about the crucial break in identifying the suspects in the case,” commented Todd Parola, who serves the Spirit of Blue as the Chairman of the Board of Directors. “The Revere community in particular has made significant investments in their surveillance capability and Amped FIVE Professional will allow them to unlock the full value of the data they are now able to collect."

The Spirit of Blue Foundation helps LE agencies through grants of product. Check out their site to see if there's a grant that will help your agency.

Timestamps in FIVE

 A few weeks ago, Amped released a new update for FIVE that includes a 64 bit version of their software. A week later, they released another update with some other improvements and a few new tools. One of the features that they updated is the Write Timestamp filter. As they note in their blog post, "Sometimes when you export a video that comes from a proprietary DVR format from CCTV you may lose the date and time information that was impressed on the native format when playing it. With the Write Timestamp filter you can manually add back the date and time information so you can quickly locate events of interest at known times."

All of this presupposes that you know what the correct time should be.

First published in 1988, ISO 8601 is the international standard for the worldwide exchange and communication of date- and time-related data. Thus, the ISO 8601 standard date format is commonly used in metadata. Complicating matters a bit are those standards bodies that cover the metadata space. The Dublin Core™ Metadata Initiative, or "DCMI" for example, is an organization supporting innovation in metadata design and best practices across the metadata ecology. The DCMI listing for date defines the property as "A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource." By this definition, the property includes time information, not only date. More importantly, the DCMI recommends that date information be stored according to the W3CDTF profile of ISO 8601. This format normally lists time zone and precision. This data is often believed to be missing by those who lack the ability to peek into stored binary formats. But, if you have the data and the means to decode it, then you have what you need to rebuild these timestamps in FIVE.

One confusing element to many has to do with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) or Zulu time (Zulu time is the term for UTC used by western military agencies). When the time is deliberately expressed in UTC, as is often the case with DVRs produced in Asia and sold to the west, then W3CDTF/ISO 8601 indicates that you use "Z" for the timezone designator, e.g., 2012-03-15T12:12:04Z. Many CCTV systems standardize on always using UTC because its consistent worldwide. That practice is helpful when carving data from storage devices as it makes sorting and searching more convenient.

Thus, if you are able to carve out and parse this information, then getting this information back into your video is where the Write Timestamp filter comes in. It's as simple as data entry, as they explain in their blog post.

If you would like to learn how to carve this type of information from CCTV storage drives, I'm hoping to do a workshop on this topic at next summer's NATIA conference in San Diego. 

Enjoy.

Creative Cloud for Government

I asked a few questions of my friends at Adobe about how the Creative Cloud scheme will be implemented for government accounts. As most folks know, governments don't usually do month-to-month recurring payments, they usually pay in blocks with a purchase order - to an authorized reseller.

With that in mind, here's the response that I received:

• We will be updating our Government Price List in July and you will be able to purchase through authorized resellers, at that time. If [your agency] chooses to enter into an ETLA (Enterprise Term License Agreement), then yes, one, annual payment would be allowed, along with annual “true ups”.
• Log in’s and further details, specific to Government End Users will be addressed at 2 separate webinars.

So, there you have it. Jump in an register for the webinars and ask your questions there.

Enjoy.