How to Look: Apprehension, Forensic Craft, and the Classification of Child Exploitation Images

The detection and removal of child pornography online is a vexing process, weighted with moral urgency. In recent years, this process has become increasingly digitally automated. In 2016, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) reported that they had reviewed over 500,000 image and video files suspected to contain child pornography; and since 2002 they had reviewed an aggregate of 192 million images in order to identify 12,500 child victims. NCMEC is a nonprofit that serves as the United States main clearinghouse for child exploitation content, and works directly with federal and local law enforcement to produce case files in criminal investigations of missing children, child abuse, and child exploitation recorded for the intent of commercial distribution.