Dozens were arrested across eight European countries last week in a sweep tied to a "huge" online child pornography ring. Some reports said the police agencies involved in the sweep used Internet-monitoring software that allowed them to spot child porn downloads, but further details about the software were not disclosed.
Last month, Microsoft and Canadian authorities launched the Child Exploitation Tracking System, a joint software package aimed at hunting computer-savvy child porn makers and distributors through credit card purchases, online chat room messages, and arrest and criminal records.
The open-source program is a product of joint development efforts between Microsoft, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Toronto police, Scotland Yard, Interpol, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Reports about the European sweep so far have not suggested whether CETS played a role in the operation.
"They could have used [peer-to-peer]-type 'sniffing' software to spot when people are sharing child pornography files by doing searches on child pornography-related keywords," Brandon Shalton, chief technology officer of the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection, told AVNOnline.com.
A French law enforcement statement indicated that information gleaned from computer hard drives belonging to suspects led to "several thousand" child-porn images and videos and to at least 20 arrests. Ten more are under investigation in France.
The sweep also involved arrests in Denmark, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Sweden, according to several reports that said exact numbers were not yet available. Two arrests were known to have been made in Denmark while 15 suspects were under investigation for possession and transmission of child porn in Sweden.
"[Child porn online] is a big global problem, and we have our share," Swedish detective inspector Annethe Ahlenius told Reuters. Ahlenius said Swedish police questioned people and searched homes around the country, though she did not specify in which areas.
Denmark law enforcement in Copenhagen told reporters its agency was part of a large child porn operation with other European countries and planned to charge two Danes with trafficking.
Other reports suggested that as many as 100 suspects were at least questioned during last week's sweep, which began May 2 and was code-named "Callidus." A report from Malta suggested that more than 4,000 stills and 137 videos swapped online or stored on hard disks were keys to the sweep. The French police statement said the sweep was carried out between May 2 and May 6.
Shalton said the sweep shows that the use of the same high-tech software that ASACP uses can help low-tech law enforcement operations get effective results. "Use of technology to proactively spot the bad guys reduces to hundreds from thousands of very limited man-hour resources by investigators," he said. "The more tech tools that are available to law enforcement, the more efficient they can become in catching [child pornographers]."
