Microsoft, Facebook join forces vs online child pornography

Two technology giants have recently linked up to combat the growing problem of child pornography, saying they will use unique tools and technologies that will proactively prevent distribution of images of child sexual abuse online. Microsoft and Facebook, two of the biggest technology companies today, announced its joint effort to join the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) PhotoDNA program, which will make use of the former's PhotoDNA technology to scour the latter's more than 500 million profile pages for possible incidences of child exploitation. "NCMEC’s program, using image-matching technology created by Microsoft Research in collaboration with Dartmouth College, gives online service providers an effective tool to take more proactive action to stop the distribution of known images of child sexual abuse online," said Bill Harmon, Associate General Counsel of Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit. He added that it takes a united effort to effectively confront the problem so child pornographers have no place to hide. Harmon also hinted that other online service providers may similarly adopt PhotoDNA. "Technology may have helped enable the growth of online child pornography, but technology can also be part of the solution," he added. Zero false-positives To date, Harmon said Microsoft had evaluated more than two billion images on its services using the PhotoDNA signatures provided by NCMEC, leading to the identification of more than 1,000 matches on SkyDrive and 1,500 matches through Bing’s image search indexing. Harmon said there have been zero false positives [false matches] so far, showing that the teamup with NCMEC "delivers a powerful ability for responsible online service providers to surgically identify and disrupt the spread of known child pornography online." "We expect the number of matches to rise over time as we continue to work with NCMEC to expand the deployment of PhotoDNA," he said. Microsoft said its Digital Crimes Unit, Microsoft Research, Windows Live, and Bing had long worked with NCMEC and Dartmouth College "to advance innovations and strong partnerships to combat child exploitation." In 2009, Microsoft, working with digital imaging expert Dr. Hany Farid of Dartmouth College, developed PhotoDNA and freely licensed it to NCMEC for use in a program to disrupt the online distribution of child pornography. Microsoft gradually began implementing PhotoDNA technology in Bing and SkyDrive, including images posted to SkyDrive through Hotmail, to assess the capabilities of the technology. "PhotoDNA identified horrific images on our services that we would have never found otherwise," Harmon said. Scouring Facebook Harmon said Facebook's participation in the PhotoDNA program will significantly expand the program’s impact, as it has the power to quickly and accurately identify known child pornography images amongst Facebook’s more than 30 billions pieces of shared content online, including photos, Web links, news stories and blog posts. "Identifying graphic child pornography in a sea of content like that is a daunting task, but PhotoDNA is helping to find the proverbial needle in a haystack," he said. Harmon said Facebook’s bold step forward to become the first online service provider to join Microsoft in partnership with NCMEC sends a strong message: "We will not tolerate the use of our services to victimize children in this way when we have the technology to do something about it." Harmon urged the public to combat the silence that child pornographers count on to stay hidden and anonymous, telling them to contact the online providers and social media networks and "tell them this is a priority for you and encourage them to join Microsoft and Facebook in NCMEC’s PhotoDNA program." He also called on the public to let their elected officials know that "you support them driving for strong global collaboration across industry, hotlines and law enforcement to enable the removal of these images from the Internet and the successful prosecution of these crimes." Welcome move Meanwhile, Ernie Allen, president and CEO of NCMEC, hailed Facebook's entry into the program. "Now, when the NCMEC identifies an image for inclusion in the PhotoDNA program, the technology will give online service providers like Facebook, Microsoft and other companies who adopt it in the future the power to identify and remove that image from among billions of photos shared on their services," Allen said in a guest blog on Microsoft. He said that since 2002, the NCMEC had reviewed and analyzed almost 49 million photos and videos of child pornography, including well more than 13 million in 2010 alone. The victims in these images have progressively been getting younger as pedophiles prey on pre-verbal children who cannot ask for help, he noted. Of the more than 3,500 children depicted in commonly traded images who have been identified by law enforcement, 10 percent are infants and toddlers and 67 percent are prepubescent, he said. "Many of these images recirculate on the Internet time and time again, even many years after the original crime occurred and the abuser has been brought to justice–and every time these crime scene images are viewed, the children in the images are re-victimized. PhotoDNA aims to break this cycle, so the images of abuse need not haunt these children online forever," he said. Allen said the public can help by reporting child pornography incidents online, through www.cybertipline.com or by calling 1 (800) THE LOST. Users of Facebook, Bing, SkyDrive, Hotmail or any other online service can report as "abuse" an image "that concerns you or other suspicious activity you think might involve child exploitation," he added. —JMT/LBG, GMA News