14 DAY TRIAL // Thanks to efforts from Microsoft Research, criminals involved in child-exploitation will have less places to hide, especially when it comes down to the nooks and crannies of the Internet. Ernie Allen, president and CEO of National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) notes that while the Internet has created new opportunities for pedophiles to access content in the privacy of their own homes, and to expose themselves less to the risks associated with their illegal activities, work has been done to identify them and bring them to justice. At the same time, PhotoDNA is designed to help stop the distribution of child-exploitation images across the web.
NCMEC will be using a technology donated by Microsoft in order to produce blueprints of known images of children abuse. PhotoDNA was developed by Microsoft Research in collaboration with Hany Farid, a leading digital-imaging expert and professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, and is designed to assign signatures to images of abuse. NCMEC will subsequently share the DNA of child pornography with online service providers. In their turn, service providers that will be able to match the signatures against the hashes of photos on their own services. The process is set up to help identify illegal content and remove it.
“Our goal is to stop that victimization,” Allen stated. “Using PhotoDNA, we will be able to match those images, working with online service providers around the country, so we can stop the redistribution of the photos.”
Of course, at the same time, the findings which will come to light with the help of PhotoDNA will be shared with law enforcement authorities, in the hope that they will be better equipped to catch pedophiles. PhotoDNA is capable of leveraging “robust hashing” technology in order to map out the particular characteristics of a digital image. The resource will put together a digital fingerprint or “hash value” for a specific photography which is not affected by the same weaknesses found in most common forms of hashing technology.
PhotoDNA will continue to identify a certain image even after the content was altered by a variety of actions including resizing, resaving in a different format. At the same time, the technology can also bypass the changes introduced through digital editing, where the original hash value is swapped for a new hash. “If I laid down in front of you a couple of billion images and ask you to hand me the ones that are inappropriate, you can imagine the scope of that problem,” Farid added. “And so we have been developing technology that can pluck out those inappropriate images from a sea of billions in a very fast, very reliable way.”
Allen promises that NCMEC will take advantage of the PhotoDNA tool, and collaborate with both law enforcement agencies and online service providers, as well as additional organizations to bring predators to justice, and to curve the volume of exploited children images on the web. In the past seven years, NCMEC has reviewed and analyzed approximately 30 million images and videos involving child pornography. PhotoDNA will automate this process and help tackle the phenomenon.
“We believe the ability to move faster and be more efficient can make a real difference in addressing the problem,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel. “This is an opportunity for us across the technology community to partner closely with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to use this technology. By combining our efforts, we can have a much bigger impact.”
UPDATE: I had the chance to ask Brad Smith whether Microsoft would be implementing PhotoDNA on its own web properties and start scanning and filtering illegal content. Microsoft’s general counsel notes that the company will certainly embrace PhotoDNA, but that the focus, at least for the time being, will be placed on public areas of the Internet. In this context, Smith mentions that certainly its search/decision engine, Bing, will benefit from the implementation of PhotoDNA in helping remove and stop the spreading of images depicting sexual abuse of children. There will be public areas of Windows Live targeted by the technology as well.
Still, Microsoft will not touch what is considered to be personal communications, namely Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live SkyDrive, Windows Live Messenger content. But Smith does underline that Microsoft is looking to have an open broad dialog in the future with the members of the government, with consumer organizations, additional members of the industry, in order to make sure that the implementation of PhotoDNA evolves in the right direction. Certainly, in this respect, the right kind of governmental policies would help Microsoft and ISPs contribute to stopping the distribution of child pornography.
Farid argues that it would be in no way a violation of privacy to have PhotoDNA scan content depicting abuse of infants and toddlers. No less than 6% of all child-exploitation actually feature infants and toddlers, and the images of abuse involving prepubescent children are getting more and more violent. Allen notes that 68 ISPs across the US are already working with NCMEC. Focusing on the United States has been chosen as the first move since the US is the top consumer market of child porn. According to Farid, the rate of false positives PhotoDNA delivers is less than 1 in a billion images, while having an accuracy detection rate of 92%.
ISPs interested in adopting the technology and contributing to stop the distribution of child-exploitation content can contact NCMEC. Although for the time being the initiative started in the US, PhotoDNA is actually part of the global solution for what is a global problem. ISPs around the world are invited to join in.
“Everyone can help in the fight against child pornography. Microsoft and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children are asking anyone who would like to participate to update their Windows Live page, Facebook page, Twitter page, blog or other Web site, and follow the directions on http://www.microsoftphotodna.com. Help us tell a positive story and send a message that together we can make a difference for the young victims of these crimes,” Microsoft said.