PART 1

Q1.)    Are digital pictures legal.

A1.)    Yes.  See www.sdfi.com/downloads/Federal_Rules_of_Evidence_Spotlight_on_Digital_Pictures.pdf


Q2.)    Are digital pictures secure.

A2.)    No, not by themselves.  You must protect your pictures from both visual access, this is the HIPAA part of the equation, and you must protect them from direct access, this is the LEGAL part of the equation. 


Q3.)    I burn my digital pictures onto a CD and put them into a locked filing cabinet. Does that cover both the HIPAA/LEGAL thing you are talking about above?

A3.)   If the pictures are in RAW format, you have total control of the CD and have very limited access to the "always" locked cabinet, you have most of it covered.  There will always be questions about who really has/had access to the filing cabinet over the years.


Q4.)    Do I really need to look through a colposope and see "trauma" before I testify about it in court?

A4.)    No.  Medical professionals use “digital pictures” for legal reasons everyday and they make life and death decisions based on Computed Axial Tomography or CAT Scans, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Electroencephalography (EEG), Digital Radiology (X-Rays), Sonograms and Ultrasounds,  Digital Mammograms and Digital  Pictures.  Most, if not all of these "digital pictures" have been used as evidence within the last four years.  In short, digital pictures are legal if you can prove they are original, something  SDFI^® was designed to do.


PART 2

Q1.) Seems to me we should be talking with our I.T. department security and about compatibility/use in our hospital computer system.

A.)    Yes, talk to them, but, please be aware that this is not their area of expertise. The I.T. department’s primary focus is on HIPAA and NOT legal “Chain of Custody” concerns.  For SAFE/SANE’s you are required to be concerned about both.    There are two things to consider when moving forward, making your job a bit more difficult.  You have to consider “HIPAA” and you have to take in the “LEGAL” aspect of “Chain of Custody”.   Your forensic pictures need to be HIPAA compliant AND they have to be able to meet ANY legal challenge regarding the validity of the pictures. (HIPAA cares about who sees the pictures, LEGAL cares who could have “changed” the pictures!)   A good defence lawyer could tear apart the whole filing cabinet thing if your pictures are in JPG format, regardless of who had access to the cabinet because JPG pictures are compressed.


Q2.) Also to law enforcement, are they able to access the information on the disc we use to take photos.

A.)    I expect they are.  If the disk is a “compact disk, similar to a music CD and is a  “CD-R” type disk, you should be fine for now. (See Q4 below.)


Q3.) Who has a secure computer to load images, print photos, then guarantee confidentiality of images once they are off the disc.

A.)    Software can make a computer secure from keyboard access, but, you should not be printing your forensic pictures, either to paper or to disc at this point.  Please consider sending the digital pictures directly via TeleMedicine to your L.E. detective and to your D.A. if needed.  Let them decide how to “warehouse” the evidence based on their own internal rules.  It will also be cheaper for you as you will not need to take the time to print multiple CD copies or pay courier costs!  (Paper printing is just bad.  You are effectively reducing the quality of the picture to the quality of the printer.  If you DO print to paper, you also remove the option to zoom in to see detail and the ability to apply software “filters”.  (See http://www.sdfi.com/sdfi_sample_pictures.html).


 Q4.) How do we address computer system updates when trying to access images 2, 5 10 years from now.

A.)    With the advances in DNA technology and in computer technology itself, you really need to keep your digital forensic evidence indefinitely.  If you store your pictures on tape or CD you are going to have problems sooner than you think.  Looking back, please think about the following “storage” formats.    78’s, 45’s, 8-track, audio cassette, 5 ¼ inch floppy disk, 3 ½ inch floppy disk, “other” countless types of digital storage disks” such as Zip and Jaz Drives, Bernoulli, Magneto Optical, VHS and even CD.  (The kids today download music. They use iPods not Walkmans! (DVD’s, I think, will be the next “disk”, but, it is not standardized or common enough to use for what we do.  Think, VHS or BETA ?)


Q5.) How long will medical records keep images so they can be accessed when needed for a trial?

A.)    Just recently we heard about a hospital in Southern California that purged it’s older paper records because of the high cost of long term storage. I can’t tell you how upset the police and the D.A. were. Years of forensic data was lost!    This is the real difference between HIPAA and LEGAL. Legal “stuff” needs to be kept forever so the answer is,  “Forensic images need to be kept indefinitely”.


Q6.) What is the lifespan of the discs being used?

A.)    The lifespan of a disc/CD depends on a how it is handled, how it is stored, etc, etc, etc. We’ve all had scratched music CD’s, and data CD’s being susceptible to the same type of damage.   The primary concern is related to the Q4 above.  A few questions for you that you don’t need to answer, but will make you think about what to do. Are you watching movies on your VHS player or DVD’s on your DVD player?  Do you have basic analog cable or digital cable?  Do you have a analog T.V. or a digital flat screen T.V.?  To bring this question into perspective, your basic analog T.V. cable is being turned off, nationwide, on February 17, 2009 because of digital television. (Your big old honkin’  T.V. will become a wonderful “boat anchor” in about a year and half!)


Q7.) Is it better to download/print the images at the time of the exam to offset degradation and/or to make law enforcement access easier and obtainable if there is technology equipment incompatibility?

A.)    No. Again paper printing digital pictures is just bad. (See Q3 above.)  Your forensic data should be stored on a computer hard disk and backed-up/copied ,at least once, to another hard drive.  Your I.T. department CAN help with this!


Q8.) With transfer to electronic records and paperless systems countrywide, how can we maintain the chain of custody and the promised confidentiality to the client and keep the images not only true but secure?

A.)     I think you just indirectly and unintentionally asked for SDFI-TeleMedicine.

Need more information?  First browse through the other sections of this web page, then contact us to arrange a "live" Internet demonstration of SDFI^®-TeleMedicine.

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