LYON, France — Interpol's vast collection of photos of child sex abuse and its victims — a database of more than 520,000 images, some of unspeakable crimes — is key to the ongoing search for a man seen in Internet photos abusing boys.
Interpol is using the computerized database to hunt for clues about the man, whose identity, nationality and whereabouts are unknown. The agency said Wednesday that its global appeal for public help to find the man had produced more than 200 leads of potential names, locations and photos of the suspect in the first 24 hours.
Interpol's Child Abuse Image Database, or ICAID, works like this: When the agency receives images of child sex abuse, a suspected pedophile, or a child victim, it runs them through the computer's memory banks, looking for matches with other images.
It can help spot, for instance, that the wallpaper in the background of one image matches that in another image. That could suggest to investigators that the photos were taken in the same place — perhaps, say, a hotel in Cambodia or somewhere else in Southeast Asia that pedophiles frequent.
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The human eye is also essential. Interpol official say they don't rely exclusively on computer matches and don't use "face recognition" software. They sift through images, looking for details that could provide a lead.
Experts at Interpol's headquarters in Lyon said the pictured abuse is sometimes so bad that even they wince. But it can also be rewarding when the work leads to an arrest.
"When you go home from work that day, you think, 'OK. I spent all that time looking at this but I found this small detail that will probably be the end of the abuse for the child,' " said Anders Persson, a Swedish police officer assigned to the division that combats human trafficking.
Persson said in previous cases, details like a Spanish hospital towel, an electric socket distinctive to North America or a bedspread at Florida's Disney World helped to solve or provide leads in child sex cases.
Persson showed an Associated Press reporter a series of pictures not related to the latest case, pointing out possible clues.
One photo showed a dollhouse. "Ah, but that's available all over," Persson said. Another showed a radiator. "I'm quite sure it's in Europe. England, maybe," he said.
The unknown suspect in the latest case came to police attention in March 2006 when 15 images of the man, including some of him allegedly sexually abusing children, were found in a computer seized in Norway.
Those photos and others received in the two years since have been run through Interpol's database, which compared them against other images for matches. In all, the database and police investigations have helped turn up a total of around 800 images, including nearly 100 of the man himself and others of his suspected victims.
Interpol released six photos that show a gray-haired white man wearing glasses or lying on a checkered mattress or blanket in a plaid yellow shirt. Interpol said other images allegedly showing him sexually abusing at least three boys, apparently aged 6 to 10.
A major message of the appeal by Interpol — only the second of its kind after another last October led to the arrest of suspect Christopher Paul Neil in Thailand only 11 days later — is that pedophiles cannot expect to hide in the anonymity of the Internet.
"When we go public with a child abuser, the whole world reacts," Persson said. "It goes to show that crimes against children are not tolerated, and people do whatever they can to support the police."
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