Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2011, $618,426)
During 2010, law enforcement from hundreds of local, state, and federal agencies used the peer-to-peer file sharing system RoundUp to identify over 1.4 million unique IP addresses as trafficking online in child pornography (CP) in the U.S. The proposed project will use the online behavior of RoundUp suspects to predict which are at great risk of harming children offline. The research leverages a unique team of academics and law enforcement, RoundUp data about online CP trafficking since October 2009, and tools measuring an array of online venues. First, the researchers will create quantitative measures of broad network behaviors and aggressiveness that can statistically cluster users. Second, they will collect data about the offline sexually abusive behavior of suspects arrested from RoundUp investigations. Third, they will combine these offline and online data to construct descriptive and predictive models. Finally, the researchers will develop, deploy, and evaluate predictive tools for identifying suspects at great risk of abusing children. This deployment will be in concert with Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces across the nation. CA/NCF