Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo! have joined with the United Kingdom’s IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) to fight online child pornography.
They are implementing a system that detects and blocks pornographic images of children. The images are tagged with distinct hashes generated by an algorithm. The hashes are unique, making it easy to identify the photo against a catalog of offensive hashes.
The Internet Watch Foundation holds all the hashes, and has only shared them with the aforementioned companies, but has stated that it will share them with other members of the IWF in the near future.
Any image uploaded unto one of the member websites will be scanned. If the scan concludes that the image has been tagged by the system, its upload will be prevented. Unfortunately, the system only currently works with images, but it is said to be capable of removing 500 webpages containing child pornography every day, and that number will increase as the system’s hash list expands.
The other unfortunate side of this is that the system only works on the normal web. The darknet, or deep-web, where child pornography thrives, cannot be monitored for now as it is only accessible with special software, like Tor. Hopefully, in the future, IWF’s system will be capable of scanning the deep-web as well.
Cătuşanu Octavian
Sursa foto: abc.net ; theverge.com