Rovereto, November 24, 2015
– Expert System’s semantic technology plays a leading role in the SICH international project for identifying illegal internet content
Expert System (EXSY.MI), the leader in multilingual cognitive computing technology for the effective management of unstructured information, is a sponsor and the main technology partner of Semantic Illegal Content Hunter (SICH), an international project for preventing illegal internet content through the use of semantic analysis to support police forces and other European organizations active in combatting and preventing online crime.
The SICH project, which was presented in Rome on November 20, is coordinated by Expert System in collaboration with RiSSC, a non-profit focused on security and crime, and is guided by an advisory board of industry experts. The project was created to identify and remove illegal content from the internet, including the most commonly monitored sources of illegal activity such as videos, images and general multimedia files, but also any text content (communications, conversations, news, websites and blogs) available on the web.
“We are proud to be able to contribute to the fight against online crime as part of the SICH project,” said Maurizio Mencarini, EMEA Head of Sales Intelligence, Expert System. “To cope with the sharp increase of information and counter the illegal activities that spread on the internet, sophisticated monitoring and search tools are essential. Semantic technology, with its ability to quickly process thousands of pieces of information and accurately determine the meaning in text, provides real-time support for investigative activities.”
Given the large and ever-growing quantity of text sources—the web hosts an estimated 6.8 billion indexed documents—manual investigative activities or those based on traditional analysis and web monitoring systems are likely to be both ineffective and expensive. The Cogito semantic technology from Expert System, with its ability to automatically understand the meaning in text, enables the rapid recovery of content related to criminal activity and supports the effective capture of useful information hidden in text.
The application of the Cogito technology for the SICH project supports analysts in preventing online crime by focusing on three areas: xenophobia and racism, illegal online gambling and new psychoactive substances (NPS). Based on a broad conceptual network and a focused and deep knowledge of the specific terminology of these three domains developed specifically for this project, semantic technology gives analysts the ability to rapidly and accurately identify and single out content that is offensive or linked to illegal activities or potentially dangerous trends.
