The company has even developed a browser plug-in for adult Web sites, which, upon verification through BayTSP, can be used to prove that the images portrayed on the site all involve adults. We are working with those sites, as well as the First Amendment Bar and other civil rights organizations, to make sure that this small element of the adult market is found and dealt with properly. Federal law enforcement officials in this country currently have roughly 70,000 photographs on file that represent child pornography as defined by United States law. BayTSP's goal is to treat those 70,000 images the same way it does a copyrighted logo, endlessly searching the Net for matches to the database. They have been verified to be pornographic in nature or derived from sexual abuse of children.
Every electronic file is unique.
That's why we've been described as bloodhounds sniffing out the Internet. We're able to detect a copy of any media format, as well as images that are cropped, color-corrected, shifted, etc. Still, the biggest difficulty is going from finding the product to finding the person, especially with the array of free Web hosting and email services available today. A child pornographer in California can sign up for an email service based in New York and upload a series of pics to a Web server in Florida, ever-extending the geographic gap between product and producer. Spidering is also illegal in many countries outside of the United States, which leaves the rest of the world open for upload as well, and free from BayTSP's tracking eyes.