fridgepunk

Mr Hofmann said the software would help automate more of the process.

"We want investigators to spend more time looking at the new material, instead of looking at the same images over and over again," he explained.

Being snarky in taking that out of context, but it does mention that this Child Abuse Image Database (CAID) is a rehash of the Childbase system from 2003:

A similar system, called Childbase, was launched in 2003 by Ceop and the Home Office.

It contained seven million images and used ground-breaking facial-recognition software.

It was rolled out to police forces across the UK, but in 2011 it was switched off.

Sharon Girling received an OBE for her work on the scheme. She believes it failed because of a lack of trained officers.

"We have increased numbers of offenders since 2011. How the heck are we going to get sufficient officers today?"

She fears that Caid may "fizzle out" unless it is properly resourced.

"Childbase ceased to exist because of a lack of resources, because there weren't sufficient officers."

"I can only see that happening again with Caid, as much as I don't want that to happen, I fear that it may well do".

The idea that the Police honestly don't even have the equivalent of reverse image search for all their kiddy porn is kinda bizarre, as is the idea that it needs especially "trained" officers to use the thing. And adding to the bizarreness is that they'd implement it so it used regular officers rather than having a system like for the dispatch boards where it's not regular police officers operating the bloody thing but people who's job is to do nothing but operate it is equally bizarre, if only because it means it'd be very easy for a handful of coppers to shut down an abuse investigation by just going; "Yeah, checked the harddrive against CAID and got a green light, no kiddy porn there" rather than bagging up the hardrive and sending it to the computers division for analysis.

Evidence is one of those things you don't want being analysed in house by police after all, you want it bagged up, sent off to experts rather than... well, rather than coppers, for examination, if only to keep them honest and stop them from cleaning blood of guns before sending it to the ballstics lab ala the Ferguson PD, but also seriously to minimise the risk of accidental fouling of the evidence by incompetent handling.