PhotoDNA Lets Google, FB and Others Hunt Down Child Pornography Without Looking at Your Photos

For another explanation see: "Why The Gmail Scan That Led To A Man’s Arrest For Child Porn Was Not A Privacy Violation

8-8-2014 Global:

Earlier this week it came out that Google turned over a man whose emails had contained an unstated amount of child pornography. And while the world as a whole seemed glad to have the perpetrator caught, there was some concern as to how whether Google dug through his emails to find these images, effectively killing the privacy of email.

However, it’s through a dedicated software that uses unique hashtags of sorts that drew Google to outing this individual. It’s called PhotoDNA and is developed by none other than Microsoft.

Working closely with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Cybertipline Child Victim Identification Program, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, OneDrive and a number of other high profile sites use PhotoDNA to track down illicit photos. Using a database of known images, PhotoDNA runs only the metadata of images through for comparison, without ever actually touching someone’s inbox.

As described in a blogpost from Google,

Since 2008, we’ve used “hashing” technology to tag known child sexual abuse images, allowing us to identify duplicate images which may exist elsewhere. Each offending image in effect gets a unique ID that our computers can recognize without humans having to view them again. Recently, we’ve started working to incorporate encrypted “fingerprints” of child sexual abuse images into a cross-industry database. This will enable companies, law enforcement and charities to better collaborate on detecting and removing these images, and to take action against the criminals.

As mentioned above, Google isn’t the only service utilizing PhotoDNA. After reports of Google using the service came out, Facebook also confirmed that it keeps a lookout for sexually exploitive photos of children. In speaking with SlashGear, a Facebook spokesperson said, “There is no place for child exploitative content on Facebook. We use PhotoDNA to check that each image which is uploaded to our site is not a known child abuse image.” ..Continued.. by Gannon Burgett

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Major search engines to warn about potential child porn searches

11-25-2013 National:

Google and Microsoft are partnering to tackle the global problem of online child pornography, and some UF students are happy with the companies’ efforts.

Internet users can now receive pop-up warnings if they Google search terms that could be associated with child pornography.

Microsoft, which claims a zero-tolerance approach to the issue, will incorporate a buzzword tagging feature on Yahoo and Bing. The company will also use Microsoft PhotoDNA to find illegal pictures and remove them, according to a Microsoft press release.

Arren De La Torre, the founding president of Gators Against Human Trafficking, said she is glad to see the efforts Microsoft and Google are taking and thinks they will help prevent crime.

“I believe the combination of this preventative measure of Google and Microsoft’s, along with increasing efforts to advocate and combat against human trafficking, can end (it) within 30 years,” De La Torre, a 20-year-old UF advertising junior, wrote in an email. “I hope that my kids will be able to finally say that slavery is defeated.”

Peter Barron, a Google spokesman, said in a statement that while the company already removes offensive material, there was more to be done.

“We are fine tuning our search engine to prevent this material appearing in our results,” he wrote in an email. “We hope this will make (a) difference in the fight against this terrible crime.”

Awurama Acquah, a 19-year-old UF advertising sophomore, said the measure is raising awareness for an uncomfortable subject.

“Human trafficking is something people don’t want to talk about,” she said. “But more needs to be done about it.” ..Source.. by Isha Choksi

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Twitter To Implement Microsoft’s PhotoDNA System To Block Child Porn

7-24-2013 National:


The Guardian reported yesterday, in an exclusive from Twitter, that the social network will be introducing a tagging system to prevent child porn images being posted.

Unfortunately, the current Twitter ecosystem sees millions of child abuse pictures posted among the millions of tweets sent every day.


The system, which will use a Microsoft-developed industry standard called PhotoDNA, is to be implemented “later this year if possible.”

The news comes on the heels of UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s announcement of an initiative to tackle child pornography across the Internet, not just social networks.

Apparently PhotoDNA, which was developed in 2009, is already used to monitor images posted to Facebook (since 2011), Microsoft Skydrive, and Bing. And Google has used a similar technology to identify child abuse images online since 2008.

PhotoDNA works by producing a “hash,” a single number generated from the binary data of a picture or video, which is compared against known images of child abuse which have been flagged.

PhotoDNA recognizes offending images even if they’ve been altered.

The complication in integrating the system into Twitter is the scale and speed of the network, as Del Harvey, senior director of Twitter’s Trust & Safety team, points out. And that’s not all. Harvey told the Guardian, ..continued.. by Allison Stadd

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Facebook Scanning for Child Porn, Missing Kids

There is no doubt that this product (PhotoDNA) is a good thing for removing KNOWN child porn. However, they may be overrating its abilities, such images are manipulated in many ways not mentioned which the product will not catch. I am more concerned with NCMEC having a master file -so to speak- of child porn to match to. Are they the soul decider as to what is or isn't child porn, I think this way it is too easy to bypass court rulings that may exist on the subject. Is the Dep't of Justice involved in the Policy as to what is child porn?

5-26-2011 Global:

Facebook is using Microsoft's PhotoDNA to track down images of child porn and missing children.

Facebook will reportedly start scanning its pages for child porn and missing children according to chief technology officer Bret Taylor in a statement released on Thursday. In conjunction with Microsoft and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the popular social website will use photo "fingerprint" technology called PhotoDNA to search for pictures matching those stored in the NCMEC database.

"Our hope and belief is that Facebook will be just the first of many [companies to use what has proven to be highly effective technology]," said Ernie Allen, chief executive of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "Online services are going to become a hostile place for child pornographers and pedophiles."

Allen assured Facebook users that the privacy and free-speech rights of adult pornography consumers won't be violated, and that the technology will only be used to find and remove known images of sexually exploited pre-pubescent children (those under 12). These are the "worst of the worst" he said, and are apparently shared over and over. Some even include snapshots of infants of toddlers.

"These are crime scene photos, not porn," Allen said. "This tool is essential to protect these victims and to prevent, to the greatest degree possible, the redistribution of their sexual abuse."

According to the New York Times, Microsoft’s PhotoDNA tech has been refined to the point of identifying these "worst of the worst" images even if they have been reduced, cropped or altered in any other fashion. It can also cull through large amounts of data quickly and accurately "enough to police the world’s largest online services."

Microsoft already implemented PhotoDNA into its search engine Bing and its online file storage service Skydrive. Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit associate general counsel Bill Harmon said that PhotoDNA has already evaluated more than two billion digital pictures across both services, uncovering 1,000 matches on SkyDrive and 1,500 matches through Bing image indexing.

"PhotoDNA identified horrific images on our services that we would have never found otherwise," Harmon said. "[With Facebook among the world's largest photo-sharing services], their participation in the PhotoDNA program will significantly expand the program's impact."

Before implementing Microsoft's PhotoDNA tech, Facebook primarily relied on user feedback. These abuse reports were reviewed by trained employees who in turn sought out and manually deleted the offending images. But with PhotoDNA in place, the offending images won't even hit the Facebook server hard drives. As it stands now, 200 million images are uploaded by Facebook users each day.

"We’ve found it to be a very powerful tool in identifying these images," Chris Sonderby, Facebook’s assistant general counsel said.

Thursday Facebook said that it will host an online event at 3:00 p.m. (Eastern time) on Friday to explain the initiative. ..Source.. by Kevin Parrish

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