theForum » The Criminal Justice System » Police » Getting property back from the police » corrupted images

corrupted images

kraken — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 19:58:00 GMT

Happy Easter all.

just a thought from a post i had seen previously.

how do images get categorised if they are corrupt?
id assume if an image is corrupt, then it cant be viewed, i have seen people have had theses on devices but they still get categorised and used against them.
how would they know what the image is of, it could be anything especially if on a mobile where pictures are taken/downloaded/shared all the time without any thought as they are random things like rainbows or cows in a field for example.
just wondered if anyone knows.

regards
Kraken

RE: corrupted images

kraken — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 19:58:00 GMT

Thank you for the explanation, it was just something i had in mind from reading the posts here.

Regards
Kraken

RE: corrupted images

Evan Davis — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 19:53:13 GMT

There is also a law enforcement database known as CAID, which assigns a unique identifier to known illegal images. This means that, once multiple law enforcement have confirmed an image as illegal as categorised it, the image can then be identified solely by the unique identifier, meaning law enforcement never need to "view" the image again for categorisation purposes.

Corrupted files corrupt in many different ways. Some will have metadata remaining, some will have picture content remaining, some will be completely corrupted but may still contain the aforementioned CAID identifier.

RE: corrupted images

kraken — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 16:26:35 GMT

Thanks for that, i wasnt sure at all so had to ask.

Regards
Kraken

RE: corrupted images

punter99 — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 15:51:31 GMT

[quote]

[b]kraken - 20 Apr 25 1:07 PM[/b]

[/quote]

I guess it depends on what corrupted really means. Usually it means overwritten, but an image can be partly overwritten, so that it can still be viewed, or it might have the key data in the heading overwritten, which means it can not be recognised by certain programs as being a picture file. However, some forensics programs are still able to recognise these things, so it could be examined if they have the right software. If they can then see enough of the image, they could categorise it.