Australia Broadcasting Corporation:
March 7, 2008
AFP to get new paedophile tracking technology
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2182898.htm
TONY JONES: Last August, Lateline revealed that some state police forces were concerned that the AFP was taking too long to introduce sophisticated computer technology that would help in the fight against global paedophile networks.
Tomorrow, Federal Police are expected to announce that the Child Exploitation Tracking System or CETS is finally going to be available in Australia. The technology is the brainchild of Bill Gates and a former Canadian police officer Paul Gillespie. Lateline's Suzanne Smith reports from Washington. The producer is Candice Talberg.
SUZANNE SMITH: On a cold and bleak day in Toronto in 2003, a lone cop was struggling to make sense of the heinous images that were flashing across his screen.
PAUL GILLESPIE, FORMER TORONTO POLICE OFFICER: I'd been working in the area of child exploitation for almost three years and um was very frustrated at the bad guys who were using technology to their advantage and we were chasing them and they were simply outdistancing us.
SUZANNE SMITH: So in a fit of pique, Paul Gillespie fired off an email to Bill Gates at Microsoft.
PAUL GILLESPIE: "Dear Mr Gates I'm in charge of the sex crimes unit and we are dealing with hundreds of thousands of imannuals of horrific abuse and we don't know who these children are, we don't know who the bad guys are who are taking the pictures. If possible can you help us find a solution so we can make a difference in the world." I certainly didn't expect anybody to respond and I didn't expect the email to make it to the head of Microsoft. For that instant that I hit enter it felt good and I just sort of forgot about it.
SUZANNE SMITH: In fact, Microsoft had taken notice and when the response came back, the answer was from the very top. Bill Gates contacted Paul Gillespie to tell him Microsoft engineers would start working on the problem regardless of the cost. So along with Paul Gillespie, the Child Exploitation Tracking System or CETS, was born. CETS is a sophisticated software program which can store an entire country's Internet crime police files on a single database. It then can find and connect clues a screen name, an address or credit card details. They can all be linked together to help find the child predator.
JULIAN SHER, CANADIAN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: The problem with these kind of cases, unlike most crime cases, is there's too much evidence. There's too many pictures, too many clues, so they needed a database that could take these pieces together, these secret passwords and names and email addresses. And so CETS as it became known, the Child Exploitation Tracking System is now operating in more than half a dozen countries. It's been rolled out around the world, in the third world, all through Europe and it's already led to the arrest of more than 60 offenders and the rescue of more than 40 children.
SUZANNE SMITH: Detective Constable Warren Bulmer is the head of the unit for the Toronto police. CETS helped Warren Bulmer connect up with another covert police agent who was investigating the same paedophile chatroom, a sinister site known as Kitty pics. CETS amalgamated their hard drive information on the site which led to the rescue of abused children.
WARREN BULMER, TORONTO POLICE: What that led to was numerous individuals. In fact, over 80 individuals in over two year length investigation who was also hands on abusers of other children. This was a tight nit chatroom group trading and sharing images of them abusing, some of them, their own children.
SUZANNE SMITH: Just yesterday, as Lateline revealed Task force Argos broke up a group that considered itself the world's elite online paedophile network. Its technological sophistication had until then seen it operate for a decade with no fear of the law.
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR JON ROUSE, QLD POLICE, TASK FORCE ARGOS: Even in child sex offender networks these guys were revered. They were held aloft as being the untouchables. That is why law enforcement officers in Germany, Toronto, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and certainly here in Queensland, we're celebrating today.
SUZANNE SMITH: It is expected that the Australian Federal Police will announce tomorrow that CETS will soon be trialled in Australia. The first police force to use the new system will be Queensland's Task force Argos.
For Paul Gillespie, the AFP's implementation of CETS is a relief, as he travelled to Australia in 2005 to demonstrate the system to the National Crime Body. For police fighting the scourge of Internet paedophilia, CETS is only as good as the information that goes into it, the hard work is getting the clues in the first place.