Microsoft spends millions of dollars each year developing security products that it gives to law enforcement agencies, knowing that it may not make any money directly in return. The work is part of the company's efforts to be a good corporate citizen, although there are also some business benefits from the work it does.

The decision to make such investments was never a foregone conclusion. Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, remembers a meeting with Canadian police three years ago when they asked him to spend more money to ramp up the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), a software program for hunting down child predators.

"I went into the meeting thinking that we could not make the substantial investment to take this project forward," Smith said on Monday.

But when police showed him what they were investigating -- images of children, some of them infants, being abused -- he changed his mind. "I soon realized that we couldn’t possibly bear to say no," he said.

Smith went back to Microsoft and scraped together an initial US$2 million for the project, and the company has invested $10 million in it to date. Microsoft won't say how much it has spent overall on developing such forensic tools for law enforcement.

Since its creation, CETS has helped rescue 138 children, according to Smith. The program was developed jointly by Microsoft Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Toronto Police Service.

Fighting child abuse is only one of the projects undertaken by Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement team. The group of about 35 people works closely with law enforcement agencies around the world, providing software and information that can help fight a wide array of Internet crimes including phishing and botnets.

Smith and others spoke at a three-day conference Microsoft is hosting for law enforcement officials at its Redmond, Washington, headquarters, inviting U.S. and international police, prosecutors and representatives from agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Microsoft has been hosting the conferences, which invite feedback from the law enforcement agents, since 2006, Smith said.

"It's in Microsoft's interest for people to have a safe and healthy computing experience," said Aaron Kornblum, a senior attorney with Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement division. "This is a part of our broader corporate citizenship."

While the team may help with Microsoft's citizenry efforts, it was originally created in about 2001 after the company saw that a string of damaging viruses was affecting its software, said Tim Cranton, associate general counsel for Microsoft's Worldwide Internet Safety Programs.