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Jusrisprudence 2012 - Technical Testimony
Pivotal to this case (refresh your memory back here) is a variety of cell phone and video evidence. Pivotal to understanding that evidence is an understanding of how those technologies work.
We heard from a total of about six different technical witnesses. We had a representative each from Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T's wireless divisions, as well as a manager from the Red Roof Inn, Fred Meyer in Renton, and the Riverside Casino, all of which provided video evidence. We also heard from Westec, the company which provides video surveillance services to the Red Roof. These gents (and they were all men) enlightened us on a variety of technical topics, which I shall now relate to you in brief. Trust me, it took a lot longer to get through all this in court.
We heard first from the Red Roof Inn manager, so I'll start with the video details. The Red Roof Inn, which is located near the airport, has 16 video cameras, mostly overlooking the outside parking areas, with a few in the lobby or in the parking garage under the hotel. All these cameras feed into a central computer, which records the video on a hard drive. This video can be dumped to DVD as video files, which the Red Roof Inn manager did for the police. Colbert spent a good deal of time behind his computer, playing back video files to the jury.
The Westec guy went into extreme detail on their video system (used, as I said, by the Red Roof Inn), since some of that footage had some weird artifacts in it. In particular, he talked about how the computer at the Red Roof Inn was sub-par, and underpowered for the task, occasionally running out of memory. Their system apparently uses "buckets" of memory (which I would call buffers), and if the system runs out of buckets, footage is lost while the computer is busy emptying buckets to the hard drive. The practical effect is that the footage can jump unexpectedly, losing seconds or minutes of time with each jump. We saw numerous such jumps. The Red Roof Inn computer was clearly struggling to keep up with the load. There was one nearly 45 minute section of video where the scene and timestamp were completely frozen. It made it challenging, but not impossible, to see what was happening. The Elf was quick to cross-examine him about the possibility that someone (never the prosecution, of course, but, you know, someone) had edited the footage, and the Westec witness said he saw no evidence of tampering.
Of course, this was all tempered by the Elf's extreme technophobia. The man was likely mauled by a mainframe as a young man or something, and was petrified of anything technological. Any time he had to ask questions about cell phones, or computers, or video of any kind, they were patently nonsensical. I had the sense (and later confirmed) that I wasn't the only one completely annoyed by this. He didn't understand how radio worked, didn't understand how cell phones worked, either as radios, or as magic black boxes that send and receive information, didn't understand how video files worked, and (to my complete frustration) was petrified of the VCR in use, at one point calling over Colbert to operate it for him, since he didn't know how to make it go.
We also heard from the security manager at the Riverside Casino, where they use what must by now be a very crusty VCR-based video recording system. The state requires that they record entrances, since they're a casino, and retain the recordings for 7 days. They just barely comply, keeping a 7-day rotation of hugely re-recorded tapes, each of which is so full of ghosting, jitter, dust and god knows what else that they're practically unwatchable. Unlike the Red Roof Inn cameras, some of the Riverside Casino cameras are PTZ cameras -- Pan/Tilt/Zoom -- which means that they can pan around side-to-side, tilt upward and downward, and zoom in or out. Their range of motion is actually pretty surprising.
The Riverside Casino has three cameras which are of interest: one shoots up and down the walkway in front of the main door, and is a PTZ; one is perched atop the corner of the roof, and scans over most of the parking lot; and the final one is a fixed camera which covers the rear door, used mostly for deliveries. The PTZ cameras have what's called a "tour" setting, where they follow a pre-determined pattern, scanning over an area repeatedly until commanded to do something else from the security office. The security office has an override control, and can manually control each camera with a joystick system.
Of the three cameras at the Riverside Casino, the one we most wanted to see was the rooftop camera. It was perched to give a nearly perfect view of much of what happened there between Matt and Jennifer and the Other Guy (the Other Guy was never identified during the trial, but was commonly referred to as the Other Man, so that seems like as good a name for him as any). Unfortunately, that ideal rooftop camera was directed off to look at a golf cart in the opposite direction from the parking lot, and left there by a Riverside Casino worker Colbert described as a "complete knucklehead." The timing was perfect, though: at 6:45 pm, the camera was trained on a distant golf cart across the river, and all the exciting stuff started happening at 7:15. I wrote in my notes that I was convinced Mr. Knucklehead was a collaborator, but Colbert insisted after we were all done that the guy was just incredibly dense, and there's no possible way he was in collusion with anyone.
We ended up hearing from all three carrier's representatives, as I've said. We also heard from one or two police experts, who talked about data analysis, or interfacing with the carriers.
The three carriers more or less all had the same story, with minor differences in details, so I'll relate them all together.
First up was always some background: how long have you been working there, what do you do, etc. This established, we quickly (although often not as quickly as I would have liked) move on to the meat of the discussion. With all three, this meant talking about their billing statements. We heard perhaps two or three hours of testimony just on billing statements. Texts are reported this way. Call time is reported that way. Internet access is reported that other way. One of them had a very unclear system for reporting call time, that included a negotiation time, followed by a real call time once it connected. Another counted the time from the moment you press the Send key. This carrier showed voicemail messages this way. And so on. For hours.
Part of the reason this took hours was the Elf. His endless self-deprecating statements about how he was "a complete dummy when it comes to technology," grew increasingly wearying. His cross-examination was always a bit of a trial in and of itself. He needed all the billing explanation again, because he didn't understand it the first time, or thought we didn't, or was stage-whispering with Matt, or whatever. So we would hear it all again. Huge print-outs of single pages from the bills would come out on the easel (all provided by the prosecution). The monitor would be wheeled forward, and some other page put under the enlarging camera -- invariably either so small that it was impossible to read, or sufficiently enlarged to be readable, but some vital part of the data was cut off. The enlarging camera also (wait for it) provided by the prosecution. To be fair, it's possible the monitor and enlarging camera were actually provided by the court, but the impression was pretty clear that Colbert was familiar with them, and the Elf shied from them like a dog who's been kicked too many times.
We also learned about how cell towers work, and are reported on bills. Each tower has some kind of identifying number, which serves to locate not only the physical location of the tower, but also which antenna was receiving the signal. There are usually three antennas on each tower, covering a bit over 120° each, so that the whole compass is covered, with a little bit of overlap. Each antenna is definitely good out to a certain distance, which is highly variable based on terrain and a few other factors.
None of this was news to me (huge nerd that I am), but I'm sure it was new information to some of the jurors. The Elf was completely baffled that the techs (including the police data analyst) wouldn't commit to a range for each antenna -- there are so many factors involved that it's an impossible question to answer: tower location and height; weather (rain/snow or not); surrounding terrain (hills or not); surrounding buildings; cell phone position: inside a car; blocked by a body (ie, a person's body between the phone and the tower) or not; inside a building or not. There are more than that, those are just the big obvious ones I can think of off the top of my head.
The bottom line is that, with some analysis, tower and antenna information can provide some rudimentary location data, usually expressed as a wedge-shaped section of a circle around the tower, or sometimes overlapping wedges. These locations can be closely correlated with time and date, and if you wanted to, and the data was there, you could use them to show rough movement. Some phones and carriers provide GPS-based data, which is accurate down to a few meters' radius -- something to think about next time you're planning your crime spree. Maybe leave the smartphone behind. None of the phones in this case were providing GPS data, though.
There is naturally more technical testimony, but this covers what I was hoping to get to for this instalment. Up next, you can look forward to the most interesting/horrifying part: Jennifer's story of abduction, rape and abuse.
Posted at 22:09 permanent link category: /jurisprudence
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater