Microsoft creates tools to crack child porn cases

Microsoft Corp., in a joint effort with Canadian law enforcement agencies, has developed a system to help track down people who prey on children online, the company said Thursday.

The Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS) was developed by Microsoft Canada and law enforcement agencies, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Toronto Police Service. The technology lets investigators spot trends and link pieces of information in, for example, child pornography cases, which often span borders and involve unknown perpetrators and victims. Also, CETS is accessible to multiple agencies and can be linked to systems used by law enforcement agencies in other countries.

"It allows us to store massive amounts of information and share it. We're all working on one common database and it uses social networking analysis to identify nonobvious relationships," said Paul Gillespie, a Toronto Police detective sergeant. "Within law enforcement, just the fact that we will all be working off the same page is a bit of a cultural shift."

CETS is an information management tool that uses XML (Extensible Markup Language) Web services and other Microsoft technology, including SharePoint Portal Server and the SQL Server database to capture information related to child exploitation. It then allows investigators to search that information and share it. Police agencies can use CETS to cross reference large volumes of case information in new ways and uncover obscure relationships between different pieces of data. The technology's social-network analysis features can spot communities of sex offenders, Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft spent US$2 million developing the program and at a news conference Thursday pledged another $2 million to help police agencies adopt and implement CETS. Any agency interested in obtaining the system at no cost can contact the software maker in Canada. "CETS is not something that we are going to be selling. We've offered to give this away to any law enforcement agency on a worldwide basis," said Microsoft Canada President David Hemler.

Details of how the system works are being kept secret, Hemler said. "We're intentionally coy about the technology that is used in this because we think it gives the good guys an advantage over the bad guys," he said. "Think of it as an assembly of commonly available Microsoft software, using techniques from Microsoft Research and best practices that the law enforcement community shared with us."

In Canada, the RCMP maintains a central CETS database that is used by more than 25 police forces across the country. Investigators can share information over a secure network and consolidate investigations that involve the same perpetrators or victims.

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