It's so they can shoot RAW and have a better argument against "wusnae me. You just photoshopped me in that pic, innit"

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/opinion/2028936/crime-scene-investigation-metadata-catch-criminals?WT.rss_f=All+the+latest+articles+from+BJP&WT.rss_a=Crime+Scene+Investigation%3A+Using+the+right+metadata+to+catch+criminals

Ah yeah, that makes sense and now that you mention it I remember reading a few years ago how Nikon (and presumably Canon) make special versions of their cameras for law enforcement that have additional security and integrity stuff.

also:
That article comes of as slightly preachy, and is also mistaken when it says raw files are a read-only format. While for most purposes that's true, there's nothing inherent in the format that makes it unmodifiable – if you can read the data and translate it into an image, you can do the reverse.

FORJ Forum | piXY | Soda | QuickSlide

Looks most like a D3000, which is bottom of the range.

Is that still going to have better low-light performance than a decent compact?

Well, unless it is a special police-only version that just uses the same shell but has better internals.

Uh, the one I posted in msg:38778.284

The guy with the not-quite-flat hat.