Senators OK $1 Billion for Online Child Porn Fight

A bill that could allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years to combat those who trade in child pornography has been unanimously approved by a Senate panel. "The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send an amended version of the Combating Child Exploitation Act, chiefly sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), to the full slate of politicians for a vote. [...] An amendment adopted Thursday also adds new sections to the original bill that would rewrite existing child pornography laws. One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."

Comments

Re:alteration illegal??

[grahamd0]

Nothing has been accomplished and in the meantime, we have one the highest incarceration rates in the World.

No, not "one of", *the* highest in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States

Re:thought crime

[tinkerghost]

"Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."

Um, if I remember correctly, SCOTUS already shot down one law that dealt with 'pseudo' child porn - if it's not a real child doing real porn, it's not child-porn. Of course this is congress, passing good laws is so much harder than 'thinking of the children'.
The other problem is that they are budgeting $125M/year - but not, evidently, using it to put more FBI into cubicles. It looks like they are throwing the money at whoever promises to solve the problem without adding cops.

Re:alteration illegal??

[NMerriam]

The Supreme Court has previously said (ie in Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition) that unless there is real child being used to create porn, it's a simple matter of free speech.

Certainly it would be easy to imagine a case where you could use the face of an underage public figure to make a clear political or social commentary (I'm not saying it would be tasteful, just very possible). I'm not so sure that you could make such a case for private individuals. One issue would be for the courts to decide if such a use would really be considered true child pornography rather than simply a case of defamation or something similar.

One major factor that jumps to mind is that in creating the fake child porn, you aren't directly causing any damage to the victim, it's only through distribution that the victim is harmed (or even aware something has happened!). But child porn is illegal to create or possess, which would mean people looking at major felonies for a victimless crime if they simply created images for their own use and never distributed them. I can't see the court endorsing that. Without distribution of the images, we seem to be close to the realm of thought crimes, but with distribution it would be a very interesting case to see argued.

Defining "child pornography"

[Brian Ribbon]

How do you define "child pornography"? The law doesn't just cover people who produce images of children being raped. A significant number of prosecutions are based solely upon images which don't depict any sexual activity at all.

Re:whom exactly is this part meant to protect?

[mweather]

That's how the RAVE act got passed after failing repeatedly. They attached it to the Amber Alert bill. You could have attached a rider that legalized crack and it would have passed.

Occurrence of paedophilia

[Brian Ribbon]

"How many pedophiles [..] are there in the USA?"

Around 5% of adult males are paedophiles; around 33% of adult men have some attraction to pre-pubescent children. [1]

"Not saying child porn is not insidiously evil."

See my comment here.

What I vaguely remember

[Anonymous Coward]

There were some precedent-setting cases prior to 2003 in which digital child porn, cartoon child porn, or any other kind of porn that did not involve real children in any way, was found to be legal (or rather, the laws that made it illegal were found to be unconstitutional).

The protect act of 2003 explicitly made cartoon images, sculptures, or fictitious written accounts, of children performing sexual activities illegal.

There was a case in 2004 (can't remember the details offhand) in which a person was convicted for owning cartoon child porn. That case did not go all the way up to the supreme court, however.

So, it seems to me that the issue is still kind of muddy. There are obviously strong opinions on both sides, and proponents of these opinions will continue to throw more legislation at it, so I expect that the door will swing back and forth, and the issue will remain muddy, indefinitely.

One thing is clear, however: this is a freedom vs security issue.

Re:What I vaguely remember

[MikeBabcock]

If its an import, definitely :-)

Consider a recent book that won prizes in Canada for its depiction of a kidnapper who believes he's in love with the little girl he has confined. It is an excellent piece of literature, but you wouldn't want it on your shelf if you live in a country where mere depictions of acts are illegal, no matter their intent, or the actual safety of children.

PS, I've heard it said a few times on the radio and elsewhere that there is no good evidence to show that the viewing of child pornography in any way leads to or is even indicative of the desire to abuse actual children, not that anyone in the Senate would stand up and oppose a child safety act.

Re:Just an Excuse for Spying on Everyone

[cdrguru]

Infrequent? What rock have you been living under?

Today, just about all "computer forensic examiners" in the US spend 50-80% of their time on child porn cases. This is well over 10,000 people working for local, state and federal law enforcement. Child porn cases are the #1 workload item for Army CID.

Yes, this means there is enough work for 10,000 people to spend all day, every day doing nothing but digging out child porn from seized computers.

I do not know the number of convictions in the last year, but I'm sure there have been thousands of them. Just US Attorneys did 1700 cases in 2007, which is federal level alone.

It is not a trivial problem and is absolutely not "infrequent" in any regard.

Re:This is really whacked...typical of Congress

[Tablizer]

Of course, realize if there are that many in the USA we have a problem because that means 1 in 250 of us are the targets of this.

Hell, when I was 14 I *wanted* my teacher to "lick my cone". Don't put her in jail for giving us the thrills we WANT. It may be the only chance for geeks to get any.

Re:ridiculous straw man

[Chris Burke]

Because the black crime/poverty/violence problem crosses cultures, and even pervades black countries, the onus is on you to prove that the problem is external.

No, wrong, there is no "default" point of view that is someone's onus to dispel, except the null hypothesis that it's all due to chance. Someone has posed the hypothesis that the difference in incarceration rates is due to society and culture, someone else said it's racial. The onus is on anyone putting forth one of these hypothesis. If they fail to do so, that doesn't make someone else's hypothesis true.

And I think you'll find that if you start looking at the socio-economics across countries, especially if you start looking at crime in non-black communities and countries, you'll find that economics first, and politics second, are the dominating factors, not race.

Furthermore, for your point to be useful, you must show that the "society and culture" problem is solvable.

I don't know that it is, but you completely missed what society they were talking about. We're talking about the society of the United States, of which blacks are just one part, and you therefore can't consider black culture in the U.S. in isolation. And if you think the society as it arose was an automatic effect of them being here, I think you've got your history backwards. Besides, go back in time, and we could just as easily be talking about violence in Italian American or Irish American communities. Think that's an inherent problem of those people too?

And if all cultures are indeed equivalent, yet some cultures fail miserably, it must be because another culture is holding them down, right?

Right, so you are questioning the idea that a culture failing implies that it was held down by another. This is a logical.

But do you also question the idea that a culture holding down another culture implies that the oppressed culture is more likely to fail? Because that would be completely illogical.

And in many cases of what you're calling "automatic", history is completely clear that such oppression has occurred. Not all, but a great, great many. Your rhetorical question only makes sense in the absence of any evidence one way or the other.

And if you want to look even farther back in time to find a way to blame any failure on inherent inferiority, asking why it was that Europeans were able to oppress Africans and Native Americans, I recommend this book.

Would you withhold it from them in order to prop up your belief that the races are identical?

Haha, this sounds just like the "women don't want to work with computers!" If this is your tack, step one is ask what they want, not assume that their desires just happen to perfectly match your social biases.

Re:Just an Excuse for Spying on Everyone

[slimjim8094]

I call bullshit.

You don't have *any* numbers for the first bit.

Your second bit is also weird. How many CP cases are NOT at the federal level? It's a federal felony, no?

So a base of 1700. Let's quadruple that and be conservative.

That's still under 8000 *a year*. Subtract out of that the healthy fraction that aren't really child porn but more 17yo on 17yo sharing between them (they abused each other!!!)

Also subtract a significant number of people who are parts of botnets... if a botnet is running on your computer, it's almost unprovable that you actually did anything

You're left with (liberal estimate) 5K cases a year... for $1B?????

Re:What is child porn according to US law

[Acer500]

But today, child porn in most states is defined as

"any image of a child, or someone appearing to be a child (or fictionally created to represent a child) which is viewed with the intent to cause arousal or sexual satisfaction"

Wow... that would be very troubling with so many ambiguous cartoons / mangas (okay, hentai).

I looked it up with Google, and here's what Cornell has to say about it:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2256.html

(8) "child pornography" means any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, of sexually explicit conduct, where--
(A) the production of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;

(B) such visual depiction is a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image that is, or is indistinguishable from, that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or

(C) such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

(9) "identifiable minor"--

(A) means a person-- (i)

(I) who was a minor at the time the visual depiction was created, adapted, or modified; or

(II) whose image as a minor was used in creating, adapting, or modifying the visual depiction; and

(ii) who is recognizable as an actual person by the person's face, likeness, or other distinguishing characteristic, such as a unique birthmark or other recognizable feature; and

(B) shall not be construed to require proof of the actual identity of the identifiable minor. (10) "graphic", when used with respect to a depiction of sexually explicit conduct, means that a viewer can observe any part of the genitals or pubic area of any depicted person or animal during any part of the time that the sexually explicit conduct is being depicted; and

(11) the term "indistinguishable" used with respect to a depiction, means virtually indistinguishable, in that the depiction is such that an ordinary person viewing the depiction would conclude that the depiction is of an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

This definition does not apply to depictions that are drawings, cartoons, sculptures, or paintings depicting minors or adults.
It's the US code, which I don't know how it works in the US, but state laws take precedence over it? Or it's a diferent jury, prision, sentence, etc? Apparently it's not illegal (whether it's amoral or unethical is another matter)

"Supreme Court strikes down ban on 'virtual child porn'":

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/04/16/scotus.virtual.child.porn/

WASHINGTON (CNN) April 18, 2002 -- The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday struck down a 6-year-old law that prohibits the distribution and possession of virtual child pornography that appears to -- but does not -- depict real children.

I'm not an US citizen (but my country usually follows any "suggestion" by the US anyway), but all this is troubling. I can certainly imagine ways these laws could be abused - what happened to the teacher that had popups showing up during class? (Oh, apparently she was not imprisioned after a retrial) Teacher story on Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/07/01/13/0753209.shtml http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/06/1917255

Re:Put up or shut up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem

Knox vs the United States (1994) was the first one i found on cursory search in Google, but i don't have scads of case law to point you to, just quick Google search and some memory of seeing other cases. The Knox case set the case law (up to the federal district appeals court level) for the "no-nudity" requirement in federal child porn charges.

Knox lawyer argued "'lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area'" [as defined in the child porn statute] meant that the girls had to be nude - wearing clothing meant that that genitals and pubic area were clearly not exhibited. The Court disagreed and held that there was no nudity requirement in the statute: "the statutory term "lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area," as used in 18 U.S.C. - 2256(2)(E), does not contain any requirement that the child subject's genitals or pubic area be fully or partially exposed or discernible through his or her opaque clothing."

There, that's the definition under federal law as determined by a federal court AND a federal appeals court.

Another well publicized case of non-nude child pornography prosecution I just found via Google surrounds this 2006 case in Utah

The judge ruled that nudity was not a requirement for child pornography charges and therefore they could face porn charges despite not possessing any nude photos of children.

I know there are more. I specifically remember one in Michigan (I believe) involving an underwear catalog, but i don't have all night to search. The trick with that one was that he had previously been convicted of child porn and this was allowed as evidence of his "intent".

Simple nudity, with no arousal or sexual connotation (aka, nude beaches, bathtubs, etc) featuring children regularly draw lengthy sentences if the state can show someone was collecting them with the apparent intent to be aroused by them...

Quoting from a Salon.com article, I gather this:

Several speakers at an L.A. police seminar I attended a few years back laughingly admitted that the largest collection of child porn in the country is in the hands of cops, who edit and publish it in sting operations. There is at most, they say, a small cottage industry among civilians in which pictures (most of them vintage) are traded.

The truth is that true research in this area is impossible, given that it's illegal to look at anything that is or might be child pornography. As a result, nobody knows exactly what child pornography is, what forms it takes, where it is, how much of it exists -- or even if it exists. We seem happy that nobody knows: That way we can take our fantasies, project them onto phantom demons (the child pornographers) and feel righteous.

And I think this is the crux of the social problem.