Sprint,
Time Warner and
Verizon have worked out an agreement with the New York State Attorney General to block access to Web sites and bulletin boards that host images of child pornography. This is a new tactic by law enforcement to stop the dissemination of these images and brings these companies into the effort by making them responsible, to a degree, for the content relayed across their servers and relay points.
Other Internet service providers, or ISPs, are expected to follow the lead of these three companies and are negotiating their approach with the attorney general's office.
Until now, the focus by law enforcement has primarily been on the perpetrators of child porn, those people who create the original images or those who go onto the message boards and Web sites to view or share the illegal content. The responsibility of the ISPs has been somewhat passive, relying on their subscribers to complain about images or other bad content before they would take action.
As the New York
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo pointed out, the individual ISP subscribers who would most likely come into contact with the illicit images are the very same people who create or intend to share them, so they would be unlikely to report the illegal activity. Still, it was undercover operatives from Cuomo's office who went on to the child porn sites and message boards in a sting operation. These agents then logged complaints with the ISPs, with the expectation that action would be taken to remove the images or block the sites. When the ISPs didn't respond to the complaints, that's when Cuomo's office took action.
ISPs have been reluctant to block Web sites and message boards, saying the nature of the Web makes it difficult to monitor content and determine who is really responsible for illicit content. But part of the agreement to block the sites includes access to an image bank maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. When an image with child porn is found, the Center logs it and creates a "digital identifier." Then, if the same image appears on another Web site it can be quickly identified, and even lead to the discovery of other child porn images. Use of this tool and searching method can aid ISPs and investigators as they seek to root out child pornographers.
This move comes at the same time an international effort is ramping up, with Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada and New Zealand already directing their ISPs to create "black lists" of sites that host child porn, and spread terrorist information or racial hatred. The latest country to announce it will join this effort is
France, which will have its blacklist in place by September.
Some ISPs, like AOL, have already put major effort into blocking child porn Web sites and message boards on their own. And some social networking sites, like
MySpace and
Facebook, have already worked with law enforcement to prevent child porn purveyors from making use of their services.
Together, Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner have about 16 million customers. [Source:
The New York Times.]
