Google is looking for paedophiles

SEARCH ENGINE GIANT Google has revealed that its boffins have been working closely with the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), adapting software to help hunt down paedophiles through image patterns on the Net.

Google reckons that the new adapted software, which is purportedly able to sort through files and pick out the ones depicting sexual abuse of children, will make it increasingly difficult for paedophiles who use the Internet to transmit child porn, and could even help law enforcement agencies track them down and rescue the abused kids.

According to the BBC, since 2002, the NCMEC has had to sift its way through more than 13 million videos and photos of children being sexually assaulted and last year alone, had to view five million sexual abuse pictures. But with Google’s software, which was originally developed so that YouTube could better detect video piracy and copyright infringement, NCMEC will be able to get through heaps more files thanks to the pattern recognition technology, which can pick up patterns from things as seemingly trivial as a calendar on the wall or the design of a t-shirt.

Google research scientist, Shumeet Baluja, told the Beeb "You always hope that your work will eventually be used to do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real". Technology analyst, Larry Magid, also added that the technology “will work even if the pattern has been modified ". µ

L’Inq
BBC