AG Says Vision Blur

AG said not prosecuting sex video - inability to identify individuals 

videos sent for authentication, face recognition analysis, locally and abroad

Cybersecurity Msia concluded videos authentic

facial recognition not achieved due to poor resolution of video recordings

clips sent to forensic experts in US who confirmed Cybersecurity findings

inability to identify individuals due to low resolution, quality of video

id not conclusive based on facial recognition analysis

In these circumstances my DDPs unanimously recommended no charges 

I have decided not to prosecute any person he said 

My comments :  So the video was clear enough to be identified as a sex video but the individual faces were not clear. 

It was clear enough to see that the guy's mouth was not sucking on a door knob.   Just that the face that was attached to the mouth was not clear. 

The AG Tommy Thomas should tell the public exactly which  lab in the US was this video sent to?  Was it a certified forensic lab? Meaning do they have the necessary qualifications for doing forensic video analysis?

I am assuming it was NOT the FBI forensics labs at Quantico in Virginia.  Because the FBI can determine the identities of faces even from the blurriest and grainiest videos.  

Here is something from the FBI's website    which is worth reading.

Forensic Analysis
Clues Buried in Sounds and Images
02/12/10

14 videotapes arrived on Peter Smith’s desk individually wrapped in plain manila envelopes. They had been sent by a special agent in our Phoenix office who wanted them analyzed after heavy rains exposed the buried cache in a yawning 35-foot-deep hole in the ground. A man who found the tapes saw the contents of one of them and quickly called the police, who in turn called us.

The tapes were in bad shape, but that’s nothing new to Smith, whose job it is to repair and recover damaged media so the contents can aid investigators. Smith is one of 26 examiners who work in the FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory’s Forensic Audio, Video, and Image Analysis Unit. Based in Quantico, Virginia, the unit gets requests from all 56 field offices and our overseas offices, or legal attachés.

“When I got them, they were caked with mud,” said Smith, a specialist in video reconstruction. Like his colleagues, he’s worked on tapes in much worse condition—unspooled, soaked in jet fuel, stretched, cut, or partially demagnetized. Every case is different.

“You have to assess each case in order to get it back into playable condition,” Smith said. In this case, that meant unspooling the tightly wound tapes, rinsing away the mud, and carefully drying them. The tapes were put on new spools and into new housings. Duplicates were recorded when the restored tapes were played. The original and new recordings were then sent back to Phoenix so investigators could move forward on the case.

Last year, the unit closed 610 examination requests—274 on audio and 336 on video and still images. On any given day, examiners are looking for even the smallest clues that could aid in a case.

In the 2007 case of the unearthed tapes, the recovered material revealed a man engaging in sexual activity with minor girls, one believed to be 5 or 6 years old. The tapes were decades old and recorded in a format that predates VHS. 

As Smith reconstructed the tapes, he found a key piece of evidence—one of the girls said the name of the man appearing with her on the video. Smith contacted the FBI case agent in Phoenix, who ran a check of motor vehicle licenses, which led him to an 81-year-old man who managed the property where the tapes came to light. He was quickly arrested.

Like video, audio and still images contain a bounty of potential clues. Examiners look for patterns and textures in clothes or a suspect’s distinctive physical features. Photogrammetry can reveal a suspect’s height or the length of a gun’s barrel. In many cases, with the proliferation of sophisticated photo-editing software, examiners can determine if images have been digitally manipulated, as is sometimes the defense claim in child pornography cases.

“It’s enabled us to hone our skills as far as recognizing real versus fake,” said Dr. Richard W. Vorder Bruegge, one of our image examiners and a leader in the field of forensic analysis.

The Digital Evidence Laboratory, part of our Operational Technology Division, has played a key role in a wide variety of high-profile cases, including the 9/11 probe, the Enron investigation, and the 2004 murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia, a case that relied heavily on analysis of grainy surveillance video showing her abductor leading her away from a Florida car wash.

For examiners working on the periphery of so many cases, it’s particularly satisfying when their forensic analysis plays a central role in an investigation. In the buried tapes case, the discovery of the man’s identity led to a search of his home—and more sex tapes. The man eventually pled guilty to child pornography charges and was sentenced in 2008 to more than six years in prison.

So the FBI video labs can restore videos that have even been soaked in jet fuel. Certainly undamaged and original videos would be much easier to analyse. 

Here is one company that sells software which they claim can make clearer videos that are not clear.  And they claim many successes.  Go to this site.

Here is another example of what they mean by enhancing unclear images. This is NOT FBI ok. This is just some commercially available software.

Above : From almost pitch black images they can extract car number plates and human faces.

As I said this is not FBI. I am positive the FBI can do a much better job in enhancing poor quality images.

Conclusion : It is obvious that the "new" AG knows the rules of the game.