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Worried about Digital Evidence Tampering?
2marcus writes "As digital technology continues to improve and is used in more and more applications, the ease of tampering with digital files becomes more pertinent. This is especially important in the field of criminal justice, where even the appearance of possible impropriety can sway a jury. CNN has an article on the issues with digital photos being used for fingerprints and other forensics evidence."
So technology has answered, its back in the hands of law enforcement to present their case properly.
Witnesses credibility has been under debate for years. Witnesses can be influenced by suggestive questioning, their own backgrounds and prejudices, or the amount of sleep they have had on a given day. And how do you quantify or qualify that kind of tampering? Witness testimony has been used for millenia. No evidence is foolproof. The problem is 1. to know what kind of tampering can be done and be aware and wary of it and 2. to get the trust of the public in that type of evidence so it can be admitted, falible or not.
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No, law enforcement officers are required to maintain strict control and tracking of evidence now ("Chain of Evidence") to try and prove the evidence has not been tampered with. The mutability of digital records adds extra considerations, in some cases.
One way of hardening the chain is to burn the digital record onto a CD-R, with a least two witnesses and recording the serial number of the CD-R onto the evidence log.
Sure, it's a little easier, but it's not something we suddenly can do that we weren't able to do previously.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I was told by a lawyer to get photographic evidence , not in digital, or film but Instant film format.
/developed.
Jury's, and judges consider the instant developed photos of the instamatic camera are considered unalterable because of how they are made
usually the oldest technology is the most accepted in the court of law.
It's not hard for experts to detect Photoshop fakery, even if amateurs can be fooled. If you move objects around in the picture, you'll never be able to get every cast shadow right, or get the lighting of the removed objects right. The analysis process that the experts use is analogous to ray tracing run backwards: given the images, figure out where the lighting is. Then boundaries between regions that have been altered and regions that have not come out clearly.
Furthermore, as its name implies, many of the Photoshop tools correspond to tricks that photographers have traditionally played in darkrooms, it just makes it easier.
at least one case where the FBI insured that an innocent man was convicted of murder and sent to prison in order to protect their own informant.
What case was that?
Joseph Salvati ABC News
A quick google turns up other probable cases.
And it's not going to change until someone gets the guts to start bringing charges against cops and prosecutors who knowingly use false information, or withhold information.
It's not hard for experts to detect Photoshop fakery, even if amateurs can be fooled.
I work in wholesale justice -- I do a lot of court-appointed work. There is no way that an expert will be approved in every case to authenticate or detect alterations of digital images. At the basic level of the legal system, the people who most need this sort of protection (accused criminals) will not be able to afford it.
I like the idea of digital photographs with some sort of cryptographic self-authentication. It would reduce the risk of cowboy cops faking evidence and putting it over on juries and judges. Someone needs to police the police, and this might help.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits