Executives from the site said people who use the site to commit crimes will be caught. Markoff, a med school student from Boston University, is accused in connection with the slaying of aspiring model and masseuse Julissa Brisman, 26, who was found shot dead in a posh Boston hotel room last week. He's also been accused of an attack on a woman at the Westin Hotel in Boston, and another woman in Warwick, R.
Blumenthal sent Craigslist a letter asking the site to take immediate action to combat persistent prostitution and pornography. Buckmaster said Wednesday that people who try to use the popular Internet advertising site to commit crimes are going to get caught. So don't use Craigslist for crime unless you want to go to jail. Under the agreement announced last November, Craigslist requires that people who post erotic services ads provide a working phone number and pay a fee with a valid credit card.
The site agreed to provide the resulting information in response to law enforcement subpoenas, and to forward all erotic services ad proceeds to charitable purposes. Buckmaster said the attention Craigslist has received because of crimes linked to it is partly a function of how heavily the site is used and the relative newness of the Internet.
Compared to human society as a whole the risks of Craigslist are low, but they're not zero," he said. Buckmaster declined to say much about how Craigslist is cooperating with authorities investigating the Boston case but said, "We make ourselves percent available to them and provide them with any and all information we have that they may request. Law enforcement officials generally ask that Craigslist not comment on what it's doing in specific cases, he said.
Buckmaster defended Craigslist's inclusion of the "erotic services" classification on its sites. He said users requested it so those ads would be posted there, where users can avoid them, instead of being scattered among other ad categories. He also insisted that illegal activity is "absolutely not welcome there. He said Craigslist will donate percent of its net revenues from those ads to charities, under an agreement announced last November with 40 state attorneys general, though he said figures aren't available yet.
