How do police gain evidence for child porn?

[mjer1984]

The police gain evidence by checking all files on the entire disk, including those that can be recovered after being deleted. From my understanding they check the emails and Internet on the computer and simply track down anyone who has been emailing the culprit illegal images. As far as confiscating equipment they will take everything, i have heard of them ripping servers out of offices as the suspect was doing bad stuff at work. Plus it seems pretty international if they need help from other forces.

 

[platypus]

Never heard of the md5 hash checking - from what I've been told, they do view every image/video to check for content.

It's quite possibly the worst job on the planet

I'd imagine for the most part its pretty disturbing, but can be amazingly rewarding when you rescue a child.

 

[Visage]

Does an officer have to scan through all the images and videos on some persons PC? That could take days and seriously mess with the officers mind?

I reckon I could take investigation a crime scene, but look at thousands of horrible images and videos?

Well, what they do is they assemble a team of guys who've been convicted of being a bit pedalo - Gary Glitter, Jonathan King, Bono...you know the sort.

The they strap them into a chair rigged with various sensors and show them loads of images. Mostly they're of cute bunnies and fluffy kittens, but occasional they will slip in a picture gleaned from a suspects computer, like a sexy toddler, or suchlike. If the sensors detect him getting a bit 'chubby' then a siren goes off and he gets automatically sprayed with paedo-catnip.

They then know that the picture in question is a bit dodgy, all while protecting the sensibilities of the officers in question.

I know all this to be true because I saw it on Top Gear.