Here is a piece from ABC7 featuring NCAVF discussing video and audio forensic analysis and enhancement in relation to the Boston Bombings.

Click here to watch, and the transcript is below.


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FEMALE ANCHOR:  …Federal investigators are working around the clock to find answers to these deadly bombings.  They are sorting through photos, videos and evidence at the scene.  Eyewitness News reporter CARLOS GRANDA joins us live now in the studio with what investigators have learned so far.  Carlos?

CARLOS GRANDA:  Well investigators found pieces of black nylon from a bag or a backpack, and fragments of nails and BB’s, all believed to be parts of the bombs, and they were possibly put together in ordinary kitchen pressure-cookers.

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CG (VOICEOVER):  A horrific site when the bombs went off.  Investigators are now analyzing the evidence those explosives left behind, debris that could yield valuable clues.

DAVID NOTOWITZ:  The focus is the bomb, that’s what the focus is, it has to be, and there…they looked at the materials on that bomb, they looked at who made…how it got possibly made, and they’re gonna track every piece of that bomb as much as they can.

CG (VO):  David Notowitz is from the National Center for Audio and Video Forensics.  He analyzes video evidence for use in court.  He says the FBI is now putting together hundreds of hours of video recordings from surveillance and traffic cameras, and peoples home videos.  Agents will need to examine everyone in the area.

DN:  But once they gather all this stuff, which is a lot of material, there’s no way for it to be automated, in terms of the search.  The search has to be done by a human being still.  There’s no surveillance software that can automatically pick out a face.

RICHARD DESLAURIERS:  All video like this, we encourage the public, and particularly business owners in that area, to continue to submit this information.  This is very, very important.

CG (VO):  We’re learning the bombs were possibly built out of kitchen pressure cookers, packed with nails, ball bearings and explosives.  Sources say it appears they were hidden in black duffle bags left on the ground.  BRIAN JENKINS is a terrorist expert with the RAND Corporation.

BRIAN JENKINS:  Pressure cooker is a bigger version of a pipe bomb.  You can clamp down a lid on a pressure cooker, you fill it with explosives, fill it with some kind of metal-debris, the pressure cooker itself can turn into debris, and, it builds up enormous force, and then bursts, creating shrapnel.

CG (VO):  And there are plenty of websites that show how to build these bombs.  Al Qaeda’s “Inspire Magazine,” published instructions for such a pressure cooker device back in 2010.

BJ:  Anyone can look at this information and, if halfway competent, can build some kind of an explosive device.

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CG:  And pressure cooker explosives have been used in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  All the evidence is now being analyzed at the FBI’s labs in Quantico, Virginia.  I’m Carlos Granda, ABC 7, Eyewitness News, Mark, back to you.

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