Multimedia signatures for vehicle forensics

The use of dashboard-mounted video cameras is rapidly spreading in many countries around the world. Widespread usage of dash-cams brings new problems, for example, dash-cam videos are uploaded on public websites which contain footage of other cars with the number-plates visible. This can potentially compromise privacy. Further, dash-cam videos can be used as evidence in case of accidents. There have been even cases of usage of dash-cam videos for insurance claims. Not only genuine claims can be made but fraudulent claims using some other cars footage can be used. The use as well as misuse of dash-cam videos is going to be widely prevalent in the near future. In this paper, we present a solution to problem of identifying the vehicle in which the dashboard camera is mounted. Our technique can be used by insurance companies for authenticating the source of origin (the vehicle on which the camera is mounted) of video before processing the insurance claim. We make use of features extracted from motion blur as a feature which is generated due to the unique motion of a vehicle. We have found that the subtle motion pattern of every vehicle acts as unique signature. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first work that describes this new area of research.