Delhi Police sleuths might soon be using the crime tracking software developed by law enforcement agencies in the US, to crack and prevent cases of online child abuse.
On the concluding day of a three-day training programme organised by Delhi Police's Special Police Unit for Women and Children (SPUWAC) in collaboration with Data Security Council of India (DSCI) and International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC), police officers were told that they might be given access to software used by the FBI and other premier investigative agencies.
"During the three-day training programme, we were told that ICMEC has developed software in collaboration with the FBI, other law enforcement agencies in the US and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that might be made available to us.
"These softwares are quite advanced and can track online predators, how they are accessing child pornographic images, where all the images have been circulated, from where it was uploaded. They can lead you to the IP address from where the abuse might be happening," said a senior police officer who attended the programme.
Officers were also taught about working on various file sharing websites and different kinds of torrent files.
The closing ceremony was attended by Nutan Guha Biswas, Additional Secretary Ministry of Women and Child Development, along with Sundari Nanda, Special Commissioner of Police, Women Safety, Airport and Modernisation.
This is a really good initiative of the Delhi Police to hold a programme for its officers to train them in cracking cases that happen in the online world. We need more such steps to be taken to educate our police officers in tackling such crimes, said Biswas.
"Many of the crimes against women and children are happening in the online space. We have to up our game when we are dealing with such criminals. It is essential for our officers to know about online platforms and social media and the threats posed by them.
"For instance, if a girl visits a police station saying that she is being stalked on Facebook and the officer there doesn't know about the social media platform, what will the girl do? It was DSCI that approached us with the idea and we were quite happy to partner with them," said Nanda.
While the officers enjoyed learning about things like preserving online evidence, safety precautions, file sharing investigations, Google search, they also spoke about many of the technologies that are not yet available in our country.
"The sessions have been quite informative but many of the technologies that the speakers explained about, we don't have access to such kind of technologies. Many of the speakers were using quite technical terms which many of us couldn't grasp fully," said one of the attendees.
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