Police four-legged friends

“Cyberdogs” sniff out prohibited data carriers

The Belgian shepherd "Esprit Stormcaller" is one of the specially trained police dogs. He is trained to sniff out USB sticks and the like.

(Bild: LPD OOE Michael Dietrich)

Special training for four-legged friends in Bavaria: our police rely on "cyberdogs" - they sniff out cell phones, sticks and hard disks. A new trump card on the side of the law in the fight against child porn and right-wing extremists.

Wow! What four-legged friends can do. Pets that sniff out explosives, drugs, missing persons or corpses have proven their worth in police work for decades.

After all, more than 240 sniffer dogs are on duty throughout Austria. The Ministry of the Interior is now going one step further. Crime is increasingly shifting to the digital world. Data carriers are getting smaller and smaller. In addition, USB sticks are often disguised as everyday objects such as lighters, pens or lipsticks. This makes it difficult for investigators to seize this important evidence.

Animal help requested from Bavaria
Four-legged colleagues are now stepping in. Two sniffer dogs received special training from the Bavarian state police. Over the course of ten weeks, they were trained to sniff out data carriers. They have been in action since late summer. One of them is the "Esprit Stormcaller".

The newly trained data sniffer dogs are an important support in the fight against sexual abuse of children on the internet.

Gerhard Karner, Innenminister, zum neuen tierischen Schnüffler

Bild: Horst Einöder/Flashpictures

The Belgian shepherd retrieves laptops, cell phones, memory cards, hard disks, etc. from even the most ingenious hiding places. He has already been successful in tracking down child pornographic material and sniffing out data carriers in the right-wing extremist scene.

The Ministry of the Interior plans to have a further 10 cyberdogs trained by the Bavarian state police - they are the leaders in this field in Germany. There are still only a few trained electronic sniffer dogs worldwide - but demand is increasing.

Large quantities of child porn or right-wing extremist data material are repeatedly found on USB sticks and other data carriers.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/nazia)

220 million olfactory cells in the dog's nose
Dogs are not only intelligent, a shepherd has 220 million olfactory cells (humans only have 10 million). That's why these four-legged friends can also sniff out things that we can't smell.

The cyber sniffer dogs are trained according to the same principle as other sniffer dogs. They are conditioned to individual substances on a search wall. The animals' willingness to work, play and prey instincts are utilized.