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A devastating string of floods and landslides have shocked residents in British Columbia, a west Canadian province increasingly forced to grapple with the effects of the climate crisis. As images of the devastation circulate on social media, experts warn that management of the provinces forests will be critical to blunting the effects of future storms.

Its just this awful feeling of being right and not wanting to be right. This is exactly what the best available science has predicted for years, said Peter Wood, author of a recent report on the link between clearcut logging and community safety from the Sierra Club BC. We know the outcome when you log steep slopes You reach sort of a tipping point, where the forest is no longer able to provide that moderating service of controlling flow of water.

On Tuesday, more residents were forced to flee their homes amid intermittent landslides and rising water levels. Videos from aerial flyovers showed parts of Abbotsford inundated with flood waters. Further north, a section of the Coquihalla highway, one of the provinces main road systems, appeared to have been severed.

Officials said it could be months before one of the provinces busiest highways reopens fully, after sections were destroyed. Rescue teams also began the search for people whose cars may have been buried after a series of mudslides trapped vehicles travelling east of Vancouver.

Experts have long cautioned that clearcut logging affects slope stability, the rate at which water is absorbed into the ground and the ability to hold soil in root systems. Without trees, heavy rains can wash large amounts of sediment into nearby water systems, choking creeks and streams and causing them to quickly overflow.

Over the last couple days, Ive been looking at the areas that have been particularly hard hit, and it happens to coincide with some of the communities that have been logged the heaviest, said Wood. A lot of that is due to the mountain pine beetle, but nonetheless, the cutting really does affect the amount of water that flows overland.

At the same time, British Columbia has suffered some of its worst wildfire seasons in recent years. As the aftermath of the storm became clear, a number of the areas worst hit were also near blazes that tore through the province earlier in the summer.

Theres a very clear link between a wildfire happening and the risk of a landslide or debris flow, said Thomas Martin, a forester in the province. If you burn a lot of the trees, grass and shrubs, there are fewer living things to intercept the water. It just flows directly off the hill. And fires can make the soil hydrophobic so the runoff increases even more.

The problem for the province isnt just that fires are getting larger theyre also getting more severe and are burning at higher temperatures.

Martin says forest ecologists have long recommended controlled burns as well as selective logging to thin the forests, allowing larger mature trees to thrive and improving protection against wildfires.

But there does not seem to be a political will to do what is required. Were talking about a large-scale look at the landscape, and how can we adapt our forests to climate change.

While forest fires have long been seen as a summer event, the recent flooding has highlighted how interconnected the issues are.

You have all these indirect effects on the landscape. Landslides have now taken out two major highways. The entire town of Merritt has been flooded, lost its drinking water and been evacuated, he said. Would I have predicted that both our key highways would get absolutely destroyed in this event? No. But was I surprised that it seems like both of these watershed events occurred in wildfires? No.

This article was amended on 17 November 2021, to insert the word fully in this information about the Coquihalla highway: it could be months before one of the provinces busiest highways reopens fully.

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A tipping point: how poor forestry fuels floods and fires in western Canada - The Guardian

Massive corporations are pursuing a common and mutually agreed upon agenda to destroy American freedom, attorney Ashley Keller told a gathering of the most powerful legal organization in America last Saturday.

This conspiracy, Keller claimed, includes companies as varied as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Twitter, and Walmart, all of which have joined forces with the swelling ranks of so-called woke people, who are completely and unabashedly opposed to individual rights.

Defenders of freedom must face reality, Keller insisted, before adding the nations top advocacy group for big business to his list of enemies. The Chamber of Commerce is not our friend. The C-suite grandees who finance it are not our friends either. They were erstwhile allies of convenience and they are now the enemies of a freedom-loving people.

Its the sort of conspiratorial thinking one might expect to hear on the Alex Jones Show, or perhaps from disciples of QAnon. But Mr. Kellers audience was not an ordinary online crowd.

Keller is a Harvard graduate who clerked on the Supreme Court of the United States, and his audience was the Federalist Society, an organization whose members dominate the federal judiciary and especially the nations highest court. He spoke to a conference packed with some of the most influential lawyers and judges in the country the conferences speaker list includes more than two dozen sitting federal appellate judges, and I spotted numerous other judges just wandering the conventions halls.

When someone speaks at the Federalist Societys annual gathering, they speak directly to many of the most powerful people in the country, some of whom literally have the power to order the Societys enemies to comply with its wishes.

And while those wishes arent clearly defined yet, the enemy increasingly is. Over the three-day span of the Federalist Societys annual convention, attendees were warned of unprecedented threats to human flourishing, all driven by cultural leftists who have taken over public and private schools, universities, and even big business in order to impose their woke agenda on an unwilling public.

Even the theme of the conference Public and Private Power: Preserving Freedom or Preventing Harm? hinted that something has gone horribly wrong in the private sector.

Never before in nearly half a century, have we seen all levels of government so blatantly disregarding the Constitution and our civil rights laws, and at such a furious pace, said Kimberly Hermann, a lawyer who sues public schools on behalf of conservative causes, at a panel denouncing diversity, equity, and inclusion-based curricula.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a young biotech executive and author of Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate Americas Social Justice Scam, claimed that the woke movement in the United States, and corporations that appeal to it, undermine Americas geopolitical standing against China.

Adam Candeub, a professor at Michigan State University College of Law, complained about Facebook and Twitters controversial decision to suppress content about a dubiously sourced story about President Joe Bidens son Hunter. Less convincingly, he complained about several big tech companies decision to temporarily block the conservative social media site Parler after January 6. As Amazon explained after it removed Parler from its web hosting service, it did so because the conservative social media site refused to pull down content that threatens the public safety, such as by inciting and planning the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens.

And yet, for Candeub, these incidents were proof that all conservatives are threatened and something needed to be done to rein in tech companies. If trends continue, Candeub told the Federalist Society audience, youll be de-platformed.

Its a stunning rhetorical shift from a fanatically pro-free market organization thats traditionally pushed a hands-off approach to business. Historically, the society has sought to undermine corporate regulation, and that has lionized decisions like Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which permits corporations to spend unlimited sums of money to influence elections. The Federalist Societys conference typically features panels warning about systematic regulatory overreach against regulated industries.

But now the society appears to have lost confidence in the very free market system it spent decades celebrating.

In a market society, economists Milton and Rose Friedman wrote in 1979, the consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. In theory, if one company adopts woke branding that offends its customers, then the market will deliver those customers into the waiting arms of a competitor.

Yet, rather than waiting for the hand of the market to deliver an invisible spanking to woke corporations, speaker after speaker at the Federalist Societys convention called for a central planner to intervene. As it turns out, the societys commitment to something as foundational as free market capitalism may be secondary to its desire to own the libs.

The conference featured an array of angry speakers raging against private sector leftism, but it was often hard to figure out what, exactly, they were so mad about. Though a mix of panels on woke corporations, universities, and secondary schools warned of a multi-institutional effort to impose this ideology on the nation, many speakers never explained what they think this ideology entails. Those that did often described a woke person in caricatured terms.

Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer defined the enemy and he very pointedly used the word enemy as the Ibram X. Kendi woke ideology extremists who are trying to poison and rot the minds of our children into hating themselves and hating their country to boot. Keller claimed that woketarians dont just oppose individual rights, they also believe that Americas founding was an immoral act and that the Bill of Rights is racist.

Numerous speakers deployed the most potent weapon in the anti-woke advocates toolbox: the unrepresentative anecdote. Three speakers pointed to the same two incidents the Hunter Biden article and the moves against Parler as evidence that big tech is out of control. Speakers on three different panels complained about an incident where a Yale Law School student and Federalist Society member felt intimidated after a mid-level administrator pressured him to apologize for an email advertising a Trap House party where Popeyes chicken and basic bitch American-themed snacks would be served.

Even when a speaker pointed to a specific incident that involved neither Yale nor Hunter Biden, moreover, they gave little reason to believe that any systemic problems exist.

Hermann, for example, alleged that a school district in Illinois separated white and non-white teachers and gave them different teacher trainings. She also complained about a childrens book likening white privilege to a deal with the Devil a book that has allegedly been taught in maybe a dozen classrooms and recommended to students in a few more. Yet, when she tried to show that these incidents were part of a broader pattern, her best evidence was that every single school district throughout this country is requiring teachers to take some sort of equity training.

Ramaswamy, the Woke, Inc. author, even implied that laws banning discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, and national origin should be repealed. Not many people are willing to revisit the question of whether the law should protect classes such as these, Ramaswamy said, but I am.

The conference, in other words, featured an array of speakers who created a general sense that values like diversity and inclusion have gone too far including several who seemed to reject the very idea that these values are worth championing at all. But it was often hard to pin down exactly what wokism is, or what the Federalist Society plans to do about it.

That said, many speakers brought up Milton Friedman, and specifically his views about the role of a corporation. Under the Friedman Doctrine, a corporate manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation, and thus must act in their interests a duty that many speakers claimed was inconsistent with corporations playing politics. Ramaswamy, for example, warned against the woke executive who uses his or her seat of corporate power, and the shareholder resources associated with it, to advance a particular agenda.

Its doubtful that the Federalist Society really wants to follow this argument to its logical conclusion. No speaker that I witnessed argued that corporations should be barred from lobbying law and policymakers. And the few speakers who mentioned Citizens United appeared to believe that it was correctly decided. For years, the Federalist Society elevated voices who believe that corporations should be free to spend money to elect Republicans or to lobby Congress to diminish the power of the EPA. And there is no reason to think that it will reverse course on these issues.

But so many speakers at this years conference appeared convinced that certain choices corporations have made present such a unique threat that the ordinary rules of free speech should not apply. The undergirding principle behind so many of these speeches was that corporate free speech and corporations ability to shape their own companies values does not extend to actions that promote whatever the Federalist Society means when it uses the word woke.

But even if we grant the premise that a corporation that promotes values like diversity is different in kind from a corporation that gives a million dollars to a Republican super PAC, its not even clear why corporate diversity initiatives and the like run counter to Friedmans theory of the corporation. Theres a perfectly plausible argument that when corporate executives make a woke comment, decline to provide services to a website that promotes political violence, or run an ad campaign featuring BLM supporters, theyre just exercising good business judgment.

The Societys rage against woke corporations only makes sense if you imagine wokeism to exclude any real concept of social and economic justice. Amazons decision to block a single extremist website does nothing to allay the harsh working conditions in its warehouses. Corporate America is replete with companies that denounce a regressive bill in public then donate to conservative groups that help reelect these lawmakers in private.

As the Roosevelt Institutes Kitty Richards told my colleague Emily Stewart, We should be skeptical of individual companies and their CEOs and shareholders talking about corporate tax rates or specific provisions that seem benevolent, because they are often trying to shape policy in a way that will affect their bottom lines positively.

But lets take the arguments against woke capital offered by people like Keller and Ramaswamy at face value. Yes, corporations have always advocated for their own interests in the political arena, and this corporate speech often promotes the laissez-faire values that used to animate the Federalist Society. But there are, at the very least, anecdotal examples of big companies taking actions that enrage conservatives and delight liberals and Democrats.

The assumption underlying so many of the Federalist Society speakers remarks is that, when companies hold diversity trainings or deny server space to websites like Parler, they are advancing the political views of corporate executives at the expense of the company itself. In Kellers words, woke capitalism is driven by CEOs who like the psychic income they get from virtue signaling, and who think that appealing to cultural leftists will appeal to all of the people who go to cocktail parties that New York Times folks like to go to.

Perhaps. But if companies as diverse as Google, Coca-Cola, JPMorgan, and Walmart are all engaged in the kind of wokism Keller despises, he should at least consider the possibility that they are doing so because it is good business.

The business case for wokism starts by looking at the political divide between younger and older voters. According to the Pew Research Center, President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump by 30 points among voters between the ages of 18 and 29. He won voters aged 30 to 49 by 11 points. Trump, meanwhile, won voters aged 50 and older.

This divide matters to corporate executives because young people wield a disproportionate influence over the market. As Ezra Klein has noted, advertisers are particularly interested in reaching the younger, Biden-supporting cohort of consumers because those younger consumers tend to have unsettled brand preferences. If you convince a young 30-something to buy a Ford truck, theres a good chance they will drive Ford trucks for the rest of their lives.

This focus on young consumers has several implications. For one thing, it means that television studios will tend to produce content that appeals to the younger, more liberal audience that advertisers want to reach thus causing Americas pop culture to embrace young peoples values. It also means that companies will try to market their products to people who share these values, even if such a campaign might alienate older consumers.

Consider, for example, Nikes decision to make Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL player and racial justice activist, the centerpiece of a 2018 ad campaign. This campaign mystified many older consumers an SSRS poll from that year found that just 26 percent of adults over 65 agreed with Nikes decision to feature Kaepernick.

But Nike also knew that two-thirds of the companys customers are under 35, according to a report by CNN, and a plurality of this age cohort supported Nikes decision to feature Kaepernick. The views of older voters didnt matter to Nike. From a purely capitalist perspective, woke branding helped Nike sell shoes.

Young people also care a great deal about diverse workplaces. A 2018 survey by the consulting firm Deloitte, for example, found that millennial and Gen Z employees working for employers perceived to have a diverse workforce are more likely to want to stay five or more years than those who say their companies are not diverse (69 percent to 27 percent). The same survey found that younger workers are more likely to remain at a company with a diverse management team.

So companies that want to attract new consumers and recruit a talented workforce must appeal to younger individuals who largely reject the Federalist Societys values. That may lead to a number of corporate policies that offend people like Keller or Ramaswamy. And it may mean that companies like Google or Amazon risk an uprising among their software engineers if those companies get in bed with a site like Parler. But its hardly evidence that corporate executives are engaged in a conspiracy to promote wokism at the expense of their shareholders.

Even if business leaders are wrong that appealing to young, left-leaning consumers is a good business plan, moreover, sanctioning these companies for doing so could require upending one of the most foundational principles of corporate law. Although corporate law typically does allow shareholders to sue the directors of a corporation if the shareholder believes that they are behaving counter to the corporations interests, corporate leaders benefit from something known as the business judgment rule, which ordinarily protects business-related decisions that are made in good faith.

The law, in other words, is built on the premise that companies should be free to experiment with business tactics that may annoy some individuals, and the proper remedy if a company makes bad business decisions is that it will lose consumers to its competitors. Let the market work, rather than turning businesses over to a central planner.

Although conservative rage against corporate wokeness was a centerpiece of the Federalist Societys gathering, its unclear what exactly the various speakers plan to do about it. Several speakers offered policy proposals, but there was no consensus around a single idea.

Although several speakers expressed skepticism about efforts to foster racial diversity, some of them supported policies to promote what Northwestern law professor John McGinnis referred to as intellectual diversity that is, policies encouraging institutions to hire political conservatives. That could mean affirmative action programs for conservatives, or something more akin to an anti-discrimination law protecting people with conservative views.

Several speakers at a panel on Private Control Over Public Discussion pointed to an opinion last April by Justice Clarence Thomas, which argued that social media websites should be treated as common carriers and subjected to special regulations, including a general requirement to serve all comers a standard that would require Twitter and Facebook to restore former President Donald Trumps accounts and that could potentially prevent these sites from refusing to link to disinformation or hate speech.

Randy Barnett, a Georgetown law professor, offered a slightly different solution: Strip many social media companies of their ability to curate most of their own content, and require them to adhere to the same rules that apply to government censorship. Under this approach, Twitter or Facebook could still remove fraud, incitement to imminent lawlessness, personal threats of violence, or other unlawful harassment, obscenity, or child pornography, but would be unable to remove hate speech. Or speech that induces people to commit a crime such as invading the United States Capitol, so long as the crime is not imminent.

At least one speaker suggested that lawmakers should rely on sanctions and menace to cow woke institutions into compliance. Hammer, the Newsweek editor, insisted that conservatives need to wield in state legislative chambers some degree of power to punish our enemies within the confines of the rule of law.

In any event, the Societys members appear to be in an early stage of brainstorming how to target woke institutions and remake them in a more conservative image. Its not yet clear which specific policies will emerge from this process or which ones will become law.

But thats no reason for anyone who fears such an agenda to remain complacent.

At the Federalist Societys 2015 convention, the speakers offered a similarly disjointed array of proposals to limit the power of federal agencies such as the Department of Labor or the Environmental Protection Agency. Though none of these proposals emerged as the Societys consensus view in 2015, the Federalist Societys views on agency power shaped the Trump White Houses decisions regarding who to appoint to the federal bench. By 2019, five members of the Supreme Court a majority had signed onto a doctrine known as nondelegation which could give the conservative Court a veto power over any regulation handed down by a federal agency.

And then, just this month, the Supreme Court announced it would hear a case that is likely to implement this nondelegation doctrine and that could gut the EPAs authority in the process.

When the Federalist Society identifies an enemy, in other words, it is very good at convincing its judges to target that same enemy. And those judges now control the Supreme Court.

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The Federalist Society loses its mind over woke corporations - Vox

Analysts at Digital TV Research predict the five major US-based platforms will control 53 per cent of the worlds 1.7 billion SVoD subscriptions by 2026

By Jenny Priestley Published: November 17, 2021 Updated: November 18, 2021

Disney Plus, Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max and Apple TV Plus will collectively reach 910 million subscriptions by 2026 according to new figures from Digital TV Research.

The analysts predict the five major US-based platforms will control 53 per cent of the worlds 1.7 billion SVoD subscriptions by 2026.

Netflix will remain the largest player, adding 53 million subscribers to reach 275 million subs by 2026.

Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: Our previous forecasts based on June 2021 results estimated that Disney Plus would overtake Netflix in 2025. Based on the September 2021 results, we now expect that this will happen in 2027.

Despite a slower global roll-out than some of its competitors, new kid on the block HBO Max is predicted to have 83 million subscribers by 2026, up from 29 million by end-2021.

Earlier this month Disney reported reaching 118.1 million Disney Plus subscribers, up 2.1 million from the end of Q3. A decline from the prior quarters 12 million new subscribers, the results are consistent with CEO Bob Chapeks warning in Septemberthat the service would hit some headwinds in Q4.

In comparison, Netflix beat analysts expectations, adding 4.38 million new subscribers to reach nearly 214 million worldwide.

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Analysts: Big five streamers to reach over 900 million subs by 2026 - TVBEurope

by: Dara Bitler, Nexstar Media Wire

If you have been fully vaccinated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there are still steps you should take if you have been exposed. (Getty Images)

DENVER (KDVR) The holidays are approaching and many people will be gathering with family to celebrate. But what happens if you find out you have been exposed to COVID-19?

If you have been fully vaccinated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there are still steps you should take if you have been exposed:

Guidelines for when to quarantine for COVID-19 have changed throughout the pandemic. Heres what the CDC says you know about quarantining no matter what your vaccination status is:

The CDC said that if you think you have COVID-19 or have COVID-19, you can be around others after:

*Loss of taste and smell may persist for weeks or months after recovery and need not delay the end of isolation

Link:
What should you do if youve been exposed to COVID-19 and youre vaccinated? - WGNO

Foreword

Digital imagery, and the audio frequently associated with it, is now an intrinsic part of everyday life and is a key enabling technology for the Police Service and public alike. With this in mind it was time to revise the Digital Imaging Procedure, first published in 2002 and last updated in 2007.

The aim of this latest version is to build on the successes of the original document and not only reflect current advances in technology, but also look to the future. The purpose of the procedure remains the same, that is to detail the processes involved in the proper capture and handling of digital data for police applications and to define best working practice. The target audience also remains broad, encompassing operational, administrative and judicial staff involved throughout all stages of the Criminal Justice System (CJS).

The key to the process is the creation of an identifiable, isolated and suitably stored Master reference copy at the earliest opportunity. The exact method of storage is unimportant provided it can be shown that the Master is unchanged from the moment of its definition. With current data trends and retention timescales the most suitable long term solution is a secure network environment.

This procedure enhances the integrity of proper evidential gathering processes whilst reducing the risk of malicious manipulation. Every effort has been made to keep the document as generic and technology neutral as possible, however specific technologies and processes are addressed as necessary and reference given to sources of more in-depth advice.

Digital imaging has enormous benefit for the swift and accurate outcome of investigations, particularly given the fuller use of network technologies. Whilst such technology has a price tag in terms of infrastructure and skilled technical support, this is an enabling document that allows for the adoption of suitable technologies as the opportunities present themselves.

We expect that operational implementation and court proceedings will continue to refine some of the procedures set out in this document, although the framework itself is considered robust and defensible, and has been widely adopted since its original publication in 2002.

The information contained in this procedure has been derived, developed and reviewed through wide ranging consultation with practitioners from the Police Service and related CJS organisations, as part of the NPCC national CCTV working group, and supports the SCC Codes of Practice. We commend it to forces and other organisations for adoption as current best practice.

The Digital Imaging and Multimedia Procedure is a guide for those practitioners within the Police and CJS who are involved with the capture, retrieval, storage or use of evidential digital images, and associated audio and metadata, either generated by the police themselves or recovered from witnesses under the CPIA (Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996).

When applied to equipment seized under PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence Act), further safeguards may be required.

It is focused around a flowchart that guides the reader through the process from the initial preparation and capture of images, through the transfer and designation of Master and Working Copies, to the presentation in court and finally the retention and disposal of exhibits.

Supporting notes are provided for each step in the flowchart. For the purposes of this document the term image can be used interchangeably for either still images or moving image sequences.

This version (v3.0) of the Procedure maintains the overall structure of the preceding editions, but has been updated in 3 key respects.

Firstly, it is recognised that there is now a broader range of technologies available for the capture and storage of digital imagery, which frequently has associated audio and metadata. Hence the broadening of the document title to explicitly include the term multimedia.

Secondly, it is recognised that the police increasingly realise the benefits of storing Master and Working Copy data on a secure server, instead of physical WORM (Write Once Read Many) media such as CDs and DVDs. This secure server environment is often configured as a DEMS (Digital Evidence Management System) or DAMS (Digital Asset Management System). Both server storage and a move away from physical exhibits brings many advantages but also raises questions around integrity and tampering. This concept of the evidence being separable from the media and steps to preserve its integrity and authenticity are addressed in this document.

Thirdly this document also reflects the changes in data protection legislation, Protection of Freedoms Act and other relevant codes since the previous version.

This procedure should be read in conjunction with:

These documents provide further information on the roles and responsibilities of the police and the prosecution.

Also of relevance is the Control of Data section of the Forensic Science Regulators Codes of Practice (Section 23 in Issue 5, plus subsequent amendment Notice 02/2020).

The bulk of this document comprises notes that should be read in conjunction with the flowchart. However, there are several issues that are not covered within the Procedure itself. These are introduced and discussed briefly in this section to answer some frequently asked questions about digital image evidence.

Evidence, in terms of still or moving image data, and/or related audio data, and associated metadata is the presentation of facts about the crime or an individual that the prosecution presents to the court in support of their case. The image data could be presented either as hard copy or on a screen, with or without audio. The evidence is not normally all the data contained on the recording device but a sub-section of it. For these reasons the term image file refers to an image or video stored electronically, not a forensic disk image of a drive or folder.

As it is possible to make a bit-for-bit identical copy of digital image data, in evidential terms there is no distinction between the copy and the primary or original data because the data are the same and have the same evidential weight. It is not important whether the data is on a stand-alone or networked computer, a server, or on any type of storage medium. This assumes the operation of adequate security against unauthorised and unrecorded access, with appropriate traceability.

The core principle of this document is that there is a definitive copy of the data (Master Copy), that is documented, sealed and stored according to established procedures and can be examined by a court if required, to confirm the authenticity of the evidence relied on in proceedings. The Master may be stored as a physical item or purely in digital form. In either case the principle stated above and the conditions below apply. If no discipline is applied there can be any number of identical files. For evidential purposes it is essential to be able to demonstrate that the images are authentic and are a true representation of the data captured in the originating device and recorded to the first medium.

The Master must be:

Force policies should be developed to cater for these requirements.

Furthermore the Master files should be in the same format as:

Where a DEM or DAM system compresses or transcodes files on ingest, this would preclude its use for Master storage.

The Master should be designated at the point at which the data is under police control and has been stored according to the conditions described above. This may be on physical media but is increasingly likely to be some form of networked storage. There is no requirement for the Master to be on physical media if these conditions have been met.

There may be intermediate steps between the initial capture and the designation of the Master Copy, involving for example transmission or the use of a transfer medium (see Section 4, Transfer and transmission).

There must be an accompanying audit trail showing its provenance (see Section 2). Audit trails can be written, electronic or a combination of both and may incorporate information automatically generated by the hardware or software used to store or process the data. Electronic audit trails if available can augment or replace the written audit trails.

Digital image and audio data is stored in a vast array of different formats and variants of formats of varying quality levels. Some lower resolution digital images displayed on a computer screen or as hard copy might not appear very lifelike but then neither do many simulations.

The important and overriding factor is that the content of the image should be fit for purpose and that the quality is adequate. To this end for reproduction and viewing the use of desktop printers for hard copies of stills and low resolution video footage should not be ruled out. It is not always necessary or feasible to produce the highest quality images to demonstrate the facts required for evidence. However any known reduction in quality should be disclosed and audited in order for the court to assess evidential weight.

Any consideration of whether an image is fit for purpose should fully take into account the uses to which it may be put, in particular whether it is likely to be subject to forensic analysis, in which case the highest quality native format should be available, with any associated metadata.

Image and audio capture devices use a multitude of complex processing techniques to combine the signals received into a representation of the event. These representations are admissible as evidence and the digital storage of them does not alter that.

There are various compression algorithms used to reduce the amount of data in a file to cut both storage capacity and transmission bandwidth requirements. All compression algorithms remove data from the file and some are more effective than others at reconstruction of the data for replay. Generally, the greater the compression ratio, the more seriously affected is the replay.

If image or associated audio data is being presented as evidence and illustrates the facts of the offence then it is evidentially irrelevant whether the data has been compressed or not. What is important is the content of the data should be fit for purpose and that the quality is adequate. It should be noted that various transmission methods used throughout the capture, retrieval and replay chain may adversely affect the quality of the data and steps should be taken to mitigate this.

Some compression algorithms are more suitable for fast movement, some for talking heads scenarios. The compression can produce some artefacts which may mask the information or contaminate it with movement, patterns, outlining, and so on. Where the capture, conversion or transmission is under police or CJS control the algorithm must be tested on typical scenes. The image quality must be agreed and performance tests carried out to ensure suitability.

Image processing cannot make up for inadequate data. Images should not be excluded because they are compressed and whilst there may be reasons to prefer some algorithms for reasons of quality, there is no reason to exclude any from evidential material.

Digital data files can have a variety of formats. The still camera industry is mostly using widely supported (or open) formats (TIFF, JPEG) although their highest resolution images are often in their own proprietary (raw) format. This may mean these latter images have to be downloaded in a proprietary software package. An open format allows for ease of incorporating images into publications, printing and transmitting to others, but will be a representation of the data held in the raw file. Generally raw files are read only with any changes either saved to an .XMP sidecar file or the processed result to another file format.

Currently digital handheld video cameras mainly record to Solid State memory (SD and its variants, CompactFlash, XQD, and so on.). The market seems to be stabilising around fewer formats, but faster read/write speeds and ever larger capacity are still the trends. Large amounts of video are now shot on mobile phones and stored on their internal drives, though some offer external storage options, including cloud storage.

The manufacturers of closed circuit television (CCTV) video recorders use a multitude of open, proprietary and mixed compression formats to meet the needs of massive amounts of data versus the cost of storage. Again the format is not relevant to the admission of the evidence, only that the quality is fit for purpose.

Many file formats record metadata along with the content, commonly time and date information but potentially many other fields that may be of value, if accurate. Metadata is often lost if files are converted between formats.

Server storage has many advantages particularly with regard to long term storage. The data can be migrated automatically and with no loss should a more effective media become available. Also server storage is more fault tolerant; failures within a RAID array can normally be rectified with no loss, ensuring that the data is accessible, as compared with a CD or DVD where once it has been noticed that the media has failed it is usually too late. Increasingly police services are deploying a DEM or DAM system that is capable of suitably storing Master evidence and providing output for court in an appropriate format.

Cloud based storage is a variation on server based storage, where the storage may be provided off-site by a third party, and has its own set of problems and advantages. These must be carefully considered and steps taken to mitigate perceived risks before this route is chosen. Cloud services may or may not be geographically located within the force area, and the implications of this need to be considered. For further information see the National Cyber Security Centres Cloud Security Principles. Also of relevance is the Control of Data section of the Forensic Science Regulators Codes of Practice (Section 23 in Issue 5, plus subsequent amendment Notice 02/2020, in particular paragraphs 23.3.30-31).

The use of a cloud or server system for secure storage of evidence should be accredited by the local force Information Security Officer, as per the Information Assurance section of the Information Management APP.

Care should be taken to ensure that the processing of personal data complies with UK data protection law. UK data protection legislation is designed to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals and is outlined in both the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA2018). The Information Management APP incorporating MoPI (The Management of Police Information) provides further detail on how the DPA2018 applies to the processing of personal data for law enforcement purposes.

Forces should be aware that many of the safeguards employed in this procedure are the same safeguards that will allow them to comply with their obligations with under the DPA2018. Its also important to note that whilst many of the requirements of the GDPR will be relevant, the provisions for processing personal data for purposes of law enforcement are set out in section 3 of the DPA2018.

The following data protection principles (described in part 3, chapter 2 of DPA2018) are most relevant when handling digital images and evidence:

It should be noted that the requirements of Principle 5 (Retention) must be harmonised with the retention requirements in the CPIA and Information Management APP.

The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 require the police to pay due regard to the Home Secretarys Surveillance Camera Code of Practice. Failure to do so is admissible in criminal and civil proceedings and the Crown Prosecution Service Disclosure Manual reflects this. The focus of the Code is on the operation of surveillance cameras however parts are relevant here, in particular:

These elements of the procedure include the preparatory steps before images are captured. This may be directly before the images are taken, or at an earlier stage or date where work can be anticipated. The steps identify the importance of:

Such checks will avoid the reputational damage of failure and/or challenges about conformance with an accepted procedure. Digital image capture systems may increasingly be used by non-specialists in operational situations and locations so adherence to an established procedure will assist in safeguarding those captured images.

This instruction applies to all image capturers, who by virtue of their role or position within the Police Service are empowered to capture images for the purposes of their particular work, where trained or deemed competent. Specific roles and responsibilities, for example for a Scenes of Crime Officer or a Collision Investigator, will be written into their job descriptions, training and instructions together with any verbal instructions. Obtaining authority is not necessarily required for each separate operational task.

However, Police Forces need to be aware that authorisations do need to be in place before data is taken, for example authorisation to permit images to be taken where Directed Surveillance is requested under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. That authority must be obtained and recorded within the audit trail of the operation. Further restrictions and/or authorities may result from Data Protection legislation. It is the responsibility of the person obtaining the data to ensure all required permissions are obtained and that all legislation is adhered to.

At this point the first 3 principles of the DPA 2018 Part 3 Chapter 2 are particularly relevant. In summary:

One of the fundamental requirements of digital imaging is the need to safeguard the integrity of images; part of this process involves an audit trail being started at the earliest stage. This may be as a written audit trail, and/or incorporate an auto-generated electronic audit trail mapping the movement and changes of files on computers. When relating to third party images, the audit trail should begin at, and detail, the point of transfer.

This Procedure relies on the written audit of activities. The audit trail should include the following information (with date and time of action) when available and if appropriate:

The practices may not be familiar where imaging is a new feature of the work and it may be worthwhile to consult the Forensic Support Manager or equivalent adviser.

The correct operation of any equipment is essential to gathering evidence.

In particular it is suggested that checks are made to ensure that:

It is essential that time and date settings are correct, any inconsistencies should be documented and the equipment monitored to ensure that further drift of these settings does not occur.

This list is not definitive and detailed information should be obtained from the equipment manuals.

Specific advice relating to re-using USB thumb drives is given later in this document.

These steps cover the capture of still or video images onto the chosen medium with due regard for the image quality and integrity of the images.

This section should be read in conjunction with the Protocol between the Police Service and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on dealing with third party material, which provides further information on the roles and responsibilities of the police and the prosecution.

The Procedure diagram should be used to establish the point of transfer at which the responsibility for the handling of third party images transfers to the police. That point of transfer will depend on the nature of images being transferred, the recording format and equipment used by the third party. At whatever stage this point of transfer occurs the police audit trail must start.

Continuity of image handling should be demonstrated throughout by ensuring that the police audit trail links directly to any audit trail that is available from the third party.

Some imagery may have little or no provenance, for example images uploaded to the police website by members of the public in response to an appeal. This imagery must be treated with caution until its authenticity and integrity can be verified.

Town centre CCTV cameras, for example, should follow established and standardised procedures and comply with the Surveillance Camera Commissioners Code of Practice. These systems should allow the police to;

Whichever still or video camera or format of medium is chosen for the capture and initial storage of images, effective means must be available for transferring the images to the computer system where they are to be used and possibly archived.

It is becoming increasingly common for the police to be granted remote access to systems either on a permanent or ad hoc basis. However, care must be taken to ensure all data protection legislation is adhered to and proper safeguards and necessary authorisations are in place before this facility is utilised.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) should be in place between the police and local authorities to govern access to town centre systems. Live access to a town centre system may enable a level of surveillance of an individual that would require a Directed Surveillance Authority (DSA) under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Data Protection legislation would be contravened by retrieving more information from a system than was necessary and agreed with the owner (DPA principle 3).

The image quality setting should be selected appropriate to the operational requirements rather than to minimise the storage capacity. Operators should anticipate their requirements and have sufficient empty storage media available.

Selective capture involves the switching on and off of recording devices and should not be confused with other editing processes.

Still images can be captured on many different types of camera using a multitude of memory storage devices/memory cards. The manufacturers manual should be referred to for instructions on correct use of this equipment.

There are several technologies for capturing video images digitally. Each is illustrated in the Procedure:

Because of the high data rates associated with digital video, the image data is usually compressed in order to:

Where image sequence(s) have come from a non-removable medium the Working Copy or copies could be made:

One crucial aspect of the Procedure is that none of the images obtained for the purposes of an investigation should be deleted without authority. This does not apply to images on a transfer medium which may be deleted once a Master Copy has been verified on more suitable storage.

Any deletion of images, intentionally or accidentally, may be the subject of a challenge or legal debate during any prosecution.

Where such authority is given, deletions must be recorded in the audit trail and be subject to the requirements of the CPIA Code of Practice and Disclosure Manual.

In CCTV systems, video is recorded directly to an HDD, which is often designed to over-record automatically after a set period. Before this happens some or all of the images may be protected on the HDD preventing them from being overwritten.

In the simplest case, images will be transferred directly from the source to create the Master (for example, copied from HDD to WORM). However, in some instances the images will be transmitted across a network or physically moved via an interim transfer medium. This may occur either at the point of capture (such as IP CCTV cameras) or during transfer from the initial storage medium to the Master.

The security, stability and longevity characteristics of different transmission methods should be considered and where necessary documented in the audit trail. This particularly applies to wireless transmission methods that may be susceptible to interception or unauthorised access, or transport media such as flash media that is prone to loss. This should also be considered when using wired network transmission, particularly if the internet forms any part of the network transmission.

The Master should be designated at the point a verified copy of the imagery reaches the optimum storage medium available, even if earlier stages are via media that is suitable to be designated as Master, for example if data were transferred via DVD to a secure server the Master would be designated on the server and the DVD could be destroyed. Figure 1, below, gives a graphical representation of this process.

Comprehensive audit trails are required in order to document the processes shown in Figure 1. In particular any transfer media must be uniquely identifiable, and suitable checks and verification carried out to ensure data integrity when transferring from the transfer media to permanent storage. These checks should be carried out at each transfer stage after the initial retrieval. A comparison of hash values such as MD5 or SHA-1 is an example of such checks.

The flow chart illustrates 2 paths for multimedia evidence, server based storage and traditional physical storage of master evidence. For both these routes the process is further separated into transfer to the long term storage media and transfer from it, either for further analysis or court replay.

Taking server based systems first, 2 paths are illustrated from the originating system to the server. In the first instance evidence is uploaded directly from the originating system to the server. In this case then there must be checks and verification between the originating system and the server in order to ensure the integrity of the data. In the second example the transfer is via an intermediate stage that may be physical (DVD, USB, and so on) or virtual such an upload portal. In this instance then at the very least there should be checks and validation between the intermediate stage and the server storage.

In the final step of this path, if the evidence is being exported for further analysis or processing, then there must be checks and verification to ensure the exported file is an exact copy of the ingested file. If the evidence is exported in an altered format for court replay for example then this must be suitably noted in the audit trail and reflected the file name and or accompanying documentation.

With storage of the master evidence on physical media, again there are 2 routes. If the originating system exported to a suitable storage medium (such as optical disc) then that could be immediately stored as the master and no further processing need be considered aside from ensuring that the transfer was successful. If however the orignating system does not export to suitable long term storage then the data must be transferred to suitable media with checks and verification done to ensure the integrity of the transferred file.

As with the final step above, if the evidence is being exported for further analysis or processing, then there must be checks and verification to ensure the exported file is an exact copy of the ingested file. If the evidence is exported in an altered format for court replay for example then this must be suitably noted in the audit trail and reflected the file name and or accompanying documentation.

This diagram illustrates how these checks could work in practice. It shows 4 stages in the path through the system:

In this instance working exhibit is used to denote a file that will undergo further processing or analysis. The diagram recommends that between each stage the file integrity is checked using a suitable method such as determining the hash value of the file at each stage. Thus hash 1 would be calculated for the file on the transfer media, hash 2 would be calculated for the file on the master storage media and hash 3 would be calculated for the file when it is exported for further processing or analysis. Verifying that all 3 hash values are the same then verifies that the file exported for further processing or analysis is identical to the file exported from the originating system.

Images on reusable media should be copied from the original storage medium in the original file format onto secure media. This secure media could be WORM or secure network storage.

The generation of the secure copy should be carried out as soon as possible after the capture to reduce the time and opportunity for the accidental or malicious alteration to images.

All imagery Master or Working Copies should be appropriately identified in order to facilitate the storage, retrieval and eventual disposal of case material. In terms of evidential value there is no difference between bit-for-bit copies of the data on the Master, Working Copies and the images on the storage medium. This does not remove the necessity to protect the Master as an exhibit in case of challenges to evidence handling procedures or image manipulation. It is suggested that the before and after hash value (MD5 or SHA-1) of a file is created, recorded and compared at any time it is transferred between media.

The correct software required for viewing proprietary formats must be available otherwise the images will be inaccessible. It is advisable to store any replay software with each recording to assist with the correct viewing of the files.

The choice of using network storage or WORM media is a matter for force policy and should be guided by factors such as volume of data, predicted storage time and longevity of WORM media. Master evidence not stored on WORM requires equivalent levels of protection such as access control and tamper proof usage logs. Appropriate measures also need to be taken when the data has to be retained on a storage medium that is not WORM and cant be write protected, for example drives from a CCTV recorder, or complete CCTV recording units.

Non-reusable removable medium technology includes CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray and so on. They represent the theoretical ideal in that once closed the recording on the disk cannot be altered. However, optical discs are prone to damage that can make them unreadable and they do degenerate over time. In addition the computer industry is moving away from optical disc storage which places it at risk of becoming a redundant technology. For these reasons a DEMS or DAMS would be a better long term repository for Master evidence. If the Master is stored on such a system then the optical disc would be considered a transfer medium and could be destroyed (once a verified copy is on the DEMS/DAMS).

The WORM medium must be closed to prevent any of the image data files being subsequently changed and further data written to the disk. Optical disks (CD-R, DVDR) must be finalised or closed in the camera or CD-writer before the disk is removed otherwise the images may not be viewable on a computer.

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Digital Imaging and Multimedia Procedure v3.0 - GOV.UK