The UCLA Medical Center employee who allegedly pried into the private medical records of the governor’s wife and 60 others in a burgeoning scandal was a low-ranking administrative specialist who told The Times on Tuesday that “it was just me being nosy.”

“Clearly I made a mistake; let’s put it like that,” Lawanda J. Jackson, 49, said when asked in a telephone interview why she improperly looked at the records of so many patients, including California First Lady Maria Shriver and actress Farrah Fawcett.

“I didn’t leak anything or anything like that,” said Jackson, who had worked at the hospital since she was 16. “It wasn’t for money or anything. It was just looking.”

UCLA took steps last May to fire Jackson after determining that she had inappropriately accessed dozens of electronic medical records, UCLA officials say. But the employee resigned in July before she could be fired, spokeswoman Roxanne Moster said. (Previously, the hospital told The Times that it had fired Jackson.)

Neither UCLA nor state health officials have confirmed Jackson’s identity, but The Times was able to verify it.

The breaches have triggered several state investigations and created a major embarrassment for UCLA. The hospital could face serious sanctions from the California Department of Public Health, and Jackson could face criminal charges for allegedly violating a federal privacy law.

Although such charges are uncommon, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have launched a preliminary inquiry into the matter, a source in the U.S. attorney’s office said Tuesday.

“We’re certainly interested and we’re looking into it,” said the source, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

Among the 61 patients whose records Jackson allegedly viewed in 2006 and 2007 were 33 celebrities, politicians and other well-known people, state officials have said.

UCLA’s ability to keep patients’ information private has been at issue since The Times reported last month that the university was trying to fire 13 workers and was disciplining 12 others for peeking into the records of pop star Britney Spears, who was hospitalized in its neuropsychiatric unit in January. (More.)

Britney Spears

As the LA Times article goes on to point out, it may not be as simple as one nosy employee. In an earlier story, the LA Times discussed other celebrity medical privacy breaches at UCLA.

When asked last week if there were other recent high-profile breaches along the lines of the ones involving Spears and Fawcett, UCLA’s chief compliance and privacy officer Carole A. Klove said, “Not to my knowledge.” A UCLA spokeswoman said Sunday that Klove was referring only to current cases.

While looking into the breaches in Fawcett’s case, a state inspector discovered the other violations Friday. The state Department of Public Health said it now has several investigations underway, and it is working with the federal government.

“UCLA assured us — the state — that the initial breach [of Spears’ records] was an anomaly,” Belshé said. “And we have since learned that, simply put, it is not anomalous.”

The latest development at UCLA highlights the irony that as privacy laws have become stronger, the computerization of medical records can increase the risk of unauthorized scrutiny.
Such widespread breaches, however, appear to be rare. Computers allow UCLA and other hospitals to track which employees call up individual records.

In Spears’ case, Feinberg said, UCLA was able to quickly identify trespassers and take almost immediate action against them, demonstrating that the medical center had learned from previous lapses.

Shriver and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were notified Friday evening that her records had been viewed inappropriately, state officials said Sunday.

Shriver, a former contributing anchor to Dateline NBC and niece of President Kennedy, could not be reached Sunday.

In a statement, Schwarzenegger said that “a breach of any patient’s medical records is outrageous” and that he had called on his administration to take action after the first incident — Spears’ case — was reported last month.

“Patients’ medical records should be private — period,” Schwarzenegger said. “No one should have to worry that an unauthorized person is reviewing their private medical records.” (More.)

California Governor Arnold-Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver

The problem is not lack of laws, but lack of enforcement.

When Congress passed a federal medical privacy law more than a decade ago, it was hailed as a new level of protection for patients nationwide. But even though the government has received about 34,000 complaints of privacy violations since it officially began enforcing the law five years ago, only a handful of defendants have been criminally prosecuted.

The half a dozen or so cases mainly involved clerical workers who pilfered patient information, using it to open credit card accounts or selling it to crooks who tried to bilk Medicare and the Internal Revenue Service.

Moreover, although the federal Health and Human Services Department has the authority to levy civil fines on medical service providers for privacy violations, it has yet to do so.

The recent revelation of snooping by UCLA Medical Center employees into the files of Britney Spears, Farrah Fawcett, California first lady Maria Shriver and dozens of other patients, however, may force a second look at the federal law, widely known as HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

Critics say the government’s approach — which focuses on getting providers to correct violations — may be too lenient, particularly at a time when medical records are increasingly being shifted from file folders to computers. In addition, a Justice Department legal opinion has stated that the law applies primarily to organizations — hospitals, health insurance plans and doctors’ offices — and only secondarily to individuals such as the low-level clerks most often implicated in information theft.

“If you are punishing the [organization] but not the person who actually did the dirty deed, then we are missing the boat,” said Doreen Z. McQuarrie, a Houston lawyer who specializes in healthcare issues and has studied the federal law.

The law was supposed to have had its greatest impact behind the scenes, ushering in a new era of sensitivity to patient privacy in the healthcare industry. But skeptics say that has not been the case.

“What the rules were supposed to do was regulate one of the most common conversations we have: ‘How are you?’ ” said Dennis Melamed, editor of the Health Information Privacy/Security Alert, which tracks the law and its enforcement. “They did it with an incomplete set of instructions, and when you are talking about an industry as huge as healthcare, that gets to be pretty difficult.” (More.)

In the final analysis, something needs to be done besides officials making the usual apologetic, hand wringing statements after the fact. To learn more about U.S. medical privacy laws and what you can do to protect yourself, see the following resources.

• EPIC Medical Privacy Resource Page
• Office for Civil Rights - HIPAA

Months before UCLA Medical Center caught staffers snooping in the medical records of pop star Britney Spears, ’70s TV icon Farrah Fawcett learned that a hospital employee had surreptitiously gone through records of her cancer treatments there, documents and interviews show.

Fawcett’s lawyers said they are concerned that the information may have been subsequently leaked or sold to tabloids, including the National Enquirer.

Shortly after UCLA doctors told Fawcett that her cancer had returned — and before she had told her son and closest friends — the Enquirer posted the news on its website. Indeed, alarming headlines regularly cropped up in the Enquirer and its sister publication, the Globe, within days of Fawcett’s treatments at UCLA.

UCLA terminated the employee who inappropriately reviewed Fawcett’s records, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

This was the second time that Fawcett’s privacy had been breached at UCLA. In a 2006 letter, one of her physicians, Gary Gitnick, informed Fawcett that a former hospital contractor had listed her name on his blog, “suggesting you are a patient and/or charitable donor of mine and UCLA.”

As Fawcett, now 61, was being treated at UCLA, officials had been monitoring access to some records to guard against a privacy breach — and found none, said Carole A. Klove, chief compliance and privacy officer for UCLA’s health system.

But after the Enquirer ran its exclusive story, “Farrah’s Cancer Is Back!,” last May, Fawcett complained to another of her doctors, Eric Esrailian, and UCLA launched an investigation and looked at additional records systems. The hospital then discovered “multiple reviews” of her records by a worker who was not involved in Fawcett’s treatment, Klove said.

Klove said the hospital found no evidence that the worker had either disclosed or sold the information she acquired. Klove would not identify the worker involved, citing privacy rules.

[…]

Fawcett, who appeared in the 1970s television series “Charlie’s Angels,” the TV movie “The Burning Bed” and a bestselling swimsuit poster, declined to comment.

Associates say the latest breach has left her shaken. She plans to meet with Dr. David Feinberg, chief executive of the UCLA Hospital System, but the meeting has been postponed several times and is being rescheduled.

“She’s been invaded — and these are the people who she entrusted her life to,” said Craig J. Nevius, who is producing the upcoming documentary “A Wing and a Prayer,” which chronicles Fawcett’s battle with anal cancer and her efforts to protect her privacy.

One of Fawcett’s lawyers, Kim Swartz, said his client was reluctant to sue over the leaked information, but added, “This is such an ugly situation.

“This has been very hard for her,” Swartz said. “Not knowing who has her personal information has taken an incredible toll on her.” (More.)

Farrah Fawcett publicly revealed her battle with cancer in 2006. This case further underscores the need and importance to guard everyone’s medical privacy.

Imagine an Oscars ceremony where the biggest stars go home empty-handed. That’s what happened today at YouTube’s second annual video awards, as Obama Girl, the Don’t Tase Me, Bro student, and other stars of viral video got nominated but lost to unlikely newcomers.

In the politics category Amber Lee Ettinger, aka Obama Girl — who became a household name thanks to her sexy clip declaring “I’ve got a crush” on the presidential candidate — lost to a far grittier video supporting Middle East peace talks, put together by global activist group Avaaz.org.

The eyewitness category, devoted to user videos of live events, pitted the famous plea of a college student before police subdued him with a Taser against gripping footage of protesting monks in Burma and wildfires in California.

But the winner was Battle at Kruger, a vivid clip of lions and buffalo fighting to the death shot by a holidaymaker on safari in South Africa.

You can watch all of the 2007 YouTube Award nominees and winners here.

Along with the Chris Crocker “Leave Britney Alone!” privacy advocacy…..

…we appreciated the worldwide impact of the Gainesville Sun’s video of Andrew Meyer, “Don’t Tase Me Bro,” in bringing attention to the cavalier and irresponsible user of Tasers which we have discussed earlier.

Two more of our favorites, both in the Politics category, did not win. We appreciated the lessons imparted in the Mike Huckabee/Chuck Norris video, “HuckChuckFacts” …..



….and “Congressman Ron Paul Visits My Dorm Room”

The State Department said on Friday that it was investigating several incidents in which the passport files of all three presidential contenders were improperly accessed by employees.

The breaches involved electronic files that contained personal information about Senators Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain. A State Department spokesman declined to say what was in those files, but he said they were likely to contain biographical information and passport applications.

Mr. Obama’s passport file was breached on three separate occasions earlier this year and as recently as last week, by three employees working for independent contractors who did not have authorization to access the information. The breaches occurred on Jan. 9, Feb. 21, and March 14, according to The Associated Press.

The State Department’s computer system had flagged each incident, but senior department officials were not informed until they looked into the matter, after receiving inquiries from a reporter on Thursday, a department spokesman said. “That information didn’t rise up to senior management levels,” the spokesman, Sean McCormack, said at a Friday news conference. “That should have happened.”

Two of the employees were fired, Mr. McCormack said. The Associated Press reported that they had worked for Stanley, Inc., a company that provides administrative support and services to government groups and is based in Arlington, Va. Stanley signed a five-year, $570 million contract with the State Department earlier this week to work on the department’s passport database.

The third employee also accessed Mr. McCain’s file, but was only reprimanded and remains employed.

More updates here and here. Watch several news reports here.

More coverage at Hot Air. As the Washington Post reports,

Two State Department employees were fired and a third has been disciplined for improperly accessing Sen. Barack Obama’s passport file, the State Department announced last night.

Senior department officials said they learned of the incidents only when a reporter made an inquiry yesterday afternoon. They said an initial investigation indicated that the employees — all of whom worked on contract — were motivated by “imprudent curiosity.”

Bill Burton, spokesman for Obama’s presidential campaign, called the incidents “an outrageous breach of security and privacy.” He said this is “a serious matter that merits a complete investigation,” adding that the campaign will “demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach.”

Undersecretary of State Patrick F. Kennedy, in a hastily arranged conference call with reporters, said he asked the State Department inspector general to open an inquiry into the matter and acknowledged that it might need to be expanded.

He also said he would brief Obama, who is locked in a tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, today on the matter.

Kennedy said that he did not know yet whether any laws were broken or whether the employees shared the information with others. He said that the incidents, which occurred at three offices, on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14, should have been “passed up the line” much sooner and that officials were seeking to determine why they had not been disclosed earlier.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was briefed yesterday afternoon, requested a “full investigation,” department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state’s new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs.

In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.

In the course of several interviews in the past few days, Paterson said he maintained a relationship for two or three years with “a woman other than my wife,” beginning in 1999.

As part of that relationship, Paterson said, he and the other woman sometimes stayed at an upper West Side hotel — the Days Inn at Broadway and W. 94th St.

He said members of his Albany legislative staff often used the same hotel when they visit the city.

“This was a marriage that appeared to be going sour at one point,” Paterson conceded in his first interview Saturday. “But I went to counseling and we decided we wanted to make it work. Michelle is well aware of what went on.”

The article and the confession continue. More coverage on the confession at the New York Post.


UPDATE. Here is the video of the press conference in which David A. Paterson and his wife, Michelle Paterson confess their affairs.

UCLA Medical Center is taking steps to fire at least 13 employees and has suspended at least six others for snooping in the confidential medical records of pop star Britney Spears during her recent hospitalization in its psychiatric unit, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.

In addition, six physicians face discipline for peeking at her computerized records, the person said.

Questioned about the breaches, officials acknowledged that it was not the first time UCLA had disciplined workers for looking at Spears’ records. Several were caught prying into records after Spears gave birth to her first son, Sean Preston, in September 2005 at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, officials said. Some were fired.

“It’s not only surprising, it’s very frustrating and it’s very disappointing,” said Jeri Simpson, the Santa Monica hospital’s director of human resources, who handled the discipline in the first instance.

“I feel like we do everything that we possibly can to ensure the privacy of our patients and I know we feel horrible that it happened again.”

Simpson said UCLA treats celebrities “all the time and you never hear about this.”

“I don’t know what it is about this particular person, I don’t know what it is about her,” she added, referring to Spears.

Hoping to head off such problems, UCLA officials sent a memo the morning Spears was hospitalized Jan. 31, reminding employees that they were not allowed to peruse records unless directly caring for a patient. Spears, 26, was not specifically mentioned.

“Each member of our workforce, which includes our physicians, faculty, employees, volunteers and students, is responsible to ensure that medical information is only accessed as required for treatment, for facilitating payment of a claim or for supporting our healthcare operations,” chief compliance and privacy officer Carole A. Klove wrote in an e-mail to all employees.

“Please remember that any unauthorized access by a workforce member will be subject to disciplinary action, which could include termination.”

Such prying is also considered a violation of state and federal laws governing medical privacy. The laws allow for fines of up to $250,000, although such penalties are uncommon. Under different laws, separate fines are allowed if patients are receiving treatment for mental illness or substance abuse.

The state Department of Public Health said late Friday that it had opened an investigation of the hospital.

The LA Times chronicles several other cases of breeches of celebrity medical privacy.

Understandably the involuntarily famous may wish to make it all go away. In our digital era is that possible?

Andy Greenberg of Forbes shares some valuable resources to help you make your digital presence vanish in a hurry, which everyone should bookmark, just in case….

Lindsey Thomas’ “Top 10 Reasons To Value Your Privacy,” is a sobering recap of stories of people whose digital presence got them in trouble.

Barack Obama’s controversial pastor and the church he’s served for 36 years may be in hot water over statements he has made from the pulpit in support of the Illinois senator’s run for the White House.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. preaches that he follows the righteous path, but when it comes to the federal tax law, his Trinity United Church of Christ may have crossed the line.

Although Wright delivered what was billed as his final sermon last month on his path to retirement, prior to his departure he delivered commentary from the pulpit now being scrutinized in which he praised Obama.

“There is a man here who can take this country in a new direction,” Wright said during his Jan. 13 sermon, according to recordings obtained by FOX News.

It was not the first time Wright appeared to endorse Obama, who was baptized at Trinity United, has been an active member of the church for two decades and receives spiritual mentorship from Wright.

The title of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” was taken from a sermon by Wright.

During a Christmas sermon, Wright tried to compare Obama’s upbringing to Jesus at the hands of the Romans.

“Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” Wright said. “Hillary would never know that.

“Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person.”

“I’m still In Bible country,” is what Jeremiah Wright said as he spoke of a “a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” and began to describe Christ as a black man. Watch the video excerpt of the controversial sermon.

Privacy Maven can’t help but note the irony of Jeremiah Wright angrily shouting that Jesus taught him to “love the hell out of my enemies.” It is a bit earthier than the King James English we are more accustomed to, “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and [to] the evil.” (Luke 6:35).

In the final analysis, actions really do speak louder than words. Jesus Christ healed the servant of a Roman centurion, and thus seemed to be able to cope with living under the rule of “rich white people.” Jeremiah Wright would do well to explore that part of “Bible country.”

Last year, Jeremiah Wright appeared on Hannity & Colmes, to explain his views.

ABC News has also examined Jeremiah Wright’s controversial theology.

Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor says blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side, has a long history of what even Obama’s campaign aides concede is “inflammatory rhetoric,” including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own “terrorism.”

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” He said Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with,” telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

The article continues.

Jeremiah Wright’s controversial theology aside, infusing his sermons with politics is jeopardizing the church’s tax exempt status, a serious matter indeed. From a WSJ article,

Mr. Wright, who will be ending his 36-year tenure as the church’s senior pastor in June, has previously been criticized for comments deriding President George Bush and lauding Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Now Mr. Wright’s and his successor’s repeated enthusiastic promotion of their famous parishioner may be running afoul of federal tax law, which says churches can endanger their tax-exempt status by endorsing or opposing candidates for public office.

Sen. Obama’s campaign issued a statement saying that he has repeatedly stressed that personal attacks “have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they’re offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church.” The statement also said he “does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Senator Obama deeply disagrees.” Mr. Wright declined to comment.

Trinity’s national parent, the United Church of Christ, recently disclosed that it’s being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service for a speech Sen. Obama gave to 10,000 people at a church conference in June in Hartford, Conn., in which he mentioned his candidacy and parts of his platform, namely health-care reform.

Scholars and attorneys say that a growing number of congregations are delving into issue advocacy and partisan politics, a trend dating back to the 1980s, when the religious right enlisted churches to fight abortion. An increasing number of complaints to the IRS over church politicking have triggered agency probes into both liberal and conservative religious groups. A Baptist church in California has acknowledged it’s under IRS scrutiny after a watchdog group complained that the church backed Republican Mike Huckabee in his recently ended bid for the White House.

“There have never been more audits than in the last three or four years” involving churches, says Marcus Owens, an attorney who represents some congregations and is a former director of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division. But while the agency has issued dozens of warning letters aimed at halting advocacy for political candidates, it has only twice revoked a church’s tax-exempt status since the tax law was amended in 1954, a spokeswoman said.

According to Fox News,

In a certified letter, Marsha Ramirez, IRS director, EO Examinations, wrote:

“Our concerns are based on articles posted on several Web sites including the church’s which state the United States Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama addressed nearly 10,000 church members gathered at the United Church of Christ’s biennial General Synod at the Hartford Civic Center, on June 23, 2007. In addition, 40 Obama volunteers staffed campaign tables outside the center to promote his campaign.”

The church and the Obama campaign have denied that any inappropriate political advocacy occurred during this speech.

“I am a fucking steamroller and I’ll roll over you or anybody else,” the Democratic governor told Republican Assemblyman James Tedisco in a private conversation last week, the New York Post reported on Wednesday.

“I’ve done more in three weeks than any governor has done in the history of the state,” Spitzer also said, the Post reported.

Asked at a news conference if the comments were inappropriately boastful, Spitzer replied tersely, “No. Next question.”

Former New York governors include DeWitt Clinton, who built the Erie Canal in the 1820s, connecting New York to the interior of the United States and cementing New York City’s position as a powerhouse of international trade.

Four former governors went on to become president including Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose social welfare programs for the state provided a model for the New Deal when he later entered the White House.

“Most of those things take longer. At that rate we should be in heaven in four weeks, but he (Spitzer) might not get in for lack of modesty,” said former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who added that he did not consider the matter serious and did not expect it to hurt Spitzer politically.

Eliot Spitzer’s documented legacy of rooting out corruption on Wall Street had already garnered comparisons to Eliot Ness. The Lack of modesty, was not new and not surprising, but this revelation of Spitzer’s lack of judgment is quite startling.

Last summer, employees at a large New York bank detected something suspicious: Gov. Eliot Spitzer was moving around thousands of dollars in what they thought was an effort to conceal the fact that the money was his own, federal officials said on Tuesday.

They said the apparent sleight of hand kept the transactions small and removed his name from deposits. The governor’s actions prompted the bank to file alerts known as Suspicious Activity Reports with the Treasury Department, which were reviewed by I.R.S. agents on Long Island, the federal officials said.

A few months later, another New York bank sent its own reports of suspicious activity to the Treasury. They showed that Mr. Spitzer and others, including people overseas, collectively deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars into an account of a company called QAT International Inc., whose business involved foreign accounts and shell companies and appeared to be vaguely related to pornography Web sites.

It was the bank reports, required under federal law, that apparently tripped up Mr. Spitzer, setting in motion the federal investigation that identified him as a client of a high-end prostitution ring.

The federal officials said the rules that ensnared Mr. Spitzer apply to every bank customer, but they acknowledged that questionable activity involving a public official, particularly a prominent figure like the governor of New York, was likely to receive quicker and more thorough review.

Financial institutions have long been required to file reports on questionable transactions, but since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks banks have been under heavier pressure from federal regulators to report any kind of questionable activity — even if, for example, a customer appears with cash that gives off a chemical-like odor.

As a result, the number of such reports has quadrupled, to more than one million in 2006 from not quite 205,000 in 2001, according to the federal government. When he was New York State’s attorney general, Mr. Spitzer himself used the reports to make his cases.

The federal officials sought to emphasize that Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat, had not been singled out by the Republican administration, although allegations of political interference dogged the Justice Department during the tenure of the former attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, who left office last year after lawmakers in both parties called for his removal. The Spitzer investigation began in July and Mr. Gonzales resigned in August last year; it is not clear whether he knew about it.

Michael B. Mukasey, Mr. Gonzales’s successor, was aware of the prostitution case involving Mr. Spitzer but did not specifically authorize the filing of charges, the federal officials said. Mr. Mukasey has pledged to manage the department’s criminal investigations in a manner free from partisan political interference.

The article continues.

As AppScout points out,

Spitzer’s downfall was aided greatly by the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a database of suspicious activity reports (SARs) that banks are required to file with the federal agency, according to ZDNet.

Though the network has been around for some time, it got a closer look after 9/11. And in October 2007, the FBI and the IRS’ criminal investigative division opened an investigation into prostitution and money-laundering organizations. That investigation reportedly started with a SAR on Spitzer’s activity. Whoopsies.

The governor reportedly always kept his transactions below $10,000 - the threshold for federal reporting rules. But that type of activity actually helped catch Spitzer - 150 transactions between $7,000 and $9,000, for example, looks a tad more suspicious than one large transfer.

Spitzer “would have never been caught (he shunned wire transfers) if the operation wasn’t under investigation and his transactions weren’t being monitored,” ZDNet said.

The story has unfolded rapidly in stunning documentation, culminating with Eliot Spitzer’s resignation, which he announced at a press conference earlier today.

The emotional pain such revelation has brought to his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, is obvious. But as Nina Bernstein points out, those who applauded his efforts to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of prostitution rings feel betrayed as well.

As New York’s attorney general, Eliot Spitzer had broken up prostitution rings before, but this 2004 case took on a special urgency for him. Prosecuting an international sex tourism business based in Queens, he listened to the entreaties of women’s advocates long frustrated by state laws that fell short of dealing with a sex trade expanding rapidly across borders.

And with his typical zeal, he embraced their push for new legislation, including a novel idea at its heart: Go after the men who seek out prostitutes.

It was a question of supply and demand, they all agreed. And one effective way to suppress the demand was to raise the penalties for patronizing a prostitute. In his first months as governor last year, Mr. Spitzer signed the bill into law.

Now the human rights groups, which credit him with what they call the toughest and most comprehensive anti-sex-trade law in the nation, are in shock. Mr. Spitzer stands accused of being one of the very men his law was designed to catch and punish.

“It leaves those of us who worked with his office absolutely feeling betrayed,” said Dorchen Leidholdt, director of Sanctuary for Families Legal Services, one of the leaders of the coalition that drafted the legislation.

The law, which went into effect Nov. 1, mainly deals with redefining and prosecuting forms of human trafficking, which Governor Spitzer called “modern-day slavery.” It offers help to the women who are victims of the practice, rather than treating them as participants in crime.

The article continues.

As Wired Threat Level points out, prostitution in the Web 2.0 world holds many dangers for those who hope to preserve privacy.

With New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer allegedly caught nibbling the fruits of a high-class, tech-savvy prostitution ring, it’s clearer than ever the world’s oldest profession is doing a fine job of harnessing the latest technology.

The red light site at the center of the Spitzer scandal is EmperorsClubVIP.com. Now offline, it’s described in FBI documents (.pdf) as a professional online storefront offering conveniences like e-mail confirmation of appointments, and linking clients and prostitutes across the United States and Europe.

[…]

Internet-based prostitution businesses are easy to find online. They range in size from sole-proprietorships posting on Craigslist to large organized rings allegedly like the Emperors Club. In 2006, federal prosecutors took down a Manhattan-based e-escort service operating as “New York Elites” and “Exotica 2000″ that had raked in $13.5 million in revenues in four years.

The industry is robust enough to have its own specialized support sector. The Emperors Club web site was crafted by an all-female web design firm with a Texas phone number called Working Girl Web Designs, which also offers hosting. Working Girl has an impressive resume, crafting the websites for businesses with names like companionescorts.com, YourLittleSecretNJ and VHotGirl.com. For operators in a hurry to get started, the firm offers six turn-key layouts, with templates like the spare “Noir Chic” design and the lush “Parisian.”

The Emperors Club VIP Web site, although offline, still exists in perpetuity on Archive.org.

Images like these, of pain and betrayal, will linger as well.