Online search outfit Google has adapted technology used to identify copyright-protected clips on YouTube so it can find kiddie porn.

Four Google employees have customized the software for the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children's program so it can spot images of children in sexually explicit photos and video.

While facial recognition software has been around for a while, the new Google tools can also seek matches based on other attributes, such as the color and shape of a couch or the wallpaper pattern in the background of a photo.

This makes it easier for the NCMEC to build evidence and for police tp locate children who have been forced to engage in sexual acts. Currently, the NCMEC has been forced to rely on an analyst's memory and since there are only 11 of them and five million child porn images they go through in a year that is a bit taxing.

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