New Software Tool Combats Child Pornography

A new technology know as “SImPLE” is being compared to a “random breath test” for computers and laptops searches for illicit or pornographic images or video has captured the interest of law enforcement agencies nationally, including the Australian Federal Police.

This new software tool was developed at Perth’s Edith Cowan University in partnership with Western Australia Police, which is now in the early stages of beta-testing the new technology.

The system enables officers on the front line - regardless of computer competency or level of training - to know on the immeatelty if a computer contains illicit images or video.

The systems main purpose is to apprehend the users of child pornography. Collectors of child porn often migrate into abusers at some point. Often it’s not a case of “if” but rather “when.”

The new tool, which received additional input from the AFP, is planned for release in early 2009.

Known as Simple Image Preview Live Environment (SImPLE), the tool is heralded as the new frontier fighting cybercrime – especially child pornography.

The SImPLE system uses a cut-down version of a Linux kernel and may be installed on almost any standard operating system.

Washtington Police computer crime squad Detective, Senior Sergeant Tim Thomas states that the tool will enable investigators to more quickly access information relevant to cases where children are in danger.

“Assuming that SImPLE goes the way we hope, we would plan for a very wide deployment in the agency,” says Thomas.
SImPLE would also reduce the volume of work computer forensic specialists were being asked to perform. This in turn would mean faster apprehention of these sex offenders suspected of possing child pornography.

Between 30-60 per cent of the case load for computer crime specialists globally in some way has to do with child pornography. “If the project is satisfactorily completed, we would certainly be encouraging its release as widely as possible because it is going to improve policing and services to the community,” Sergeant Thomas said.

Craig Valli, co-director of the university’s security research group SECAU, based in the School of Computer and Information Science, said the final release version of the SImPLE tool was expected by the end of February.

Associate Professor Valli also stated a range of government agencies, including Customs, had shown interest in the tool as well. “Particularly for Customs at the border, that sort of stuff is a problem,” he said.

As head of the university’s School of Computer and Information Science, Professor Valli, said police required a simple tool that could eliminate the need for highly trained experts to undertake initial profiling of evidence.

“The design concept is that any police officer with adequate training could use the tool, so that when they go into a crime scene they can quickly review a computer for illicit images or videos,” he said.

“It is not digging down into the hard drive to find anything that has been deleted; it is just what is topically available.”

Professor Valli said computers that were seized were usually bagged, tagged and taken to a lab to be investigated. “This cuts out that loop because it allows officers to preview the computer. “If they find evidence this allows them to write images to a disc and take it to a judge straight away.”

The SImPLE progran is a Linux-bootable CD that is inseted into the CD-ROM drive of a computer or laptop and boots into its own forensically clean environment.

“The disc goes into the CD-ROM drive of the PC and if files are found, the user connects a USB-DVD writer to the back of the computer, and the images that are stored in memory in the RAM of the computer are written to the DVD,” Professor Valli said. “Nothing gets written to the original evidence at all, which is the key.”

What this really means is that the technology can be used in court and an accused cannot challenge it on the basis of forensics – which is a typical defense in cases like these.