Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act (KIDS Act)

The Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act was passed in 2006 and, among other things, created state public online databases of sex offenders and the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website through which all of the state databases could be accessed. Leveraging information technology, the Department of Justice has now put within everyone's reach information about sex offenders in their neighborhood. Visit the site, punch in your zip code, and get a graphical map displaying who lives in your neighborhood, their name, where they live, and what they were charged with.

It's easy to use and the results can be, unfortunately, surprising.

The Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website provides information about who is near you in the real world – but what about in the virtual world. What about on social networking sites. How do you know whether a person near you online is a sex offender? Your child may be discussing with a “new friend” how yesterday some one-hit-wonder-pop band is, or how good it is that Jagr left the Rangers and went back to Russia to play hockey. That “new friend” could be anyone.

Sen. Chuck Schumer attempted to address this problem with the recently enacted Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act (KIDS Act). This new law would require sexual offenders to register their email addresses and another other online identifiers that they use. The Department of Justice will house this information in a secure database and permit certified social networking sites to securely contrast their subscriber lists against the sex offender database. The statute calls for this comparison to be secure such that the DOJ Database Operator cannot see the social networking site's list – and the social networking site cannot see the database – except for those records that match records on the social networking site's list (this security is possible using cryptographic measures).

Use of the service by social networks is voluntary, they must be certified, and they may not abuse the information they come to acquire from the database.

Registration of email addresses and internet identifiers is not voluntary for the convicted sex offenders; failure to comply may subject violators to up to ten years' imprisonment.

Upon passage, sponsor Sen. Schumer stated

“Millions of teenagers log on to websites like MySpace and they, and their parents, shouldn't have to worry about running in to these predators online,” Schumer said. “Sex offenders have no business joining social networking communities - especially those with teenage users - and our legislation will help keep them out. We know that many predators are using the Internet to find victims. This legislation will take a big step toward keeping sexual predators out of the online neighborhoods our kids frequent.”

The KIDS Act was also co-sponsored by Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and John McCain (R-AZ).

The Protect Our Children Act of 2008 - Reports and Tasks Forces

Our last post explored how the most powerful person in politics, Obama-Supporter-Oprah rallied the Oprah Nation to get the Biden-McCain Protect Our Children from the SAFE Act passed. In this post, we will explore the workings of the new law (prepared to be bored).

In Washington D.C. when legislators want it to look to the American Public that they are doing something - but they either dont know what to do or they dont want to create a new set of red tape regulations - they either create a task force to study the problem or they require an agency to file a report with Congress. The PROTECT Act does both - several times.

Title I

In Title I, Section 101 requires the Department of Justice to create a National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction which will annually file a report with Congress on DOJ's strategy [REPORT COUNT: 1] .

Section 102 requires the formation of the National Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) Program. The ICAC itself already exists. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 authorized and created an ICAC within DOJ, which is described as:

"The Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force Program helps state and local law enforcement agencies develop an effective response to cyber enticement and child pornography cases. This help encompasses forensic and investigative components, training and technical assistance, victim services, and community education. Numerous task forces have been established throughout the nation. " DOJ ICAC Website.

The Section 102 ICAC will consist "of state and local task forces (including at least one ICAC Task Force for each state) to address online enticement of children, child exploitation, and child obscenity and pornography." [CRS Summary] Sections 102 - 107 give details of the work of the new program. The purpose of the ICAC Task Force Program is set forth in Sec. 103:

The ICAC Task Force Program, and each State or local ICAC task force that is part of the national program of task forces, shall be dedicated toward--

(1) increasing the investigative capabilities of State and local law enforcement officers in the detection, investigation, and apprehension of Internet crimes against children offenses or offenders, including technology-facilitated child exploitation offenses;

(2) conducting proactive and reactive Internet crimes against children investigations;

(3) providing training and technical assistance to ICAC task forces and other Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies in the areas of investigations, forensics, prosecution, community outreach, and capacity-building, using recognized experts to assist in the development and delivery of training programs;

(4) increasing the number of Internet crimes against children offenses being investigated and prosecuted in both Federal and State courts;

(5) creating a multiagency task force response to Internet crimes against children offenses within each State;

(6) participating in the Department of Justice's Project Safe Childhood initiative, the purpose of which is to combat technology-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes against children;

(7) enhancing nationwide responses to Internet crimes against children offenses, including assisting other ICAC task forces, as well as other Federal, State, and local agencies with Internet crimes against children investigations and prosecutions;

(8) developing and delivering Internet crimes against children public awareness and prevention programs; and

(9) participating in such other activities, both proactive and reactive, that will enhance investigations and prosecutions of Internet crimes against children.

$60m is appropriated each year for 5 years for a total of $300m to support title I. Sec. 107. 75% of this appropriation shall be available for grants to the states and local ICACs, which can be used to hire investigators and prosecutors, establish forensic labs, support investigations, conduct education and training programs, and support other related activities. Sec. 106.

DOJ shall Report to Congress within one year on the progress of the ICAC Task Force Program. [REPORT COUNT: 2]

Title II

Title II recognizes the needs to expands DOJ's CSI capabilities by expanding DOJ's computer forensics capacity - and DOJ gets to file an annual report on its expanded computer forensics capacity. [REPORT COUNT: 3] $2m is appropriated for this.

Title III

Title III amends existing child protection and pornography laws to reflect advanced means of image manipulation and depiction. Sec. 301 prohibits the broadcast of live images of child abuse. Sec. 302 expands the definition of "visual depiction," basically, to cover data that has yet to be converted into a visual image. Sec. 303 amends the prohibition against importing child pornography into the United States to include live visual depictions of child pornography. Finally, Section 304 prohibits the modification of an actual visual image of a child into a pornographic picture.'

Note that Congress has attempted to amend the child pornography several times and struggled to compose a Constitutional statute. One of the struggles is that the child pornography laws are a curtailment of First Amendment rights (dont knee jerk-react - think medical text books, think Romeo and Juliet which relates the romantic life of a 13 year old girl, think people's increadibly boring baby pictures - remember, if the material is obscene, it is already illegal under a different statute) which are justified based on the government interest of protecting actual children. In a previous statutory attempt, congress prohibited electronic child pornography, regardless of whether the image was of an actual child. The constitutional problem was, if the government interest was to protect children, and if there were no children involved, then the statutory attempt failed constitutional muster because the means of curtailing child pornography was not narrowly tailored to the government interest. Here, in Sec. 304 we see the interesting move of advancing that government interest of protecting actual children by saying even where there is a non-pornographic picture of an actual child, and that photograph is morphed to become pornography - that's a problem that harms the actual child - regardless of whether the child was involved in the pornography.

Title IV

Title IV asks for another report to Congress. This report will be on the subject of "whether a subject of an online child exploitation investigation poses a high risk of harm to children." DOJ gets $500k to finance the study. [REPORT COUNT: 4]

Title V

Title V is a reporting requirement imposed on Internet Services, the language of which comes from McCain's SAFE Act. We will explore this new legislation in the next post.

Congress Thinks of the Children: S.1738 PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008

In the middle of the country’s ClusterF#@k to the Poor House, Congress took some time out to Think of the Children.

John McCain said on September 24 that he was canceling his appearance on Letterman suspending his campaign in order to respond to the national crisis and that he would not reinstate his campaign until the crisis was properly resolved. Sen. McCain reinstated his campaign on Friday the 26th.


So what National crisis was resolved that let his campaign continue? It couldn’t have been the financial crisis, since I am now using my AIG stock as toilet paper.

No, in the middle of our National Economy going flush with executives squirreling vast sums into executive golden parachutes, the crisis which was resolved was who could take credit for Thinking of the Children.

In 2007, both VP wannabe Joe Biden and Prez wannabe John McCain introduced legislation attempting to combat the ever growing problem of child abuse and child pornography. Joe Biden’s PROTECT Our Children Act had been considered by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary in April 2008, reported out favorably and placed on the Senate calendar in July 2008. It had 60 cosponsors.

S.1738 PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008
Title: A bill to require the Department of Justice to develop and implement a National Strategy Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction, to improve the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, to increase resources for regional computer forensic labs, and to make other improvements to increase the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute child predators.
Sponsor: Sen Biden, Joseph R., Jr. [DE] (introduced 6/28/2007) Cosponsors (60)
Related Bills: H.R.3845, S.519
Latest Major Action: 10/2/2008 Presented to President.

Sen. McCain’s Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act (SAFE Act) had never been considered by a committee, had not seen legislative action, and had only 10 cosponsors.

S.519 Safe Act of 2007
Title: A bill to modernize and expand the reporting requirements relating to child pornography, to expand cooperation in combating child pornography, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen McCain, John [AZ] (introduced 2/7/2007) Cosponsors (10)
Related Bills: H.R.876, H.R.3791, S.1738
Latest Major Action: 2/7/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.

Now all that is nice and most Washington fat-cats know that once the calendar closes in on the elections, nothing gets done – the legislative process comes to a standstill. The candidates get brownie points for showing they care by introducing legislation, even if the legislation is bound for nowhere – you can always blame those unamericans-in-the-other-party for it going nowhere, and get a few more brownie points.

But on September 15th, an event occurred which the candidates could not ignore: Obama-supporter-Oprah came out in favor of VP wannabe Joe Biden’s PROTECT Our Children Act! The Oprah Nation took to the streets in support of Biden’s bill – and within a week McCain had suspended his campaign and scuttled back to Washington D.C.

Upon McCain’s return to Washington, the PROTECT Our Children Act was passed – on the 25th by the Senate, and on the 27th by the House - but this was quite a different PROTECT Our Children Act than the one thrashed about in the Senate Judiciary Hearing many months ago. As the Center for Democracy and Technology notes, “Some in Congress insisted that the core parts of [John McCain’s] S. 519 – the “SAFE Act” – be added to [Biden's] S. 1738 before passage.” Sec. 2 of John McCain’s act, “Reporting Requirements of Electronic Communication Providers and Remote Computing Service Providers,” became Title V of Joe Biden’s Act, “Securing Adolescents from Online Exploitation” (which had as its first section, Sec. 501 Reporting Requirements of Electronic Communication Providers and Remote Computing Service Providers). One day after the Senate voted on the Biden-McCain SAFE PROTECT Act, with the danger averted, McCain reinstated his campaign.

Upon passage:

• Sen. Joe Biden stated: “At the same time when the Internet has given children access to the world – it has also given a dangerous world access to our kids,” said Sen. Biden, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs. “Protecting them requires constant vigilance – in our neighborhoods, in our homes and on-line. Finally we have a bill that will give law enforcement the funds and the tools to pull the plug on Internet predators. I urge the President to quickly sign the Protect Our Children Act into law.”

• Oprah stated: "Thank you to the 60 senators—Republican and Democrat—who co-sponsored the bill. … All of you proved that the people can really make a difference."

• John McCain stated: [a review of the John McCain Senatorial website reviewed no press release or statement]

Meanwhile, back on the Clusterf@#k, the Center of Democracy and Technology all but lamented, "These provisions should – if the bailout leaves any money to actually spend on law enforcement – really help in the fight against child pornography."

Wheel of Morality, turn turn turn, Tell Us the Lesson We Should Learn: Oprah can get legislation passed even in the midst of a fierce political campaign and the worst economic crisis since the Long Depression of 1873 – now that’s political power! That and, even for the noblest cause, the legislative process is nothing short of a sausage factory – be pleased with your bratwurst but don’t look too close at how it was made.

Note One: I aint hereby supporting no candidate – I am sure someone will be offended – but if you read closely (you will bump the screen with your forehead har har) you will see I am making fun of everyone (including you).

Note Two: I aint dissing the noble cause sought after (didn’t I just say that) – but you gotta admit, that’s some sausage factory.

Note Three: Oh yeah, next post we will dig into this fun “We Don’t Regulate the Internet” new law and see what it means for Internet interests.

UPDATE: President Bush reportedly signed the Biden PROTECT Act into law on Monday October 14 . . . without comment or press release.