When dealing with content containing sensitive information such as digital evidence, privacy is of utmost importance. Whether sharing the evidence with another party or presenting information in court, certain information such as PII needs to be redacted before it can be shared with others. With the rise of digital evidence for modern security measures, criminal justice and law enforcement agencies are now looking for evidence management solutions with reliable audio and video redaction software.
But redacting and sharing digital evidence isn’t easy, and it can be time-consuming without a reliable tool to simplify the process. For these reasons, criminal justice and law enforcement agencies are turning to digital evidence management systems to redact evidence such as audio and video evidence to swiftly react, manage and share digital evidence with relevant stakeholders.
What is Redaction?
Redaction refers to obscuring sensitive information from the content before sharing or publishing. Redaction can be done for anything from text to faces, objects, voices, etc. Redaction is vital for privacy and security reasons. Evidence often needs to be redacted for privacy and security reasons, such as hiding personally identifiable information (PII), protecting the privacy of bystanders, witnesses, minors and other individuals recorded in the evidence, and meeting various compliances such as GDPR and HIPAA. With the establishment of new laws demanding more significant measures to protect the privacy of individuals, more and more criminal justice and law enforcement agencies are looking for audio and video redaction software to ensure they don’t incur any legal consequences.
Learn More: Accelerate Audio and Video Redaction Using Artificial Intelligence
How Important is Redaction?
While most industries require redaction to a certain degree, its most essential and extensive use is in the legal domain. Entities such as criminal justice and law enforcement agencies have sensitive data and information that must be kept secure and private. Stakeholders like prosecutors, public defenders and defense attorneys need to redact certain content from legal documents such as digital evidence before it can be shared with other stakeholders, such as during discovery. This is necessary not only to protect the privacy of individuals such as witnesses, bystanders and minors but can also be an obligation required for legal compliance, such as CJIS, GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, etc. Using audio and video redaction software tools is common in the legal domain for protecting personally identifiable information (PII), such as:
- Social security numbers
- Financial account numbers
- Names (such as those of minors)
- Date of birth
- Addresses
- Driver’s license numbers and license plates
Other government and commercial entities might also be subject to legal repercussions for failing to protect sensitive information about their employees, clients or other stakeholders, such as protected health information (PHI) for HIPAA and payment card industry (PCI) compliance. Regardless of whether a file or document is being used for legal reasons, redaction can help add an extra layer of security to protect sensitive information and mitigate the risk of a breach in privacy. Using audio and video redaction software allows you to share the evidence containing relevant information with a wider audience while preventing access to the sensitive and confidential information contained within the evidence.
With the rise of digital evidence, video and audio recordings from various sources such as CCTV cameras, dashcams, bodycams, phone call recordings have become widely present in legal proceedings. The market for video surveillance alone is estimated to reach a worth of 62.6 billion US, while the security cameras market is expected to surpass approximately $9.7 billion by 2023. Similarly, a majority of police officers in the US are now equipped with bodycams, with 7 states mandating them for all officers. This growth in digital multimedia evidence means the demand for redaction has grown, particularly for digital evidence such as audio and video recordings. However, redacting large amounts of digital evidence without the right tool can be difficult. That’s why most agencies look for a reliable solution with audio and video redaction software to redact, store, manage and share evidence.
Redact and Share Audio & Video Evidence with VIDIZMO!
VIDIZMO Digital Evidence Management System (DEMS) is a complete solution for managing digital evidence and legal documents, providing features and functions such as audio and video redaction to streamline criminal justice proceedings and expedite cases.
VIDIZMO’s digital evidence redaction software allows you to use artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically detect faces appearing in videos and pixelate, blur or crop witnesses, bystanders or minors to protect their identities. In cases where their clothes or stature can identify a person, you can redact whole bodies to maintain their privacy. With VIDIZMO’s video redaction software, you can also redact objects such as license plates, name tags and other custom objects. Additionally, you can also redact audio recordings for PII, PHI and PCI. By redacting audio and video evidence, you can ensure compliance with GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA and other legal frameworks.
An end-to-end digital evidence management system, VIDIZMO allows you to maintain the original files on the system and quickly share the redacted audio and video with other stakeholders such as prosecutors, defense attorneys, public defenders, law enforcement agencies and others. With VIDIZMO, you can use advanced sharing capabilities such as limited time and views sharing, protect your documents with end-to-end encryption and track your redacted evidence with chain of custody to see when they have been viewed, accessed and handled. Moreover, the solution is capable of integrating with bodycams, dashcams, CCTV cameras and other sources to automatically collect evidence for redaction.
Visit our website or contact us to learn more about VIDIZMO's evidence redaction and sharing capabilities.
