Protecting the Children - A new Web-based portal links law enforcement on the lookout for child predators
By Lynn Haber, VARBusiness
4:33 PM EST Fri., May 02, 2003
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
While its benefits are renowned, the Internet can also be used for
criminal purposes. Stories about the Internet being used as a tool to
exploit children are all too commonplace. In fact, the number of
individuals using the resources of the Internet to prey on children is
growing, according to Captain Rick Wiita of the Bedford County Sheriff's
office in Virginia. But what's comforting to know is that the same
technology is also playing a big part in an effort to crack down on
child predators.
Such predators so far as to use images, chat rooms, e-mail and bulletin boards to locate and develop relationships with children for purposes of sexual exploitation. But local law enforcement is on the case. For example: Law-enforcement officials across the United States were recently given access to the Law Enforcement Data Exchange (LEDX), a document-management-based portal that allows them to share child-pornography and criminal-intelligence information over the Internet.
"The truth of the matter was that just three years ago, when it came to pursuing child predators over the Internet, law enforcement was way behind the technology curve",
says Larry Hunt, CEO and chief engineer at Integrated Digital Systems/ScanAmerica (IDS), a Manassas, Va.-based integrator selected by the Department of Justice to develop the system.
The full LEDX system, with reporting, calendars, bulletin boards and incident tracking, went live at the beginning of 2003. Today, hundreds of law-enforcement officers from 40 task forces across the United States are sharing information and communicating with each other via LEDX, according to Hunt. Potential system users number in the thousands, and eventually will include international law enforcement agents, he says.
The computer-based system is designed to save law-enforcement officials time, provide broad search capabilities and access to information, reduce crime and catch suspects. In addition, the communication and networking capabilities of LEDX for law-enforcement officials nationwide is unparalleled, Wiita says.
A vast amount of information has been made available on LEDX for approved law-enforcement officers. For example, in the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) repository, there are bulletin boards, conference schedules, calendars, agency reports, member (task force) reporting, member (task force) submissions, ICAC policies, procedures and standards, quarterly board minutes, an incident-reporting system, legal library, major cases section, DoJ reports and resource information, such as presentations, which are submitted by various task forces. There is also a training section for law-enforcement officers, and a section that lets states store their own reports and data.
"Truthfully, I don't know how we managed without LEDX," says Wiita, who recently used LEDX to request sample crime-related legislation from other states that Virginia may use as a guideline as it writes similar legislation.
Combining Concerns
Before LEDX was put in place, not only was reporting done manually but
there was no system for securely storing and sharing data about
perpetrators across the country.
"We used the telephone and e-mail the best we could, but it really wasn't effective for communication with other law-enforcement officers," Wiita says.
Several years ago, Hunt, also a sworn officer in the state of Virginia and a longtime activist in his community, meshed his concerns regarding safety issues for children with his company's expertise. He hooked up with the Bedford County Sheriff's Office, also known as the Blue Ridge Thunder Task Force, and began developing LEDX.
Hunt was certain that IDS, a systems integrator, technical support and services company, and one of the first VARs to represent DocuShare®, Xerox's Web-based document-management application, could use IDS' expertise to develop a portal that would help task forces under the DoJ pursue child predators. In particular, Hunt called on his own expertise gained from creating a secure document-management system for Marine Corps Intelligence.
Xerox donated its DocuShare® 2.0 Web Accessible Document Storage System, then IDS took the underlying repository and built the LEDX portal. LEDX was built to manage millions of documents, it's configured to handle 576 GB of data,with much of the information being captured using online forms.
While system specifications cannot be revealed for security reasons, there are a number of products being used in the $800,000-plus solution, which include RAID servers from Compaq, firewalls from WatchGuard Technologies (as well as other firewall equipment vendors), UPS protection from APC, Surestore Optical Storage from Hewlett-Packard, HP DLT Tape Library, Microsoft SQL Database and IDS Edge XP Document Management System Software.
Available for free to 500 task-force members, the Edge XP Document Management System was developed by IDS and released late last year. It is a Microsoft-certified, document-management and middleware application used to acquire and manage files and documents using Windows NT and Windows 2000 and up workstations. It has an Access Database built into the system and can be customized. IDS' EdgeXP is available in several vertical-market versions. The product also can be packaged as a turnkey solution by IDS or one of its authorized VARs.
According to Hunt, the LEDX uses Compaq ML370 rack-mounted redundant servers. Primary and backup servers are configured with eight 72-GB drives, high-end Xeon 900 multiprocessors and Windows 2000, with 2 GB of RAM each. Inside the firewall, the system uses 100-Mbps networking, and communication takes place over five T-1 lines with failover.
Safety Measures
Without a doubt, system security was paramount when building LEDX,
according to Hunt. When the system went live, multiple security measures
were invoked, and only law-enforcement officers are allowed to
administer and maintain the system.
In addition, security for LEDX occurs on many levels: technical as well as physical. Technically, security measures include firewalls, encryption and passwords, as well as a permissions structure. All passwords are generated randomly and issued by Hunt only. Also, the incident-reporting system, which is used by officers to report criminal incidents, uses a double security system. Law-enforcement officers must first pass security to access LEDX, then gain entrance to the incident-reporting system using a second series of security protections.
Additional security measures are in place that prohibit users from getting complete file access to information about predators. Users, however, can search incident data by a specific piece of information and obtain related profiles.
The system was designed with redundancy and is located at a secure IDS facility that is government-certified. IDS does work for a number of government agencies that require security certification. There is also nightly backup, which is taken off-site using unmarked secure vehicles.
Finally, users access LEDX from their browsers via a direct, secure, encrypted T-1 connection, and use Edge to gather data locally. Most users enter data on a form that uses XML to populate the database rather than sending data directly to the system.
Tools Of the Trade
While LEDX was developed for the law-enforcement community, Hunt says
similar systems could be used in other industries, such as health care,
homeland security, counterterrorism, first responders and the Department
of Defense, as well as in the private sector for sharing internally
sensitive information.
According to Wiita, law-enforcement officers today can conduct their business in ways that were previously not possible.
"We can communicate with other task forces, share information and presentations, read up on trends in equipment that perpetrators may be using, and read legal updates on recent court decisions, for example," he says.
From a case standpoint, law-enforcement officers can now communicate with other participating agencies to identify predators, with the potential to eliminate duplicity of efforts and, more likely, find other law-enforcement officers with existing information on the perpetrator being tracked.
LEDX was designed to be easy to use. According to Hunt, once users get past the firewall, they have access to help files, computer-based training and a full user manual on LEDX.
Today, LEDX receives requests for as many as 10 to 12 new passwords daily. The system, however, is capable of sharing information worldwide.
"The faster information can be disseminated, the faster cases will be resolved," Hunt says. "Ultimately, we know LEDX will help save children's lives."
Lynn Haber (lthaber@attbi.com) is a freelance writer in Norwell, Mass.
For more information call 1 (800) 283-0999, contact sales@idsscan.com