Facebook Patrols for Child Porn

Facebook joined Microsoft and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to patrol its user accounts for child pornography, according to reports.

Facebook has begun using Microsoft's PhotoDNA, a program which breaks down a digital image into pieces and extracts a signature, kind of like a photo's fingerprint, to find matches to a database of child pornography from the national center, according to the Telegraph. PhotoDNA was created in 2009 as a collaboration between Microsoft and Dartmouth College.

"We believe we have a great responsibility and privilege to provide a safe platform for the world to share and connect," said Chris Sonderby, assistant general counsel for Facebook. Sonderby said that Facebook will run PhotoDNA on all photos uploaded to the site and report violations to police. (Facebook is also scheduled to announce the event live at 12 p.m. Pacific time.)

So far, PhotoDNA has scanned more than two billion images and finding more than 1,000 matches on SkyDrive and 1,500 matches on Bing's image search indexing, IDG News reported.

As with most photo-sharing sites or applications, once users upload photos, they relinquish many if not all of their rights --  and responsible companies must report these egregious violations.

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