The pedo describes his exploits in unprintable detail and eventually asks to exchange pictures. They negotiate for a while, and the other guy sends a dozen photos that seem to be culled from other websites.
Krawczyk says they will try to save any kid, no matter where the child is. But this guy is very far away, and none of the images seems to be the kind of homemade product that indicates active exploitation.
About a third of child-porn collectors are also hands-on abusers, the police say, and almost all of them are related to or otherwise known by their victims. Krawczyk brushes him off with a "Not good enuf" and moves on.
Internet-savvy pedophiles have managed to stay ahead of investigators by using private networks, file-sharing software and surfing anonymously on public wireless systems.
One night in 2003, a frustrated Gillespie e-mailed Gates asking for help creating a database that could combine data from around the country -- and the world -- to help track down offenders and their victims.
To his surprise, Gates responded. After a year and a half of collaboration, Microsoft Canada and the Toronto police unveiled the Child Exploitation Tracking System this month to help investigators share information.
The system is designed to enable police in any country to plug into the system and cross-check data, including names, Internet aliases and the digital signature of every captured photograph. The software is free to any police team working to stop child pornography.
"It's important, because when we see a new series of photos online, that child could be anywhere," Gillespie said. "We need to cooperate and not duplicate each other's work. We just traced a toddler to a particular neighborhood in Spain through a subway ticket in his picture."
Interpol sends Gillespie any photo series suspected to have originated in North America. Clothing styles, writing or even the shape of a wall socket offer clues to locale.
Gillespie hopes the tracking system will not only link the often-overlapping investigations around the world, but that it will save his team heartache by letting the computers do some of the dirty work of sifting through the photos by their digital signatures.
"We arrested a bad guy last week," he said. "There were 1,000 images on his hard drive. Can I pay you enough to sit at this computer and look at every image? There are babies raped and sodomized with romantic music playing in the background. You are never the same person after you see something like that. It's soul-destroying."
