AST April 2018 Magazine AST April Magazine (3.30.18) | Page 31

Volume 22
April 2018 Edition
DHS S&T and DHS Homeland Security Investiga-
tions (HSI), Cyber Crimes Center (C3), Child Ex-
ploitation Investigations Unit are collaborating
on  automated recognition programs  that can
help comb through the seized materials.
Patricia Wolfhope, DHS S&T Program Manager
Large amounts of explicit child exploitation ma-
terial are traded on what is known as the darknet,
where predators use encryption, anonymization,
and other techniques to make it almost impossi-
ble to trace back to the originator.
At any given time there are more than 300
darknet boards with more than 500,000
members whose sole purpose is facilitating
the exchange of child exploitation material.
(The DHS Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate is devel-
oping advanced forensic tools and techniques that help DHS
Homeland Security Investigations rescue exploited children,
track down child pornographers, and obtain convictions
against child molesters worldwide. )
These research and development programs will
greatly reduce the amount of time it takes forensic
analysts to locate crime scenes, identify and rescue
the children, and identify their perpetrators.
S&T and HSI C3 are designing, developing, test-
Furthermore, the same illicit imagery is dupli-
ing, and integrating new face recognition algo-
cated, manipulated, and shared among child rithms that will allow agents to sift through massive
abuse collectors.
amounts of digital data much faster and efficiently
than current manual processes.
“Locating the perpetrator and victim as quickly
as possible is critical,” said Wolfhope.
Agents could process materials faster by eliminating
materials already seized in other cases.
“As it is estimated by the Centers for Dis-
ease Control that approximately one in S&T expects these technologies to help find inves-
six boys and one in four girls are sexually tigative leads that would otherwise be missed due
to the sheer bulk of data and human limitations.
abused before the age of 18.”
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