Apr
15
Google never ceases to amaze
Posted by Dirk Avery at 12:59 pm under Internet, Technology.
(Apologies for writing so little lately. The final finals season is heating up even though the weather is not - very much.)
Anyway, Google recently announced they will be employing software tools originally intended to filter out copyrighted material to track down missing and exploited children used in the pornography industry. It is tragic that the world situation necessitates such uses of the tools but heart warming that Google is putting their technical genius to work on the problem in partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). As a father, I offer Shumeet Baluja hearty kudos for his efforts!
Shumeet writes:
One of our core strengths here at Google is our ability to manage and organize immense amounts of information — whether it’s text, image, audio, or video — and make it more useful and accessible for users. As a member of Google’s research group, I realized that NCMEC had an immediate need for some of our research-stage technology. They needed help organizing and making sense of the enormous number of images and videos sent to them every week through their CyberTipline and from law enforcement officers nationwide.
So we went into overdrive. I recruited some fellow engineers to help me build tools that NCMEC might find useful. Throughout 2007, using our 20% time, we created innovative software tools to help NCMEC track down child predators through video and image search. With these tools, analysts will be able to more quickly and easily search NCMEC’s large information systems to sort and identify files that contain images of child pornography. In addition, a new video tool we built streamlines analysts’ review of video snippets.
The Washington Post/Reuters has this:
Google Inc (GOOG.O) is enlisting the same image-recognition technology the company uses to trace copyright violations on its YouTube video site to fight online child pornography…
The project is applying so-called video fingerprinting technology, which Google has been urging media copyright holders to adopt as a means for policing widespread piracy…
Google engineers have worked for more than a year with federal agencies and NCMEC’s analysts in its Child Victim Identification Program to create software to automate the review of some 13 million pornographic images and videos that analysts at the center previously had to review manually.
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kudos to GOOGLE a) for actually coming up with that idea and b) following through with it. many companies would shy back from getting involved with such a taboo topic, even if it’s actually fighting against child pornography.