That's allowing "criminals to infiltrate the community, become part of the conversation and persuade people to part with personal information," Smith said.

Children are particularly at risk to anonymous predators or those with false identities. "Criminals seek to win a child's confidence in cyberspace and meet in real space," Smith cautioned.

Expertise and technology like COFEE are needed to investigate cybercrime, and, increasingly, real-world crimes.

"So many of our crimes today, just as our lives, involve the Internet and other digital evidence," said Lisa Johnson, who heads the Special Assault Unit in the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.

A suspect's online activities can corroborate a crime or dispel an alibi, she said.

The 35 individual law-enforcement agencies in King County, for example, don't have the resources to investigate the explosion of digital evidence they seize, said Johnson, who attended the conference.

"They might even choose not to seize it because they don't know what to do with it," she said. "... We've kind of equated it to asking specific law-enforcement agencies to do their own DNA analysis. You can't possibly do that."

Johnson said the prosecutor's office, the Washington Attorney General's Office and Microsoft are working on a proposal to the Legislature to fund computer forensic crime labs.

Microsoft also got credit for other public-private partnerships around law enforcement.

Jean-Michel Louboutin, Interpol's executive director of police services, said only 10 of 50 African countries have dedicated cybercrime investigative units.

"The digital divide is no exaggeration," he told the conference. "Even in countries with dedicated cybercrime units, expertise is often too scarce."

He credited Microsoft for helping Interpol develop training materials and international databases used to prevent child abuse.

Smith acknowledged Microsoft's efforts are not purely altruistic. It benefits from selling collaboration software and other technology to law-enforcement agencies, just like everybody else, he said.