INVESTIGATIONS ACCELERATED BY LTU-ENCASE INTEGRATION
Paris and Washington D.C. – February 28, 2006 - A feature enhancement for investigators using the EnCase® computer analysis tool has been announced by LTU Technologies. For the critical field of child abuse and other image-based investigations, the new capability, developed for one of LTU's major government clients, is designed to speed the analysis of computer materials seized from suspects.
"Our federal client wants to speed up the field analysis of seized materials, since in each seizure there may be evidence of a new case of child abuse. The more quickly that the data can be analyzed, the better the chances of finding and rescuing the child, " said Alex Winter, LTU Chief Technology Officer and co-founder, based in LTU's Washington D.C. office.
"The EnCase® / Image-Seeker™ integration also facilitates cooperation between local and central agencies. Without compromising the image data - which is too sensitive for general circulation - investigators at all levels, local or national, may compare current cases with profiles of images stored by the national agencies that gather and centralize information. This could be a benefit to the law enforcement organization of any country."
EnCase® Forensic software, produced by Guidance Software Inc. (Pasadena, California) is widely used by investigators in law enforcement and government for analyzing computer evidence, including the digital photographs that are seized or intercepted from abuse perpetrators and collectors of child abuse images.
The EnCase / Image-Seeker™ integration is also applicable to other types of investigations, such as for intelligence purposes and the investigation of counterfeiting - anywhere there is the need to compare field-analyzed materials with those held by the central agency, without compromising the security of the central database.
Investigators in child abuse cases emphasize that these images, which are sometimes called "child pornography" are more accurately called images of child abuse, because they are more than just photographs: they are evidence of horrible acts done to children. And the traffic in these images, because the images are sold and exchanged among collectors, encourages further acts of abuse.
LTU Image-Seeker™, produced by LTU Technologies (Paris and Washington, D.C.), is an image analysis tool which LTU provides to national police and international organizations active in identifying and rescuing the victims of child abuse. LTU Image-Seeker™ helps investigators assemble all of the visual evidence available on particular criminals and victims.
The new integration with EnCase Forensic is designed for officers in the field as they analyze the disk drives and other storage media seized from suspects in child abuse investigations. This "plug-in" uses the versatile EnCase scripting feature along with a specially developed encoded library. Agents in the field may quickly identify which images on the seized materials are already known by the national or international authorities. The encoded library, which contains no images but only visual descriptors of the images, is based upon LTU's proprietary technology: LTU indexes the visual content of images by creating a digital "signature" or "image DNA", which describes all of the visual aspects of each image.
In certain child abuse cases, the urgency of identifying "known images" is so that investigators may quickly focus on the "unknown" images. It is the "unknown" images that may be images of a child in the household or the child next door, who is currently a victim of abuse. This same procedure may also uncover images that are supplemental to known cases, as the LTU image comparison may discover new images that were taken in the same surroundings as images already known.
Agents in the field, without needing to connect to the central database, may compare seized images with this encoded library. The library requires the cooperation of the national agency, but the integrated tool provides a fully portable analysis unit (600,000 image signatures may be stored in 40 Mb), and the image signatures are updated in ways similar to virus definition updates for computer security software.
"And because image signatures are a more powerful means of comparison than the checksum or hash comparisons that are often used in this field, the known images will be identified - even if the seized images have been modified or re-dimensioned, which is sometimes the case when images are exchanged or sold in these activities," Winter said.
"We recognize the urgency of extending to field investigations the critical data that is available in centralized agencies. The central databases must of course be maintained in tightly-controlled security. But this integration with EnCase allows the distribution of the image signatures - which may be distributed to the field because there is no way by which an image be reconstituted from a signature - and allows field officers to expedite these time-critical investigations", Winter concluded.
About LTU Technologies
Founded in 1999 by veteran scientists of MIT, Oxford and INRIA, LTU Technologies provides mission-critical software for search, retrieval and classification of images and videos. LTU's technology is patented. LTU's clients include government organizations such as the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as commercial organizations such as Meredith Corporation. The technology has also successfully been integrated in third party solutions for brand protection, enterprise search, digital asset management, and email monitoring. LTU Technologies has offices in Paris, France and Washington DC. For more information, visit www.ltutech.com
Press contact:
LTU Technologies
Francois Veltz
Tel (France) : + 33 (1) 53 43 01 71
