Report of the National Center for Audio Video Forensics

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Sunday, January 29, 2012

The following is a report prepared by NCAVF regarding video files delivered to the office by Life Bliss Foundation in early October 2011.

1) Statements of credentials See attached biography

2) Background Today, video and audio technology has advanced enough that itʼs often difficult to determine what is real and what has been manufactured. Feature films such as Avatar and Hugo used actors to capture movements, gestures, and interactions, and experts in computer graphics and animation converted that information into totally re-imagined characters and scenarios.

If a person has access to the right computer resources he can create almost any scene.

3) Integrity of Evidence So what becomes most important in the authentication of evidence is to be able to know and track the original source of the video -- the videoʼs “chain of evidence.”

4) Explaining Chain of Evidence It is crucial that the integrity of evidence is maintained, from the beginning of a case until its resolution, to be sure a court makes a legal determination based on accurate facts. With this in mind, the first stage of investigating an alleged incident includes the gathering and protecting of evidence by a trusted police employee or a trusted and objective expert.

In a case that involves video or audio, a forensic video expert will gather the evidence directly from a surveillance system or from some original source such as a cellphone or a video camera.

That second generation copy is then manipulated in some way, to enhance and analyze it for law enforcement officials or attorneys. At every step the enhancements are noted care- fully and tracked, so that later, if needed, in court, those technical steps can be described and even repeated for a judge or jury.

5) Chain of Evidence in this specific instance In this situation, video was allegedly taken December 23-25, 2009 and it emerged to the public March 2, 2010. What happened to the video during that time? We donʼt know. The chain in this case was broken -- not only a little but extremely -- because we donʼt have a trustworthy guardian of the video for over two months. During that time all kinds of digital manipulation may have been applied.

Forensic Video Production • Digital Media Enhancement & Analysis • Expert Witness P.O. Box 67704 [email protected] Los Angeles, CA 90067 www.NCAVF.com 213-973-7811

Because the chain of evidence was broken, and in addition because it was broken for such a long time, it almost doesnʼt matter how much analysis you do. Itʼs just not video we can trust.

6) Issue of no audio -- It is strange that if a small recording device was purportedly placed in the room to capture private moments, why wasnʼt audio recorded? All devices have the function of recording audio too. Why not this device?

7) Issue of unexplained recording start and stop -- The unexplained start and stop in the video does not have a good explanation.

The video seems to begin at 23:21:33, and lasts 23 minutes, 11 seconds. It seems to end at 23:44:44. Why?

Regarding those who might say that motion activated and stopped the recording, this does not seem to be so. Because during fairly still screen activity the recording starts, and during obvious motion the camera recording stops.

David Notowitz Owner and founder National Center for Audio and Video Forensics