Lease Web plans to use hash technology way to find and remove the offending sites. Typically, hash technology is used to encrypt sensitive information, but LeaseWeb intends to use it as a new way to detect child porn.
Assuming it works, LeaseWeb plans to offer its filtering technology to other companies. According to company representatives, LeaseWeb has invited other neighboring hosting companies to follow its example.
LeaseWeb security officer Alex de Joode said that the usual methods for fighting child porn weren't enough.
“In our network in 2007 however we noticed an increase of the amount of reports regarding child porn images,” he said. “Reports which were mainly caused by co called upload websites, websites like Flickr. On these websites users can bring images online without the interference of website administrators.
“In 2008 fortunately the amount of reports has declined a bit, but still reports within the LeaseWeb network were substantial. For LeaseWeb this is unacceptable. With current investments in new technological solutions we hope to change the character of our working procedures to a more proactive approach. This way we hope to prevent child porn sensitive websites from being abused by distributors of child porn.”
LeaseWeb's proposed plan would use hash technology to somehow attach digital fingerprints to undesirable images, thereby making them very easy for an online filter to find and remove.
But where are these fingerprints coming from? And if LeaseWeb's filter can find and fingerprints the images, why doesn't it just automatically remove them?
Apparently, that's where the Swedish company NetClean comes in. NetClean will provide LeaseWeb with enough data on illegal images to get started.
ASACP CEO Joan Irvine praised this new method because it would mean that only one person would have to look at, and thereby confirm, the existence of a child porn image once.
“ASACP has been trying to implement this technology for over four years and even offered to develop a system and give it to all the U.S. [Attorney General] offices," she said. "However, in the U.S., as in the Netherlands, the ability to convert a [child porn] image into a hash value is limited to specific government or law enforcement agencies and illegal for all others because it is considered downloading of [child porn].”
Irvine added that she hopes to acquire this data to speed up her own company's process in identifying and eradicating child porn.
LeaseWeb will test this new technology on an unidentified file-sharing website on its own servers that deals with about 40 million images and has had its share of child porn reports in the past.
“The client in question immediately gave a positive reaction on our proposal to start a pilot project with filtering on child porn,” De Joode said.
“Most of the time it’s the same images that emerge on the Internet over and over again,” De Joode said. “With this technology we hope to stop this continuous circulation of child porn images. By using more than one database from several relevant parties within this pilot we expect to maximize the effects.”
For more information, visit LeaseWeb.com.