How the biometrics industry can help stop child abuse

Abstract

October's ‘Biometrics 2016’ conference in London featured an extraordinary session where experts in child protection (see box) appealed for help from the biometrics profession to combat child sexual abuse. The disturbing scale of the task was set out by special agent Jim Cole, head of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) victim identification programme, who told the conference that a staggering 185,000,000 child abuse images and videos have been seized in the US since 2002, with around 5,000 new files found every week. “It's a shocking number that most people are unaware of,” he says.