Surveillance video is practically tailor-made for use as evidence in court. An event caught “on tape”, so to speak, can’t be denied – or can it? Well, a judge would probably accept video data that is of high quality, credible, and not tampered with.
But there are also cases where the evidential value of video is inadvertently reduced. For example, surveillance footage with time gaps, where people or vehicles suddenly disappear or “jump” in the image, might not be considered sufficiently trustworthy to be used as evidence.
Video could also be questioned if its metadata, such as timestamps or the camera’s MAC address, doesn’t make sense. Any suspicion that video might have been edited, deleted, or tampered with can reduce the video owner’s credibility.
This white paper presents advice on how to manage video as evidence. More specifically, it describes the role of the video management software (VMS) AXIS Camera Station in the evidence chain, as well as the role of the video owner.
Companies and organizations that use video surveillance need to have processes and procedures in place that determine how to handle and store video data.
To be fully prepared for when one of your cameras captures an incident, you need to make sure that video is protected from being overwritten, tampered with, or stolen.
It must also be possible to export the footage safely to secure storage and hand it over to
law enforcement. But the production of high-quality video evidence is a process that starts with a purposeful designing of your video system.
It is also of the utmost importance that you keep your system up-to-date and keep
track of any irregularities.
This chapter presents the steps in this process, and how they can be followed with the help of AXIS Camera Station and its toolbox AXIS Camera Station Integrator Suite.
If you produce surveillance video according to these principles about system design, system maintenance, and handling of incidents, it will comply with current cybersecurity requirements and, most probably, provide value as evidence, should that be needed. read full pdf here
