Admissibility of digital photographs
Nogood Boyo
committing a crime) are not admissible in evidence. Is that right?
I'd have thought that a print of a digital photo, supported by a
witness statement by the person who took the photo that it had not
been altered or enhanced in any way, would be acceptable for most
purposes (its usefulness obviously depending on the quality of the
photo).
Are there rules about this sort of thing?
--
Nogood Boyo
GP Hardy
> It's been suggested to me that digital photographs (eg, of someone
> committing a crime) are not admissible in evidence. Is that right?
They are admissible as long as the trail of evidence is maintained - so a
digital photo taken by £40,000 automated traffic camera is more "believable"
than that from a £50 point-and-shoot image taken by grandpa Joe as he
photographs the yobs vandalising next door.
peterwn
Any 'rules' would be what judges rule in specific cases especially any
Appeal Court or Supreme Court rulings. For a serious criminal matter,
it is quite open for the defence lawyer to try and cast a shadow of
doubt over the validity ie quality of print, likliehood of tampering
etc. For speed camera digital photos it is unlikely they can be
readily 'attacked' unless something is obviously wrong (eg incorrect
location recorded). For civil matters it is on the balance of
probabilities. The person the photo is being used against can try and
ask for an exact copy of the .jpg, etc produced by the camera and even
for the camera itself (for examination by a specialist) and if these
are produced would strengthen the credibility of the photo evidence.
An expert would soon be able to tell if a .jpg file has been tampered
via Photoshop, Gimp, etc. Trying to tamper with a movie clip frame by
frame without leaving obvious traces would seem very difficult.
Another problem with tampering is there would be no need AFAIK for the
defence to forewarn that tampering is going to be an issue. The
defence can call an expert witness and smack the prosecution right
between the eyes with a tampering claim.
For scene photos following a serious crime, the police would
presumably be expected to take the highest standards of care, any
shortfalls would be open to a stinging attack from defence counsel.
This should include retaining flash RAM cards used as part of the
evidence with 'clones' supplied to the defence if requested. Sloppy
police work can lose a case or result in a manslaughter instead of a
murder conviction, especially when mor care could have easily been
taken.
There is not necessarily any need for paper prints except perhaps for
the most significant photos. A CD containing the original
'camera' .jpg's accompanied by a sworn statement by the photographer
(and anyone else who copied the images to the CD) may suffice as these
can be displayed using a OHP in court. The defence could ask the
people concerned to present the photos and CD as witnesses and be open
to cross examination.
A judge is unlikely to rule digital images 'inadmissible' but could
well tell a jury how to go about considering their validity.
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
Also, photographic negatives are far harder to doctor than digitized images.
--
Dirk
http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/onetribe - Occult Talk Show
Paul Rudin
> GP Hardy wrote:
>> "Nogood Boyo" wrote...
>>> It's been suggested to me that digital photographs (eg, of someone
>>> committing a crime) are not admissible in evidence. Is that right?
>>
>> They are admissible as long as the trail of evidence is maintained -
>> so a digital photo taken by £40,000 automated traffic camera is more
>> "believable" than that from a £50 point-and-shoot image taken by
>> grandpa Joe as he photographs the yobs vandalising next door.
>
> Also, photographic negatives are far harder to doctor than digitized images.
Presumably with the right equipment you can make a photographic negative
from something that started out as a digitized image.
Nogood Boyo
Thanks. Very helpful.
--
Nogood Boyo
Peter Parry
<paul....@rudin.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Presumably with the right equipment you can make a photographic negative
>from something that started out as a digitized image.
You can but it won't be the same as an original wet film image of the
same scene. Some digital cameras (Nikon D2/3/D200/D300 for example)
have an option of generating and embedding a cryptographic image
authentication signature in any image when it is taken. Any subsequent
alteration to the image or image data will cause it to fail
validation.
Roland Perry
2010, Paul Rudin <paul....@rudin.co.uk> remarked:
>Presumably with the right equipment you can make a photographic negative
>from something that started out as a digitized image.
And you can also take a new photo of a doctored traditional chemical
print.
--
Roland Perry
John Smith
"GP Hardy" <gareth...@ntlwrold.com> wrote in message
news:MPu3n.25843$Ym4....@text.news.virginmedia.com...
"Nogood Boyo" wrote...
> It's been suggested to me that digital photographs (eg, of someone
> committing a crime) are not admissible in evidence. Is that right?
-They are admissible as long as the trail of evidence is maintained - so a
-digital photo taken by �40,000 automated traffic camera is more
"believable"
-than that from a �50 point-and-shoot image taken by grandpa Joe as he
-photographs the yobs vandalising next door.
*****
I remember a while back there was a case where a traffic warden or authority
had a photo doctored to support their case - they digitally altered the date
of the timestamp on the photo to match a ticket issued.
I'm sure someone will come up with the case shortly.
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
True, but it's vastly more complex than loading a copy of photoshop on
your computer and hitting a few buttons. At least it is if you want to
make it seem like its the original.
tim....
"John Smith" <jbl...@nospam.net> wrote in message
news:goednZAVWIj9jtLW...@giganews.com...
No they didn't
They just adjusted the time in the camera and when back to the scene later
As this is trivially easy, the time stamp on any photo is worthless as
evidence IMHO.
tim
Peter Parry
<tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>"John Smith" <jbl...@nospam.net> wrote
>> I remember a while back there was a case where a traffic warden or
>> authority had a photo doctored to support their case - they digitally altered the
>> date of the timestamp on the photo to match a ticket issued.
>
>No they didn't
Oh yes they did :-)
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article151693.ece
tim....
"Peter Parry" <pe...@wpp.ltd.uk> wrote in message
news:ehouk5pjg7uf960ml...@4ax.com...
oh, I stand corrected
tim
>
Big Les Wade
>They just adjusted the time in the camera and when back to the scene later
>
>As this is trivially easy, the time stamp on any photo is worthless as
>evidence IMHO.
It's not any more worthless than verbal witness testimony. A witness
might say "I saw the defendant in Gowan Avenue at 9.30am", and a digital
photograph might bear the time-stamp 9.30am. Either statement could be
true or false, and the court should decide on their truth based on the
reliability of the witness and perhaps their consistency with other
evidence.
--
Les
If by creating a police state we can save just one child, then it will all have
been worthwhile.
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
It needs to be accompanied by a sequence number that cannot be set by
the user.
tim....
"Dirk Bruere at NeoPax" <dirk....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7r912m...@mid.individual.net...
That's only useful of you're showing a before and after photo
tim
tim....
"Big Les Wade" <L...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:BZcKPcOY...@obviously.invalid...
> tim.... <tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> posted
>>They just adjusted the time in the camera and when back to the scene later
>>
>>As this is trivially easy, the time stamp on any photo is worthless as
>>evidence IMHO.
>
> It's not any more worthless than verbal witness testimony.
A witness can be cross examined.
A photo can't
tim
John Smith
"tim...." <tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:7r8tvn...@mid.individual.net...
Ah right, yes, I remember now, they wanted to get him for parking for too
long but in actual fact he hadn't been there all that time. I knew they were
doing something funny with a camera's timestamp though.
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
Not if each number is accompanied by the date.
It would considerably narrow the possibility for fraud.
peterwn
They do not become 'inadmissible' just because evidence trail etc is
not maintained. They merely become more susceptible to challenge. A
judge rules on admissibility being a point of law, but the validity of
the images is a point of fact and this is decided by a jury when
considering the overall evidence if there is one.
If grandpa e-mails the camera images to the cops and deletes nothing
from his camera pending any forensic examination of the camera, this
evidence would be hard to challenge.
peterwn
wrote:
> GP Hardy wrote:
> > "Nogood Boyo" wrote...
> >> It's been suggested to me that digital photographs (eg, of someone
> >> committing a crime) are not admissible in evidence. Is that right?
>
> > They are admissible as long as the trail of evidence is maintained - so
> > a digital photo taken by £40,000 automated traffic camera is more
> > "believable" than that from a £50 point-and-shoot image taken by grandpa
> > Joe as he photographs the yobs vandalising next door.
>
> Also, photographic negatives are far harder to doctor than digitized images.
>
Only if the resulting negative image could be passed off as coming
from a film cameras. If it is found to have been taken by a digital
camera originally, the immediate question is where is the digital
image as produced by a camera. If such a digital image is
subsequently processed by Photoshop, this will almost invariably be
detectable by one means or another (eg Photoshop adds its own metadata
to a .jpg file).
GP Hardy
> If grandpa e-mails the camera images to the cops and deletes nothing from
> his camera pending any forensic examination of the camera, this evidence
> would be hard to challenge.
Thanks for that - it's prompted another couple of questions which are worthy
(IMO) of their own thread...
Nogood Boyo
If digital images are not considered inadmissible per se, I'm happy.
If a credible witness says "I not only saw what I'm telling you but I
also took a picture of it and here it is, unchanged in any way, for
you to see that my eyes were not deceiving me" and the court is
allowed to consider the picture along with the other evidence of the
witness, I'm content. I can see that, if the image is still on the
camera and the camera is available for examination in case of doubt,
it would make the evidence as a whole more credible. That's good
enough for me. (For anyone who's interested, the circumstances I'm
thinking of are of a fishing club bailiff giving evidence of someone
poaching).
--
Nogood Boyo (NAL)
smr
I'd say that not having a photo would be worse than having a digital
one. I think a lot of the issue revolves around the "magic bullet"
theory of evidence - that there is one thing that sends the guilty
away when really it's the reaction gained by all or most of the
evidence working together. If you contradict your photo with your
testimony it doesn't matter what you used to take the photo.
No one's ever going to say that you can't admit a photo just because
it's a digital image. It's the sort of thing that gets in the papers
as a sign of the outdated judical system.
Paul Rudin
So? A photo can be subjected to various techniques to determined whether
it's been altered in any way. A witness can't.
Clearly they're not the same thing, but they both have some value as
evidence.
smr
> "tim...." <tims_new_h...@yahoo.co.uk> writes:
> > "Big Les Wade" <L...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
> >news:BZcKPcOY...@obviously.invalid...
> >>>They just adjusted the time in the camera and when back to the scene later
>
> >>>As this is trivially easy, the time stamp on any photo is worthless as
> >>>evidence IMHO.
>
> >> It's not any more worthless than verbal witness testimony.
>
> > A witness can be cross examined.
>
> > A photo can't
>
> So? A photo can be subjected to various techniques to determined whether
> it's been altered in any way. A witness can't.
>
> Clearly they're not the same thing, but they both have some value as
> evidence.
You can't cross examine seized drugs either, so obviously they
shouldn't be used as evidence. It's a crazily short sighted complaint
against photographs.
Ian Jackson
tim.... <tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>"Peter Parry" <pe...@wpp.ltd.uk> wrote in message
>news:ehouk5pjg7uf960ml...@4ax.com...
Blimey. Have they not attempted to pervert the course of justice, or
committed perjury, or attempted fraud, or something ?
--
Ian Jackson personal email: <ijac...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
These opinions are my own. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/
PGP2 key 1024R/0x23f5addb, fingerprint 5906F687 BD03ACAD 0D8E602E FCF37657
tim....
No, I correctly remembered that they wanted to (try to) prove that he had
violated a parking condition, that had been posted after he had parked.
So they created a photo of the new sign with a bogus date.
tim
tim....
"Paul Rudin" <paul....@rudin.co.uk> wrote in message
news:871vhr7...@rudin.co.uk...
> "tim...." <tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> writes:
>
>> "Big Les Wade" <L...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
>> news:BZcKPcOY...@obviously.invalid...
>>> tim.... <tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> posted
>>>>They just adjusted the time in the camera and when back to the scene
>>>>later
>>>>
>>>>As this is trivially easy, the time stamp on any photo is worthless as
>>>>evidence IMHO.
>>>
>>> It's not any more worthless than verbal witness testimony.
>>
>> A witness can be cross examined.
>>
>> A photo can't
>
> So? A photo can be subjected to various techniques to determined whether
> it's been altered in any way. A witness can't.
As I said before. Unless you have a series of photos, it is completely
impossible to tell if the wrong date/time has been set in the camera before
any individual photo was taken, so the timestamp is IMHO always worthless as
evidence.
tim
tim....
"smr" <stevi...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:8b8a6df8-5bba-4789...@m16g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
--------------------------------------------------
I'm not saying anything about the use of the photo. It is the timestamp
that is in question
tim
Roland Perry
2010, tim.... <tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> remarked:
>I correctly remembered that they wanted to (try to) prove that he had
>violated a parking condition, that had been posted after he had parked.
>
>So they created a photo of the new sign with a bogus date.
Which has to be perjury, if not perverting the course of justice.
--
Roland Perry
Ian Jackson
tim.... <tims_n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>As I said before. Unless you have a series of photos, it is completely
>impossible to tell if the wrong date/time has been set in the camera before
>any individual photo was taken, so the timestamp is IMHO always worthless as
>evidence.
I think you're falling into the false dichotomy that others have
warned of. Just because the timestamp isn't 100% definitive doesn't
mean that it's 100% useless.
For example, if I took a photo personally and kept the camera in my
posession until some time later double-checking the clock, I would be
able to testify to the accuracy of the camera's clock and thus to the
accuracy of the timestamp on the photo. Whether the court believed me
or not would be the important question, and if they were convinced I
was telling the truth then the timestamp, taken together with my
testimony, would be a powerful piece of evidence as to the time the
photo was taken.
Jonathan Bryce
>> It's not any more worthless than verbal witness testimony.
>
> A witness can be cross examined.
>
> A photo can't
The photographer can be cross examined on his photo.
tim....
"Jonathan Bryce" <jona...@localhost.localdomain> wrote in message
news:hir2sk$is2$1...@speranza.aioe.org...
I know. So the evidence of the date is that of the photographer, not the
date on photo.
This is a legal group, the distinction is important
tim
Steve Firth
> Just because the timestamp isn't 100% definitive doesn't
> mean that it's 100% useless.
That's correct, and I've given evidence in criminal cases where the
timestamp (on a computer system) wasn't correct because of a failure by
an engineer to configure the time server correctly. However the time was
precise and it was possible to back calculate times for the events in
question and also to verify the calculations against other known events.
The evidence was accepted by the judge at the time and I suspect it
would be accepted were the trial to be run today.
smr
Now that is proper old fashioned detective work. I think I can
appreciate the effort that would take.
Paul
> On Jan 14, 12:40 pm, Nogood Boyo <ynyst...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> It's been suggested to me that digital photographs (eg, of someone
>> committing a crime) are not admissible in evidence. Is that right?
>>
>> witness statement by the person who took the photo that it had not been
>> altered or enhanced in any way, would be acceptable for most purposes
>> (its usefulness obviously depending on the quality of the photo).
>>
>> Are there rules about this sort of thing?
>>
>>
> Any 'rules' would be what judges rule in specific cases especially any
> Appeal Court or Supreme Court rulings. For a serious criminal matter, it
> is quite open for the defence lawyer to try and cast a shadow of doubt
> over the validity ie quality of print, likliehood of tampering etc. For
> speed camera digital photos it is unlikely they can be readily
> 'attacked' unless something is obviously wrong (eg incorrect location
> recorded). For civil matters it is on the balance of probabilities. The
> person the photo is being used against can try and ask for an exact copy
> of the .jpg, etc produced by the camera and even for the camera itself
> (for examination by a specialist) and if these are produced would
> strengthen the credibility of the photo evidence. An expert would soon
> be able to tell if a .jpg file has been tampered via Photoshop, Gimp,
> etc. Trying to tamper with a movie clip frame by frame without leaving
> obvious traces would seem very difficult. Another problem with tampering
> is there would be no need AFAIK for the defence to forewarn that
> tampering is going to be an issue. The defence can call an expert
> witness and smack the prosecution right between the eyes with a
> tampering claim.
>
> For scene photos following a serious crime, the police would presumably
> be expected to take the highest standards of care, any shortfalls would
> be open to a stinging attack from defence counsel. This should include
> retaining flash RAM cards used as part of the evidence with 'clones'
> supplied to the defence if requested. Sloppy police work can lose a case
> or result in a manslaughter instead of a murder conviction, especially
> when mor care could have easily been taken.
>
> There is not necessarily any need for paper prints except perhaps for
> the most significant photos. A CD containing the original 'camera'
> .jpg's accompanied by a sworn statement by the photographer (and anyone
> else who copied the images to the CD) may suffice as these can be
> displayed using a OHP in court. The defence could ask the people
> concerned to present the photos and CD as witnesses and be open to cross
> examination.
>
> A judge is unlikely to rule digital images 'inadmissible' but could well
> tell a jury how to go about considering their validity.
Good response. I don't think there's any hard and fast rules concerning
digital evidence. It's obviously on a case by case basis and examined
closely by experts.
As an aside to this post... I was once the victim of an attempted street
robbery by a gang of youths who were trying to steal my digital camera.
I reported it to the police and had a photo of the gang on the camera.
The police examined the camera and used the photo as evidence and arrested
the ring-leader. He was subsequently released without charge after being
held in a cell as the police said the photo by itself wasn't enough to
bring a prosecution and they lacked any CCTV evidence or witnesses.