Page 55 - GCN, May 2016

jurisdiction, it’s very hard to make an automated solution that knows what to redact and what not to redact, so we let the hu- man do that,” he said. “If something goes wrong in a redaction and a person’s face even in a single frame is not blurred — the face of a minor or the face of a witness or the face of an undercover police officer — it can put someone’s life at risk.... In these cas- es with really high-stakes video footage, you can’t afford to not have a hu- man involved.”
“If something goes wrong in a redaction and a person’s face even in a single frame is not blurred — the face of a minor or the face of a witness or the face of an undercover police officer — it can put someone’s life at risk.... In these cases with really high-stakes video footage,
you can’t afford to not have a human involved.”
self-hosted environ- ment.
The Veretos system manages the compa- ny’s in-car and body- worn camera systems, “but you can also up- load Vievu video, vid- eo from your iPhone, from your Android, from your camera, by- stander video,” Guzik said. “The whole idea is that you have a co- hesive, single work- flow.”
After users select the video or videos they need, they click on a gear that pops up and select “re- dact.” From a menu, they choose what
Ikena Spotlight cur-
rently costs $2,995, and
the new version will bump
the price tag to between
$3,000 and $4,000. MotionDSP is working on a cloud-based version that users can try now.
OUTSOURCING REDACTION
While Ikena Spotlight puts the tools in the hands of police departments, PRI Management handles redaction for them. The online, cloud-based service uses the Microsoft Azure Government platform, which complies with secu- rity requirements issued by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division.
Users log into a PRI Management webpage that has been customized for their department and upload a copy of a video to a virtual machine in the cloud. They fill out a form about the video, including whether it’s from an open or closed case and whether an arrest has been made or a juvenile is involved.
Next, PRI Management’s team of technicians receives an email alert, logs into the virtual machine, and re- dacts the video according to state law and what the department specifies.
– SEAN VARAH, MOTIONDSP
When the redaction is complete, an email notice goes to the department. The company is working on add- ing text message notifications, too, Claughton said.
The turnaround time is typically one day, but expedited requests can be met within a couple hours. The company offers two pricing models: annual contracts for departments that receive many FOI requests and daily fee options for those that get a few. A single video would cost $75.
PRI Management offers storage options, too, but it automatically purges videos after 30 days unless de- partments request longer or shorter storage.
THE TOTAL PACKAGE
Other companies are camera-specific. Getac offers video redaction as part of its Veretos Enterprise evidence man- agement suite, which includes body- worn cameras and the tools to redact the video they record. Getac provides the tools in the Azure Government cloud but can also install them in a
they want to redact — audio, video or both — and the level of blur. The tech- nology will take all the videos select- ed, process them in a batch and make copies available for downloading and distribution.
“The other, bigger problem is orga- nizing your data,” Guzik said. “You have body-worn cameras, you have in-car video, you have bystander video that comes in, you have security cam- era video — most of these systems in a law enforcement agency live in dif- ferent areas.” He noted that seven to 10 systems could house the video that has been requested.
That’s why Veretos Cloud also stores video so that authorized users can search evidence by metadata — such as date, keywords, incident types and location — and share evidence via se- cure links.
“When you can put all this together into one platform, which we’ve been doing now for seven years, you can then basically say, ‘Hey, we’ve just sim- plified life for a department,’” Guzik said. •
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