Hunting pervs on the Internet

On the very same day the war on child sex predators claimed a major victory, a former Far Rockaway man was arrested for allegedly engaging in sexually explicit electronic communications with three young girls - all of whom are between 9 and 14 years old.
AT&T, the nation’s largest Internet Service Provider (ISP), and America On Line (AOL), the nation’s third largest, have both agreed to purge their servers of child porn web sites, according to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. They will also eliminate access to child porn Newsgroups, a major supplier of illegal images.
The ISPs follow in the footsteps of three other companies: Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner Cable.
The agreement was a result of an investigation in which Cuomo’s office reviewed millions of pictures over several months, uncovering 88 different Newsgroups that contained a total of 11,390 sexually lewd photos featuring prepubescent children, and in some cases photos of children being raped and sexual activity involving animals.
As part of the undercover investigation, the Attorney General’s office developed a new system for identifying online content that contains child pornography. Every online picture has a unique Hash Value that, once identified and collected, can be used to digitally match the same image anywhere else it is distributed. By building a library of the Hash Values for images identified as being child pornography, the investigators were able to filter through tens of thousands of online files at a time, speedily identifying which ISPs were providing access to child pornography images.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) regularly reviews and updates its registry of these illegal sites to ensure the list reflects the current presence of such web sites on the Internet.
“This is another tremendous step forward in ridding the Internet of child pornography,” said NCMEC Chief Executive Officer Ernie Allen.
Just hours after Cuomo’s announcement, Philip Hawthorne, 27, presently of Connecticut, but formerly of Far Rockaway, was charged with three counts of use of a child in a sexual performance, 14 counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child and three counts of endangering the welfare of a child. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
According to the charges, Hawthorne began communicating with a 13-year-old Massachusetts girl in November 2007 on an Internet social networking site by using the screen name “ballin4lyfe1237@aim.com” and pretending to be a 16-year-old Boston teenager named Keith.
It is alleged that during the course of their conversations, the girl provided “Keith” with personal information - such as where she resided and went to school, and the names of her parents - and, in turn, Hawthorne convinced the girl to send him naked pictures of herself, as well as a video of herself and her nine-year-old sister in which they were both naked and exhibiting their genital and anal areas.
Then, beginning in February of this year, Hawthorne allegedly communicated with a 14-year-old Illinois girl by assuming the persona of “Keith Singleton,” a 16-year-old boy who played on the football team of a nearby high school. It is alleged that they communicated on a number of social networking sites - including BuddyPic, TeenSpot and MySpace - and by instant messaging (IM).
During their IM conversations, Hawthorne allegedly was able to get her to relate personal information about herself and her family and convince her that he wanted a relationship with her but that she would have to take nude pictures of herself and send them to him, which she did. Hawthorne then allegedly requested that she make a video of herself taking off her clothes and show her genital area. After she had made the video but refused to send it to the defendant, Hawthorne allegedly began threatening her by telling her that if she did not send the video he would send the other sexually explicit pictures to her school and her parents, post them online and that she would be arrested.
On July 2, a court-authorized search warrant was executed at 224 Beach 97th Street - Hawthorne’s last known address and the residence of his mother. During questioning, she allegedly admitted that her son had moved out - taking his computer and external storage media with him - in May 2008 after being visited by FBI agents.
“There is a national connection to this case which frighteningly shows the far reach of the Internet and the ease in which sexual predators can gain access to young children,” said District Attorney Richard A. Brown. “This case should serve as a clear and unmistakable warning that law enforcement is prepared to apprehend and prosecute sexual predators who betray and defile youngsters and that parents need to closely monitor their children’s Internet access and activities.”