NEW YORK, NY — AT&T, America’s largest internet service provider, and America Online, the third-largest, have reached agreements with the New York Attorney General to eliminate access to newsgroups and purge their servers of websites that offer access to child pornography.The deal is similar to ones signed in June by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo and Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner Cable. Newsgroups will not be blocked by the ISPs, but their customers will need to find alternative means of accessing them. Google and other online sources provide free and paid subscriptions to newsgroups.
In addition, Cuomo’s office has laid plans to ramp up pressure on other ISPs to combat child porn. The office unveiled a new website, NYStopChildPorn.com, dedicated to fighting online child abuse. The website provides details about which ISPs have signed agreements with the Attorney General’s office to eradicate access to child porn on their servers. It also provides consumers with instructions for contacting ISPs that have failed to make the same commitment.
Cuomo urged New York consumers to check whether their ISPs have signed the code of conduct and to demand that they do so if they have not.
“These with agreements with two of the nation’s largest ISPs to eradicate child porn websites from their servers tighten the noose around this despicable trade,” Cuomo said. “Today’s agreements with AT&T and AOL send a message to internet service providers across the nation that they can no longer drag their feet when it comes to protecting our children and instead must quickly purge child porn from their servers.”
The attorney general said during the course of an investigation, his office reviewed millions of pictures over several months, uncovering 88 different newsgroups that contained a total of 11,390 sexually lewd photos featuring prepubescent children. In some cases, the photos depicted children being raped and sexual activity involving animals.
As part of the undercover investigation, the attorney general’s office developed what it called “a new system for identifying online content that contains child pornography.” The system employs “hashing,” a process that compares digital images mathematically in order to identify similar content. Cuomo’s office built its own hash value library, allowing it to filter tens of thousands of images at once and match them to child-porn patterns, a spokesman said.
“This is another tremendous step forward in ridding the internet of child pornography,” National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Chief Executive Officer Ernie Allen said. “Attorney General Cuomo continues to lead the fight against child pornography, and I applaud his efforts to cut this horrific material off at the source.”
Protecting children from online predators has been a priority for Cuomo. In May 2007, Cuomo worked with law enforcement authorities to investigate sex offenders on MySpace, a popular social networking site. In October 2007, Cuomo and the popular online community Facebook announced a new model to enforce safeguards aimed at protecting Facebook members, especially children and adolescents, from sexual predators, offensive content and harassment.
In January 2008, Cuomo sponsored legislation to enhance protections for New Yorkers, especially children, from sexual predators on the internet. The comprehensive Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP) passed unanimously in the New York State Assembly and Senate and was signed into law by the governor in May 2008. The legislation restricts sex offenders’ use of the internet and updates Megan’s Law for the internet age.
This investigation is being handled by Senior Investigator Michael McCartney and First Assistant Deputy Attorney General Peri Kadanoff with additional assistance from Assistant Attorney General Karen Geduldig and Confidential Analyst Bradley Bartram. The investigation is being supervised by Special Counsel to the Attorney General Elizabeth Glazer and Executive Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice Robin Baker.
