Taming technology

"You always hope that your work will eventually be used do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real by creating tools that have the potential to aid investigations of child predators, find child victims and reduce the flow of child pornography on the Internet."


Kudos to Shumeet Baluja, Research Scientist and their team at Google. They are taming the technology to work for humanity and not against it. I have always believed that every technology was developed with all good intentions until it got into the wrong hands. The internet is an ocean of knowledge for many but for some it is a means seeking sadistic, inhumane pleasure knowing well that it is killing their own souls and also that of the innocent child. Many are minting money out of this appalling business and the world stands by, having lost all sensitivity.

Now the team at Google are building softwares to find child victims. This would also deter these criminals from posting pornographic material online so blatantly.

Since it was founded in 1984, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has reported more than 570,000 child exploitation leads to law enforcement agencies and assisted with more than 140,900 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 124,500 children.

The advent of the Internet has unfortunately provided child predators with a new avenue to exploit children. In August 2006, we joined NCMEC's Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography, teaming up with other tech industry companies to develop solutions that hinder predators' ability to use the Internet to exploit children or traffic in child pornography.

Shumeet Baluja, Ph.D., is currently a Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google, where he works on a broad set of topics ranging from image processing and machine learning to wireless application development and user interaction measurement. Shumeet was formerly the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of JAMDAT Mobile, Inc., where he oversaw all aspects of technology initiation, development and deployment.

Pornography and Child Predators

These numbers are startling:

•1 out of 3 children* are exposed to sexually explicit images online they did not want to view
(Previously 1 in 4 )
• 79%* of exposures occur at home
• 9%* occur at school
• *Not advising adults of exposures has also gotten worse
(*Youth Internet Safety Study-2)
• Average age of 1st exposure is 11 years old(Family Safe Media)
• Pornography is a tool frequently used by predators to lure and coax children--
• Pornography is now going "mobile"(cell phones, etc)
To continue reading, please check this site.. http://internetsafetyadvisor.info/pornography/


What disturbed me most was..

Pornography-after first exposure:

• The desire and need to keep coming back for pornographic images.
• * Escalation - The need for more explicit, rougher, and more deviant images for the same sexual effect.
• * Desensitization - Materiel once viewed as shocking or taboo is seen as acceptable or commonplace.
• * Acting out - The tendency to perform the behaviors viewed, including exhibitionism, sadistic/masochistic sex, group sex, rape, or sex with minor children
(Dr. Victor Cline, clinical psychologist at the University

Make the internet safe for children

The other day I was shocked to find a few obscene words(not deadly) typed onto the search column of Google... was it my kids aged 10 & 11?

They were given internet access recently and were playing online games. On checking with them, came to know that certain links were on the games page itself and when curiosity got the better of them they went on to search!

I thanked God that I stumbled upon this earlier enough to block the internet for safe usage and to give my kids a heart to heart talk on the danger of internet. I pray that they have understood the seriousness of the matter. I really do not want them to waste their time on unwanted sites and spoil their mental health. This is the time when they should study and aquire knowledge.

There are many sites giving free Web blockers for the caring parents...