Andrew Cuomo’s crusade against child porn certainly sounded like a noble cause. Decent people abhor child porn. The problem is he’s taken a ridiculous approach. He didn’t have the law on the side, so the Attorney General turned to blackmail and threatened to embarrass ISP’s into censorship. The ISP’s signed on. It’s no surprise, who wants to get sued as a “supporter” of child porn. So in order to cut off access ISP’s shut off access to all UseNet groups. UseNet isn’t widely used these days so even though there are plenty of non-porn use for it there wasn’t a huge outcry (one study says 99.9997% of UseNet content was legitimate).

Buy even if the blocking had been selective it’s not a good plan. They’ll just drive the traffic underground making it harder to actually stop these people. Note that the ISP’s are blocking access, not taking down or reporting the sites. No criminals are prosecuted by Mr. Cuomo or anyone else and no porn is actually removed.

AG Andrew Cuomo doesn’t have to expend any effort actually trying to track down these criminals, instead he gets to grab some headlines while not doing anything to actually fix the problem. As the latest TechDirt article points out:

This is the lowest of the low of political tricks, and it would simply be lying. An ISP may be quite committed to stomping out child porn, and could recognize that Cuomo’s tactics actually make the problem worse, by not targeting the actual pornographers — and Cuomo would still publicly splash their names across the news as not wanting to stop child porn.

Now he’s expanded his insanity. He’s promoting deep packet Inspection to have your ISP scan everything you do on the Internet. Even worse, according to TechDirt, the company he’s promoting has a shady past involving adware. (Cuomo claims he doesn’t endorse the product merely sees it a useful tool.)

Child porn is such a hot button issue that it can be used by the company to sell their product and gain acceptance. Because some consider the technology to be wiretapping and illegal they may also be able to use the issue to get the laws changed or clarified in their favor. And it’s obviously being used by Cuomo for political gain.

Some things to consider:

1. Do you want a New York politician deciding what you can do on the internet? Remember, he’s circumventing the law and unilaterally deciding his way is the best way.
2. Who decides what child porn is? If you upload your pictures of your baby to a site that’s limited to friends and family is it child porn? With deep packet inspection the fact that the destination is limited is irrelevant. Sure, it may be clear to the cops who visit you, but they did visit and you have the potential stigma attached.
3. Do you want your ISP or a third party company (even one without dubious roots) reading all your internet traffic? Remember, they look at everything when looking for one thing.
4. Then there’s the slippery slope. One thing seems certain, when given the ability to access data, companies and governments will find a way to use it.

And to you New Yorkers, when Mr. Cuomo comes up for election again remember he put political ambition above results, hard work, and common sense. The rest of us need to remember it when his ambitions bring him to pursue national office.