Our Work and Projects
UMass Amherst Rescue Lab builds tools and advances research that rescue children from sexual abuse. Our work is a force multiplier for investigators of child sexual abuse: every day we work to make it easier and more efficient for investigators to rescue children world wide.
Thousands of children have been rescued from sexual abuse by investigators using our tools. Investigators use our tools in every U.S. state and in over 40 countries. We have never charged for our tools or trainings.
Our Mission
To research novel forensic methods and to build advanced tools for rescuing children that are sexually exploited;
To characterize empirically the extent of this crime, which evolves as the Internet changes, to inform strategy and policy;
And to collaborate with partners to ensure tools we build and trainings we create are available to investigators world wide and see wide deployment.
Rescue Lab’s work is aimed at thwarting internet-based crimes against children. Our policy is that when responding to child welfare and protection issues, the child’s needs are the paramount concern.
Professor Brian Levine giving the keynote address to the Yahoo! Tech Pulse Conference.
“The Internet allows for the free exchange of information, but unfortunately, some of what people are exchanging is illegal. We feel we can’t exist without our mobile phones, yet we’re risking our privacy while using them. What interests me is dealing directly with these technical issues and trying to resolve the complications for society,”
— Brian Levine, Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Director–Cybersecurity Institute
Our Projects
Tools for investigation of CSAM on file sharing networks. It has been shown many times over that a high percentage of persons who download CSAM are also physically abusing children. Accordingly, investigations of CSAM distribution and posession by law enforcement often leads to the rescue of an abused child. In contrast with simply waiting for the abuse to be discovered and reported by a third party, these pro-active investigations of CSAM file sharing have a better chance of rescuing children who are silenced by fear, are invalids, or are so young that they are pre-verbal.
Tools for investigation of CSAM on darknets. Services such as Freenet and Tor are leveraged often by child abuse perpetrators of child sexual. Darknets host some of the most dangerous content and persons on the Internet. Our work on darknets has resulted in numerous breakthrough designs for rescuing children.
Characterization of abuses. We have published numerous scientific studies that make use of years of empirical measurement. Understanding the extent of this crime -- over 1 million a month share known CSAM -- is critical for law and policy makers, law enforcment, industry, victims, and society.
Machine learning for images and video analysis. One of the most important tools for investigators is the ability to recognize new and old victims and to gather information from videos to help solve cases.
Expertise for prosecution via courtroom testimony. We show up! We have testified as expert witnesses in many criminal trials across the US, lending our insight to critical matters in front of courts.
Testimony to commissions and expert working groups and Op-Eds to inform policy. For years, we have served on and testified to a varity of committess in the US and internationally. In 2008 we served on the Multi-state Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace. In 2011, we testified to the US. Most recently, we are members of the European Commission's group on Techical Solutions to Detecting Child Abuse.