Sometimes, the next idea comes from nothing more than a spontaneous e-mail to the king of the computer world borne of sheer frustration. In this case, the e-mail came from Toronto police veteran Sgt. Paul Gillespie, it landed in Bill Gates's inbox, and Gates sent it on to Microsoft Canada. And now, the software kings will work with Toronto police developing a software program to make it easier to hunt and thwart child porn in cyberspace.
"To be honest, I didn't expect anything back," Gillespie told CNN. "I didn't even save the e-mail." He told the network the entire thing began with one "really rotten day" on the job in January, and three weeks after he sent the forgotten e-mail, he got the call from Microsoft Canada saying let's talk about that e-mail.
Microsoft and Toronto police said they hope to have an early working version of the program some time in November, aimed at storing copies of all images police find, creating a searchable database to help find similarities between separate cases, and analyze pictures and classify those that are actually child porn, "largely automating a job that consumes a huge amount of police labor," CNN said.
And, Microsoft Canada added, the program will be made on the open standard so it can be tied to any software used by any other law enforcement agency.
Microsoft isn't saying just yet why Gates decided to support the idea, other than to call it part of their overall work to improve the Internet. Gates is known for making large donations to health initiatives and other causes, including setting up a philanthropic foundation endowed to $24 billion.
Toronto will call the software the Child Exploitation Linkage Tracking System. "There is all sorts of new software out there that is specifically designed to defeat the forensic retrieval [by police] of evidence by using encryption and it just seems like ... the bad guys are winning," Gillespie told CNN. "The wild, wild west is certainly an accurate description of these chat rooms and newsgroups."
He said child porn is increasing exponentially in cyberspace. "Several years ago, you might see 15 pictures, 20, 100 or 150 and a few videotapes. Now, we're to the point, on a typical seizure, we could see up to 10,000, 100,000, 500,000 images," he told CNN.
