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FP7: iCOP

Project: Research

Description

The iCOP project (funded by the EU’s Safer Internet program) is developing a novel forensics software toolkit to support law enforcement agencies across the EU in identifying new or previously unknown child abuse media and its originators on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

The only way to currently identify such media is through manual analysis by law enforcement personnel. However, such a manual approach is difficult nigh impossible to resource given the large number of files that need to be reviewed individually. The limited resources that law enforcement agencies possess make it impractical for them to examine the thousands of new files that may appear on P2P networks everyday.

iCOP brings together international experts on online child safety technologies from Lancaster University (UK), University of Louvain (Belgium), University College Cork (Ireland) and The German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (Germany). At the same time, iCOP involves a range of European law enforcement agencies as end-users and collaborators through its advisory group: German Police, Belgian Police, Lancashire Constabulary in the UK and Interpol, as well as experts on child welfare. This unique combination of scientific and practitioner expertise provides a truly European dimension to tackling originators of child abuse media on P2P Networks.

The key output of iCOP will be a forensics toolkit to be utilised by law enforcement, alongside their existing P2P monitoring tools, to help filter and prioritise new instances of child abuse media on P2P networks.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date1/06/1130/11/13

Funding

  • European Commission: £201,392.00

Research outputs