IT upgrade boosts battle against child pornography Queensland Police Service Acting Inspector Craig Weatherley Photo: Kristian Silva The Queensland Police Service's latest tool to hunt criminals won't be used, or even seen, by officers on the beat. Instead, it sits on a shelf, locked away in a government server room in a secret location. The $3.2 million computer system, which was rolled out last month, will be used by detectives to investigate child exploitation offences and to help bust illegal pornography rings. Police say the state-wide Access to Digital Seized Evidence (SASDE) project will dramatically boost their ability to share evidence within the force, which in turn will speed up investigations. The Acting Inspector of the QPS Child Safety and Sexual Crime Group, Craig Weatherley, said there were at least five million child pornography images on the internet - and that isn't including pictures that have been duplicated or modified. Acting Detective Inspector Weatherley said QPS' old evidence sharing system struggled to cope with the volume of data generated from high resolution images and data in recent years. After hard drives were seized from offenders and sent to computer analysts they had to be mailed or couriered back to detectives so they could prepare court briefings. The delays created a backlog, slowed the court process and ultimately diverted police resources away from investigations. Now, data from a smartphone can be extracted and accessed by investigators in an hour. "There would be no state in Australia that has got a better system than us," Acting Inspector Weatherley told Fairfax Media. They'd all be looking towards us and learning from the experience we've had from SASDE. Task Force Argos, a specialist unit consisting of 25 members dedicated to investigating child exploitation crimes, are expected to be one of the main users of the SASDE system, along with the 550 specialist child protection and investigation unit officers around the state. During the 2012/13 financial year, Argos seized more than 877,000 child exploitation images and 1039 hours of video. There were 158 children rescued in Australia and overseas as a result of Argos' work, and 164 offenders were prosecuted by police. Argos was responsible for passing information to US authorities, which aided their prosecution of Peter Truong and Mark J Newton - an Australian and American who flew a boy between Australia, France, Germany and the US for other pedophiles to abuse him. The pair, who bought the baby boy from Russia in 2005, lived in Cairns for several years before they were arrested in America in 2011. In July this year, Newton was jailed for 40 years. Truong has pleaded guilty but is yet to be sentenced. Acting Inspector Weatherley said child sex predators who use the internet generally have "an addiction to store, hoard and trade images." There's also a second tier of people who get curious. But if you get curious about that sort of stuff, in my view, you have a problem. The link between looking at pornography involving kids and child exploitation material is quite strong to contact offending. The only thing that limits these people from offending is opportunity. Keeping up with this dark and sinister side of the internet is an ongoing challenge. Along with tracking the ever-changing methods used by the syndicates, there is the mental toll the job has on police. Once evidence is seized, investigators must pore over every offending image and rank its severity. A limit of four hours per shift is allowed for this kind of work and every year the officers must complete a series of psychological tests. Acting Inspector Weatherley describes them as "absolute heroes" for taking on the unglamorous role. The fact they commit themselves to such a horrific crime type at times, is a testament to that. They've got wives, husbands and children in their lives as well.