The image filtering project is a technology program to help carriers and companies reduce the ever growing abuse of illegal or illicit images.

We are working on the development of a next generation illicit and illegal image system that can block unwanted images to end-users. In cooperation with a large international wireless carrier, a major IT supplier, a handset software provider, and two international police agencies, we have created a very large database of image signatures that can be used by public message networks to filter out the highly illicit or illegal content. We have also created a number of no cost software tools for Law Enforcement to use to further investigate the source of these images. While currently in an international trial for the past 24 months, we expect that the new program will go to production in the summer of 2008.

We currently test more than 4 million messages a day for illegal material. From this raw number, we have seen as many as 1,000 messages meeting the standard for being illegal or highly illicit. However, the daily average is much lower. We have also seen that on average, the number of public adult web sites and usenet groups may contain up to 7.3% of illegal material.