Rhode Island State Police are showing off their latest tool in the fight against child pornography: Thoreau, a golden Labrador.
K-9 is trained to sniff out gadgets, such as thumb drives and hard drives, that may contain child pornography. Thoreau is designed to recognize odors, such as metals and other ingredients found on these gadgets. The dog can then help authorities find hidden digital storage materials in the homes of suspects in possession of child pornography.
“If he has a memory card, he’ll smell it,” said Detective Adam Houston, Thoreau’s trainer. Dogs can be trained to detect a variety of odors, such as the smell of optical discs. The Motion Picture Association of America, for example, has trained dogs that can sniff out polycarbonate used in DVDs to help search areas that have become huge caches of copyrighted and illegally reproduced material.
