In 2003, Toronto police detective Paul Gillespie thought there must be a better way to catch criminals who trafficked in child pornography. The Internet was giving child pornographers new ways to find and exploit children, and Gillespie could see that law enforcement officials were far behind the technology curve. "With the Internet, the bad guys had figured out a better way to hide their tracks while committing crime at new levels," said Gillespie, who has since retired from the police force. "Law enforcement hadn't learned how to use the Internet to gain the upper hand." Police help design a system to apprehend pornographers
 | Law enforcement hadn't learned how to use the Internet to gain the upper hand, |  | | Paul Gillespie
retired Toronto police detective
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Determined to do what he could to stop the growth of child porn, Gillespie sent letters and e-mail messages to corporations and government agencies. One landed on the desk of Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft Corporation. Gates passed along the note to Microsoft Canada and asked for its assistance in developing a tool to help fight child pornography. Microsoft Canada software engineers worked with Gillespie, the Toronto Police Service Sex Crimes Unit, and other law enforcement agencies to understand how child pornographers were taking advantage of the openness and anonymity of the Internet. With that information in hand, the engineers then created a tool to help law enforcement officers apprehend pornographers. The result: the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), built on Microsoft technology, was unveiled in April 2005. CETS helped law enforcement agencies follow hundreds of suspects at a time and eliminate duplicated work, making it much easier for them to follow up on leads, collect evidence, and build cases against suspected child pornographers.
Even during beta testing, CETS proved its value by helping police investigate a man accused of sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl. CETS also figured prominently in the March 2006 arrest of 27 people in four countries who operated a private chat room to groom vulnerable children. CETS produces impressive results
| CETS has grown beyond my wildest dreams, | | | Paul Gillespie
retired Toronto police detective
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Since 2004, Toronto police officers have used CETS in their investigations, resulting in 64 arrests and the identification of 43 victims worldwide. "CETS really helps identify the non-obvious connections that can lead to a child pornographer and that humans could never identify on their own," said Gillespie, who now works as a consultant on Internet child safety for Microsoft and other corporate and government entities. CETS has grown from a Canadian law enforcement tool to one that is now global in scale. In April 2006, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), which works across the United Kingdom, made CETS part of its enforcement arsenal. The results were immediate. By October 2006, CETS was credited with helping police in the United Kingdom arrest 37 suspects and rescue five children. "In the past, police officers simply didn't understand the Internet — it was a labyrinth to them," Jim Gamble, chief executive officer of CEOP, told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). "But now we are upstream of [online pedophiles] and awaiting their next move." Since then, the international momentum of CETS has increased tremendously. Law enforcement officials in Indonesia, Italy, and Brazil put the tool to work in 2006. And 13 other countries, among them Spain and Chile, are assessing the effectiveness of CETS and may deploy it soon. According to Gillespie, the input that law enforcement officers worldwide were able to contribute during development is responsible in part for the widespread acceptance of CETS. Using the technology tools Microsoft has provided, police officers charged with fighting child abuse have been able to agree widely on how to structure the CETS database and develop the way information can be shared between jurisdictions. That's helped tremendously with "buy-in" from law enforcement. "Officers from around the world have been able to claim ownership of the solution," said Gillespie. "They were challenged to discuss what their own systems could and could not do, and the result was that CETS was built by investigators, for investigators." Gillespie added that the success of CETS in Canada and the United Kingdom has given law enforcement officers confidence that it is an effective weapon in the fight against pornography. However, vigilance is still needed. The abuse and exploitation of children on the Internet continues to generate shocking statistics worldwide. According to data gathered by the non-governmental organization Anesvad, more than four million Internet sites contain sexual material involving children worldwide, and 500 new sites are created each day. It is estimated that more than half of those sites—around 2.4 million—are fee-based services that generate worldwide revenue of some $1.3 (U.S.D.) billion per month. Microsoft continues its role with the development and deployment of CETS. When representatives of a country express interest in adopting CETS, Microsoft helps law enforcement officials assess how it might work within the country. Among other things, this task involves determining which police agencies will be covered by CETS, how database searches should be designed, and what sort of computing resources are needed. Microsoft also covers a portion of the cost of the initial CETS assessment, with the balance being paid by the hosting government or non-governmental organizations. If a country decides to adopt CETS, Microsoft supplies the software, documentation, and training to make it a useful tool. As of late 2006, Microsoft had contributed more than $7 million (U.S.D.) to the deployment of CETS. It also continues to support the development of the CETS tool itself, and in June 2007 it will release CETS 2.0 (the current version is 1.3). Microsoft Canada played a key role in developing the first version of CETS for Gillespie and the Toronto Police Service, and it still takes much of the technical lead in improving CETS. CETS helps energize public officialsTo Gillespie, the broad adoption of CETS is a result of the way it helps solve a problem that is global, both in its scope and in the way combating child abuse strikes a common chord. "When talking children and child abuse, it's something everyone can relate to," he said. "It really brings out the energy of everyone involved in the CETS initiative." "CETS has grown beyond my wildest dreams," Gillespie added. "It has realized its potential in that children have been rescued and offenders put in jail. That's very gratifying."
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