Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ANDRUPOS (Automatic non-destructive recognition of used printing techniques on substrates)

Teaser

Millions of valuable documents worldwide are currently checked on security features like UV re-action, watermark, MRZ (machine readable zone), infra-red reaction, etc. However due to quickly changing and improving technologies it becomes more easy to counterfeit these...

Summary

Millions of valuable documents worldwide are currently checked on security features like UV re-action, watermark, MRZ (machine readable zone), infra-red reaction, etc. However due to quickly changing and improving technologies it becomes more easy to counterfeit these features, so a lot ID-document counterfeits remain undetected.
Questioned document examination is a forensic science discipline related to documents, providing evidence about questionable documents. These can be examined for evidence of alterations, obliterations, erasures and page substitutions. Due to the widespread use of printing machines for document forgery, printed document examination is an important issue. The determi¬nation of whether different pages of a document are produced by the same machine is an extreme valua-ble information in a lot of cases and is a frequent requirement.
Manual document analysis requires certificated document specialists so examination costs are very high.
- Current passport scanners are not capable of forensic examination and not always relia-ble. The only measure security features and there are more and more ways for counter-feiers to forge these documents with low-cost equipment.
- Forensic examination (such as what printer is used) is time consuming
- It is not possible to oversee the (counterfeit) documents if were originated on the same source.
- Especially in human smuggling and refugee crisis it is important to know asap where the presented documents are originated, so that can be determined if the documents are au-thentic.

Quick and reliable document fraud detection is of utmost societal interest. Fraudulent identity and security documents are integral prerequisites for the smuggling of migrants, trafficking in persons, terrorist mobility, to facilitate the smuggling of drugs, weapons and other goods, simplifying cross-border crime of all types. Counterfeited or manipulated documents enable opening of a bank ac-count or receiving illegal social insurance benefits. Even if document fraud is detected, prosecu-tion is difficult as manual linkage between counterfeiters by their used printing equipment is very complex.
“Travel document fraud is widely perceived as a serious problem affecting border control and the internal security of the European Union. The verification of the authenticity of travel docu-ments is a key element of border checks and a pre-requisite for efficient border control”. (THE DOCUMENT CHALLENGE II, Frontex, 2014).

ANDRUPOS proactively targets the needs and requirements of national and European users like EUROPOL (European police office), FRONTEX (European agency for the management of oper-ational cooperation at the external borders of the member states of the EU), Criminal Offices, National Police Services, Customs Investigation Bureaus, Financial/Customs. This new examina-tion system is essential to respond to current EU and global challenges in regard to terrorism, ref-ugees and migration.
ANDRUPOS provides a disruptive solution for printed document examination and classification with fast, software-based, highly automated, optical and non-destructive methods: forensic level inspection of printed source and security documents (ID documents, passports, banknotes, con-tracts, ...) leading to an increased reduction in time and effort in the overall examination process up to 50-80%.

By identifying printing characteristics used to generate questioned documents and implementing additional forensic intelligence ANDRUPOS focuses on two challenges: helping to fight and pros-ecute organzed crime as well as improving border security and immigration proceedings.
The main general objectives of the project Andrupos are to ease and drastically reduce inspection effort on forensic document examination and to provide a central database containing information about printing technologies and printers as well as specific information of individual printers.
More specific ojectives of the platform are related

Work performed

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far (For the final period please include an overview of the results and their exploitation and dissemination)
Work performed in the first reporting covered:
- Use case definition, system specification,
- Andrupos distributed system software architecture
- Specification of a General Printer Reference Sheet
- Printer database specification
- Draft implementation of the server application
- IT security considerations
- Prototype / draft version of the printing technology and printer database
- Investor integration

The main results are
- Draft implementation of the server application including the printing technology and printer database;
- Scanning and importing documents,
- Analyzing acquired region of interest (RoI) images,
- Matching RoI images (so far documents only)
- Founding of Andrupos BV, which will be responsible to commercialize the system after the project phase

Final results

Progress beyond the state of the art, expected results until the end of the project and potential impacts (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far):
It is the time line for getting trustworthy results pointing towards potential crime, which finally also saves costs: ANDRUPOS brings a clear economic benefit for users by drastically reducing examinition costs of questioned documents encouraging them to invest and employ this applica-tion. Today, at the users site lots of cases cannot be evaluated today due to limited staff capaci-ties. Considering the impact of crime and fraud in economic terms, the investment in crime pre-vention in this respect delivers a return of investment which impacts not just security issues of the society but especially of industry and economy at large.

Main innovations of ANDRUPOS
• Automated, streamlined documents examination including reporting
• Use of intrinsic features (retrieving document biometrics) to detect counterfeits
• Classifying and possible linking of questioned documents with other cases

ANDRUPOS: Improvements in respect of competing solutions
• Streamlined examination process, significantly saving examination time and costs
• Enabling more examinations to be executed

ANDRUPOS: Additional completely new features (not available on the market today)
• A large printer database: very time consuming task and unmanageable for individual foren-sic institutes or law enforcement agencies,
• Ability to store (questioned) documents that have to be returned to the issuing authorities to be able to be used in the future for further research

Website & more info

More info: http://www.andrupos-forensics.com.