Finding a victim in a pink nighty across hundreds of thousands of images – a needle in a haystack?
During the course of an investigation conducted within the Digital Investigation and Intelligence Department of a major police force, a Victim Identification Officer found an indecent image of a child. The victim could not be identified, as the face was not in focus. The abuser had gone to great lengths to conceal the identity of the victim. Or did he?
Needing to find more images from the same crime scene, or of the same victim, the officer carefully examined the scene depicted in the image but there was no give away sign, so he zoned in on the rather plain pink nighty worn by the victim. He wanted to quickly find any relevant images that could help identify the victim.
The officer deployed S21 LASERi-X’s unique colour search capability, with a couple of clicks. He selected the pink colour on the image by clicking on the pink nighty. LASERi allowed him to adjust the colour search criteria, to account for changes in shading or lighting. The search results appeared nearly instantly, with firm matches displayed first.
The search returned many images of the same nighty on or off the victim. Lo and behold, some of the images uncovered by S21 LASERi-X also showed some faces. Scrutiny of these faces revealed the identity of not only the victim but also the perpetrator.
Case solved! S21 LASERi-X enabled the victim identification officer to deploy colour-based filtering and quickly find relevant images and videos to scrutinise further. The officer was able to uncover the identity of the victim, and ultimately enable the police to find and protect them.
The detective breezed through the examination in about two days. The AI also detected extremist imagery, which was subsequently passed on to the Special Operations Team for further investigation and action.
S21 LASERi-X quickly discarded irrelevant material; reducing to about half, the amount of material to be investigated for possible evidence of a serious crime. The AI also detected extremist imagery; presenting it to the investigator in far less time than manual review would have required.