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Automated Human Image Detection and Authentication Continuation

Award Information

Awardee
University of Rhode Island
Award #
2009-FD-CX-K215
Funding Category
Competitive
Location

Kingston, RI

Congressional District
2
Status
Closed
Funding First Awarded
2009
Total funding (to date)
$499,695
Original Solicitation
NIJ FY 09 Electronic Crime and Digital Evidence Recovery: Invited Full Proposals

Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2009, $150,000)

This project will develop software to assist computer forensic specialists in cases that involve searching for images of humans, such as victims of child pornography. The current state-of-the-practice requires that a computer forensic specialist manually sift through potentially hundreds of thousands of images that are often found on a seized harddrive. The software that the University of Rhode Island produced is very effective at automatically detecting likely pornography and marking those image files for subsequent investigation.

This project will:
' Refine the current detection of general pornography to detect only likely child pornography;
' Integrate the child pornography detection into a Windows forensic boot disk for triage;
' Integrate the child pornography detection into FTK, EnCase, and X-Ways law enforcement analysis tools in a uniform way.

By automating the identification of child pornography in processes and tools familiar to law enforcement, the resulting software will drastically reduce the time required to search for child pornography and generally improve the process for investigators. CA/NCF

Date Created: September 21, 2009