AOL, AT&T join child porn battle

Two of the biggest US internet service providers have agreed to block access to newsgroups which include child pornography. It’s another coup for New York’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (pictured), who secured similar commitments from three other major internet firms last month.

AT&T and AOL (the largest and third-largest ISPs respectively) committed to blocking access to all newsgroups with child porn, along with offending websites stored on their servers. Verizon, Time Warner and Sprint had already agreed to this action.

Assuming the new agreement is the same, AT&T and AOL will also have to cross-reference with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s register of child porn sites.

It’s not clear whether AT&T and AOL will also be “persuaded” to contribute to a fund to combat child porn; the other three firms are handing over a combined $1.1 million. Part of the fund’s work involves building up a library of common child porn images and electronically analysing them. This allows investigators to automatically search for any site hosting copies of the images, even if they’ve been resized or cropped.

(Note: Since this post was published, AT&T’s corporate communications team have contacted Blorge to confirm “the agreement does not call for AT&T to make any sort of payment”.)

Cuomo appears to now be using publicity rather than the law to target ISPs which don’t comply. He’s announced a website which lists those firms which have made agreements with him, along with a form letter that customers can send to ISPs which haven’t made such commitments.

Though it’s not mentioned by name, it’s likely Comcast will come under such pressure being the largest ISP yet to make a deal with Cuomo.

Neither AT&T nor AOL have yet revealed exactly how they’ll tackle the newsgroup issue. Time Warner simply cut all newsgroup access, while Sprint blocked everything in the ‘alt’ category, which still meant tens of thousands of perfectly legitimate sites were cut off.

As happened last month when Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote an open letter to ISPs, the new deal will fuel the debate over whether such imprecise methods of targeting child porn could threaten civil liberties.

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