Child Rescue Coalition: Fighting Online Predators at SUSECON 2025

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone, it's Alan Shilo. We're back here at Scon in, uh, SCON in Orlando.

And, uh, let me introduce you to my next guest as we continue our coverage of, of what's turned out to be a great event. Um, I want to introduce you to Roberto Machado. Maro?

Yes, Machado. You got it. All right, Roberto.

Well, why don't you introduce yourself, Roberto, go ahead. Because absolutely. I, one mango was enough for me.

I don't wanna Thank you. That's anything else. And thank you for having me here.

My name is Roberto Majaro. I'm a software developer at Child Rescue Coalition, and if I may, I'll introduce Child Rescue Coalition as well. Chow Rescue Coalition is a very small, very enthusiastic nonprofit organization, and we build systems.

We're a technology, uh, organization, and these systems track data in the internet that, uh, identify pedophiles. And we take all that data and we make it available to law enforcement for free. We even build these systems for law enforcement, and they can take this data, take this data to court, and use it to prosecute and convict offenders.

And it's been so successful that there, there is no longer a need, uh, to put a victim on the stand in order to convict an offender. The data alone stands to make the conviction On its face. Yes, prima fass used the word in law we use for that.

And, and you know what? 9%, but so far it's really been a hundred percent. A hundred percent.

That's fantastic. What a great story. So I guess I understand, you know, my first question's gonna be, what's a nice guy like you doing at a conference like this?

Right? What, what do you need Susa for? But I I, I could see the beginnings of why, because you guys have had to build, I guess, an extensive web kind of monitoring network.

Yeah. So our infrastructure relies on SUSE's technology. It is our foundation.

We, our systems live on top of it. So what SUSE provides is the real, is the reliability, the high availability of it, and also the flexibility to expand, uh, or shrink the resources that we're using and the monitoring. And I can go on and on about how we use suse, but just alone the high availability because we need to track these offenders 24 7 on.

'cause the world doesn't sleep, Especially with people like that. Yes. Yeah.

And also the amount of data that we collect, we cannot lose. And it needs to be secure. This is data that's gonna be used to prosecute offenders, it's evidence.

So all that, we sleep very well knowing that we got our backs. Uh, su has our backs. Absolutely.

And, and look, it, it's, it's a solid, scalable, proven platform. Yes. Give us an idea.

I mean, I, I'm assuming it's Souse Linux are, are you running cloud native kind of stuff with, uh, with rancher and stuff like that? Yeah, so we have several parts. We have a lot of moving parts, but two key parts is the systems that we provide to law enforcements.

Uh, these are running on Cuse Rancher Prime, and these are systems that look more standard to what your an everyday web user would be. Is that a web interface that accesses our data, that has filters, that has a lot of tools that law enforcement can use. They interact with them.

Those are sitting on top of suse Rancher Prime, but there's also the tools that go out and collect the data from the internet. And those are sitting in SUSE virtualization. We have dozens and dozens of virtual machines that are collecting these, this data.

They each run a different operating system and tools and, uh, adapted to those particular networks or requirements where we are harvesting data from. And they're both, uh, being able to be monitored by this big window that is Ranger of Prime. Huh.

I love it. Give me an idea, like what kind of, I mean obviously it's a, it's it's data on pedophiles, but like, where do you look? What are you looking for?

So this has been the result of a lot of collaboration with law enforcement. Law enforcement will be the first to say, Hey, you know what, this is a new place where a lot of activity is happening and they've already been there. They've kind of already Scouted it.

Scouted Scouted it, and then we go in and automate the whole thing. Because it, it isn't just about knowing where to look, it's also about actually knowing how to collect the data. And it's very diverse.

Uh, some, some parts are very well known by just about everybody, and some parts are not. There's some, some very dark parts. Well, I would imagine, I mean, I mean, one way of is going in creating an account or something so you could, you know, be part of the community like undercover, if you will.

Yes. But, but then there's probably also, I don't wanna use the word hacking, but there's probably also ways of, you know, exfiltrating data where you don't, you know, actually go create a, a user account or something like that. Correct.

So there is some, uh, level of account creations in, in different services and so on. But that doesn't scale. And we, we need our solutions scale because we, we don't just collect the data from a single source or a single offender.

We want all offenders. So, uh, there is some account creations and, and I, unfortunately, I can't get into all those. No, no, No.

Don't say anything that's gonna get either of us in trouble piece, But we, we do explore in, in those mechanisms and then go for a grander scale. We, we don't just want to go into one service and, and put what's called a honeypot and know some, some something that attracts the, the, the wrong slash right people. And, and then we gather data from them.

We want to gather up the entire nest and, and collect data from it. That's beautiful. Two questions.

First of all, you mentioned that with the data you guys collect, you don't even need a, a human to testify, right? The, the, the data you collect is enough to, to convict someone. How do you ensure the integrity of that data that it's not been tampered with, that it's legitimate, that it wasn't planted by, you know, against people or something like that?

How, how, you know, and so I used to go, I went to Law, sky Practice Law a bunch of years. Couple years. I hated it.

I loved computers. But you know, when it comes to evidence, this is that what we call chain of evidence, right? That this is, this is the real gloves he was wearing when he murdered her or something.

Right. How do you guys ensure that in your system? So we practice standard secure IT security practices, uh, that it's, it's data.

So it just, it's treated like very delicate data and both physically, uh, and also in the internet space, our data is secure and actual, the actual data is not even available through to the internet. We, we have, uh, a separate infrastructure where we keep that data physically within our reach. Um, and that data, there's no way to get to it from, from, right.

It, it's, it's not why it's not connected. It, However, we, we process it continuously as, as data is being added, we process it continually to, to have the information made available to law enforcement in our portal systems and, and so on. Got it.

Keep, Roberta, can you give us an idea of, as a result of the efforts of your organization, how many people have been, or, or how many pedophiles have been taken off the street as a result of this? So, I'll, I'll answer that question. We are aware of over 16,000 offenders having been arrested as a result of our data.

16,000. 16,000. Is that US worldwide?

Worldwide, over a hundred countries. We're in over a hundred countries. However, we believe that number to be smaller, uh, than what it may really be because we don't always get reported back When they take you.

When, when somebody has been arrested, sometimes we train, uh, uh, uh, law enforcement in countries where they make arrests, but they don't come back and say, Hey, we've arrested five more or 10 more. So that's, that's a low number in our opinion. But I will say another number, which we're very proud of.

We, and I think it's also a low number, but as a result of all of our efforts so far, we believe over 1600 children have been safeguarded from their offenders. Thank God, thank God. You know, I'm, I, I'll be honest with you, I'm so naive and ignorant on this subject.

I wouldn't have bet there was 16,000 pedophiles in the whole world. I, I like, I just, I don't know. You know, I don't, it, it's just not, it's, it's foreign to me.

I, I don't know any of you know, that's a lot. And I think it should be followed by, by an even bigger number. So every day we, as we collect data from all these different sources, we collect close to 2 million leads, unique leads of offenses every single day.

What is an offense? Someone transmitting images of underage people. That is, yes.

That is one, one offense. Yes. Uh, and each one of these leads is one of those counts.

Uh, we are also in chat based systems and talks based systems. So that's another count. And it, there's many ways that, that those counts count.

Sure. Lemme ask you another question, and it is not technology wise, I apologize. But besides collecting data, turning over and working with law enforcement or prosecute, do you guys do anything around education and prevention?

I love that question and I really, really appreciate it because sometimes what we've, what how it feels like what we're doing is we're playing a, a game of whack-a-mole. We have an offender that comes out and whack another offender, whack and, and multiply by hundreds. Right.

Right. We can, we can continue to the end of time doing that. But I, I think we need to go back to the source.

Child risky coalition's efforts have gone, uh, in a, in a couple of directions as of late. One is in education, going to the communities and, and talking to kids and parents and empowering them to how to use best use devices and how to protect their children on the internet. The other thing we we do is by, and I, I won't say names because I don't, I don't know if I'm allowed to yet, but Oh, yeah.

But, but we're working with universities providing our data. We, we sanitize our data and we provide, uh, our data for research. So this research can be mental health, psychological studies and, and so on, because that's another way to approach it.

This is a, a, a problem that, that isn't just a behavioral problem on the internet. It comes from a lot more. So we need to find out where that is, where that is.

And, and of course, we, we want to promote, and this is another way that Child Rescue Coalition is approaching this from the legal aspect, uh, talking to, to Congress and, and so on, to, to change the law, to protect our children better, because we can do better. Our CEO Greg Schiller was a couple of days ago testifying before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on the stop, CSA act. So that's another way that we're working on.

So we, we've got a lot of things going. We're really excited that this direction that we're going, that isn't just systems and I'm, I'm from the system's part mm-hmm. But that it's really trying to tackle the problem from many perspectives.

I think that's the, the key to it. Hey, we're almost out of time, but I'm sure people out here watching saying, how can I help? How can I get involved?

You're a not-for-profit. I'm sure you could use fundraising and maybe volunteers. Where can people go?

org is our main website. There's a lot of information there. If you are able to visit and you feel like you cannot financially contribute, that's okay.

Share the link, share, uh, our mission, tell others about what we're doing. There's a lot of information there. Uh, education for, for kids and parents and, and so on.

We also have community events, uh, that people can participate, blankets and bear hugs. Uh, we just recently had our gala. Definitely.

That is, that is something that people can do. Of course, donations, monthly donations are the best things you can do. We have our coalition club for, for people that donate over a certain amount.

We, we do special events for our coalition club members. Um, and right now for SUSE Con, uh, SUSE is matching the first $5,000 donations given to during this event. And I believe until the end of March.

Hey, do you wanna do something? You got till the end of March, CER will match it. So your dollar becomes two.

What a great thank you to CER for doing that. What a great story. What a great job, man.

Thank you. Thank you for having me here. Thank.

Appreciate it. Alrightyy Child Welfare Coalition. Child Rescue Coalition.

org. Yes. Dot org.

Check 'em out. We're at scom. We've got some more, uh, video coming up later.

Stay tuned.