Google adapts YouTube's copyright-ID technology to combat child-porn

Shumeet Baluja, a research scientist and the head of the team of Google engineers said, "The keys here were organization, scalability and search. In particular, the tools have been designed to aid in organizing and indexing NCMEC's information so that analysts can deal with new images and videos more efficiently as also reference historical material more effectively."

According to Google, its aim in teaming up with the center's 'Technology Coalition against Child Pornography' is to develop solutions that would make it harder for people to use the Web to exploit children or traffic in child porn.

Back in August 2006, Google joined in with NCMEC's effort which was already working towards the cause with leading technology companies including Yahoo Inc., Time Warner Inc.'s AOL and Microsoft Corp.

Baluja realized the NCMEC could use a technology solution to sort through an ever-growing number of child pornography images, which are sent to the organization via the NCMEC CyberTipline and thereby recruited some fellow engineers who throughout 2007 devoted 20 percent of their workday to focus on the humanitarian effort.

"You always hope that your work will eventually be used [to] do some good in the world. This was an amazing chance to make that hope real," said Baluja on the Official Google Blog.

Under NCMEC's Child Victim Identification Program (CVIP), the analysts working in cooperation with federal law enforcement agencies, have reviewed more than 13 million child pornography images and videos since 2002 with about five million of those in the last year itself. "It's an overwhelming process," NCMEC stated.