A group of Internet companies have joined together to fight online child pornography.
Last week, America Online began the effort by adding the support of Yahoo, Microsoft, Earthlink and United Online, parent company of NetZero, the New York Times reported today.
The group will funnel $1 million to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which will develop programs to identify online child pornography and refer those cases to authorities.
The first such program would create a central database to help identify child porn sent by e-mail.
AOL’s Chief Counsel John Ryan said the group’s effort is a response to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzalez’s request for Internet companies to retain online data to be used to catch child porn purveyors.
Prosecutors say that by using online data, they can identify and prosecute child porn purveyors. But Internet companies have balked at such proposals in the past, saying it would infringe on its customers’ privacy and would prove expensive.
The group’s announcement today comes as a House subcommittee begins two days of hearings starting today to examine how Internet service providers and certain Web networking sites are used by child pornographers.
In April and May, the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Energy and Commerce Committee were examining the prevalence of online child porn. During hearings, law enforcement officials told the committee that investigations are often thwarted because Internet companies don’t keep online data that could be used to identify purported child porn purveyors.
AOL said it keeps records of child porn images reported to it by its customers through a system which records its electronic signature rather than the image itself since possession of child porn is illegal. Such an electronic signature allows the company to identify the images if they are sent again by e-mail.
Those images that are identified are then sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which serves as a clearinghouse for criminal referrals on child porn.
