Craigslist is once again the target of a legal inquisition, with a group of 39 state attorneys general asking for answers about the company's efforts to keep illicit ads for prostitution and other crimes out of its listings.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is leading the charge, reprising a role he played in negotiating with Craigslist in 2008 to secure a set of changes to the way the site monitors for unlawful content.
Blumenthal is now alleging that Craigslist has failed to live up to its promises, citing reported estimates pegging Craigslist's annual revenue from adult ads at more than $36 million.
To be sure, not all the ads in Craigslist's "Casual Encounters" section are soliciting illegal activity, but Blumenthal said the "best evidence" indicates that thousands of illicit postings remain on the site, "slickly disguised with code words."
He has filed a subpoena seeking a litany of documents relating to Craigslist's monitoring and telephone verification activities and its communications with law enforcement authorities.
"The Craigslist brothel business seems booming," Blumenthal said in a statement. "We are asking Craigslist for specific answers about steps to screen and stop sex-for-money offers -- and whether the company is actually profiting from prostitution ads that it promised the states and public that it would try to block."
In November 2008, Craigslist and a coalition of state attorneys general, led by Blumenthal, made a joint announcement describing a new manual monitoring process in which employees of the company would review the listings to remove objectionable or unlawful content. Craigslist also said it had begun conducting telephone verifications and charging a fee for "Erotic Services" listings, a section Craigslist later dropped after another confrontation with state attorneys general -- with Blumenthal again running point -- involving the high-profile murder of a masseuse who had posted an ad on the site.
Those changes were intended to rid the site not only of prostitution, but also to crack down on human trafficking and other crimes of exploitation.
Now the attorney general, who is currently seeking a seat in the U.S. Senate, is claiming that Craigslist has reneged on its commitments to police the site, invoking the familiar inflammatory rhetoric ("online red light district") that has accompanied previous campaigns that law enforcement authorities have waged against the site.
Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster shot back in a blog post, accusing Blumenthal of political grandstanding as he fights through a primary contest that is closer than most observers had expected.
"True to form, Connecticut AG Blumenthal is once again indulging in self-serving publicity at the expense of the truth and his constituents," Buckmaster said.
"As AG Blumenthal knows full well, Craigslist has gone beyond fulfilling its legal obligations, far beyond classifieds industry norms, has more than lived up to any promises it made, and, working together with its partners, is in fact a leader in the fight against human trafficking and exploitation."
Kenneth Corbin is an associate editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.
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