Fighting Child Porn With Image DNA Technology

For all the pedophiles out there, it is time to clean up your act. Microsoft has developed a new technology to tackle online child abuse images. Hopefully, this technology can weed out child abuse, which is a most abhorrent crime. 

I have little love lost for Microsoft whose products are expensive and full of security loopholes. It is good to see such a monopolistic giant do a moral act though. The fact that they are donating this technology will have done their PR and branding a whole lot of good.

Using PhotoDNA, the new technology picks out images which are identical, even if they have been edited, resized, cropped and edited in other ways, and logs them. The system matches them through a technique which monochromes the image, breaks the image into smaller chunks and the intensity gradients are converted into a signature.

The ISPs are then given a list of these signatures, data strings essentially without giving away evidence, to search for other identical images which are out there on the web.

Microsoft is donating this technology to the NCMEC, which will then be licenced out to other law enforcement agencies across the globe.

[Zdnet]

Paul is a geek who shares his thoughts on technology, gadgets, social networks and football in this blog. Stay in touch with his updates by subscribing to the RSS feeds or Email. Thanks for visiting Seventoten and leaving a comment.  To change this standard text, you have to enter some information about your self in the Dashboard -> Users -> Your Profile box.