News item (February 2, 2016)

Doing our Part – Using Technology for Good

By: Johann Hofmann, Director & Head of Griffeye

By partnering with ICMEC and Project VIC, a wider audience of law enforcement officers around the world have access to Analyze and other technologies that are critical in child exploitation investigations. To demonstrate our commit to the cause, our donation of Analyze means that the technology is available pro bono to all law officers working to help victims of child exploitation.

When we read the first-hand accounts of the difference the technology is already making, such as cutting down time it takes to find victims and perpetrators, we know that we have made the right choice in our donation. By giving law officers the chance to complete cases more quickly, more lives are ultimately saved.

Putting technology to use

Our donation is modeled off of previous donations made to ICMEC, such as Microsoft PhotoDNA and MTS’ F1 technology. By using Project VIC’s open standard protocol and law enforcement-defined data models, we integrate with Project VIC’s other partners to make sure data is able to seamlessly move among the different tools. This means unnecessary steps are avoided and law enforcement agencies no longer need to manually input raw code for each technology into their individual systems, saving time and money. Using private technology repositories, law enforcement agencies around the world can import and export the images quickly and easily. Without a leading force like ICMEC or Project VIC, it’s unlikely that so many technologies from various companies would be able to communicate like they do today.

The collaboration between ICMEC / Project VIC, private companies and governments around the world is proof that great things can happen when multiple groups come together to fight for the same cause.