Child Care Solicitors

David Cameron is to launch the government’s Child Abuse Image Database (CAID) at an Internet safety event on 11 December.

BBC News reports that the international database will enable police officers to identify the location of a victim using the database – potentially enabling child protection officers to identify thousands of previously unidentified victims of child abuse in the UK and globally.

The CAID system works by cross-referencing data from stored images to flag up information such as the location of a child abuse victim within minutes of a police officer accessing a new image. The system analyses visual information and employs GPS to build up a comprehensive database. Images seized during child protection operations and child abuse cases will be uploaded to the database.

Police forces in Britain and across the globe will be able to share data using the system, making it harder for child abusers who operate online and upload images to the Internet to continue their abuse unidentified by police. The database is expected to contain millions of images, however – all of which may at some point have to be viewed by child protection officers.

The CAID system was created by coders in Gothenburg, Sweden, who say it will transform the way child protection officers in the UK carry out child abuse investigations.

Investigations will be reduced from “months to days”, said Johann Hofmann – a law enforcement liaison officer for Netclean, one of the companies involved in CAID.

There are also two other tech firms involved in CAID – Hubstream and L-3 ASA. The system is backed by a £720,000 contract lasting two years.

However, one expert has said that unless the UK system is properly staffed, it will not offer adequate protection to children at risk of being sexually abused by paedophiles.

Police officers frequently seize large amounts of materials in child abuse cases – and officers have to work their way through the materials stored on memory sticks or hard drives to gain evidence and build a case. The work is painstaking but currently some materials may never be viewed because of the time required to process all the materials seized from suspects. As a result, some victims of child abuse may never be identified.

Downloading materials seized in child abuse cases to CAID makes the process of sifting through materials automatic, as the system picks up similarities in images to pinpoint the location of victims and other details such as clothing or objects in an image, or details of abuse.

CAID assigns a digital fingerprint to each image – known as a hash value.

Johann Hoffman said:

“We want investigators to spend more time looking at the new material instead of looking at the same images over and over again, because we know that these images are typically traded and the same images appear in investigation after investigation.”

Seized hard drives can be connected to the system which will scan the material contained on them and flag up any similarities as it cross references the new images with the stored materials on CAID.

BBC News reports that in a test, innocent images were flagged up as green by CAID, whereas suspicious images of children were allocated a red flag.

Duncan Lewis Children Lawyers

Duncan Lewis is a leading firm of children lawyers and can advise on childcare issues under UK law and Islamic law, including child abuse and domestic violence.

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For expert legal advice on family law and childcare matters, call Duncan Lewis children lawyers on 020 7923 4020.