National image database could tag child porn

The head of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children told Congress today that Internet search engines are working on a scheme to make kiddie porn images much more difficult to access, Ars Technica reports.

According to Ernie Allen, CEO of the NCMEC, child pornography can float around the Internet for years, the same images popping up again and again in the course of investigations. The NCMEC is working with Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, he said, to create a centralized database of specific images that could make this material far more difficult to access.

Also testifying was Christine Jones, general counsel for GoDaddy, who said the company's efforts at dealing with child porn, online harassment and sexual predators had grown from one employee six years ago to two full departments today. "Not one single day happens when we don't have something nefarious happen," said Jones.

The panelists called for more tools for law enforcement, including, said Allen, better data retention. The timing on that proposal is interesting, given that the search engines have all announced this week shorter time frames for keeping personally identifiable information.

He was careful to say that only basic connectivity information needs to be retained, not content. Preferably, such information would be kept for least a year, though "longer is better" seems to be the motto.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) also pointed out that rural police lack the computer foresnic needed to deal with advanced criminals.

In her years as a Minnesota prosecutor, she said that local police had come across several computers containing special triggers that wiped the offending information from the hard drive if the computer was improperly accessed, and local police were at a disadvantage when dealing with high-tech issues.