• Facebook Uses PhotoDNA To Detect Child Porn

    Facebook Uses PhotoDNA To Detect Child Porn

    Jayesh Limaye, May 23, 2011 1437 hrs IST

    Joins forces with Microsoft in image-matching technology.

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Facebook has started using an image-matching technology known as PhotoDNA (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/photodna/), which allows it to detect evidence of child exploitation by scanning users' photos. The social networking giant will use the technology to prevent "child abuse material" from being uploaded and distributed by users on its website.

Chris Sonderby, Assistant General Counsel, Facebook, said, "We intend to put that technology to use against between two and three hundred million photo images that are uploaded every day. The technology will allow us to block their upload, prevent their distribution and the re-victimisation of the children who are depicted in those images, and also allow us to refer and report those incidences to law enforcement so they can take immediate action."

The technology in question, known as PhotoDNA, was developed in 2009 by Microsoft and Dartmouth College, with the aim of finding and removing some of the "worst of the worst" images of child sexual exploitation from the internet. Digital signatures or hash values of images are calculated and compared to detect and identify matches, even if the photos were resized or altered, achieving up to 99.7 percent success. First rolled out by Microsoft on Bing, SkyDrive and Hotmail, PhotoDNA relies on a database of sexual abuse images from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Facebook has now joined forces with Microsoft in this just fight.

Bill Harmon, Associate General Counsel of Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, said that based on 4,000 NCMEC signatures, Microsoft had removed 1,000 images from its SkyDrive cloud storage service since February this year. There have already been arrests made in New Zealand using PhotoDNA's beta tests. NCMEC and Microsoft hope to establish partnerships with more online services involved in photo sharing and social networking, such as Facebook.

Here is the video of the Facebook announcement:




The video below explains how PhotoDNA works:


 


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jonnas
,windsor, on May 23, 2011 06:06 PM
hey
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