ATTORNEY GENERAL ANDREW M. CUOMO
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE NEW YORK STATE SENATE
COMMITTEE ON CODES
JANUARY 31, 2008
Thank you Chairman Volker and members of the Senate Codes Committee for
inviting me to testify this afternoon. Today’s hearing highlights many serious
problems facing communities all across New York--child pornography on the
Internet, cyber sex predators using the Internet to prey upon young people and other
ways children are exploited in cyberspace.
These issues are personal for me. I sit before you, not only as New York’s
Attorney General, but also as a father of three young girls; all of whom have a greater
facility to navigate in cyberspace than do I. Unlike all of us, however, far too many
children in New York are unaware of the dangers and pitfalls to which they may be
exposed on the Internet.
As you know, the first responsibility of government is to protect the safety and
security of its citizens. It is our obligation, therefore, to do everything we can to
protect our children from sex predators who use the Internet as a means to their
nefarious ends.
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That is why I want to commend the important work being done by you
Chairman Volker, and your colleagues, to address these serious problems of child
pornography and Internet safety for children in today’s hearing. I commend your
work fighting child pornography and the exploitation of children in cyberspace. You
have raised the public and policymakers’ awareness, and are making a real difference,
and I thank you for everything you are doing.
Today, in my testimony, I would like to share with you the steps being taken
by my office to make the Internet a safer place for children from dangerous sex
predators. In particular, I’ll share with you the results of recent investigations we
have conducted, in addition to describing landmark bipartisan legislation we
announced just this week in Albany with Senate Majority Leader Bruno and Speaker
Silver, Senator Volker and others.
At the outset, I also want to emphasize that the creation and distribution of
child pornography are pernicious and insidious crimes that cause harms which are
simply unimaginable. Tragically, moreover, there has been an explosion in the
amount of child pornography that is now accessible on, and by virtue of, the Internet.
Thus, the law enforcement community is focused on tracking down and
prosecuting those people responsible for distributing child pornography. There’s also
been an effort to prosecute people who view these images, and the federal
government has led the way in that area. Notably, many distributors of child
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pornography produce the images outside the United States, thus making it difficult to
apprehend them.
My Office is dedicated to attacking the plague of child pornography and
stemming its flow in New York. We are now conducting an investigation regarding
the distribution of online pornography. Because of the nature of that investigation, it
would be inappropriate for me to discuss it further. What I can say, however, is that
we are looking to identify technological and systemic solutions -- solutions that
address the distribution problem not just in New York, but also nationally and
internationally.
I. Background
The Internet Age has made the world smaller, allowing people to
communicate, meet and socialize from all walks of life, and from every corner of the
earth. The Internet affords us with all sorts of opportunities and promise. In
particular, to many young people the Internet has become a regular part of their daily
life. They use it as a tool of learning, entertainment and communication with their
peers. Online communities for kids are emerging all over cyberspace through social
networking websites, chatrooms and other web services.
However, with the promise the Internet offers, it is also fraught with peril.
The Internet is also an opportunistic place for sex predators to prey on young people
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and presents law enforcement unique challenges in ensuring public safety on the web.
Social networking sites, which attract so many of our children, put a billboard up for
these predators stating, “IF YOU WANT TO MEET YOUNG PEOPLE, THIS IS
WHERE YOU DO IT.” As a consequence, these websites can serve as hunting
grounds for cyber predators trolling for young people.
To combat this scourge, my office began a comprehensive series of
investigations to uncover systematic vulnerabilities and ensure online safety.
II. Investigations
So far, our investigations, which are continuing, have revealed the frightening
degree to which children online are at risk of exposure to sexual predators. Time and
again, we found that the Internet is being used by sex offenders who hide behind
computer screens to prey upon kids in cyberspace.
Current preventative safety measures are simply inadequate to protect children
from harm. Indeed, one of our investigations revealed that tens of thousands of sex
offenders were members of a popular social networking website. You heard me right,
not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands of sexual predators.
The sheer number of cyber sex predators lurking on such sites, which are
frequented by children, is alarming to say the least.
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Just as alarming, perhaps, is that our investigations have discovered popular
websites are not adequately responding to user complaints about sexual solicitation of
minors and minors’ access to graphic pornography.
Likewise, serious security problems exist in Internet chatrooms and other
online discussion forums. In fact, certain chatrooms and online discussion groups
specifically for children and teens permitted forums dedicated to the sexual
solicitation of minors by adults.
III. Investigations Change the Online Security Paradigm
As a result of these findings, my office is working with various social
networking websites, including the two largest—MySpace and Facebook—and other
types of Internet service providers to strengthen the security of Internet services and
provide better policing of known sex predators.
For example, in 2007, we entered into a pathbreaking settlement agreement
with Facebook that has tens of millions of users. The settlement created a new
paradigm to enforce safeguards aimed at protecting members of the social networking
websites, especially children, and adolescents, from sexual predators, obscene content
and harassment. Specifically, Facebook agreed to:
• Disclose safety procedures;
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• Accept complaints about nudity or pornography, harassment or unwelcome
contact confidentially via hyperlinks placed throughout the social networking
website, as well as through an independent auditor;
• Respond to and address complaints about nudity or pornography, harassment or
unwelcome contact within 24 hours;
• Report to the complainant the steps it has taken to address the complaint within
72 hours;
• Allow the complaint review process to be examined by an Independent Safety
and Security Examiner, a third party approved by my office, to report
compliance;
• Provide a prominent and easily accessible hyperlink to allow users or their
parent/guardian to give feedback to the Independent Safety and Security
Examiner about the social networking website’s performance in responding to
complaints; and
• Submit to my office reports prepared by the Independent Safety and Security
Examiner evaluating the social networking website performance in responding
to complaints.
This innovative settlement agreement has established an industry standard and vastly
improved the safety and security for children in cyberspace.
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IV. Permanent Solutions-The Electronic Security and Targeting of Online
Predators Act (“e-Stop”)
To be sure, such agreements have made the Internet more secure, but there is
much more work that needs to be done. In particular, over the course of our work,
social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook raised a serious point. They said
they needed changes in the law in order to make the Internet safe. MySpace and
Facebook said they could not do it alone, and they were right.
Above all, we need to modernize our laws to adapt and adjust to the Internet
Age. While New York has enacted laws in the past to protect children from sex
offenders in the “real world” -- in playgrounds, schools, camps and other places
where children congregate -- we need to extend such protections to cyberspace.
The reality today is that many children use the Internet as a primary means to
communicate and socialize. The law has to take this new reality into account and
safeguard our children in the cyber playgrounds they frequent.
To that end, together, we announced this week landmark legislation: the
Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act or “e-Stop”.
e-Stop, which we jointly announced with Majority Leader Bruno, Speaker
Silver, Senator Volker, and a broad coalition of industry and advocates, is the most
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comprehensive, smartest and toughest law in the nation to keep people safe on the
Internet, especially young people from sex predators.
e-Stop establishes key protections against sexual predators, so that New
Yorkers -- especially young people -- can more safely use the Internet. It will provide
New Yorkers with the most comprehensive protections anywhere in the nation. And I
urge the Legislature to promptly enact it into law.
Let me describe how the law works.
A. e-Stop Brings “Megan’s Law” into the Internet Age
Notably, e-Stop builds upon and expands New York’s Megan’s Law. Indeed,
in a sense, I view e-Stop as a Megan’s Law for the Internet Age.
As you know, Megan’s Law, requires convicted sex offenders to register
identifying information with the Division of Criminal Justice Services (“DCJS”), and
to allow dissemination of some of that information to the general public. Megan’s
Law is vitally important, because it allows citizens to know the whereabouts of
known sex predators. And, the risk of recidivist behavior among sex offenders is a
real and present danger. According to one study conducted by the Department of
Justice, for example:
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• 5 percent of sex offenders (men who had committed rape or sexual assault)
were rearrested for another sex crime within 3 years following their release.
• 3.3 percent of released child molesters were rearrested for another sex crime
against a child within 3 years of their release. Most of the children they were
alleged to have molested after leaving prison were age 13 or younger.
• And compared to non-sex offenders released from State prisons, released sex
offenders were 4 times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime.
In short, while any criminals subsequent re-offending is of public concern, the
prevention of sex crimes is particularly important given the devastating harm such
crimes cause victims.
Megan’s law, however, is currently of little use in preventing sex crimes in
cyberspace. When the law was enacted in 1995, the Internet was not the dominant
force it has now become.
e-Stop fills the current void in Megan's law and extends its real-world
protections into the virtual world.
Under e-Stop, convicted sex offenders will submit all their Internet identifiers-
-including their email addresses, instant messaging accounts, social networking
accounts and the like -- to DCJS, which may provide such information to social
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networking websites and other similar online services that request it. Social
networking websites -- as good corporate citizens -- in turn, can use this information
for the purposes of prescreening or removing sex offenders from their services and
advising law enforcement agencies and other governmental entities of potential
violations of law and threats to public safety. Indeed, MySpace and Facebook have
already pledged that they will use this information for these purposes.
This builds upon law already on the books that allow summer camps and other
entities to have access to detailed sex offender information maintained by DCJS in
order to create a safe environment for children in the real world.
B. e-Stop Extends Mandatory and Other Conditions for Sex Offenders
from the “Real World” to “Cyberspace”
In addition, e-Stop prohibits dangerous convicted sex offenders from using the
Internet to access inappropriate material, accessing commercial social networking
websites or communicating with minors.
Current parole and probation conditions, which impose geographic restrictions
on a sex offender’s whereabouts, stop short at the computer screen. While under
supervision by law enforcement, the most serious of sex offenders are now prohibited
from accessing, meeting or interacting with children in their real world meeting
places, such as school grounds. By failing to take into account that adults and
children readily interact and congregate online, however, this real-world limitation in
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our State’s laws leave our children vulnerable to sex offenders who anonymously
invade their online communities and also serve to undermine sex offender supervision
and treatment.
e-Stop corrects this anomaly by prohibiting dangerous sex offenders from
using a child’s online hangout in the very ways that would be illegal offline.
Specifically, under e-Stop, sentencing courts and the State Board of Parole are
required to impose mandatory prohibitions on internet access to the most dangerous
sex offenders. Convicted sexual predators who either harm minors, or are designated
level 3 sex offenders, or use the Internet to facilitate the commission of their crimes,
are automatically prohibited from (1) accessing a commercial social networking
website, such as MySpace or Facebook, (2) using the Internet to access pornographic
material, (3) communicating with other individuals or groups for the purpose of
promoting sexual relations with persons under the age of eighteen, and (4)
communicating with a person under the age of eighteen if the offender is over 18.
No state in the nation imposes mandatory prohibitions such as these on so
broad a universe of sex offenders.
Additionally, e-Stop authorizes sentencing courts the discretion to impose as a
condition of probation other reasonable limitations on sex offender’s access to the
Internet.
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At the same time e-Stop creates tough new restrictions, it also recognizes the
importance of the Internet to every day life. e-Stop thus allows a court to permit
certain sex offenders to communicate with their own children online, provided they
are not otherwise prohibited from doing so. Also, a sentencing court is constrained
from restricting a sex offender from using the Internet in connection with education,
lawful employment or search for lawful employment.
Thus, e-Stop is carefully crafted to protect individuals from sex predators,
while preserving necessary rehabilitative functions.
V. Conclusion
Members of the Committee, real lives are at risk. Take for instance, the case
of a Suffolk County sex predator, Andrew Lubrano, who preyed upon children on a
popular social networking site. Lubrano, a level 3 registered sex offender -- that is
the worst of the worst – convicted of 1st degree sexual abuse of 9 and 11 year old
boys, as well as other sex offenses, was contacting kids online until law enforcement
was able to arrest him. Although banned from entering school grounds and
playgrounds, Lubrano -- who was convicted of sexually abusing children--was legally
free to roam the cyber playgrounds. Thankfully, his activity did not result in
additional children being harmed -- but it could have. This is but one example of a
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cyber predator roaming the Internet, carte blanche, and it highlights the need for
tougher new laws found in e-Stop.
e-Stop will create a safer online environment for our children to freely
communicate, socialize and congregate. There is no law comparable to e-Stop in the
country; New York is going to face this great challenge and the New York State
Legislature is going to lead the way for the nation.
I look forward to continuing our partnership to make sure this vitally important
legislation is enacted without delay.
Thank you.
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