Google says it will spend $5 million on an effort to wipe pictures of child sexual abuse from the Web and another $2 million to research more effective ways to find, report and eradicate the images.
“The Internet has been a tremendous force for good — increasing access to information, improving people’s ability to communicate and driving economic growth,” Jacqueline Fuller, the director of Google Giving, said in a blog post. “But like the physical world, there are dark corners on the web where criminal behavior exists.”
Part of the $5 million will go to established child-protection groups that have been partnering with Google to fight the problem. They include the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation.
The Web giant also is creating the Child Protection Technology Fund to develop more efficient ways to fight child porn.
Recently, Google has begun using “fingerprinting” of child sex-abuse images, Fuller said. It will help law enforcement, Web companies and advocates find and remove the images, as well as prosecute the people who posted them, Google says.
“We’re in the business of making information widely available, but there’s certain ‘information’ that should never be created or found,” Fuller wrote. “We can do a lot to ensure it’s not available online — and that when people try to share this disgusting content they are caught and prosecuted.”
Read more at cnn.com
