Google plans to wipe child porn from the Web

Photos and videos of child pornography on the Web have multiplied at an alarming rate over the past few years. In 2011, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said it received 17.3 million images and videos of suspected child abuse, which is four times more than 2007.
 
Google has announced that it wants to help curb this proliferation of child pornography. In fact, the Web giant plans to take it even a step further -- it wants to completely eradicate child porn from the Internet.
"Behind these images are real, vulnerable kids who are sexually victimized and victimized further through the distribution of their images," Google Giving director Jacquelline Fuller wrote in a blog poston Saturday. "It is critical that we take action as a community -- as concerned parents, guardians, teachers and companies -- to help combat this problem."
 
Google's plan is to build a database of child porn images that can be shared with other tech companies, law enforcement, and charities around the world. The database will let these groups swap information, collaborate, and remove the images from the Web.
 
Part of the technology behind this database comes from a technique Google already uses called "hashing," which tags images showing sexual abuse of children with a unique identification code. Computers can recognize the code and then locate, block, and report all duplicate images on the Web. Google plans to have the database up and running within a year.
 
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