100,000 happy pictures: a new tool in the cyber ‘arms race’ against child sexual abusers

The volume of child sexual assault material online is on the rise. An Australian project is crowdsourcing images of safe children so it can find those in danger

Leading Senior Constable Dr Janis Dalins is looking for 100,000 happy images of children - a toddler in a sandpit, a nine-year-old winning an award at school, a sullen teenager unwrapping a present at Christmas and pretending not to care.

The search for these safe, happy pictures is the goal of a new campaign to crowdsource a database of ethically obtained images that Dalins hopes will help build better investigative tools to use in the fight against what some have called a tsunami" of child sexual assault material online.