ABCs of Reviewing Video Surveillance Footage

If you are tasked with reviewing hours of video files from surveillance cameras, keep in mind that most systems should have tools which will help you expedite the review.

1. As with a PDF of a document, the video should contain thumbnails which let you quickly scan the range of the video across multiple moments in time to see when there is relevant footage.

2. Some systems use motion histograms that will indicate where movement appears in a video image. These are similar to sound wave charts. The graphs are displayed above a timeline for the video, and will rise at the time ranges where motion is detected.

3. A system may allow you to designate a motion detection window in a specific area of the video, to detect when the pixels change in that window.

These windows can also be used to exclude areas of motion that you want a search to ignore.

Edit Video Clips in Windows 10 Without Special Software

Don't miss that you can easily edit video files in Windows 10.

Right click on a video file in Windows Explorer and select Open with . . . Photos

In the 'Edit & Create' menu on the upper right select the option to Trim the video.

Move the white circles back and forth to select the range of the video file that you want to excerpt.

Click 'Save as' in the upper right, and your video clip will be created.

Where can you record a conversation without the other party's consent?

As noted in last night's tip, recording a conversation without another party's consent is legal in some states but not others. This map, available here, shows states (shaded in dark blue) where the other party's consent is needed as those (in light blue) where it is not.

So while in a great plurality of states you can record a phone call without the other person's consent, in four of the six biggest states (California, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania) the second party's consent is required.

A 2012 decision by the 7th Circuit, raised questions about the constitutionality of Illinois' eavesdropping statute. See, ACLU of Illinois v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583 (7th Cir. 2012). This statute requires all parties involved in a conversation to consent to it be recorded. However this case concerned a recording made by the ACLU of police officers performing their official duties in public. The Illinois statute makes it a felony to record a conversation without the consent of all parties, even if the conversation is not intended to be private. Massachusetts also has a statute requiring the consent of all parties, regardless of whether or not the the conversation is private.

In California, Florida, and Pennsylvania public conversations can be recorded without consent. While Illinois, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania make an illegal recording a felony, in Florida one can only be jailed for less than one year or fined $1000, and in California an offender can only be jailed for less than one year or fined $2500.

Federal law only requires the consent of a single party. See 18 U.S.C. § 2511.