Putting It All Together — on Video

Sophia Kocur

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/insider/video-forensic-investigations.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FForensic%20Science&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=collection’’

Winstead, Ed. “Putting It All Together — on Video.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Nov. 2017,

This article titled, “Putting It All Together — on Video,” Members of The New York Times’s video department explain how they use forensic techniques to uncover new information about news stories. On Oct. 26, the United Nations released the findings of an investigation on a lethal sarin gas attack in a Syrian village in April that the Syrian Air Force was responsible for. This was no surprise to the director of news for The New York Times’s video unit, Mark Scheffler, who worked to uncover what really happened in Khan Sheikhoun.

After the attack, two of Mr. Scheffler’s team members, the senior story producer Malachy Browne and the video editor Natalie Reneau, pieced together satellite imagery, photographs and videos of the attack, drone footage and more into a seven-minute video examining the strike. They concluded that “all of the circumstantial evidence points to a chemical weapon being dropped,” as Mr. Browne says in the video, which “put Syria and Russia’s story in serious doubt.”  

“We’re increasingly seeing the value in this type of reporting, and The Times has committed to making it a part of how we gather and report the news,” said Marcelle Hopkins, the deputy editor of the video department. “It has been done in the past with human rights organizations and some smaller investigative organizations, but we’ve recognized that this is something that can be extremely useful in reporting.” For Mr. Browne, videos of an event not only provide a sense of what it was like to be there, but are also sources of important information about the location and timing of key moments. “There has to be visual evidence that we can make deductions around, and there have to be discrepancies in the story being told” — by governments, the police or even the news media — “and the one we think we can tell through this sort of evidence-based journalism.”

Overall, Witte’s article is well-written. The information is presented chronologically, and it is easy to follow why video footage is so important to developing cases despite all of the other different elements of the crime being examined. However, I would have preferred if the article mentioned what kind of specific evidence was found while using the new method that they had. I know this was strictly a “report” of what new method they found, but because this was on a forensics publication, explaining what kinds of evidence they were able to obtain would have been more appropriate.

Case Reveals Legal Rules of Thumb Tricky with iPhone Sensors

Lucy Rizzo

October 18, 2017

Forensics

Current Event #5

https://www.forensicmag.com/news/2017/10/case-reveals-legal-rules-thumb-tricky-iphone-sensors

Case Reveals Legal Rules of Thumb Tricky with iPhone Sensors

I read the article “Case Reveals Legal Rules of Thumb Tricky with iPhone Sensors” for the magazine Forensics on the Scene and in the Lab. The article covered recent court rulings on whether or not the touch ID feature on older versions of the IPhone are covered by the fifth amendment rights or not. The 5th amendment prevents suspects from incriminating themselves by answering questions in a court of law or artifacts at the scene of a crime that are not covered by a police warrant. For example, in a court of law, no one is required to give the personal password to a smart device. Companies will not turn over customer information either, but if a police/ investigative team wishes to crack the combo they are permitted to under the law. A difference in the touch ID feature, is that “Touch ID and similar technologies have made fingerprints akin to a key,” the filing said. “Instead of carrying that key on a metal ring, Apple users now carry five potential keys on each hand.” This information was connecting back to a child pronography case, where authorities asked the residents of the house/ alleged criminals to open all IPads and IPhones in the house to search for footage. This piece of evidence was brought up by the defense attorney to the judge claiming that it was a violation of fifth amendment rights and that anything discovered on the devices should be thrown out. This situation and question is now being discussed by judges in different districts, trying to determine whether or not it was a violation of fifth amendment rights, and if the court of law needs to create any amendments to the law to include touch ID with protection.

This article was a very important conversation to be brought to the public's attention. With the rapid increase in technologies advancements, our courts need to be amending laws to accommodate for these advancements. With new technology coming out every few months, the government needs to create a bureau or cabinet of lawyers, judges, and officials to oversee how these technologies can impact criminal procedures in a court of law so that law enforcement officials do not throw out evidence based upon misconduct. Personally I think that technologies such as touch ID and passwords should be rightfully protected under the law and by major companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Android. In other court cases we have seen Apple stand by their customer contacts and have not breached these when pressured by courts, which I find very comforting. I also think that it is very important for upcoming generations to know that laws will start adapting to changing times, and will mold to protect a growing community influenced and interconnected with technology.

Overall I found the article very informative. I though the overall message was well developed and the examples were helpful but it was relatively short. Though the story was written today, I am intrigued to see if the writer will follow up on upcoming news and findings regarding this court case and what conclusion is drawn about touch ID protection under the law.

Scott McGrath

10/11/17

Current Event 4

https://www.ohio.com/akron/news/local/curious-internet-users-may-have-solved-akrons-oldest-active-missing-persons-case

In this article, the author describes how a genealogy researcher by the name of Christina Scates helped solve a homicide that was previously ruled unsolved. Scates, a biology major at Cleveland University, who stumbled upon the grave of a set of unknown bones. She later found out that the case was closed after no avail in locating a killer, and decided to take matters into her own hands. She received the case file from a compliant officer in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where she learned that on February 5th 1975 a skeleton had been found by some teens strolling through a park. The coroner deemed the death a homicide, and the the hunt for the killer began. The killer, nor the identity of the victim, was ever discovered. The body was buried in an unmarked grave. Scates posted the information of the file in a reddit forum, a forum which had already been successful in discovering the identity of a man killed in  a car crash 20 years earlier. The case began to draw attention, where a forensic artist eventually drew up a sketch based on details found from the crime scene, such as hair in the mud, etc. This forensic artist used programs to recreate the face of the victim based on bone readings, and eventually got a call from the same officer who gave the files to Scates. They learned that the bones had never been submitted into a database for missing persons, due to a typo. With the correction made, a name and photograph appeared to them, looking awfully like the drawing made by the forensic artist. The body was discovered to be that of Linda Pagano, a girl gone missing 6 months before the skeleton was found. She fit the missing person's file, and was ruled to be the skeleton. With The help of Reddit, the family of Linda Pagano was able to receive some sort of closure, even though a killer or real cause of death has yet to be determined.

This article is very significant in the world of Forensic science. It goes to show that a group of people dedicated to a task, can sometimes complete this task through hard work, even when the odds are stacked against you. A group of reddit users was able to discover the identity of a skeleton found in 1975, through some good detective work and determination. They located errors that made the case insolvable, and corrected them, something the police had not been able to do. With a case like this being solved by a few curious minds on the internet, who's to say what will be solved next.

I think that this article was well written, but became confusing at times. The information was thrown at the reader all at once, and was hard to take in all at once at times.The author did a good job at emphasizing the fact that this case was solved by someone who stumbled upon it on reddit, making sure that that aspect of it was not overlooked. Overall, this case interested me very much, seeing as I had not heard of anything of the sorts before, and was a generally well written article.