Google has announced a series of initiatives designed to fight against the evils of child pornograhy hosted online, including a new database that will make it easier to identify and remove offending images.
Google has been working on fighting child exploitation since as early as 2006 when we joined the Technology Coalition, teaming up with other tech industry companies to develop technical solutions.Since then, it has been providing software and hardware to helping organizations all around the world to fight child abuse images on the web and help locate missing children.
Since 2008, the company has been using “hashing” technology to tag known child sexual abuse images, allowing us to identify duplicate images which may exist elsewhere. The company has started maintaining a database to incorporate encrypted “fingerprints” of child sexual abuse images into a cross-industry database. This will enable companies, law enforcement and charities to better collaborate on detecting and removing these images, and to take action against the criminals.
The company has pledged $5 million effort to eradicate child abuse imagery online. Part of this commitment will go to global child protection partners like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation. Also additional support will be provided to similar heroic organizations in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Latin America.
It also announced a $2 million Child Protection Technology Fund to encourage the development of ever more effective tools.
