UPDATED 06:49 EDT / JUNE 17 2013

NEWS

Google Announces Big Data Plan To Eradicate Child Porn

For all the benefits it brings to the world, the internet also has a much darker side to it that only causes harm. And of these shady corners of the world wide web, few will disagree that none are more abhorrent than those sites which harbor child pornography.

But despite growing awareness of this problem and the efforts of law enforcement to clamp down on such sites, the presence of this sickening material on the web has steadily been growing. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, it came across 17.3 million videos and images of suspected child abuse in 2011, more than four times the number it found in 2007.

Aware that child porn is a growing problem, Google has announced plans to try and curb its growth. Ultimately, the world’s biggest search engine is hopeful that it can eliminate child porn from the web altogether.

Jacqueline Fuller, director of Google Giving, writes about the company’s plan in her latest blog post:

“Behind these images are real, vulnerable kids who are sexually victimized and victimized further through the distribution of their images. It is critical that we take action as a community — as concerned parents, guardians, teachers and companies — to help combat this problem.”

“We’re in the business of making information widely available, but there’s certain ‘information’ that should never be created or found. We can do a lot to ensure it’s not available online — and that when people try to share this disgusting content they are caught and prosecuted.”

So the plan calls for a giant, global database of suspected child abuse images to be built, which Google will then share with other tech firms, law enforcement agencies and charities. Organizations concerned with fighting child porn will then be able to trade information and try to remove these images from the web. To make it possible, Google relies on a technique known as “hashing,” which allows suspect images to be tagged with a unique ID number. Google’s computers can use these IDs to locate, report and block all duplicate images posted elsewhere on the net. The company said that it hopes to get this database online within the next 12 months.

This initiative is just the latest development in a long fight by Google to try and curb child pornography. The company was one of the founders of the Technology Coalition, a group formed by tech companies in 2006 with the goal of using technology to end the exploitation of children.

Google isn’t alone in its efforts either. Microsoft takes the credit for developing the original hashing technology for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s PhotoDNA program. Meanwhile, Facebook makes efforts to ensure that its site is not used to harbor images and other media showing child porn.

Aside from creating the database, Google said that it’s also making a donation of $5 million to organizations including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Internet Watch Foundation, and its own Child Protection Technology Fund. Google said that these organizations will use the funds to help in the fight against child porn.


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