The scum of the Earth just got five new corporate enemies. AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft, United Online, and Yahoo! have signed on to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s campaign against child exploitation on the Internet.
The five companies will fund a new “Technology Coalition,” a sort of Justice League, within NCMEC with aim of disrupting predators from using the Internet to exploit kids and distribute child pornography.
The coalition, who’ve pledged a combined million dollars in initial funding will develop and deploy technologies for that purpose. In a statement, the companies agreed to offer “the full backing of their collective experience, knowledge, and expertise.”
“Child predators take advantage of Internet technologies not only to help distribute images of child exploitation, but also to attempt to conceal their criminal behavior,” said Ernie Allen, President and CEO of NCMEC.
“These leading companies have a wealth of expertise and technological tools that can help protect children and reduce the proliferation of sexually abusive images of children. Similar tools have been used to protect users from other Internet-related threats, such as spam, phishing and viruses. Now they can also be applied to this fight against child pornographers.”
The Coalition will be meeting in July 2006 to draft its charter and to evaluate a timeline for identification and deployment of technologies. The group says it will be working toward four principal objectives:
* Developing and implementing technology solutions that can detect and disrupt the distribution of known images of child exploitation on the Internet.
* Improving knowledge sharing within the industry by establishing a centralized clearinghouse for known images of child pornography and other information that network operators can use to combat or block child pornography.
* Improving law enforcement tools by researching and developing tools for law enforcement to assist in the location and identification of predators and distributors of child pornography.
* Research perpetrators’ technologies to enhance industry efforts by evaluating the specific and emerging technologies used by child predators to exploit children and conceal their activity.
“It may not be possible to eradicate all threats to children online, any more than it is possible to protect children from all threats in the physical world,” said John Ryan, Chief Counsel of AOL.
“However, by better leveraging 21st century technologies, we believe it is possible to increase the chance that child predators will be caught and provide a deterrent to those who would be tempted to exploit children on the Internet. The proposed Coalition would employ the best minds of the Internet industry to develop deterrent strategies and technologies.”
Interestingly, Internet technology powerhouse Google is absent from the list of major corporations contributing to the effort.
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