A Commitment to Solutions: What Harvard is Doing to Address Crime on MySpace and Other Social Web Sites

By Douglas Wood, Infoglide Senior Vice President

Last week we focused on the issue of cybercrimes against children and how technology can play a role in preventing the victimization of young people on the Internet. One organization that is very much aware of the impact technology can have is the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

The Berkman Center’s mission is to explore and understand cyberspace; to study its development, dynamics, norms, and standards; and to assess the need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions.

The center was established to study cyberspace through active research, and they address a variety of relevant issues including content control, governance, privacy, intellectual property, and electronic commerce.

One of their programs is the Internet Safety Technical Task Force Technical Advisory Board, whose objective is “to evaluate and assess the range of technologies that may be used to promote children’s safety on the Internet.” The Technical Advisory Board (TAB) brings together corporations and academic institutions to address real-world issues with real-world solutions. Members of the TAB include representatives from MIT, Dartmouth, Twistbox, Bank of America, and, naturally, Harvard.

Created in February of this year, TAB is tasked with identifying “effective online safety tools and technologies that can be used by many companies across multiple platforms.” They review technologies based on standardized submissions from individuals, companies, and organizations and prepare quarterly and year-end reports with their findings. The types of technologies include identification, authentication, search, filtering, blocking, age verification, labeling, rating, and forensics. TAB is looking for technologies that accomplish one or more of the following:

• Limit harmful contact between adults and minors
• Limit harmful contact between minors
• Limit/prevent minors from accessing inappropriate content on the Internet
• Limit/prevent minors from creating inappropriate content on the Internet
• Limit the availability of illegal content on the Internet
• Prevent minors from accessing particular sites without parental consent
• Prevent harassment, unwanted solicitation, and bullying of minors on the Internet

As I mentioned in my previous post, identity resolution technologies can protect children by limiting harmful contact between adults and minors; preventing harassment, unwanted solicitation, and bullying of minors on the Internet; and preventing known sex offenders from accessing social network sites, even through attempts to mask their identities. For our part, we’ve submitted our technology for review by TAB, and we look forward to their evaluation.

It’s clear that protecting children from Internet predators is a cause that we can all get behind. We applaud Harvard and the TAB for taking steps to address this problem.