Digital investigative solutions that detect, block and analyze digital media are becoming increasingly important tools for law enforcement investigators having to dig into big data in today’s criminal investigations.
Analyze Digital Investigator 15.1, the newest version of NetClean’s leading digital media investigation solution, helps investigators expedite cases, the company said in announcing the update, Analyze Relations. This new feature provides a visual navigation tool that enables digital investigators to dig deeper into case material.
Through NetClean’s partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Virtual Global Task Force’s Project Vic, “the Analyze platform has expanded into other industries, both private and public, that also use digital forensics to solve cases,” the company said. “The solution now includes Analyze Relations, an industry first visual navigation tool that helps digital investigators dig deeper into case material by actively suggesting relationships between millions of images. Used by more than 2,500 law enforcement agencies around the globe — from local law enforcement to federal agencies — Analyze is helping investigators produce better results in less time.”
According to Project Vic, its purpose is to create an ecosystem of information and data sharing between domestic and international law enforcement agencies working on crimes facilitated against children and the exploitation of children. The agencies generally retain silos of similar data that would be more useful in the aggregate. This project looks at the sum total effect of facilitating a method for each agency to leverage aggregate data in the form of robust image hash values.”
“Project VIC is a combination of a Project to bring Victim Identification to the forefront of investigations, and the tools that have adopted the ideals of the project. In the last two years, the concept has come to reality and is in production, but continues to innovate every day to achieve the goals of law enforcements’ fight against child exploitation,” the organization says.
According to NetClean, “Thousands of investigators and forensic examiners in both law enforcement and private industry already trust Analyze, which has the ability to tackle any use case that involves image and video data.”
The Analyze platform “has always been at the forefront of the digital investigative industry, but we have now made the digital analysis process even more seamless,” explained Johann Hofmann, Analyze product manager. “We are excited to introduce Analyze Relations, which gives users the ability to automatically pinpoint and correlate information of interest in what can seem like a needle in a haystack. Ultimately, investigators are able to produce better results and maximize their limited resources.”
The company explained that, “With the proliferation of digital media – whether in the form of video or photo images – investigators are often forced to manually review and analyze millions of digital files. Although more digital files mean more potential evidence, it’s nearly impossible to manually review and make sense of such large quantities of material.”
“Without the proper tools,” NetClean said, “the process is time-consuming and frustrating for the investigator and missed leads and unidentified connections are virtually guaranteed. The newest version of Analyze DI incorporates Analyze Relations, an industry first capability for visual navigation that actively suggests relationships between millions of images.”
Typically, investigative tools are static and investigators must know what they are looking for when new images are discovered as a part of an investigation. “The process of finding out if those newly acquired images are related to one another or to previously seized data requires manual actions,” NetClean said.
Its Analyze Relations solution “offers a dynamic solution that actively helps to connect the dots between images and assists in building visual maps, ultimately furthering investigators’ ability to abstract actionable intelligence from visual big data. The software identifies relationships by comparing multiple types of data collected from this type of digital media – including what camera was used, attributes depicted visually within the images, and where and when the image was taken.”
