Slashdot Mirror
Computer-Edited Photos Lead To Child-Porn Locale
Leilah writes "Toronto police have found a new application for computerized photo editing. The police released edited photos on Feb. 3 from a series of child pornography pics in an attempt to locate where the photos may have been taken. Two days later, they have identified the Port Orleans hotel in Disney World as being the location. This seems to be the first time photo editing has been used in law enforcement this way and strikes an interesting line between protecting the victims and being able to get public tips. It looks like it may be used quite heavily in the future given this success."
Hex-editing arcade.jpg (the first of six photos) shows JFIF ... Ducky ... Adobe. Ducky is the code name for Adobe ImageReady.
An article in the Montreal Gazette (that I just finished reading -- what a coincidence!) says that if necessary the police might release the photos with the girl's face, the reason being that they believe that it might help the girl escape a "life of abuse"...
Doomie
What they were hoping, and what seems to have happened, is that someone who had been to the location would see it, recognise it, and call them. See any person who would be persuing these kind of pictures in their unedited form is not the kind of person who's going to be calling the police with a tip. So, they go and edit them to remove the illegal and offensive material. The repairs were done rather than just blocking the subject since most people find a black area very distracting, and focus on it rather than the information that is there.
Now it seems to have worked, normal people looked at the photos and some said "Hey! I recognise that place!" and called it in. It reamins to be seen if they are able to get any evidence from this, but it's a place ot start at least. Knowing where something took place gives you a good starting place to look.
The next step perhaps will be to again turn to computer editing (or maybe just old fashion sketch artists) and take the faces of the children in the photos and get them out ot people in the area, and see if anyone recognises them.
The edited photos will never see a court room for a trial, because it would be worthless to do so. "Here's a picture of an empty room", not going to matter. However it does seem to be a useful step in finding the person they need to bring them to trial.
Enlisting the public's help is a powerful tool often. Hence shows like America's Most Wanted. They actually do provide a useful service, in addtion to being entertianment. It's not a panacea, and you can't rely on 100% accurate and useful tips, but it can help police get pointed in the right direction on an investigation.
That's only partly true. There are two types of child molesters. One does it due to a stressor as a way of coping. In that sense its like drinking or what not to get away from the pain of a divorce loss of job or what not. These people very rarely reoffend because once the stressor is gone and they get counseling to deal with the stressor they have no urge to do it again.
The other is the classical child molestor in the sense that they have a constant sexual urge towards children and this in all likelihood will not go away. It is effectively a form of sexuality (albeit an incredibly destructive one). The only real treatment is counseling and some form of castration. Even with treatment, reoccurance is possible; without treatment its almost absolute.
Even though its incredibly unpopular to say so, I do have compassion for these people. The vast majority know that they are causing hurt but are unable to stop. I don't think they're evil, just very mentally ill.
Border and Transportation Security (BTS) - this is the TSA and Border Patrol, mostly.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) - www.fema.gov
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
U.S. Coast Guard
U.S. Secret Service (USSS) - formerly part of the Treasury Dept.
What they did was take all those gov't agencies with overlapping responsibilities vis-a-vis "homeland security", but no communication because they were in separate departments, and combine them under one department. Really, this should have been done a long time ago.
In this case, it's the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm that's investigating because it appears to involve a child from Canada being brought to the US. If this were a purely domestic investigation, the FBI would take care of it.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Now they can compare these (and possibly several more pictures that we haven't seen) and narrow it down. The police (who frequent internet child porn rings to help keep tabs on things) may have first seen these pictures turn up around 2001, so they know it would be before 2001. Perhaps that fountain was recently renovated? If it shows the "old fountain" in the pic, then they know it was taken before X date. They go on from there. Then they can take a list of all the people that visited the hotel from records and cross it with a database of known offenders from the area they think the guy is from. They may get lucky. They may even catch the guy for a separate offense and link him back to this. Maybe the hotel archives it's security tapes (unlikely, but you never know) and they can sift through until they see somebody take a picture at the fountain or in the elevator. Hell, this is generating a LOT of publicity, the girl may even phone in and say "OH MY GOD THAT'S ME, IT WAS MY BASTARD UNCLE". Anyways, THAT is what police work is.
Either way, it's still better than doing nothing.