clair006

Wishing you and yours a healthy and happy new year (free from the Y2K hysteria of years past :) ).

In an article over on SC Magazine UK, a senior Met investigator argues against the use of encryption. "In any democratic society we need to provide law enforcement with a right to obtain information authorised by a judge, based on a clear suspicion, in cases involving serious crime or terrorism. This applies to the offline world and should also apply to the online world." “Full encryption of

A few people have asked me about my opinion of the Sony hack, the Interview, and the prospect that we may be in the beginning stages of a Cyber War with North Korea. I don't really have an opinion, as such. So, I'll offer my version of a conspiracy theory as a response. Here it is: It is no secret that Sony has a history of being hacked. It is no secret that the bilge that Hollywood is

A few weeks ago, I alerted you to a Kickstarter campaign around a new image authentication product called PhotoDetective. Well, I've put my copy through a few tests and it's time to share the results. The program is quite simple to use. It has a very clean/lean interface - almost too lean. It has a few of the basic authentication algorithms that you've come to expect. But, nothing fancy. No

There's an interesting discussion happening over on Forensic Focus. It deals with the recoverability of stripped EXIF data. I get this type of question often, can stripped EXIF data be recovered? Here's a good explanation to add to your arsenal: "If data are stripped, they are stripped, and gone to the heaven of bytes, wherever it is, forever, may they R.I.P. Seriously, you can consider the

The OSAC subcommittees have announced their membership rosters. The Imaging Technologies Subcommittee's list can be found here. It's my privilege and quite the honor to be selected to serve on this subcommittee. I'm sure that there'll be a ton of work to do.

This just in from NIST: "NIST’s Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) is taking the first steps toward developing an OSAC Registry of Approved Standards and an OSAC Registry of Approved Guidelines. Independent scientific working groups, standards development organizations, professional organizations and government entities have developed many standards and guidelines for use by the

This just in from Petapixel.com: "JPEG is a remarkably resilient file format. Despite having many upstart formats attempt to dethrone it over the years — including JPEG 2000 and Google’s WebP — the JPEG is still used by nearly 70% of websites and is holding strong in popularity. Now there’s a new competitor in the ring. It’s called BPG (Better Portable Graphics), and it’s a format designed and

The folks at Amped Software just posted this awesome article over on their blog about the myths vs. science of video enhancement. Check it out by clicking here.

Forensically Fit presents this interesting article on photographic evidence. "For decades the admission of imagery as exhibits has been practically rote. Within the last 10 years the accession and propagation of digital, optical, and color sciences has generated more informed and exhaustive analysis of visual artifacts, but those disciplines are yet in their infancy within the legal industry.

f/stop spot recently interviewed George Reis about careers in Forensic Photography. Click here to read the interview.

The How-To-Geek answers the question, why does every camera put photos in a DCIM folder? "Every camera — whether it’s a dedicated digital camera or the Camera app on Android or iPhone — places the photos you take in a DCIM folder. DCIM stands for “Digital Camera Images.” The DCIM folder and its layout come from DCF, a standard created back in 2003. DCF is so valuable because it provides a

In the first edition of the new The Forensic Investigator publication, Amped Software looks at the growing world of digital multimedia evidence and the challenges investigators face in gathering evidence. "Everywhere we go, we see people taking photos or recording videos on their mobile phones. There is an increased use of surveillance cameras by governments, businesses and private house owners.

With the recent troubles around the country, many agencies are declaring their intent to purchase body worn video cameras for their officers. While this might quiet down some folks cries for transparency, the devil's always in the details. Prices for good recorders range from $300 - $1500 per unit for the initial purchase. If the agency has 100 officers on patrol at any one time, do the math.

The other day, I received a nice email from a doctoral student about a project he's working on. I am a doctoral student and researcher at the University of Illinois. I am a very passionate about digital forensics, and I follow your blog regularly and am glad someone is covering the literature and news as you are in this field, because there would be a depsrate shortage without it. I have

With yesterday's ruling in Staten Island related to the in-custody death of Eric Garner, I've received quite a few requests for comment on the video from various media outlets and bloggers. I've declined them all. Here are just a couple of reasons why I've decided to decline their requests. Most requests suffered from presuppositional bias. Use of the words "chokehold death," presupposes a

With all the news about police use of force, it's important to discus the use of body worn video in the context of the individual agency's policy. As a San Diego news outlet recently found out, just because there's video doesn't mean you'll ever get to see it. "We filed a public records request for the videos. The department declined to release them, saying they were part of an investigation.

Amped Software announced some really cool additions to their flagship program, FIVE. Build 6636 includes the following new stuff and fixes: New filter. Correct Aspect Ratio: doubles the height of an image which appears vertically squeezed because of an incomplete deinterlacing process or other issues in the decoding. Only one line every two will be interpolated, while the others will be kept