The Australian Federal Police and Microsoft has teamed up to track predators. Microsoft will be adding a logistics system to the Australian Federal Police’s existing online child protection unit. The system will enhance the efforts of the AFP in tracking crimes against children and their perpetrators, and will help tighten the net for capture.

Microsoft is calling this tracking program the Child Exploitation Tracking System. It is being rolled out in every AFP office for national child safety coverage. It is expected to be a much needed enhancement to the already strong online presence of the Australian Federal Police and help them do more to protect children online.

Bill Gates got the idea for developing the Child Exploitation Tracking System in 2003. He received a letter from a frustrated FBI agent that described the never ending mountain of data they had to sift through for each case, and how much time it cost them, often preventing or delaying resolution of the crime. Gates decided to have a team develop a solution, working closely with a variety of law enforcement agencies in the States to ensure it answered all of their needs.

The software offers potential for specific database mining, IP tracking and other information gathering, all of it tailored to crimes against children. It is designed to scrape information that already exists on the web, not to be invasive.

“[CETS] is a very, very useful tool to bring these types of offenders to justice, it’s able to identify all kinds of linkages that lead to a successful investigation in real time and provides a forum to exchange that intelligence between agencies a lot faster,” said Reece Kershaw, AFP agent and national coordinator of its Online Child Sex Exploitation Team (OCSET).

The AFP does not plan to hoard the system and what it can do. It has plans to share the system with local law enforcement agencies once the learning curve has been reached. Western Australia and Queensland AFP will be the first to receive the new software. Once it is up and running smoothly there, it will be installed across the country.
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