To the "savvy" political insiders, political corruption is still not seen as an election issue that people care about or vote over. We've been discussing a number of attempts to change that -- such as with new anti-corruption PACs -- and two of the political races we've discussed ended yesterday. In both cases, the candidates lost, but they way outperformed their expectations, suggesting that there's a real possibility of a better reaction in the future.
In NY, the Governor/Lt. Governor primary ticket of Zephyr Teachout/Tim Wu was always a tremendous long shot. Going up against a popular incumbent governor in Andrew Cuomo (who also has tremendous NY name recognition as the son of a former -- also tremendously popular -- NY governor), the media more or less ignored any possibility of Teachout succeeding. The campaign had little money and no real established political base. It ran almost entirely on the basis of "Hey, Cuomo is kind of corrupt and lies a lot." Before the election yesterday, an analysis of similar races suggested that incumbent governors in similar primaries often get over 90% of the vote and anything under 70% would be a political disaster for Cuomo, who is hoping to leverage his success in NY into an eventual presidential run. While he did eventually win, it was with about 62% of the vote. Teachout got 34% -- again, with no political machine and very little money. Wu ended up with just over 40%, and his opponent Kathy Hochul (Cuomo's choice) got under 60%.
Obviously, a win would have been a bigger deal, but to come out of nowhere (in just a couple of months), with no huge campaign war chest or connections to traditional politics -- against such a well-known governor, basing most of their campaign on corruption issues -- this suggests that corruption absolutely can play as an election issue. Teachout and Wu had one paid staffer and four volunteers. Cuomo has a campaign war chest in the many millions. And he still could only barely crack 60% of the vote. That says something. Also interesting is the fact that Teachout and Wu actually won in many rural upstate counties. The campaign had been expecting a weaker showing there (Hochul is from upstate, and Teachout and Wu are based in Manhattan -- which they also won). Again, while losing the overall race, the strong showing is a good sign for future campaigns.
Meanwhile, up in New Hampshire, we'd discussed the campaign of Jim Rubens for the Senate, against carpetbagging Scott Brown (who jumped states from Massachusetts after losing his Senate seat there). Early on, Rubens was basically a complete nobody. While he'd been in NH politics in the past, he hadn't actually occupied a political office since the 1990s. He was basically roadkill for the political machine of Scott Brown. However Larry Lessig's Mayday PAC noted that Rubens was the only Republican candidate running on an anti-corruption platform to limit the influence of money in politics. Mayday PAC spent heavily on campaign ads for Rubens, and he ended up getting around 24% of the vote, with Brown pulling in less than 50%.
In the end, both of these campaigns obviously lost -- but they were interesting experiments with important lessons. Two upstart campaigns from totally different sides of the traditional political spectrum (Zephyr/Wu to the "left" and Rubens to the "right"), both of which made anti-corruption efforts a key plank in their campaigns. Both were considered barely worth mentioning at the beginnings of the campaigns. Both were up against incredibly well-known, well-funded political machines with national name recognition and ambition. Neither campaign had any significant money. And both actually performed decently despite their disadvantages.
In the end, both campaigns definitely did lose, but they showed how there's clearly a dissatisfaction with the traditional political machine. And if two such tiny, out-of-nowhere campaigns could do that, hopefully it means that future campaigns can do even more.
We've written a little bit about the campaign of Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu for Governor and Lt. Governor of NY -- in particular about incumbent governor Andrew Cuomo's petty attempt to bankrupt the campaign with a bogus attack on Teachout's residency. That required a significant waste of time and resources, eventually leading a judge to toss out Cuomo's frivolous challenge. Teachout and Wu have long histories of being really in touch with the internet generation, and being true anti-corruption reformers. While their campaign may be a longshot (big time "outsiders" against the quintessential insider), they've certainly managed to make some noise. As we noted in our last piece, while most political observers felt that Teachout had no chance against the Cuomo brand, Wu stood a significant chance against Cuomo's preferred Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul.
Mr. Wu, a political newcomer, offers a fresh perspective and a new voice to counter Albany’s entrenched players. Ms. Hochul does not, and she has a deeply troubling record on health reform, gun control and environmental deregulation. For these reasons, we recommend Mr. Wu in the Democratic primary.
[....]
Although he lacks time in politics, Mr. Wu has an impressive record in the legal field, particularly in Internet law and policy. Widely known for coining the phrase “net neutrality,” he has been an adviser to the Federal Trade Commission as part of his efforts on behalf of consumers to keep the Internet from “becoming too corporatized.”
As lieutenant governor, he wants to speak out on complicated issues that are too often ignored in Albany like immigrant rights and broadband access needed by more than a million New Yorkers. Those would be worthy pursuits, but he will also have to learn quickly how to navigate Albany’s difficult politics to make his views heard.
However, in a bizarre move, yesterday the same paper refused to endorse either Cuomo or Teachout in an article that really reads like an endorsement of Teachout, but where someone was too chicken to pull the trigger and actually endorse Teachout. It slams Cuomo and praises Teachout throughout the piece. Here's a snippet:
Mr. Cuomo became governor on that platform and recorded several impressive achievements, but he failed to perform Job 1. The state government remains as subservient to big money as ever, and Mr. Cuomo resisted and even shut down opportunities to fix it. Because he broke his most important promise, we have decided not to make an endorsement for the Democratic primary on Sept. 9.
His opponent in the primary is Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham Law School who is a national expert on political corruption and an advocate of precisely the kind of transparency and political reform that Albany needs. Her description of Mr. Cuomo as part of a broken system “where public servants just end up serving the wealthy” is exactly on point....
So, uh, why not endorse Teachout? Well, because she doesn't have enough "experience." And yes, that seems to contradict exactly what they said about Wu, who also doesn't have much experience. But the NYT tries to explain this away by saying that the Lt. Governor's job has much less responsibility (which is true) and thus experience isn't as big a deal. But, really, everyone who becomes governor doesn't have experience being governor before (and lots of people get elected to such leadership positions with even less experience). Teachout has been heavily involved in a number of policy issues for quite some time.
As Gawker's Tom Scocca rightly notes, the NY Times' logic appears to be as follows:
In other words, Zephyr Teachout can't replace Cuomo as governor because she is not already the governor.
It is true that Teachout is not an experienced politician. The experienced politicians in New York State are hacks and criminals. That is the situation that the New York Times editorial board would like you to believe it cares about.
Yet the Times will not back the nomination of someone who comes from outside of the state's culture of political corruption—not some reckless crank, a goldbug or anti-vaccinationist or animal-rights activist, but a degree-holding product of Yale and Duke, a former law clerk, a person who works full-time at understanding the process of political reform.
What other credentials would the Times ask a political reformer to have?
The NY Times further rationalizes its failure to endorse Teachout, who the editorial board clearly likes better, because she has no chance. This is a typical, cynical and pointless "church of the savvy" move, in which the press likes to call things based on what they think will happen, based on their "savviness" in understanding the political process more than the public who actually votes. But that's why we have elections. Sometimes the "savvy" are wrong. Just ask Eric Cantor.
The NY Times further dings Teachout because she doesn't have experience in politics (even if she has tremendous policy experience), noting that the governor has to get legislation passed, but Scocca again points out how silly this charge is:
So rather than risk the possibility of failed reform, voters should resign themselves to the certainty of failed reform. On a practical level, then, the Times' attitude toward corruption in Albany is identical to Cuomo's: Accept the fact that nothing will ever change.
While the endorsement of Wu is nice to see, that was a "safe" way to pretend to support reform. The NY Times could have taken a real stand by endorsing both Teachout and Wu, but it chose to take the "easy" way out.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's office continues to do everything it can to prevent its emails from being accessed by FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requests. As Justin Elliott of ProPublica reported earlier this year, Cuomo's office has been making use of personal email accounts to skirt FOIL requests.
Adopting a tactic that has been used by officials ranging from Sarah Palin to staffers of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, aides to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are sending emails from private accounts to conduct official business.
I know because I got one myself. And three other people who interact with the governor's office on policy or media matters told me they have too. None of the others wanted to be named.
This isn't all Cuomo's office is doing, though. It's also set its email retention bar incredibly low. With personal email accounts already removing a certain percentage of communications from the "responsive document" set, the governor's office has moved towards eradicating access to the rest, using an unusually short retention schedule. ProPublica again has the story.
Last year, the state started deleting any emails more than 90 days old that users hadn't specifically saved — a much more aggressive stance than many other states. The policy shift was first reported by the Albany Times Union.
A previously unpublished memo outlining the policy raises new questions about the state's stated rationale for its deletions policy. What's more, the rules on which emails must be retained are bewilderingly complex – they fill 118 pages – leading to further concern that emails may not be saved at all.
The state's policy is supposedly predicated on storage limitations. But this was put into place as part of a move to Microsoft's Office365, which offers 50 Gb of storage per email user. And, as ProPublica points out, the state's version includes unlimited email archiving.
Despite the reality of the storage situation (i.e, that it's not going to ever be a problem), the state still automatically deletes emails when they hit the expiration date. When asked why the state does this when it's obvious it has plenty of email storage space, it delivered this nonsensical response.
The Office of Information and Technology Services declined to comment on the record. An official in the office said even though the state can store large quantities of email, it can still be difficult to manage.
"Just because you have a big house doesn't mean you have to shove stuff in it," the official said.
Yeah, but if this "big house" was actually purchased for you by the public to store stuff it might need later, the purchasers expect you to make full use of the storage space. What it doesn't expect is for you to throw out a large percentage of its belongings (government emails are public records) every 90 days. Policies vary from state to state, with most email being held for two years minimum. Certain categories are held onto for a longer period of time, but rarely, if ever, are government emails given a shorter "sell by" date than the state of New York.
Not everything disappears at 90 days. Some are supposed to be held onto for far longer, but as far as ProPublica can tell, there's no one in place to ensure the numerous and complex retention rules are followed.
There is no internal or external watchdog to make sure the rules are being followed, [John] Kaehny [president, Reinvent Albany] said.
The state also doesn't have a standardized system for preserving emails that do have to be saved, according to the Office of Information Technology Services official. State workers can save their emails by printing them out, pasting them into Microsoft Word documents or placing them in a special folder in the email program itself.
"Everyone does it differently, and some people are still learning how to do it," the official said.
Email related to FOIL requests and litigation is supposed to be preserved indefinitely. But with de facto 90-day destruction in place, journalists and others seeking public records would need to know what they're searching for before the corresponding emails have even been composed. Government misconduct is usually discovered months or years down the road. By that time, most responsive emails will have long since been destroyed, especially when there's no one making sure possibly incriminating communications are retained.
What's being touted as a solution to an email management problem looks an awful lot like an easy way to minimize the number of responsive documents that might be returned to a citizens' rights group or an investigative journalist. Ninety days isn't acceptable as a warranty period, much less a time frame for the retention of public records.
There's been some attention (especially in tech circles) to the upstart primary challenge in NY against Governor Andrew Cuomo (and his preferred Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul), coming from law professors Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu. Both Teachout and Wu have been in and around a variety of tech and internet issues for years, and are pretty well-known in the community. Wu, of course, is well-known for coining the term "net neutrality" but has been deeply involved in a variety of other issues as well. Teachout has also been deeply involved in a variety of issues we frequently discuss here as well, including being national director of the Sunlight Foundation. Cuomo, on the other hand, is basically the very definition of traditional old school politics, and is currently embroiled in a big corruption scandal. Many people have noted that Cuomo is likely to win handily over Teachout just on name recognition alone, but since Lt. Governors run separately from Governors, Wu has a legitimate chance to beat Hochul.
Bizarrely, the Cuomo campaign seems to be doing everything it can to attract even more attention to the Teachout/Wu campaign, sending its own protestors to Teachout events. The campaign has also been attacking Wu.
But the most ridiculous of all is that the Cuomo campaign has filed a frivolous legal challenge against Teachout, claiming that she hasn't really lived in New York state long enough to be on the ballot. The whole thing seems pretty clearly to be a way to force the bootstrapped campaign to spend a bunch of money on lawyers (and to spend a bunch of time and resources fighting the legal challenge, rather than campaigning). Teachout and Wu are running a crowdfunding campaign to try to raise some extra money to handle the legal challenge, so they don't have to waste all of their campaign money just to beat back a frivolous lawsuit.
In court last week, it seemed pretty clear that this whole thing is also a way for Cuomo's political operatives to go fishing through Teachout's history for anything it can use against her in the campaign:
The Cuomo lawyers have asked for boxes of documents — not only her tax filings and rental checks and voting records. They have also demanded her credit card and debit card records.
As Teachout notes, Cuomo is acting as if it's "on the edge of illegal to even run against Governor Cuomo."
It may be standard operating procedures to "play dirty" in politics, but this whole thing is making Cuomo look especially petty... and scared. Is he really so afraid of a couple of law school professors who happen to have some fans online? Why does he feel the need to bully them with frivolous lawsuits?
Update: The judge has ruled against Cuomo allowing Teachout to continue her campaign.
For years -- since before he was NY State's governor -- we've raised questions about Andrew Cuomo's activities. When he was Attorney General, he often used that position to grandstand around various issues that sounded good politically, but were real world disasters. He browbeat ISPs into policing the internet, when they had no legal obligation to, with bogus threats of lawsuits -- even pushing them to install spyware to snoop on everyone's traffic. He was among the leaders of the group of Attorneys General who wanted to blame high-profile internet companies for the way consumers used them, and he tried to broker a "3 strikes" system to kick file sharers offline. Since becoming governor, he's been embroiled in a bunch of scandals, including having staffers use private email accounts to hide their work from Freedom of Information laws.
Now, however, things are heating up. The NY Times has reported that Cuomo's greatly hyped "corruption commission" appeared to be nothing more than a front group for Cuomo himself. That is, he seemed fine with it investigating "corruption" of others, but if it came anywhere near him or his friends, Cuomo's people ordered the commission to back away -- and they did. The crowning anecdote:
It was barely two months old when its investigators, hunting for violations of campaign-finance laws, issued a subpoena to a media-buying firm that had placed millions of dollars’ worth of advertisements for the New York State Democratic Party.
The investigators did not realize that the firm, Buying Time, also counted Mr. Cuomo among its clients, having bought the airtime for his campaign when he ran for governor in 2010.
Word that the subpoena had been served quickly reached Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aide, Lawrence S. Schwartz. He called one of the commission’s three co-chairs, William J. Fitzpatrick, the district attorney in Syracuse.
“This is wrong,” Mr. Schwartz said, according to Mr. Fitzpatrick, whose account was corroborated by three other people told about the call at the time. He said the firm worked for the governor, and issued a simple directive:
“Pull it back.”
The subpoena was swiftly withdrawn. The panel’s chief investigator explained why in an email to the two other co-chairs later that afternoon.
“They apparently produced ads for the governor,” she wrote.
That last line is fairly incredible, isn't it? They don't even come up with any kind of excuse. They just admit that when the government asked them to stop digging into things involving his friends, they did. The NY Times article is incredibly damning, highlighting how Cuomo promised the committee would be totally independent, even directly saying that it was free to investigate him and his associates. But, the reality was quite different. And Cuomo doesn't seem to care. His response is that of course he was allowed to meddle in the commission's affairs since it was his commission. Here's what Cuomo said when the commission was set up:
Mr. Cuomo said early on that the commission would be “totally independent” and free to pursue wrongdoing anywhere in state government, including in his own office. “Anything they want to look at, they can look at — me, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the comptroller, any senator, any assemblyman,” he said last August.
Here's what his "office" said now in response to the NYT's inquiry about the story:
First, your fundamental assertion is that the Commission was independent. It wasn't. No
Moreland Commission can be independent from the Governor's office. It is purely a creation of
the Governor's power under the law, which vests subpoena power in the Governor or his
designee.
Right. Furthermore, Cuomo's response is that it would be a conflict of interest for the panel to investigate the governor, since he had appointed them. Talk about a brilliant anti-corruption strategy. The prevailing party gets to appoint the panel, block its use against any friends or those in the ruling party, and then the panel can only target the Governor's enemies. Damn. That's sneaky. And obnoxious. And, well, it seems to us, incredibly corrupt.
The corruption here is different — and much much worse. If an aid to the chief corruption reformer in NY has corruptly interfered with a corruption investigation, then NY doesn’t need that “corruption reformer” anymore — because that’s not what he is.
If this charge is true, then this is a governor who believes himself above the law. THAT is the keystone of corruption.
Lessig notes that Cuomo should resign over this scandal, though it seems unlikely that will happen. Either way, the level of corruption infiltrating our government these days is absolutely sickening. Federal prosecutors are apparently now investigating the situation, though, it's not all that often that those in power will take down "one of their own." Sure, it happens (pretty much all the time if you're in Illinois), but chances are Cuomo will skate by this one as well. Because that's how the system functions.
Adopting a tactic that has been used by officials ranging from Sarah Palin to staffers of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, aides to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are sending emails from private accounts to conduct official business.
I know because I got one myself. And three other people who interact with the governor's office on policy or media matters told me they have too. None of the others wanted to be named.
The tactic appears to be another item in the toolbox of an administration that, despite Cuomo's early vows of unprecedented transparency, has become known for an obsession with secrecy. Emailing from private accounts can help officials hide communications and discussions that are supposed to be available to the public.
"Government business should never be conducted through private email accounts. Not only does it make it difficult to retrieve what is a government record, but it just invites the suspicion that a government employee is attempting to evade accountability by supervisors and the public," said Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union, a frequent requester of records under the state's Freedom of Information Law.
Emailing from private accounts also may violate state policy. State employees are not to "use a personal email account to conduct State business unless explicitly authorized," according to a policy bearing the governor's name published by the Office of Information Technology Services.
The Cuomo administration declined to comment on whether any employees are authorized to use private accounts.
Back when he was running for governor, Cuomo pledged, "We must use technology to bring more sunlight to the operation of government."
The governor himself uses a Blackberry messaging system that does not save messages to communicate with aides, the Daily News reported in 2012. Under the Freedom of Information Law, those records would typically not have to be released because there is an exemption for internal deliberative material.
But emails with anyone outside of the administration – such as lobbyists, company executives, or reporters – usually have to be made public upon request. It is for those communications, with people outside the administration, that private email accounts have been used.
Last year, I was poking around on a possible story and filed some public records requests that sought emails from Director of State Operations Howard Glaser, a top Cuomo adviser. One day in October, just hours after filing a request with the governor's office, an email appeared in my inbox from Glaser himself.
The email, inquiring what I was working on, was sent from a @glasergroup.net address rather than a government account. The note had a signature line about not using the email address for official business (even though it appeared to be doing just that). My interest was piqued.
So I filed a request under the state's Freedom of Information Law, asking for all records sent to and from Glaser's private account. It is not supposedto matter if an email is sent from an official account or a private one: If it pertains to government business, it typically has to be released.
A couple of months later, the Cuomo administration responded with a terse denial: "Please be advised that the New York State Executive Chamber has conducted a diligent search, but does not possess records responsive to your request."
I appealed, noting that I had in my possession a record responsive to the request – Glaser's email to me – and included it as an attachment.
The administration upheld its original denial, now citing a retention issue.
"[T]he fact that this record is in your possession does not mean that the Chamber failed to produce a responsive record in its possession. Emails and certain other correspondence are not required to be preserved indefinitely," the March letter said.
When I asked about the email this month, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi took a different tack, now disputing that Glaser was emailing me in his official capacity at all and calling the email "informal." "It would be inaccurate to characterize Howard's email as official business – as he noted, your official business was being handled by the FOIL office, not him," Azzopardi said.
But I have no personal relationship with Glaser, and my Freedom of Information Law requests focused only on his activities as a state official. When I recently asked Glaser about his email practices, he said, "I don't use personal email to conduct official business." He would not say how he defines "official business."
In its letter denying my request for emails from Glaser's private account, the administration cited the general retention policy of the State Archives. That policy says that "many email communications are not records and are therefore suitable for immediate destruction" but also that those emails which are records must be preserved.
So how does one determine which emails are "records"?
The governor's office seems to take a particularly narrow view. The governor's policy says that emails are only "records" if they are formal documents like press releases and nominations. Azzopardi, the Cuomo spokesman, said: "Official email is not required to be retained unless it meets the definition of a particular kind of record (eg – contract), consistent with the State Archives policy."
But the Archives, which Cuomo's office itself cited, takes a more expansive view, even as state law gives the governor leeway to determine which records should be kept.
Quoting the official definition of records, Archives spokeswoman Antonia Valentine said an email is a record if it is created "in connection with the transaction of public business (and provides) … evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities (of an agency)."
In practice, Glaser seems to be either eschewing his official email account or promptly deleting messages of substance. When I asked for a 10-day sample of emails from Glaser's official account, I got back little actual communication: 147 pages that are largely filled with newsletters, press releases, and the occasional terse email to set up a phone call.
The use of private accounts can result in even more roadblocks when an official leaves the government. (Glaser is reportedly leaving the administration in June.)
The issue has come up before.
In 2007, executives from the insurance giant AIG filed a public records request with the Office of the Attorney General, seeking, among other things, former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's communications with the press from the period when he had sued the insurance giant. That request was resisted for years by Spitzer's successor as attorney general: Andrew Cuomo.
While Cuomo's office eventually released emails sent from official accounts, it maintained that Spitzer's use of a private account put any of those emails beyond its reach.
"[T]he reality is that the Office of the Attorney General lacks access to this account and possession of whatever e-mails it may contain, thus rendering them beyond the scope of petitioner's FOIL request both practically and legally," Cuomo's office said in a 2009 court filing.
A judge ruled against the attorney general's office, which has appealed. Seven years since the original request, the case is still in the courts and Spitzer's private email account – which he was known to use in his capacity as a state official – has never been searched for records.
Lawyers for Spitzer joined the case this year, arguing in a March filing that because Spitzer is now a former employee and a private citizen, the Freedom of Information Law doesn't apply.
Beyond the governor's office, the state is reportedly moving toward an email system that would automatically delete emails after 90 days except for those marked by users to save.
It's not clear how that process would work or how the state will ensure that records are not destroyed. The Office of Information and Technology Services declined to provide the memo describing the new policy, requiring that I file a formal public records request to get it.
Transparency advocates have criticized 90 days as too short a period because emails may only become relevant months later after a scandal or other event.
A document on the IT office's website references the possibility in a state email system for "recovery of deleted mailbox contents for the length of the retention period" – another capability that would not exist for officials using private accounts.
Across the river in New Jersey, private email accounts are at the center of the Bridgegate scandal.
The infamous "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" email was sent from a Christie aide's Yahoo account to another official's Gmail account. That tactic held off public access to the email for a time.
In December, the Christie administration claimed it did not have records in response to a request from the Record of Bergen, N.J. The emails became public later, only after the officials were subpoenaed by the state Assembly.
If you have gotten emails from the private account of an official in the governor's office or other state or city agencies, email me at justin@propublica.org.
Reposted from ProPublica via its Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license.
Via Jeff Nolan, we learn that the new Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who has a history of misguided attacks on social networks, apparently isn't very good with social media personally. In setting up the new website of the governor, the staff linked to a parody Twitter account as the official Twitter account of the governor. Rather than the real account, the supremely boring and corporate @NYGovCuomo, the website linked to @NYGovernor, which was an amusing parody account. Not surprisingly, whoever is behind @NYGovernor had a lot of fun with it, while people thought it was the official account.
While this may seem like a minor slip up, it's indicative of a larger problem. In the same article, Cuomo's staff apparently told reporters that "Cuomo did not have time to 'twitter on his own' and that the 'best web and social media people around' were now in charge of his personal account." Of course, those "best web and social media people around," apparently couldn't even figure out which account was their own, and have followed it up with perhaps one of the most boring Twitter feeds around. Perhaps Cuomo could take a lesson from Cory Booker, who despite working over 20 hours a day while helping to shovel people out of the recent blizzard, was still able to tweet basic updates.
This one is a bit odd and unexpected. We recently reported on how grandstanding New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had kicked off a new project that would create a database of child porn, and offer up hashes to any website that wanted to use it to block such content from being uploaded. While the general concept seemed good, it wasn't clear how this database was being generated, or if there were safeguards in place to make sure that the list really only included illegal images. Either way, it appears that Cuomo has welcomed with open arms a surprising company who wants to use the database: IsoHunt. Yes, the torrent search engine in the midst of a legal battle for its survival has agreed to use the hash database to prevent access to such images via its system.
Considering that Cuomo thrust himself in the middle of the file sharing debate by supposedly trying (and failing) to broker backroom deals with ISPs to get them to embrace three strikes policies, it seems a bit surprising that he would embrace a site like IsoHunt. That said, it seems that he appears a lot more interested in getting publicity over child porn issues rather than copyright. As for IsoHunt, this also appears to be a pretty calculated move. Part of the site's legal argument is that the judge's demand to filter by keyword is way too broad, and it has argued that a similar hash database would make more sense. So, it's no surprise that IsoHunt wasted little time in letting the judge know about this new deal.
As part of NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's grandstanding against child porn, he's mostly been making silly threats against the wrong parties in ways that don't actually help stop child porn (and could make it worse). However, his latest announcement actually sounds a lot more reasonable. His office is putting together a database of offending photos, and letting social networks compare uploads to the database to try to stop the uploads of known offending photos. I would imagine that it also records who was trying to upload that content. Some care would need to be taken to make sure that this effort really does focus on actually offending images -- one thing that makes such an effort tricky. I also do wonder if it makes sense for a gov't agency to be putting together the database, rather than having it done by the industry itself. On top of that, given Cuomo's earlier grandstanding and his usual methods, you have to expect that it would be long before Cuomo would start threatening any social network that doesn't use his system with some sort of bogus (but very, very public) legal threats. In other words, when the gov't (especially someone like Cuomo) sets up a system like this, how long until he starts acting like it's mandatory, rather than optional?
Now that NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has officially announced his long-expected campaign to be governor of New York (following in his father's footsteps), it looks like he's back to grandstanding by making very public, if very misleading, threats against tech companies. You may recall that this is Andrew Cuomo's basic blueprint for censoring the internet. It starts with him releasing an "open letter" to various online services, claiming that they have child porn on their service, and if they don't clean it up, he's going to sue. Of course, he's never actually sued, because he probably wouldn't win. Child porn is very much illegal and a very, very bad thing, but the responsible parties are those who are actually creating, uploading and sharing the content -- not the larger service providers. A Section 230 defense almost certainly protects most of these sites. But... of course, when you have a high profile politician threatening to sue you for child porn, you cave. It's simply not worth the legal battle. Cuomo would gleefully take a legal battle where he gets headlines about how he's "fighting to protect people from child porn" by taking on big evil tech companies -- even if he would lose eventually. He just needs the headlines to get elected.
And so, here he goes again, threatening the social networking site Tagged.com with a lawsuit for not cleaning up child porn on the site. Apparently, Cuomo's office had people set up accounts and go searching for stuff, which they reported to Tagged, but which the company failed to take down in a timely manner. So he threatens Tagged. But what isn't explained is why he's not doing anything to go after those actually responsible. Rather than blame Tagged, why not work with them to help find out who's responsible for the content and bring them to justice?
Reading between the lines, it looks like Cuomo's way of trying to get around Section 230 with a pretty sneaky tactic. He wants to charge Tagged with false and deceptive advertising. How's that work? Well, Tagged has said that it has safety measures in place to deal with inappropriate content. So Cuomo's office is claiming that because those measures don't work very well, that the company is falsely advertising its safety measures. As a way to get around Section 230 safe harbors, it's pretty sneaky.
The really disturbing part of all of this is that, in his blatant move to grab headlines for "fighting child porn," he's actually making the problem a lot worse. When this stuff is happening on mainstream sites, it's easier to track down and capture those actually responsible. Driving it further underground doesn't stop the activity -- it just makes it that much more difficult for law enforcement to do its actual job. But Cuomo doesn't really care about that. He just wants to get elected. If it makes the child porn problem worse, no big deal, apparently.
