The forerunner of the Law Enforcement Data Exchange (LEDX) was a system known as DocuShare, developed and marketed by Stamford, Conn.-based Xerox Corp. The product started out as a way for five company research centers to collaborate and share information, said Colman Murphy, Xerox's DocuShare product manager. "So they designed it to be secure but also to make it very easy for distributed work groups to build collaborative spaces and to share information," he said. "So it has a lot of security capabilities built into it, like the user name and password control on not just areas of the DocuShare server...but actually right down to each individual document. "The users themselves get to control that access. I, as the user, can decide who else can view this document down to the individual level. Also, the site itself can be administered among the users. So it distributes the administration mode across the organization. You don't have to have a large [information technology] organization to set it up, to administer it, to manage the content, to give people permission. All of that can be distributed across the organization." Murphy said the product could store any document in its original format. The application also includes filters to convert more than 200 file formats to HTML quickly and easily. Larry Hunt, chief engineer and chief executive officer of Integrated Digital Systems/ScanAmerica Inc., tried to come up with a better way to exchange information among the Internet Crimes Against Children task force centers. Because his company was one of Xerox's top value-added resellers and because he was familiar with DocuShare, Hunt modified the product and called it LEDX. MORE ON http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/0902/spec-law-09-02-02.asp