Video Evidence Research Articles

The Role of Mobile Technology in Documenting International Crimes

Abstract This article reflects on the landmark use of photo and video evidence in the Affaire Castro et Kizito. In 2018, a mobile military court in Kalehe, South Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) tried two members of the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) for crimes against humanity and war crimes. This case broke new ground not only in the DRC, but also globally. For the first time, a court of law admitted digital photography that had been captured with the eyeWitness app, a ready-for-court technology developed to streamline the documentation of international crimes. The authors of this article are legal advisers who were involved in the case and write from their own experience to illustrate how photo and video evidence can strengthen cases and advance justice for the gravest crimes.

Giant tortoises hunt and consume birds

Tortoises (land turtles) are familiar animals and are generally assumed to be strict herbivores. Their ecological roles are most obvious in giant tortoise species which, due to their size and local abundance, play major roles as keystone species and ecosystem engineers1-3. In the Galápagos and Seychelles islands these species are known to play major roles as the islands' largest herbivores, with exceptionally high biomass and consuming up to 11% of primary production1. In addition they act as ecosystem engineers, dispersing seeds, breaking vegetation and eroding rocks2. However, as slow-moving poikilotherms most people assume their behaviour to be simple. Here we present video evidence of a Seychelles giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) attacking a tern chick and pursuing it along a log. Finally the tortoise killed the chick and was observed to eat it. Other tortoises in the same area have been seen making similar attacks, although those were not fully documented. We believe that the exceptional combination of a tree-nesting tern colony with a resident giant tortoise population has created conditions leading to systematic hunting of birds by several individual tortoises; an entirely novel behavioural strategy for any tortoise species. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

More and better video evidence for police investigations of shootings: Chicago's area technology centers

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to describe the creation, implementation, activities and rationale for the Area Technology Centers (ATCs), an innovation adopted by the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD’s) Bureau of Detectives (BoD) in 2019 for the purpose of supporting investigations of crimes of serious violence by deploying specialized teams of officers to gather and process video and digital evidence.Design/methodology/approachThis case study utilizes historical information and descriptive data generated by a record-keeping system adopted by the ATCs.FindingsThe ATCs were developed as a collaboration between the CPD and the University of Chicago Crime Lab (a research center). The start-up was funded by a gift from the Griffin Foundation. Detectives have made extensive use of the services provided by the ATCs from the beginning, with the result that homicide and shooting investigations now have access to more video and digital evidence that has been processed by state-of-the-art equipment. The CPD has assumed budget responsibility for the ATCs, which is an indication of their success. The ATC teams have been assembled by voluntary transfers by sworn officers, together with an embedded analyst from the University of Chicago.Practical implicationsThe ATC model could be adopted by other large police departments. The study finds that ATCs can be effectively staffed by redeploying and training existing staff and that their operation does not require a budget increase.Social implicationsBy arguably making police investigations of shooting cases more efficient, the ATCs have the potential to increase the clearance rate and thereby prevent future gun violence.Originality/valueThe ATCs are a novel response to the challenges of securing and making good use of video and digital evidence in police investigations.

Association behavior between sand tiger sharks and round scad is driven by mesopredators.

In marine systems, behaviorally-mediated indirect interactions between prey, mesopredators, and higher trophic-level, large predators are less commonly investigated than other ecologic interactions, likely because of inherent difficulties associated with making observations. Underwater videos (n = 216) from SharkCam, a camera installation sited beneath Frying Pan Tower, a decommissioned light house and platform, on a natural, hard bottom site approximately 50 km off Cape Fear, North Carolina, were used to investigate association behavior of round scad Decapterus punctatus around sand tiger sharks Carcharias taurus. Videos containing sand tiger sharks were analyzed for the simultaneous presence of round scad, and six species of scad mesopredators, with scad-shark interactions assigned to one of three categories of association: no visible interaction, loosely associated, or tightly associated. The likelihood of scad being loosely or tightly associated with sharks was significantly higher in the presence of scad mesopredators, suggesting that sharks provide a predation refuge for scad. This behaviorally-mediated indirect interaction has important implications for trophic energy transfer and mesopredator control on hard bottoms, as scad are one of the most abundant planktivorous fish on hard bottoms in the western Atlantic Ocean. Although we were not able to provide statistical evidence that sand tiger sharks also benefit from this association behavior, we have clear video evidence that round scad association conceals and attracts mesopredators, enhancing predation opportunities for sand tiger sharks. These interactions potentially yield additional trophic consequences to this unique association and highlight the value of exploring behaviorally-mediated interactions in marine communities.

Admissibility of a Video as Evidence in a Court: Its Presentation and Probative Value

To general public, all videos are perceived to be true, but they may not have probative value in the Court of law. The undertaken article analyzes the admissibility and probative value of a video presented as evidence before a court in the Criminal Justice System of Pakistan (CJSP). It analyzes the relevant law and diagnoses the problems with the video evidence through the lens of the judgments of Superior Courts. The court of law objectively ascertains that a video presented as evidentiary means bears significant relevance to the fact in question. It must be admissible under the law, and it must be proved to be genuine. To fill up the gap between a “Video” and a “Video Evidence”, there is a process, which is known as video authentication. It determines that the video contents are genuine, authentic, credible, unaltered, untampered and unfabricated. The study discusses various modes of video authentication. Precedents set by superior courts of Pakistan show that convictions have been made once the courts are satisfied with the credibility of video evidence. In the court of law, video evidence is normally presented after the completion of prosecution evidence. The video is played in court and is watched by the presence. But the researcher establishes that such process does not have legal justification. The article suggests that it would be legal and proper for the prosecution to produce the video evidence through the witness, during his evidence, who is either victim, witness, recorded and/or copied the video directly from original source such as C.C.T.V system and that witness would be subjected to cross examination.

Visual discourses in sport. A sociological analysis of the implementation of the video evidence in cycling and football

What is the connection between visual orders and social orders? This article goes some way to answering this question by analysing the use of video evidence to reconstruct two discourses from the field of sport. The article focuses on the roles played by the different social groups and how they use images. Whichever one has the power to decide what images are interpreted and how, also determines the way in which the actions of athletes are judged and how any potential rules infringements are sanctioned. Sports federations have a particular interest in influencing the way in which images are produced, processed and interpreted, and in adopting a position of authority. But whilst enforcing a single point of view yields a relatively clear consensus regarding the actions that take place during sporting events, this control comes at a price: the media-technical analysis replacing the live sporting experience.

MOTIVES OF THE LOCAL POLICE REGARDING PARTICIPATION IN THE HOLOCAUST IN THE GENERAL DISTRICT "DNIPROPETROVSK" (EVIDENCE FROM THE DISTRICTS OF KRYVYI RIH AND STALINDORF)

Summary. The purpose of the research is to study the motives that prompted local policemen in the Kryvyi Rih and Stalindorf districts to participate in Holocaust. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, system-formation, scientific character, verification, the author’s objectivity, moderated narrative constructivism, and the use of general scientific (analysis, synthesis, generalization) and specially-historical (historical-genetic, historical-typological, historical-systemic, etc.) methods. Scientific novelty for the first time on the basis of video evidence from the Yahad-In Unum archive and other archives, we researched features of the motives for local policemen to participate in Holocaust in the Kryvyi Rih and Stalindorf districts. Concise conclusions - Video evidence from the Yahad-In Unum archive gave the opportunity to analyze the motives of local policemen and also the stages of the Holocaust in which they took part. There were several main motives: socio-economic motives, which were associated with the satisfaction of their material needs; ideological motives associated with the negative attitude of some policemen to the Soviet authority (they also saw the Jews as the representatives of Soviet power); envy (which bordered on anti-Semitism); the desire for power. These motives forced the local police to take part in the Holocaust. The direct executors, together with the Germans, were ordinary police officers. They were mainly engaged in the collection and guard of the Jews before the execution, the escorting of the Jews to the places of execution, guarding the places of mass murder, and sometimes directly committed murders of the Jews.

Detecting DeepFake, FaceSwap and Face2Face facial forgeries using frequency CNN

The face of a person plays a vital role in any communication or visual content. To enhance this visual content, popular and easy accessible editing tools are used. However, there malicious usage is spreading disharmony in the society, by tampering video evidences, defaming a person’s image etc. Therefore a robust detection method is required to authenticate the visual content. Thus, a novel method is proposed to detect facial forgeries. The proposed method extracts faces from a target video and convert them into frequency domain using two dimensional global discrete Cosine transform (2D- GDCT). Thereafter, a 3 layered frequency convolutional neural network (fCNN) is employed to detect forged facial image. The proposed method is trained and tested on FaceForensics++ dataset and Celeb-DF(v2) dataset. In addition, its robustness is evaluated on standardized benchmark dataset and compared with the state-of-the-art methods to prove its effectiveness.

Customers' social interactions and panic buying behavior: Insights from social media practices

AbstractThe Covid‐19 pandemic led to social distancing and lockdown practices, which increased social interactions and information exchange on social media for timely decision making. This study explores how social practices and social influence generated through social media created panic buying behavior among customers. A social constructionist epistemological position was taken in order to understand the social practice of information sharing and to ask why different meanings were ascribed to Covid‐19 pandemic. Qualitative data collection and analysis methods were used to understand these subjective realities. A total of 40 UK customers participated in semi‐structured interviews in which they were asked about their usage of social media during the pandemic. Results revealed that social media increased the sharing of viral video evidence, such as empty shelves and quarreling in grocery stores, which increased fear and uncertainty; as a result, people shared recommendations to stay at home and buy extra for survival. Analysis revealed that social media increased awareness of stock unavailability in other parts of world, such as the USA, China, and Germany; therefore, people took proactive actions, such as stockpiling or panic buying, to avoid risks and uncertainties. The major theoretical contribution of this study is that the researcher merged social practice theory and social influence theory, and constructed a research framework which provides understanding of the social factors generated through social media platforms that increased socially influenced panic buying practices among UK customers. This study suggests that there is a need to control socially shared information and panic buying behavior and how socially shared information can influence different people in different contexts.

New High-Resolution Modeling of the 2018 Palu Tsunami, Based on Supershear Earthquake Mechanisms and Mapped Coastal Landslides, Supports a Dual Source

The Mw 7.5 earthquake that struck Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, on September 28, 2018, was rapidly followed by coastal landslides and destructive tsunami waves within Palu Bay. Here, we present new tsunami modeling that supports a dual source mechanism from the supershear strike-slip earthquake and coastal landslides. Up until now the tsunami mechanism: earthquake, coastal landslides, or a combination of both, has remained controversial, because published research has been inconclusive; with some studies explaining most observations from the earthquake and others the landslides. Major challenges are the numerous different earthquake source models used in tsunami modeling, and that landslide mechanisms have been hypothetical. Here, we simulate tsunami generation using three published earthquake models, alone and in combination with seven coastal landslides identified in earlier work and confirmed by field and bathymetric evidence which, from video evidence, produced significant waves. To generate and propagate the tsunamis, we use a combination of two wave models, the 3D non-hydrostatic model NHWAVE and the 2D Boussinesq model FUNWAVE-TVD. Both models are nonlinear and address the physics of wave frequency dispersion critical in modeling tsunamis from landslides, which here, in NHWAVE are modeled as granular material. Our combined, earthquake and coastal landslide, simulations recreate all observed tsunami runups, except those in the southeast of Palu Bay where they were most elevated (10.5 m), as well as observations made in video recordings and at the Pantoloan Port tide gauge located within Palu Bay. With regard to the timing of tsunami impact on the coast, results from the dual landslide/earthquake sources, particularly those using the supershear earthquake models are in good agreement with reconstructed time series at most locations. Our new work shows that an additional tsunami mechanism is also necessary to explain the elevated tsunami observations in the southeast of Palu Bay. Using partial information from bathymetric surveys in this area we show that an additional, submarine landslide here, when simulated with the other coastal slides, and the supershear earthquake mechanism better explains the observations. This supports the need for future marine geology work in this area.

An empirical study of consumer video activism in China: protesting against businesses with short videos

This article explores how Chinese consumers adopt short videos and short-video-based social media platforms (short-video-based [SVB] platforms) to safeguard their rights and interests. Bringing together the literature on SVB platforms and media practices and interviewing 56 interviewees in four groups that are involved in the consumer video activism process, I uncover the working mechanism behind this consumer video activism strategy: by uploading short video evidence to SVB platforms, Chinese consumers can bring increased attention—including that of the media and government departments—to bear on their experiences and demands. Thus, with the aid of media coverage and government intervention, businesses are forced to admit their faults and compensate consumers accordingly.

First video evidence of urination by a captive ocean sunfish, Mola mola

First video evidence of urination by a captive ocean sunfish, <i>Mola mola</i>

Authentication of Video Evidence for Forensic Investigation: A Case of Nigeria

Video shreds of evidence are usually admissible in the court of law all over the world. However, individuals manipulate these videos to either defame or incriminate innocent people. Others indulge in video tampering to falsely escape the wrath of the law against misconducts. One way impostors can forge these videos is through inter-frame video forgery. Thus, the integrity of such videos is under threat. This is because these digital forgeries seriously debase the credibility of video contents as being definite records of events. This leads to an increasing concern about the trustworthiness of video contents. Hence, it continues to affect the social and legal system, forensic investigations, intelligence services, and security and surveillance systems as the case may be. The problem of inter-frame video forgery is increasingly spontaneous as more video-editing software continues to emerge. These video editing tools can easily manipulate videos without leaving obvious traces and these tampered videos become viral. Alarmingly, even the beginner users of these editing tools can alter the contents of digital videos in a manner that renders them practically indistinguishable from the original content by mere observations. This paper, however, leveraged on the concept of correlation coefficients to produce a more elaborate and reliable inter-frame video detection to aid forensic investigations, especially in Nigeria. The model employed the use of the idea of a threshold to efficiently distinguish forged videos from authentic videos. A benchmark and locally manipulated video datasets were used to evaluate the proposed model. Experimentally, our approach performed better than the existing methods. The overall accuracy for all the evaluation metrics such as accuracy, recall, precision and F1-score was 100%. The proposed method implemented in the MATLAB programming language has proven to effectively detect inter-frame forgeries.

ANALYSIS OF ISLAMIC CRIMINAL LAW ON THE USE OF CCTV VIDEO RECORDING TOOLS (Decision Study Number 465 / Pid.B / 2019 / PN Smg)

Discussion of CCTV video recordings that serve as a monitoring tool to record all events. The existence of this tool is very useful as a source of information in case of a criminal act. Therefore, in this technological era, these video recordings then began to enter the realm of law, this video recording is very useful as a source of information in the event of a criminal act. It is not uncommon for these video recordings to be used as evidence in a trial, but the problem is that this video recording is not included in Article 184 of the Criminal Procedure Code regarding various types of evidence, is not included in Islamic law, and also this video recording is very important. very vulnerable to being manipulated for certain purposes and purposes, therefore it is interesting for the author to research it, so the question arises how to use CCTV video evidence in trials of premeditated murder in Decision Number 465 / Pid.B / 2019 / PN Smg ?, how analysis of Islamic criminal law on the use of CCTV video evidence in the trial of premeditated murder in Decision Number 465 / Pid.B / 2019 / PN Smg? The method that I use in this journal is the library research method. The results of this study The use of CCTV video evidence in Decision Number 465 / Pid.B / 2019 / PN Smg can be used as legal evidence and in its use it is used as evidence for guidance by the judge supported by the testimonies of witnesses and statements from the an expert, in which the witnesses and experts have been sworn in to give true testimony at trial, so as to convince the judge of the truth of a criminal act committed by the defendant. The use of CCTV video recordings in Decision Number 465 / Pid.B / 2019 / PN Smg can be used as evidence of guidance or qarīnah which corroborates other evidence. The use of CCTV video evidence evidence in Islamic criminal law is included in the category of bayyinah which means anything that can show the truth of an event or action, in its use it is included in Qarīnah evidence.

Characterization of marine microbial communities around an Arctic seabed hydrocarbon seep at Scott Inlet, Baffin Bay

Seabed hydrocarbon seeps present natural laboratories for investigating responses of marine ecosystems to petroleum input. A hydrocarbon seep near Scott Inlet, Baffin Bay, was visited for in situ observations and sampling in the summer of 2018. Video evidence of an active hydrocarbon seep was confirmed by methane and hydrocarbon analysis of the overlying water column, which is 260 m at this site. Elevated methane concentrations in bottom water above and down current from the seep decreased to background seawater levels in the mid-water column >150 m above the seafloor. Seafloor microbial mats morphologically resembling sulfide-oxidizing bacteria surrounded areas of bubble ebullition. Calcareous tube worms, brittle stars, shrimp, sponges, sea stars, sea anemones, sea urchins, small fish and soft corals were observed near the seep, with soft corals showing evidence for hydrocarbon incorporation. Sediment microbial communities included putative methane-oxidizing Methyloprofundus, sulfate-reducing Desulfobulbaceae and sulfide-oxidizing Sulfurovum. A metabolic gene diagnostic for aerobic methanotrophs (pmoA) was detected in the sediment and bottom water above the seep epicentre and up to 5 km away. Both 16S rRNA gene and pmoA amplicon sequencing revealed that pelagic microbial communities oriented along the geologic basement rise associated with methane seepage (running SW to NE) differed from communities in off-axis water up to 5 km away. Relative abundances of aerobic methanotrophs and putative hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria were elevated in the bottom water down current from the seep. Detection of bacterial clades typically associated with hydrocarbon and methane oxidation highlights the importance of Arctic marine microbial communities in mitigating hydrocarbon emissions from natural geologic sources.

Experimentation of digital multimedia forensics: State of the art and research gaps

AbstractDigital multimedia forensics (DMF) plays an outstanding role in digital forensics (DF) area as it encompasses solutions for promoting image, audio, and video evidence to be used in court. As every science, one straightforward way of evolving is conducting formal experiments and providing reliable and auditable evidence. Therefore, in this article, we systematically map and analyze how experiments in DMF have been conducted and whether data‐based evidence has been provided. This article presents a subset of results on DMF from a wider mapping study on DF experimentation. We then analyzed 49 experiments resulting from electronic and manual searches in widely known electronic databases and conferences/workshops on DF. We used them to answer six research questions. We demonstrated that DMF needs to improve the way experiments are reported, especially how data are shared to allow reproducibility and, consequently, evolution of the research topic. We show that experimental elements, for example, hypothesis, variables, design, instrumentation, validity evaluation, setup, training, data sets and benchmarks, statistical techniques (descriptive, hypothesis, and effect size test), and limitations, should be better reported. As a general result, we understand DMF formal experimentation needs to evolve toward providing useful, reliable, auditable, and reproducible experimental evidence as both academia and practitioners might straightforward benefit from such evolution.This article is categorized under: Digital and Multimedia Science &gt; Multimedia Forensics

Explaining the Body-Worn Camera Perspective Bias

Body-worn cameras (BWCs) can be used to provide video evidence that is expected to help settle cases quickly. The present study explores the assumption that everyone who watches a recorded intervention will have the same understanding of the images. Focus groups were conducted with different people: citizens from the general population, in-training police candidates and cadets, as well as experienced police officers. The aim was to provide insights into how a potential BWC perspective bias affects attitudes towards use of force incidents. Results suggest that the bias has more effect on those without actual experience of police work. In particular, it appears that BWC’s first-person perspective encourages self-imagery but that only experienced officers and, to a lesser extent, in-training police candidates can put themselves in a situation similar to that in the video. Also, while distance is recognized as a crucial element in threat assessment, unexperienced participants noted that it was difficult to estimate distance from the BWC footage.

Laparoscopic Pancreaticoduodenectomy with Superior Mesenteric Vein Resection and Artificial Vascular Graft Reconstruction for Borderline Resectable Pancreatic Cancer

BackgroundLaparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy (LPD) technique with artificial vascular graft reconstruction for patients with borderline resectable pancreatic cancer has been rarely reported since it is a very challenging technique. However, preliminary experience for the technique has been reported at the Department of Pancreatic Surgery, West China Hospital, Sichuan University.1,2 The rising popularity of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer patients may result in the increase of operative difficulty due to tissue edema and many other factors caused by the chemotherapy. The main aim of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility, safety, and key surgical procedure for LPD using video evidence. MethodsA three-dimensional upper abdominal computed tomography angiography (CTA) scan done to a 51-year-old man brought to the center with upper abdominal pain showed a mass in the uncinate process of the pancreas, with over 180-degree involvement of the superior mesenteric vein. Percutaneous transhepatic cholangial drainage (PTCD) was performed to reduce jaundice while endoscopic ultrasound and fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) were done to confirm the diagnosis of adenocarcinoma. The patient underwent two cycles of neoadjuvant chemotherapy using albumin-bound paclitaxel gemcitabine + program. The chemotherapy helped in significantly relieving the symptoms where CA 199 reduced from 586.7 IU/ml to 36.73 IU/ml, and the tumor maximum diameter was reduced from 4.3 cm to 2.2 cm. The violated superior mesenteric vein (SMV) and the tumor were en bloc resected, and a 4.0-cm artificial vascular graft was placed for reconstruction. Bing’s anastomosis was performed using pancreaticojejunostomy3 while cholangiojejunostomy was performed using continuous stitching. The gastroduodenal artery (GDA) stump was wrapped with ligamentum teres hepatis after the completion of gastrointestinal anastomosis. The specimen was then removed through the extended umbilical incision (4 cm) and the operation was completed after the drainage tube was placed. ResultsThe length of intraoperative excisional SMV, duration of artificial vascular graft reconstruction, operation time, and volume of intraoperative blood loss were 4.0 cm, 30 min, 520 min, and 800 mL, respectively. Histopathological examination of ypT2N1 indicated that 1 of the 27 lymph nodes was positive. Pathological results showed a moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma with all margins being negative. ConclusionsThis study demonstrated the feasibility of total laparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy combined with vascular resection and artificial vascular graft reconstruction in properly selected cases of pancreatic cancer with vein involvement after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. It is worth noting that skilled laparoscopic technicians and effective teamwork are necessities for safe completion of the procedure.

Psychotherapy in Dark Times: The Role of Moral Injury

Psychotherapy in Dark Times: The Role of Moral Injury

Simplified source description for atmospheric dispersion model comparison of the Jack Rabbit II chlorine field experiments

This paper provides a summary of the methods used to quantify the mass release rate and thermodynamic state of the chlorine released during the Jack Rabbit II chlorine field experiments. In the two-year campaign, eight successful field trials were conducted in which chlorine was released in quantities of 5–10 tons (4540–9070 kg) through a 6-inch (0.152 m) circular breach in the test vessel (disseminator) along with an additional 20 ton (18100 kg) release (Trial 9). Previous analysis of load cell data has been conducted to quantify the mass release rate from primary containment as well as video evidence from Trial 6 which was used to quantify the rainout (and subsequent re-evaporation) during that trial. A method was developed to extend this analysis approach to other trials (except Trial 8 which was vertically upward and Trial 9 which was not instrumented with load cells). The objective of this work was to provide a simplified description of the source suitable for comparison of calculations made using different atmospheric transport and dispersion (ATD) models in Trials 1–7. This work also provides an estimate of the momentum flux (and mean velocity) of the release for use by ATD models which would use such information as input. The recommended release rate parameters are presented along with a summary of the relevant assumptions used in the analysis.