previous story  next story

October 2008

Video Forensics Technology Helps Investigators Working to Aid Missing and Exploited Children

About the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
According to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice, although many are recovered quickly, an estimated 800,000 children are reported missing each year. That amounts to more than 2,000 each day. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is a nonprofit organization created in 1984 to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation; help find missing children; and assist victims of child abduction and sexual exploitation, their families, and the professionals who serve them. NCMEC works in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and serves as a national clearinghouse of information about missing and exploited children.

Since its inception, NCMEC has assisted law enforcement with more than 138,411 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 121,580 children; trained more than 235,150 police and other professionals; and handled more than 556,237 reports of child sexual exploitation.

The Challenge
With security and surveillance cameras so commonplace, video is regularly used to catch criminals in the act, or provide leads that help identify and catch suspects, even as many people do not notice cameras at the mall, bank, grocery store, pharmacy and other public buildings.

Further, the Internet has provided a new tool for child-pornography collectors, traders and manufacturers. With an instant and somewhat anonymous, at-home vehicle, perpetrators can meet, trade files and gain broader access to children.

The Child Victim Identification Program (CVIP), part of NCMEC's Exploited Children Division, provides technical and investigative assistance to law enforcement on child exploitation cases. At the request of law enforcement, this team often reviews both security camera and Internet video and still images to find leads, identify suspects and identify missing or exploited children.

"One or two frames from a video can be very important," said Eric Fallah, a CVIP Digital Imaging Specialist. "Online files are traded in various formats. By grabbing and enhancing the video, we can identify victims and aid in the prosecution of offenders."

Unfortunately, many of today's security camera videos are multiplexed, with a single video combining several camera feeds into a single, confusing playback stream. These camera and Internet videos and images are also often low-resolution, damaged, and shaky. Even worse, most video is locked in proprietary digital file formats that are not easily copied or converted for investigation.

The Result
CVIP analysts use VideoFOCUS, a video forensics system from Salient Stills, in their daily analysis of online child pornography to grab small details in the image, in order to assist law enforcement in locating unknown child victims and identifying offenders.

Every video and image is closely examined in the hopes of finding child victims' locations. Once a location has been determined, CVIP analysts work with the appropriate law enforcement agency to locate the child victim, with many successful cases.

To obtain clear images of other items in videos and photos, VideoFOCUS can capture and import both analog and digital video into a computer to help pinpoint and zoom into areas of interest. The software helps to de-interlace, de-multiplex, quad separate, enhance, and edit video and convert the final product into a usable, shareable form. Such functionality helps to identify both victims and perpetrators.

CVIP analysts also appreciate VideoFOCUS' ability to import an extensive range of digital video file types including .MPG, .WMF and .ASF; and that the system can export popular .MOV, .AVI and .WMF files for viewing through widely used Windows Media Player and QuickTime video players.

In child pornography cases, CVIP processes images submitted by law enforcement hoping to rescue unidentified children, while also aiding in prosecutions by indicating which images contain previously identified victims.

For one example, in 2006 the Los Angeles County Sheriff requested NCMEC review evidence from a movie theater that showed a young girl being assaulted in a hallway. The only witness was the surveillance system, which was of poor quality and had multiplexed video on a VHS tape. The images were blurred and it was difficult to decipher what happened. At first, the Los Angeles County Sheriff had asked NASA for help to demultiplex the video.

But at CVIP, VideoFOCUS quickly de-multiplexed the video feeds, captured them, and broke down the different camera streams. CVIP was soon able to produce a still of the suspect, and piece together a timeline.

"When confronted with the evidence, the perpetrator couldn't deny what happened, ultimately leading to his conviction," said Fallah. "VideoFOCUS was crucial in getting the images and prosecuting this suspect. It's an incredible tool for demultiplexing."

The Solution
"VideoFOCUS is so fast to use and very flexible. I thought we would lose quality or resolution, but that is not the case. It produces superior quality images," said Fallah. "And the process is easy to follow and seamless."

The ability to capture and export digital video, work with proprietary video data formats, and directly print images has enabled CVIP to repeatedly obtain high quality still images required for successful investigations.

While such casework at CVIP can be challenging, "The ability to assist law enforcement with closing a case and helping a child is very rewarding," said Fallah.

previous story  next story