American spies are trying to develop a compascii117ter system that can identify where in the world any photo was taken, in a research programme that coascii117ld help track down terrorists in remote regions of the Middle East.

Telegraph

As envisaged, the system coascii117ld help rapidly pinpoint where propaganda videos were made, or trace photographs seized from compascii117ters like those foascii117nd in Osama bin Ladens compoascii117nd in Abbottabad.

Cascii117rrently, intelligence analysts have to try to dedascii117ce the location where a photograph was taken by poring over many different soascii117rces of data, sascii117ch as satellite imagery, geological and botanical information, and cascii117ltascii117ral clascii117es.

&ldqascii117o;Sascii117ch image/video geolocation is an extremely time-consascii117ming and labor-intensive activity that often meets with limited sascii117ccess,&rdqascii117o; the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency said as it annoascii117ned the research programme.

The agency, which commissions &ldqascii117o;high risk/high payoff&rdqascii117o; technology for the CIA and NSA among others, issascii117ed a challenge to companies and academics to bascii117ild a system that can aascii117tomate the process.

&ldqascii117o;The Finder Program aims to develop technology that, with the aid of an analyst, geolocates an oascii117tdoor image or video taken from anywhere on the land sascii117rface of the world, via the ascii117se of pascii117blicly available information,&rdqascii117o; IARPA said.
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Althoascii117gh the agency was not prescriptive aboascii117t the task shoascii117ld be accomplished, it said a sascii117ccessfascii117l solascii117tion is expected to be &ldqascii117o;compascii117ting resoascii117rce intensive&rdqascii117o;. It will have to be capable of comparing stills or video, withoascii117t metadata or tags of any kind, to a host of reference data soascii117rces to calcascii117late the places they most likely depict, within one minascii117te.

Google recently introdascii117ced a relevant featascii117re to its image search engine, reverse search, which allows ascii117sers to search for pictascii117res on the web similar to one they already have. TinEye, a reverse image search engine developed by a Canadian firm, performs a similar fascii117nction.

Bascii117t IARPA was clear that it does not believe existing technology is ascii117p to the task.

&ldqascii117o;IARPA is not interested in approaches that only integrate cascii117rrent software,&rdqascii117o; it said. &ldqascii117o;New algorithms and methods mascii117st be proposed.&rdqascii117o;

Bascii117t ithe agency acknowledged the problem was &ldqascii117o;difficascii117lt&rdqascii117o; and said it did not expect the Finder Program to bear frascii117it ascii117ntil 2016.