It is very important that people are able to report illegal content they come across online. As technology partner of INHOPE, we enable them to do so.
INHOPE is an active and collaborative global network of Hotlines, dealing with illegal online content and committed to rooting out child sexual abuse from the Internet. Hotlines worldwide offer the public a way of anonymously reporting online material they suspect to be illegal. If found to be illegal, the information will be passed to the relevant Law Enforcement Agencies for investigation. In many cases, the Internet Service Provider hosting the content shuts down the websites immediately.
This partnership resulted in the development of ICCAM (pronounce: I see CAM – Child Abuse Material): a tool for crawling websites for illegal content. The solution enhances the Hotlines’ capability and capacity to match, identify and analyze child sexual abuse images and videos.
The reports the Hotlines receive, contain a URL pointing to the content. URLs are entered in the ICCAM system. ICCAM crawls the URL and downloads images and videos for classification by a hotline analyst. If the investigated URL is hosted in a different country, the report will be forwarded to the respective Hotline in that country. ICCAM filters out images and videos that have been previously classified by Hotlines or that already exist in Police databases with illegal material. Images and videos that have been classified as illegal by Hotline analysts and that are unknown to the Police, will be reported to both the National Police Force and INTERPOL.
Although initially developed for INHOPE, ICCAM can also be repurposed as a classification system for Police forces that operate in a wide geographical area. It allows remote investigators to connect to the system securely to collaborate on the processing of images and videos.
