Cuomo helps social-network sites block child porn

Two more social-networking websites have agreed to help rid their sites of child pornography by blocking images that are in the attorney general's database of known child porn, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday.

The addition of LiveJournal, which hosts blogs, and Fotolog, a photo-sharing site, mean that seven networking websites now use Cuomo's database as another tool in their ongoing efforts to rid their sites of the images.

It is not, however, a tool without limitations. If an image is cropped or changed in any way, its hash value - its unique digital fingerprint tracked by the database - will change as well, and the new tag will not be in the database. But Collins said the exact same images are traded often enough that the initiative should work.

MySpace and Facebook, two of the most popular social networking sites, already use the database, as do Friendster, hi5, and isoHunt.

At a news conference held in the Jericho Middle School library, Cuomo described the initiative in front of a group of parents, politicians, and his own three teenage daughters. "We're using the technology against the pornographers," Cuomo said.

More than 8,000 hash values of child porn are in the database, contributed to the attorney general by various law enforcement agencies. The social networks then use these identifiers in the database to block the images from their sites.

Both LiveJournal and Fotolog issued statements emphasizing their desire to keep their sites safer for children.

"I think this will definitely help," said Alane Fagin, executive director of Child Abuse Prevention Services in Roslyn. "Unfortunately child pornography is so rampant on the Internet, so whatever we can do to eradicate it is helpful to keep our kids safe."

Under federal law, electronic communication service providers, including social networking sites, must report any instances of child pornography on their systems to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyperTipline.

Michelle Collins, vice president of the exploited children division of the Alexandria, Va.-based group, said she welcomed the idea of collecting the hash tags and distributing them to the companies. "It's still effective," she said. "It's not a silver bullet, but it's still a very useful tool to the industry."