by: Tom Corelis
Comprehensive software monitors the internet for kiddie porn
Senator Joe Biden, a democrat from Delaware, has a new plan for combating kiddie porn on the internet: implement a nationwide P2P monitoring system.
It’s “pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation,” said Biden, because all you have to do is look at the filenames. He cites a piece of software, known as “Operation Fairplay,” which currently sees use around the world and at regional Internet Crimes Against Children task forces in the U.S.
Operation Fairplay is a “comprehensive computer infrastructure” that gives law enforcement officers a view of the “big picture” of child pornography transfers around the country. Biden says Special Agent Flint Waters of the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office developed the program, and describes him as an expert in the field.
A description of the software as is witnessed by CNET says the software works similar to anti-P2P measures used by Hollywood enforcers: investigators patrol peer-to-peer networks for suspicious-looking for suspicious files, downloading anything they find of interest. Fairplay’s software retrieves the IP address for the investigator and is sometimes able to locate the offender’s computer on a map. Agents then track the offender on a “daily” basis, identifying them by their IP address and, in some cases, a “unique serial number” sourced from offender’s computer.
Special Agent Waters wouldn’t elaborate on what the serial number is comprised of, for fear of giving perpetrators information they could use to circumvent it. “It's unique to the computer, that's as far as I'll go,” he said, noting that “we're able to get it when they're transferring child pornography.”
Investigators have recorded almost 1.3 million of the unique serial numbers thus far, with about half of them residing in the United States – and that number is steadily increasing each month due to “extensive capturing” conducted since October 2005.
Fairplay is also capable of tracking the files themselves, monitoring where a file goes by its hashcode – often generated by the P2P client itself as a means of identifying identical files with different filenames.
According to Biden, the FBI’s “Innocent Images” unit only has 32 investigators working on the case – allowing the agency to tackle less than 2 percent of what he calls “known” cases of child pornography tracking on the internet. As a result, Biden is pushing the “Combating Child Exploitation Act,” which would authorize over $1 billion, spent over the next eight years, to hire an additional 250 agents for the child pornography unit and increase child pornography enforcement worldwide. “We can get our arms around it, the worst aspect of it,” said Biden, “if we provide the resources.”
Biden’s stance is unique in that he isn’t directly opposed to P2P as a whole, recognizing the technology’s use in legal situations. “Blaming this problem on peer-to-peer innovation,” he said, “is like blaming the interstate highway system when someone uses it to transport drugs.”
