Nassau County, N. Three had come all the way from the San Francisco Bay area, one from Miami. Two lived less than 60 miles away, in Newark and Elizabeth, N. All eight were arrested on prostitution charges here, snared in a new sting operation by the Nassau County police that focuses on Craigslist. Nassau County has made more than 70 arrests since it began focusing on Craigslist last year, one of numerous crackdowns by vice squads from Hawaii to New Hampshire that have lately been monitoring the Web site closely, sometimes placing decoy ads to catch would-be customers.
Augmenting traditional surveillance of street walkers, massage parlors, brothels and escort services, investigators are now hunching over computer screens to scroll through provocative cyber-ads in search of solicitors. In July raids, the sheriff of Cook County, Ill. In Seattle, a covert police ad on Craigslist in November resulted in the arrests of 71 men, including a bank officer, a construction worker and a surgeon.
And in Jacksonville, Fla. Hartley, the assistant chief sheriff there. Sex and the Internet have been intertwined almost since the first Web site, but the authorities say that prostitution is flourishing online as never before. And while prostitutes also advertise on other sites, the police here and across the country say Craigslist is by far the favorite. On one recent day, for example, some 9, listings were added to the site's "Erotic Services" category in the New York region alone: Most offered massage and escorts, often hinting at more.
A civil liberties issue Law enforcement officials have accused Craigslist of enabling prostitution. But the company's president, Jim Buckmaster, said its member staff cannot patrol the multitude of constantly changing listings--some 20 million per month--and counts on viewers to flag objectionable ads, which are promptly removed. Asked whether the company supported the police's placing decoy ads on Craigslist , Buckmaster said: "We don't comment on the specifics" of law enforcement.
Craig Newmark, the site's founder and chairman , deferred all questions to Buckmaster. The police have also occasionally turned to Craigslist to trace stolen goods offered for sale or make drug arrests. In June, in Nassau, spotting code words like "snow" or "skiing" to refer to cocaine, they set up a sting with an undercover officer to arrest a man who advertised cocaine for sex. Experts say that under the federal Communications Decency Act of , the ads are legal and Web site owners are exempt from responsibility for content posted by users.
