Internet Firms to Step Up Child-Porn Fight
Five leading Internet service providers will jointly build a database of child-pornography images and develop other tools to help network operators and law enforcement better prevent distribution of the images.
The companies are set to pledge a total of $1 million today to form a technology coalition as part of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They aim to create the database by year’s end, although many details remain unsettled.
The participating companies are Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp., EarthLink Inc. and United Online Inc., the company behind NetZero and Juno.
Ernie Allen, chief executive of the missing children’s center, noted that the Internet companies already possessed many technologies to help protect users from threats such as viruses and e-mail “phishing” scams. “There’s nothing more insidious and inappropriate” than child pornography, he said.
The announcement comes as the U.S. government is pressuring service providers to do more to help combat child pornography. Top law enforcement officials have told Internet companies that they must retain customer records longer to help in such cases and have suggested seeking legislation to require it.
AOL chief counsel John Ryan said the coalition was partly a response to U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales’ speech in April identifying increases in child-porn cases and chiding the Internet industry for not doing more about them.
The creation of the technology coalition does not directly address the preservation of records but could demonstrate the industry’s willingness to cooperate.
Plans call for the missing children’s center to collect known child-porn images and create a unique mathematical signature for each one based on a common formula. Each participating company would scan images sent by its users for matches.
AOL, for instance, plans to check e-mail attachments that are already being scanned for viruses. If child porn is detected, AOL would refer the case to the missing-children’s center for further investigation, as service providers are required to do under federal law.
Each company will set its own procedures on how it uses the database, but executives say the partnership will let companies exchange their best ideas -- ultimately developing tools for preventing child-porn distribution instead of simply catching violations.
