To deal with some of points….
iGrade is a partnership between ourselves (Geek Ltd) and Marcus Rowe, who initially developed PiCA with a colleague, Pete Forster. Marcus and I have joined forces and condensed 4 years worth of experiences to build the software as it is today.
One of the main benefits of iGrade is that it can be used as a support tool to the forensic examiner. I strongly agree with Andy’s comments about his role and ultimately his duty to the court as an expert. iGrade can be used by the investigator to grade images leaving you to work out the “what, why, where, when, and how’†aspects of a case. That said, in a recent case I dealt with 37,000 images spanning 15 exhibits. Using a blank database I graded these images in 9 hours. The reports are designed to present not only an exhibit by exhibit overview, but a case overview.
iGrade is by far a much quicker solution to grading images than using EnCase book mark features, and so it should be, this is its primarily role. iGrade’s management of hash values and grades is dynamic during the grading process and because it handles multi exhibit cases this applies across the case as well as upgrading a central library for future work. Also the physical process of clicking once to grade an image is quicker than the book mark procedure.
We understand a need for the forensic examiner to return to their forensic environment with iGrade results. To address this iGrade has two methods. The first is to create a ‘hash keeper’ hash set which I believe most forensic software can import, and the other is a ‘copy folders’ option where iGrade creates folders called Level 1, Level 2 etc. and copies the image in to the appropriate folder. This allows the user to create any hash library in any forensic software they wish or use any third party image viewer they may prefer.
Anyway I have gone on too long…. If you would like to give iGrade a good thrashing and would like a free licence to do so, please download the software at
Cheers,
Sam
Many thanks Sam, I've registered and downloaded a trial. I will try iGrade out next week and give it a ruddy good thrashing.
Steve, I had a meagre attempt at v4 EnScript prgramming (to help with bookmarking), a while back, I posted them to the downloads section. Use them at you peril….
http//www.forensicfocus.com/index.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=3
Don't laugh ), they might save you a couple of minutes creating folders & stuff.
In France, we don't use grading for CP. We only have to define that the person is underage and that the picture is pornographic. The problem is we don't have a legal definition of pornography, which can be a problem when we discover pictures of naked children, not involved in any sexual activity.
Where could I find these gradings which seem to be used in UK/US ?
What is the legal use of this grading ?I think that such a grading could be used in french CP cases, even if it does not have any legal foundation.
Marc
Could someone help me with this ? If this post was inapropriate for some reason, could you let me know ?
Thanks
marc
The information is all open source and there isn't any big secret about the SAP guidelines or COPINE project, so I don't feel the post was inappropriate. A Google will reveal these links.
The SAP guidelines are in this document http//
The COPINE project website is here http//
SAP is the Sentencing Advisory Panel, and they came up with the following 5 categories following the case R v Oliver
http//
1 Images depicting nudity or erotic posing, with no sexual activity
2 Sexual activity between children, or solo masturbation by a child
3 Non-penetrative sexual activity between adult(s) and child(ren)
4 Penetrative sexual activity between child(ren) and adult(s)
5 Sadistic / bestiality (sexual images involving pain or animals)
It should be noted that there were some issues with nudist photos (i.e. groups of naked people performing everyday tasks), as to whether or not they count as level 1. My opinion is that of course, they do, however in my previous role I would categorise these seperately and highlight them for the attention of the OIC.
There was also some debate as to whether oral sex counted as level 3 or 4, but I do not think that this is an appropraite forum for such a conversation - just warning you of the arguements ahead.
Hope that is helpful.
Emma
Thanks a lot for help.
I did search through google and indeed found lots of pages talking about this, but none explaining the actual grading.
If I may add to the debate, french laws consider penetration as "penetrated or penetrating sexual organ". As soon as a sexual organ penetrates "something" or that a sexual organ is penetrated by "something", it is considered as a "penetration" which makes the difference between a rape and a sexual assault.
In our case, oral sex would fall into the "penetrating sexual organ" type of penetration.
Hope this fuels the debate a bit more -)
Marc
Thanks for detailing the R V Oliver, Emma, this page now gets blocked by the Internet misuse filter on my home machine ). Have had to wait to get into the office to post!
I'm not sure if this forum is best suited to an explicit discussion of the intimate issues around image grading, does anyone have any thoughts about that, as this forum is open to the public to read. Perhaps a protected forum such as Digital Detective would be better.
Am I just being overly sensitive?
Nick
I agree Nick, discussing grades of pictures in detail may not be appropriate for an open forum. I have no doubt that those subject to such investigations have access, and have posted questions specific to their case in the past. Everything discussed up to now has been open source, very easy to find and ‘Googleable’ (is that a new word?). But I would not like to get some weirdo excited by talking about obscene pictures. I also am careful not post links where I suspect it will attract the attention of ‘undesirables’ (they create a footprint). It might be worth obfuscating any posted links in future (change www to w.w.w.) so it needs manually changing at the url bar?
Thanks for the reminder Emma, R v Oliver is well documented on the web. Also the link you posted is quite interesting. If you navigate up the directories you will see the anonymous author has some strong opinions about the subject.
Andy
Nick, Andy, all,
From my point of view I think you're right that any more detailed discussion is probably best taken to a protected forum (such as DD). Thanks for bringing the issue up, I think it's an extremely sensible approach to take.
Jamie
PS If there's enough call for it it's certainly possible to create such a forum here, for LE only for example. It is something we tried a few years ago but the level of interest was low, however we're certainly busier now than we were so there may already be a suitably large user base to make it worthwhile. If that's of interest please let me know. Equally, if DD already covers that need more than adequately I guess there's no need to reinvent the wheel…
PS If there's enough call for it it's certainly possible to create such a forum here, for LE only for example. It is something we tried a few years ago but the level of interest was low, however we're certainly busier now than we were so there may already be a suitably large user base to make it worthwhile. If that's of interest please let me know. Equally, if DD already covers that need more than adequately I guess there's no need to reinvent the wheel…
Please don't make it LE only! You would be cutting your source of knowledge by 75% for starters.
As you say, do we really need to duplicate Digital Detective?