This seems a little suspicious. First, if the sites are really in the business of manufacturing and selling child pornography, I'd imagine the police in the relevant jurisdictions would be delighted to prosecute. Second, while there certainly is child porn out there, I'd be a little hesitant to accept prosecutors' claims at face value -- they know that because of the strict nature of the law, independent verification is not just unlikely, but it could be illegal. Third, why is a state official using PR Newswire to send out press releases? Also, I'd recommend an excellent article by the always-interesting Steve Silberman of Wired magazine. It's subtitled, "Inside Operation Candyman, the FBI's crusade to sweep the Net clean of child abuse" and available here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/kidporn_pr.html -Declan --- http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=CMPTW_inter.story&STORY=/www/story/09-12-2002/0001798903&EDATE=THU+Sep+12+2002,+03:00+PM Michigan Attorney General Granholm Cuts Off Money Stream To 104 Suspect Child Pornography Websites LANSING, Mich., Sept. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Attorney General Jennifer M. Granholm today announced that as a result of a cease and desist order her office issued on August 26, 2002 to certain Internet billing companies, 104 suspected child pornography websites are no longer able to accept credit card charges through such companies to peddle their wares. As a result of this action, which is the first of its kind in the nation, the access to these websites is essentially cut off for residents of the United States. On August 26, 2002, the Attorney General's High Tech Crime Unit issued letters to six Internet billing companies including: "BillCards," "CardBilling," "CCbill," "iBill," "Trust-Bill," and EAN Enterprises, d/b/a "LancelotSecurity," ordering them to stop facilitating and promoting suspected child porn on 116 websites. Nearly all of the billers have responded, saying they will stop providing billing services to the suspect sites. Even where no response was received from a particular billing company, a further review by the Attorney General's High Tech Crime Unit found that the targeted websites were no longer accepting charges through the billing company. Granholm said: "Websites that cash in on the exploitation of our children have no place on the web. I am proud to report that because of the hard work by our High Tech Crime Unit, we have been able to effectively cut off access to these child porn websites to residents of the United States." As of early September, 104 of the 116 websites containing suspected child pornography are no longer able to accept charges through the previously mentioned billing companies. All of the companies that were sent cease and desist orders have either indicated a willingness to comply with the order, have severed their relationship with most of the websites, or have indicated they have required the websites to provide proof that the models depicted are of legal age. Granholm said: "While it is unfortunate that it took this type of action to sever the funding from these appalling websites, their compliance is definitely a step in the right direction. But make no mistake about it -- our High Tech Crime Unit will continue to monitor these companies, and if they decide to exploit children and place profits ahead of the law, we will prosecute." Granholm noted that because the investigation is ongoing, her office would vigilantly monitor the billing companies who received the cease and desist letters, as well as other third-party billing companies, to ensure they are not facilitating child pornography on the Internet by accepting credit card charges on behalf of illicit websites. Granholm urges that parents call the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force at 1-877-5CYBER3 [1-877-529-2373] 24-hours a day to report child predators or child porn on the Internet. (All Attorney General news releases may be found at http://www.ag.state.mi.us . ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan CNET Radio 9:40 am ET weekdays: http://cnet.com/broadband/0-7227152.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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