News Blog

[Update 6/10/2008 1 p.m.: We've found out details about what's going to happen. Time Warner Cable will pull the plug on tens of thousands of Usenet discussion groups after the N.Y. attorney general's office found child porn on 88 of them. Verizon and Sprint plan to limit Usenet, too. Earlier reports that the three broadband providers would block access to, say, overseas Web sites may not have been accurate. --Declan McCullagh]

Internet service providers Verizon Communications, Sprint Nextel, and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block Internet newsgroups and Web sites nationwide that disseminate child pornography, The New York Times reported Monday.

The move--part of an agreement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo expected to be announced Tuesday--will affect customers across the country, the newspaper reported. Negotiations are reportedly continuing with other ISPs.

Part of the plan is to shut down access to Usenet newsgroups known to traffic such images, as well as Web sites that host child pornography.

"The ISPs' point had been, 'We're not responsible, these are individuals communicating with individuals, we're not responsible,'" the newspaper reported Cuomo as saying. "Our point was that at some point, you do bear responsibility."

The agreement was reportedly reached after the attorney general's office threatened charges of fraud and deceptive business practices when the companies ignored investigators' complaints.

Cuomo has made safety of children on the Internet a priority of his office. He subpoenaed Facebook in September 2007 after his office conducted an undercover investigation that he said yielded a slow response from the social network to complaints of harassment and inappropriate conduct. The subpoena eventually led to an agreement between Facebook and the attorneys general of 49 states.

Earlier in 2007, Cuomo joined a group of New York lawmakers in introducing a bill to crack down on the presence of sex offenders on the Internet, specifically on sites where they could get in touch with minors.

A U.S. Senate panel has unanimously approved a bill that would encourage federal, state, and local police to use and create special software designed to nab child pornography swappers on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send an amended version of the Combating Child Exploitation Act, chiefly sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), to the full slate of politicians for a vote.

All told, the bill would allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years for a broad array of efforts aimed at tackling Internet crimes against children. It calls for hiring 250 new federal agents at the FBI, the Immigrations and Custom Enforcement Agency, and the U.S. Postal Service dedicated to child exploitation cases; for beefing up personnel, equipment, and educational programs designed to combat Internet crimes against children; and for creating new forensics laboratories if the attorney general deems it necessary to deal with a "backlog" of online child exploitation cases.

"We need to give law enforcement the funds and the tools to pull the plug on Internet predators," Biden said in a statement.

An amendment adopted Thursday also adds new sections to the original bill that would rewrite existing child pornography laws. One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted.

It's unclear whether the changes are necessary. The Justice Department in the past, for instance, has netted guilty pleas in cases related to live Webcam recordings involving minors engaged in sexual acts.

The bill's passage follows a hearing last month at which Biden and other senators suggested they saw considerable promise in software designed to detect child pornography sources--specifically a tool called "Operation Fairplay." The so-called "comprehensive computer infrastructure" was developed two years ago by Special Agent Flint Waters in the Wyoming Attorney General's Office, where the system is still housed, and is currently being used by online child exploitation investigators nationwide.

The bill approved Thursday allocates $2 million for the attorney general to build upon that software by creating a "National Internet Crimes Against Children Data System," which would make information about ongoing cases--particularly high-priority ones--accessible to investigators nationwide and coordinate development of new software tools designed to detect alleged child predators in real time.

Through the existing Fairplay system, investigators log onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks as any other person would and search for files containing certain keywords that are likely to indicate child pornography is involved. Then they download files--frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" and much more obscene--to their own machines. The Fairplay software allows the investigator to obtain the IP address of the file's sender and, in some cases, display its geographic location in map form.

Once armed with an IP address and date and time of the download, investigators can subpoena the Internet service provider for more information, such as name and address of the subscriber who was assigned it at that moment. It's not clear whether any wiretaps are also conducted to monitor ongoing file-swapping.

Through that process, investigators have identified more than 600,000 unique computers allegedly trafficking in child pornography and traced them to the United States. But Biden and others have voiced dismay that they're only equipped with the resources to investigate about 2 percent of those potential cases.

WASHINGTON--A prominent Senate Democrat on Wednesday said federal and local police should use custom software to monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity, and he wants to spend $1 billion in tax dollars to help make that happen.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.)

(Credit: Biden.senate.gov)

At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders.

The software, dubbed "Operation Fairplay," was developed two years ago by Special Agent Flint Waters in the Wyoming Attorney General's Office, who, by Biden's description, is considered an expert in the field. The application is currently being used by all of the regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces nationwide and internationally, Waters told the panel.

Waters describes the system as a "comprehensive computer infrastructure," housed in Wyoming, that grants law enforcement officers a "big picture" of what sort of child pornography file transfers are going on across the country. It's able to help investigators conduct undercover operations involving peer-to-peer file-sharing applications, chat rooms, Web sites, and mobile telephones, Waters said.

No one's trying to demonize those technologies, Waters said. "Blaming this problem on peer-to-peer innovation is like blaming the interstate highway system when someone uses it to transport drugs," he said.

But in 2008 alone, investigators using Fairplay have "seen" more than 1,400 IP addresses tied to swapping child pornography files on at least 100 different occasions, Waters said. He didn't say how he identified what he viewed as child pornography, which can include photographs of fully-clothed teenagers taken with their parents' consent. In addition, as critiques of a 1995 law review article pointed out, trying to guess the contents of a file based on its name can be a problematic process.

Based on Waters' statements to the committee, the system appears to work like this: Investigators log onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks as any other person would and search for files containing certain keywords that are likely to indicate child pornography is involved. Then they download the files--frequently videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "children kiddy underage illegal.mpg" and much more obscene--to their own machines. They're able to use the Fairplay software to obtain the IP address of the file's sender and, in some cases, display its geographic location in map form.

Once armed with an IP address and date and time of the download, investigators can subpoena the Internet service provider for more information, such as name and address of the subscriber who was assigned it at that moment. "It's not necessarily the suspect but it tells us the physical location to start," Waters said. (He didn't say whether any wiretaps were conducted to monitor ongoing file swapping.)

Investigators use the IP addresses to keep track of offenders on a "daily" basis, Waters told CNET News.com during a break at the hearing. But in about half its cases, for purposes of longer-term tracking, the software captures "unique serial numbers" from the person's computer and keeps a tally of how many allegedly illicit files that particular user is trading.

Waters provided the committee with a chart that said, for example, law enforcement had "seen" one user in Pennsylvania exchanging those files 2,792 times, one New Jersey user swapping them 1,182 times, and so on. It wasn't clear whether the so-called serial number corresponded to IP address, P2P username, or something else, and Waters wouldn't elaborate.

"It's unique to the computer, that's as far as I'll go," Waters added, saying he didn't want to divulge more details that suspects could use to circumvent detection. "We're able to get it when they're transferring child pornography."

So far, investigators have recorded more than 642,000 "unique serial numbers" that can be traced to the United States and another 650,000 of them that cannot be traced to a particular country, with the number of unique serial numbers rising steadily each month since "widespread capturing" of the details began in October 2005.

In addition to tracking the senders of the files, investigators use Fairplay to track the files themselves through their hash values or digital signatures. In one case, investigators found that an image of a toddler who'd been "horribly abused" was available in more than 1 million places around the world, Waters said.

Lt. Robert Moses, unit commander of the Delaware State Police High Technology Crimes Unit, told the committee that the software has been instrumental in allowing law enforcement to "proactively" identify criminals who possess and distribute child pornography, helping lead to arrests and prosecutions.

Grier Weeks, executive director of an anticrime nonprofit association known as the National Association to Protect Children, said the system has "revolutionized law enforcement" in the child pornography area.

Biden and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the committee's ranking member, said they were troubled that because of limited resources, investigators are able to take on less than 2 percent of what they called "known" cases of child-pornography trafficking via the Internet. Biden said he also isn't pleased to see that the FBI currently has only 32 agents working in its "Innocent Images" unit, which focuses on child pornography. Still, Biden said he isn't out to "exaggerate" the problem and acknowledged that some of those cases may involve "accidental" exchanges of illicit material.

Biden pushed for passage of a bill known as the Combating Child Exploitation Act. It would authorize more than $1 billion over the next eight years to hire 250 new federal agents devoted to Internet crimes against children, provide additional funding to regional computer forensics labs, and give out more federal grants to the regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. The House of Representatives passed a companion bill in October.

"We can get our arms around it, the worst aspect of it," he said, "if we provide the resources."

Sessions cautioned the law enforcement officials to be smart about obtaining search warrants in such investigations. "You can't just go peruse everybody's computer," he said. "You train the officers in what is legal and established and approved and how to get warrants when they need a warrant?"

Waters said he "didn't know of any cases where (requests for warrants) had been overturned."

News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report

HOLLYWOOD, Fla.--In the long ago heyday of adult magazines, Screw publisher Al Goldstein was one of the undisputed porn kings.

Now the onetime multimillionaire and foul-mouthed sex celeb has turned his talents to hawking Booble.com here at the Internext conference organized by adult trade publisher AVN Media Network.

Former Screw publisher Al Goldstein presents a $5,000 check to this year's 'Booble Girl.'

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET News.com)

Booble, which features some topless photos and isn't entirely safe for work, is an adult search engine and "sex search directory." It also features a "Booble Porn Minute" and the ability to search by porn star name and by sex-cam name.

During a lunch break at Internext, a cursing, cussing Goldstein presented a check for $5,000 to the naturally well-endowed porn actress Lisa Sparxxx who bested 175 other contestants to become "Booble Girl of the Year." The work seems somewhat less than arduous: a few minutes later she was spotted over at the Booble booth signing small plastic breasts.

Once a towering figure in the smut businesses, the 71-year old Goldstein practically lost it all in the last few years when, in quick succession, cheap Internet porn put his notoriously ribald magazine out of business, he filed for bankruptcy, and he got slapped with harassment charges. A 2004 article reported that Goldstein was reduced to selling salami, gefilte fish and beef brisket at a Manhattan deli.

Now Goldstein is on something of a comeback. He's got a new book out called I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life and a blog at Booble. He's also, of course, running for president at Goldstein08.com as the "dirty old candidate" with a slogan of "Removing the 'o' from country."

In case you're wondering how Booble got away with the similarity to Google under U.S. trademark law, by the way, there was a spat complete with a nastygram from Google back in 2004. But J.T. Ortiz, who works in marketing at Booble's parent company, said Friday that everything settled amicably, not least because Booble considers itself a parody of its far better known cousin.

Now that we are breaking down the digital divide by getting computers to children in impoverished regions of the world, let's take a look at what the kids are doing with their new laptops. It turns out they are using them the same way most of the people surfing the Net use them: searching for pornography.

A reporter for the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) found that pornographic images were stored on many of the laptops donated by the One Laptop Per Child project.

"Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials," Reuters quoted NAN as saying.

However, an observer of the One Laptop Per Child project questioned the news value of the story and the motivation behind the report.

"To focus on it this much means that the reporter really wanted a headline grabbing story or is against the project on a personal level," Wayan Vota wrote on an OLPC news site.

"No matter which, OLPC Nigeria reacted quickly and XO computers will now be fitted with filters," Vota wrote. "Porn surfing is not a technical problem to be solved with filters, it's a human nature issue addressed through a comprehensive cultural integration process."

It's probably also worth noting that the school children are also using the laptops for their stated purpose: education.

Update:This posting has been changed to correct the spelling of Wayan Vota's name. Olpcnews.com is a site independent of the OLPC project.

Slide to unlock, eh?

(Credit: Playboy.com)

The iPhone hype has either reached a high point or totally jumped the shark, depending on your personal opinion. Playboy.com just announced that it has launched its official iPhone effort, which it calls "iPlayboy."

We'll just say that it sure gives "touch screen" a whole new meaning.

Playboy's virtual goodie bag for the iPhone consists of 12 "sexy non-nude wallpapers" for the sleek Apple handset, a special photo album with another dozen photos of Playmates, an episode of Playboy's Sirius Satellite Radio show, and a video customized for the iPhone's interface. It's free, and available on the main Playboy Web site.

Now that the adult entertainment world has officially penetrated the iPhone hype machine, the next step is obvious: naughty toy add-ons!

With competing high-definition DVD standards HD DVD and Blu-ray, a clear line has been drawn in the sand. Major technology companies are beginning to line up with their support for one side or the other. But it won't necessarily be the Sonys or Microsofts of the world that determine the winner in this standards war. In the end, it may come down to an often overlooked technology influencer: the porn industry.

Adult film producers have a long history of being early adopters of new technology. When the porn industry pushed hard for VHS in the 1980s, Sony took a beating with its Beta Max standard. CNET's Rich DeMuro says the current battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray bears a striking resemblance to that format war. In a three-part video series, Rich looks at how the industry might again be the deciding factor that makes or breaks one of them.

By most accounts, the two standards look the same to the average viewer. So it may come down to which standard gets more support from movie studios, with consumers adopting whichever standard makes it possible for them to view the movies they want.

Check out part one of the series on CNET TV. And for a detailed look at how the two standards compare, watch Veronica Belmont as she pits the two against each other in a Prizefight match-up.