This TED Talk features social entrepreneur Julie Cordua, recorded live at TED 2019.

This ambitious idea is part of the Audacious Project, Ted's initiative to inspire and fund global change.

Learn more at audaciousproject.org. This talk contains mature content.

Five years ago, I received a phone call that would change my life. I remember so vividly that

day. It was about this time of year, and I was sitting in my office. Remember the sun streaming through the window, and my phone

rang, and I picked it up, and it was two federal agents asking for my help in identifying

a little girl, featured in hundreds of child sexual abuse images they had found online.

They had just started working the case, but what they knew was that her abuse had been

broadcast to the world for years on dark websites dedicated to the sexual abuse of children.

And her abuser was incredibly technologically sophisticated. New images and new videos

and new videos every few weeks, but very few clues as to who she was or where she was.

And so they called us because they had heard we were a new nonprofit

building technology to fight child sexual abuse.

But we were only two years old,

and we had only worked on child sex trafficking.

And I had to tell him we had nothing.

We had nothing that could help them stop this abuse. It took those agents another year to ultimately find that child.

And by the time she was rescued,

hundreds of images and videos documenting her rape

had gone viral from the dark web

to peer-to-peer networks, private chat rooms,

and to the websites you and I use every single day.

...