The police investigator and former chief of Wyoming’s Internet Crimes Against Children task force is known for making software that identifies computers trading child pornography on file-sharing networks.
The program has been used by thousands of police investigators across the nation as the basis for prosecutions, according to a USA Today feature story on Waters’ software and the pervasiveness of child porn in the U.S. In three years of work, Waters had found more than 600,000 computers containing the illegal pornography, only a small percentage of what’s thought to be online.
Waters was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show in a 2008 segment about online sex crimes. He is listed online as a programmer for TLO, a data-mining engine for research and investigations.
“We worked hard to find innovative ways to protect our children and now I’m eager to take on the task of finding innovations for our state,” Waters said in a statement released Tuesday, May 3, after Gov. Matt Mead announced his appointment as Wyoming CIO.
Mead said he was grateful that someone of Waters’ skills would work for the state. Waters has received awards from the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, according to the governor’s office.
A phone call to Waters’ office Wednesday wasn’t immediately returned.
Waters replaces Bob von Wolffradt, who was appointed state CIO in 2007 by then Gov. Dave Freudenthal.
Wyoming is currently consolidating e-mail and productivity software for the entire state work force. The state IT budget is approximately $222 million.
