On Monday, Italy became the first European nation to agree to implement an anti-child-porn system developed by Microsoft. Both Italy and Microsoft believe that the rest of the continent will soon follow suit.
The Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS) is already being used in Canada and Indonesia.
The Italian police’s special communications unit thinks that CETS will allow it to conduct its investigations 80% quicker.
“In substance, we want to oppose pedophile rings with an international network of cyber-police,” said Domenico Vulpiani, the head of the police and postal communications group.
The anti-child-porn system was developed in a joint effort by Microsoft Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Toronto Police Service. It was formally launched on April 7, 2005.
Microsoft spent around $7 million developing CETS, but is giving it to governments at no charge.
“CETS, a software solution built using open industry standards, assists law-enforcement officials in their work to stop the exploitation of children on the Internet by enabling effective collaboration and providing a set of advanced software tools and technologies for use by investigators,” Microsoft indicated in the article it posted on the day of the system’s launch.
A spokesperson for Microsoft said that Britain and Spain were close to implementing CETS, and that five other European nations were expressing interest.
Sources:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=
internetNews&storyID=2006-10-16T172221Z_01_L16652216_
RTRUKOC_0_US-ITALY-MICROSOFT-PORNOGRAPHY.xml&WTmodLoc=
InternetNewsHome_C2_internetNews-1
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/apr05/
04-07CETS.mspx
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