A Kelowna company is working to help stop the spread of child pornography on the Internet.
Two Hat Security Ltd. aims to develop software that will identify and prevent the uploading of photographs and videos that depict the sexual abuse of children.
“Of all the issues we’re solving to keep the Internet safe, this is probably the most important,” said Two Hat’s chief executive officer, Chris Priebe, in a news release.
Existing software tools search the Internet for known images of child pornography that have been previously reported to authorities.
But Two Hat’s product will scan for illegal images as they are uploaded, with the ultimate goal of stopping them from ever being posted, said Two Hat’s head of product development, Brad Leitch.
Two Hat is working with researchers at the University of Manitoba on the project, which is being funded by Mitacs, a government-supported agency that links academics with business leaders.
The U of M researchers are working at the leading edge of computer vision, deep learning and convolutional neural networks, the three main technologies being applied in the project.
Their work is particularly challenging, Priebe says, because it is a criminal offence to view images of child sexual abuse, so they are training computers to recognize images they themselves will never see.
One possible end result of the project is an app that that warns teens they are about to upload an image from their phone, tablet or computer that is inappropriate or illegal.
“Studies have shown that if you can remind adolescents about the consequences of their actions, there’s a high likelihood they won’t do it,” Priebe says.
The RCMP says that, nationwide, reports of child sex abuse doubled in 2015 and again in 2016.
“This is a rampant global problem,” said Sgt. Arnold Guerin of the force’s centre for missing and exploited children in Ottawa.
“The ability to successfully detect and categorize newly distributed child sexual materials will be a game-changer in our fight against the online victimization of children,” he said.
