NY- New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo unleashed two new landmark weapons last week in Albany to continue his effort to thwart perverts’ use of the Internet and to fight fraud in the home healthcare industry.

In the anti-pervert move, Cuomo announced agreements with Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint, the three largest Internet service providers, to block access to a major source of child pornography on the Web, Newsgroups, a major supplier of these illegal images, and will also purge their servers of child porn Web sites.

Explaining the perv/Internet problem, Cuomo stated, “The pervasiveness of child pornography on the Internet is horrific and it needs to be stopped. We are attacking this problem by working with Internet Service Providers (ISP) to ensure they do not play host to this immoral business.”

He commended the three companies for stepping up to embrace “a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry”.

An undercover investigation by the Attorney General’s office uncovered the major source of online child porn, “Newsgroups”, an online service not affiliated with Web sites. Newsgroups act as online public bulletin boards where users can upload and download files. Users access Newsgroups through their Internet Service Providers.

“As a part of the agreements,” Cuomo said, “Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint will for the first time completely block access to all child porn Newsgroups.”

Also under the new agreements, the three firms will secure more than $1 million to combat the spread of child porn.

In all, the Attorney General’s probe uncovered 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. Verizon, Time Warner and Sprint provided their subscribers with access to many of these Newsgroups, Cuomo pointed out.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said through its executive officer, Ernie Allen, that this was “a major step forward in the fight against child pornography” and applauded Cuomo for bringing it about.

Protecting children from online predators has been a priority for Cuomo. In May 2007, he worked with law enforcement authorities to investigate sex offenders who had been found on MySpace, a popular social networking site. In October 2007, Cuomo and the popular online community Facebook announced a new model to enforce safeguards aimed at protecting its network members, especially children and adolescents, from sexual predators, obscene content, and harassment.

In January 2008, Cuomo sponsored the nation’s most comprehensive legislation to dramatically enhance protections for New Yorkers, especially children, from sexual predators on the Internet. The comprehensive Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP), was passed unanimously by the state Assembly and senate, and was signed into law by Governor David Paterson in May 2008. The legislation restricts certain sex offenders’ use of the Internet and updates Megan’s Law for the Internet age.

Turning to the home healthcare industry, Cuomo was joined by state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in announcing first-of-its-kind legislation to fight fraud in the home healthcare industry and to provide vital information to help protect dependent New Yorkers.

The latter group, considered the most vulnerable, would get protection with the creation of a publicly accessible registry of all certified home health and personal care aides in New York state. The central registry would include background information and sworn proof of proper training.

Cuomo said his office’s ongoing investigation of the home healthcare industry had uncovered widespread fraud and corruption throughout the state, “endangering New York’s most vulnerable population and costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars”.

“A publicly accessible registry with background information on aides is a critical first step in improving government oversight and ending the fraud in this rapidly growing industry,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo said the new legislation, called the New York Certified Aide Registry and Employment Search Act, or NY-CARES, would create an Internet-based registry of home health and personal care aides that would include health care employment history, results of criminal background checks for aides employed through agencies and certifications- from senior school officials that the aides completed the required training- signed under penalty of perjury.

Bruno said the new registry is a critical step to providing peace of mind to patients and their families.

Silver noted home healthcare workers play a much-needed roll in caring for the elderly, so it is absolutely essential that they are properly vetted before they are sent into people’s homes to care for the elderly.

Cuomo said his investigation leading up to the introduction of the NY-CARES legislation had uncovered thousands of fraudulent home health aide certifications and led to the convictions of dozens of uncertified aides, registered nurses and managers of schools that provided false certifications. In many cases, aides were found to be billing for care they had not provided, he said.