Crime Scene Investigation: Photographic Portfolio

A former forensic crime lab technician turned professional photographer named Angela Strassheim has used her fascination with crime scenes to create a photographic portfolio.  For the portfolio, she visited dozens of former crime scenes and photographed them using a combination of low light, long exposure times, black and white film, and a chemical reagent used to highlight blood stains.  The results are fascinating and you can see them here.

Audio Forensics: Signal Processing helps unravel JFK Shooting evidence

IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) has started a public video section on its web site it calls ieee.tv.  I have been a member of IEEE since at least my graduate school days, as are many speech and forensic scientists, so if you are in either one or both of these fields and are not a member, I highly recommend that you check into it. (And in the spirit of full disclosure and in the hopes of avoiding investigation under who knows what new law is actually now or ever will be on the books about such things on the Internet - no, they didn't pay me to plug them as a professional organization!).

On to the subject of this post: ieee.tv has a fascinating video clip on the gunshot analysis performed by various experts on the recordings JFK assassination.

Hat Tip: Thanks Alex!

Biometrics: Fingerprints versus palm prints

While driving back from Charleston, SC (USA) today - a lovely seaport city, by the way - I was catching up on my podcasts and happened to listen to a Wall Street Journal (US, center-right, business news) segment on new palm print readers.  The part that caught my attention was the claim by one interviewee that - and I'm paraphrasing here - "people" were concerned about using fingerprint biometric identification technologies because they were worried about later being falsely accused of a crime due to a mistaken match to a print left at a crime scene.  The interviewee went on to say that as police did not collect palm prints during crime scene investigations, palm print biometrics systems were getting a leg up in the market place.

This made me wonder exactly who are these "people" he referred to?  I'm rather doubtful that it is the general public that has these concerns.  I find it much easier to believe that elements of criminal "society" or privacy advocates would be tuned-in to these issues, but not the average man on the street.  I might be being too critical of this particular piece, but I thought that the reporter should have challenged, or at least followed up on, that statement.

In a larger context, this may unfortunately be a textbook example of how public policy is determined at the chaotic intersection where the general public, subject matter experts, issue advocates, the marketplace, and technology all collide.  I certainly hope not!