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#13351787 at 2021-04-03 09:53:10 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #15 - NEVER RETREAT FROM THE BATTLEFIELD Edition

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Raising awareness

Three weeks ago, the ACCCE launched its own Trace an Object campaign, the first outside Europe, initially sharing nine objects. Australian investigators hope it will attract an army of online sleuths such as Gonzales, but they stress that people don't need to be experts to contribute.

The real success will come if people in the wider community simply take a regular look at the images as they are progressively published on a dedicated AFP website, accce.gov.au/report/trace, to see if they recognise them.

AFP victim identification analyst Laura Smith, who sits beside Desirs in the ACCCE, selected the first set of images. She says six are "without question" from Australia and three are from Asia.

"I wanted to include a higher percentage of Australian images, particularly with this first round, because we have direct control over what happens with that information," she says.

"If it leads to identification or an area, we can as the law enforcement body go out and directly execute a search warrant or interview people."

She says it's already generating valuable leads from around the world. On her computer, she pulls up a photo someone has sent in of Disney bedsheets on a Japanese woman's blog.

It matches one of the new campaign's nine images - a relatively new case in which the child is most likely still being abused.

"We're able to see the full pattern of the sheets and recognise the brand," Smith says. "Along with a lot of other indicators that we had from the series, we've been able to go, OK, well, this is a Japanese series. We'll this week be referring this case over to Japan."

There are strict rules about what can be published, Smith says.

"It needs to go through a very stringent victim ID process to make sure that we've exhausted all options," she says.

"If we're putting something on here, we generally don't have any other avenues of investigative inquiry with it."

Detective Inspector Jon Rouse, ACCCE manager for covert online investigations, victim ID and training, says it's intended that the campaign will run permanently.

Gonzales describes the civilian investigators trying to find the objects as being akin to "X-Men" characters.

"So many people are doing things out there which are incredible. Every one of them has like a superpower," he says.

"For example, some of us are good with satellite imagery, some of us are good with the dark web, some are good in Facebook or analysing social networks and gathering information.

"I'm in the geolocation and visual investigation unit so I think I'm good at analysing images.

"Rather than speed, I am like a bit of a sniper. I'm taking my time, but I will get there and I will find it."

He encourages everyone to look at the images being shared by police, regardless of technical or investigative skills.

"The more people are aware of the campaign, the better," Gonzales says.

"We all have object memory. The other day I recognised one that was from my country, and it took me just two minutes."

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/trace-an-object-citizen-sleuths-to-the-rescue-in-child-abuse-cases/news-story/29c3cc8cef1c4e123fbe5405f011495e

https://accce.gov.au/report/trace

#13351778 at 2021-04-03 09:50:31 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #15 - NEVER RETREAT FROM THE BATTLEFIELD Edition

Civilian expert tracks the child abusers

DAVID MURRAY - APRIL 3, 2021

Australian police are using civilian sleuths with expertise in open source intelligence techniques to help solve the world's toughest online child sexual abuse cases.

Since September last year, carefully selected images from a dozen cases have been sent overseas by Queensland's Task Force Argos to a volunteer online investigator with remarkable skills in finding locations from small clues in photographs.

Working with a team of other international volunteer investigators, the engineer has directly tracked down locations or generated significant leads in 10 of the cases, leading to authorities rescuing children.

He first discovered his proficiency in online investigations through Europol's Trace an ­Object crowdsourcing campaign, in which the public is asked to identify objects and places from unsolved child abuse cases.

The Australian Federal Police-led Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) in March launched its own version of the campaign, ­initially releasing images of nine objects.

Investigators say they are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new images being generated every day and public assistance is key to fighting back against child exploitation.

"In many cases, we know the sex offender communities are ­demanding more content from some of these people," says ­Detective Superintendent Jon Rouse, manager of covert online investigations, victim ID and training at the ACCCE.

"So, you know it's going to keep happening, and police are working against the clock with what we have, to try to find the ­location and get an investigative team somewhere in the world or Australia onto it.

"There's people out there that once they realise what we are up against, and with the very, very, very thin blue line that we have to put against it, they want to help."

ACCCE victim identification analyst Laura Smith has been driving the Australian Trace campaign since returning from a three-year stint with Interpol's Crimes Against Children Unit in France.

"The crime type as a whole can be a really hard and uncomfortable topic to talk about for people in general, but it's so important because the effects of abuse on children last a lifetime," she said.

The hope is that in some cases the victim would come forward and recognise that the object used to belong to them, and that they know that they've been abused and photographed.

Superintendent Rouse said ­investigators had been unable to identify hundreds of abused and at-risk Australian children on photographs and videos retrieved from the surface web, dark web and other sources, so had to think laterally to try to solve them.

"Crime scenes are something police deal with all the time," Superintendent Rouse said.

"Our problem is we don't know where the crime scene is, we don't know who the victim is and we don't know who the ­offender is. And all that we've got is that image or video."

Since its launch, Trace an ­Object Australia's website has had about 37,500 page visits and received 425 reports from the public that are being assessed, an AFP spokesman said on Friday.

Victim identification analyst Adele Desirs from Argos has been selecting images for the civilian investigator.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/civilian-expert-tracks-the-child-abusers/news-story/a9a4ec119ba3c16c85000fd37c06f8b1

https://accce.gov.au/report/trace