Good Intentions

Good Intentions

High tech police tools for fighting "child predators" is good news. George
Bernard Shaw said, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Toronto
police say, "as soon as we type an e-mail or name or anything else, we know
right away if another department has already launched an investigation, and we
can see their investigation." (ANGELA MONTEFINISE, "NYPD TO UNLEASH 'PREDATOR'
DRONE," New York Post, September 2, 2007, page 2) What safeguards are in this
system to prevent abuses?
How does this system identify political abuses of police powers? In Boston
ethnic cleansing, the FBI framed four men for murder. Two died in prison. Two
spent 30 years in jail. Taxpayers paid $101 million for the wrongdoing of FBI
agents who suffered no liability. Boston FBI informants killed 19 people that we
know of. The one FBI agent convicted of abusing his power regularly filed false
reports to protect his informants.
How will this system distinguish from criminal abuse of power and accurate
law enforcement purposes? This creates the potential for worse abuses. It is
effectively impossible to correct false information in government computer
files.

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

NYPD TO UNLEASH 'PREDATOR' DRONE
New York Post
By ANGELA MONTEFINISE

September 2, 2007 -- City cops are going high-tech to catch lowlifes.

The NYPD plans to sign a $542,000 deal with Microsoft to bring the software
company's highly touted Child Exploitation Tracking System to the city.

The CETS technology - which was launched in Toronto in 2004 but is not yet in
the United States - connects law-enforcement agencies across the world, allowing
police to share information to help nab child predators, particularly those who
prey online.

"It's a really excellent program to deal with online predators," said Detective
Constable Warren Bulmer of Toronto Police Services. "With CETS, as soon as we
type an e-mail or name or anything else, we know right away if another
department has already launched an investigation, and we can see their
investigation.

"It definitely helps us catch people. It saves hours of double work, especially
in Internet cases when there's no jurisdiction. Two detectives across the
country can be studying the same guy."

To comply with city procurement rules, the NYPD released a mandatory "request
for proposals" from other potential companies last week, but NYPD brass
considers the Microsoft system "a unique product."

"We're looking at this system to see if it can assist our detectives with child
exploitation cases," said Assistant Chief Michael Collins. "The system is being
used across the world and getting good reviews, so we want to try it."

Collins said the NYPD "would use it in a variety of these types of cases,"
including online predators.

"The CETS will allow the department to collaborate and coordinate investigations
of child exploitation with other police organizations around the world,
including police organizations in Canada and Europe, who currently use the
Microsoft CETS," according to the NYPD's request for proposals.

"The CETS will make use of existing capacity to link numerous existing NYPD
child-exploitation databases with each other and with CETS databases of other
police organizations world-wide."

The system actually analyzes data, Bulmer said, connecting "things detectives
might not notice, like similar postal codes or similar e-mail addresses" to link
cases together.

He remembered when CETS linked two seemingly different cases by connecting the
same postal code, "That's something that probably would have been missed,"
Bulmer said. "Eventually, that guy was caught, and the system is a big reason."

The CETS system is currently in Canada, Britain, Italy, Brazil, Chile and
Indonesia. There are plans to bring it to Australia, according to Bulmer, whose
department actually helped develop the software.

His former colleague in Toronto, Paul Gillespie, sent an e-mail to Microsoft
founder Bill Gates asking for help dealing with online predators, and Gates
responded by creating CETS along with law-enforcement officials.

"Eventually, this will be a worldwide thing," he said. "It's really invaluable."

So far, the software has been tested in Wyoming, and some states have expressed
interest, but the system has not been implemented in the United States,
according to Microsoft spokeswoman Katie Ford.

"We are working with U.S. law enforcement toward the possible domestic
deployment of CETS, and we are optimistic that it will happen," she said.

angela.montefinise@nypost.com