ALEXANDRIA, VA – In a speech delivered today at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), Attorney General Alberto Gonzales delved into the ongoing efforts of the federal government to combat child pornography, and announced a new piece of legislation that the Bush Administration is sending to Congress for consideration. The newly proposed legislation is called the “Child Pornography and Obscenity Prevention Amendments of 2006”.While most of Gonzales’s comments were focused on the subject of child pornography and the government’s efforts to curb production and distribution of it, Gonzales also specified that the new legislation contains measures to “prevent people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the Internet.”
In order to prevent such inadvertent stumbling, the legislation includes a language requiring all adult-oriented websites that are “operated primarily for commercial purposes” to include warning labels on every page that contains sexually explicit material, according to reports in the Associated Press.
Additionally, the new legislation would prohibit websites from initially displaying sexually explicit material without further action, such as an additional click by the viewer. (This sounds very much like what many adult sites already do, by way of using “warning pages” as an index page.)
It isn’t clear at the time of this article’s writing what form the required label would take; whether such a label will be akin to an ICRA tag, or if a more obtrusive and eye-catching type of labeling will be required remains to be seen.
The proposed legislation would also stiffen criminal penalties for failing to report the presence of child pornography, a provision aimed squarely at Web hosting services and other ISPs. Fines for “knowing and willful failures to report” would be increased to $150,000 for the initial violation and $300,000 for each subsequent violation.
Also prohibited under the new legislation is the practice of embedding innocuous terms in a website’s meta tags and other code, such that a sexually explicit site would appear in the search responses for common and non-adult search terms. The language of the legislation prohibits an individual “knowingly acting with the intent to deceive another individual into viewing obscene material”, and also prohibits “knowingly acting with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material harmful to the minor.”
In his speech to NCMEC, Gonzales also drew a clear line between the child pornography and other forms of pornography – a distinction that Gonzales and other government officials frequently have blurred through their own public comments, previously.
“To many people, when you mention the term ‘child pornography,’ they think of distasteful, but somewhat benign, pictures; maybe a photograph of a partially nude teenager in a suggestive pose,” Gonzales said. “To them, child pornography is different from the adult pornography that the Supreme Court has said gets First Amendment protection – but only by degree.”
The difference between illegal child pornography and legal adult pornography, Gonzales noted, is far more significant than that.
“These are not just ‘pornographic’ pictures or videos,” Gonzales said. “They are images of graphic sexual and physical abuse of innocent children, even babies. We need to get the public – as well as government officials – to start thinking about it in the right terms. It is brutal, it is heinous, and it is criminal.”
Gonzales also echoed points recently made by representatives of NCMEC, ASACP and other child-protection groups; there isn’t just more child pornography out there these days – the images, videos, sex acts and underlying crimes themselves are all getting more severe and more heinous.
“Sadly, the Internet age has created a vicious cycle in which child pornography continually becomes more widespread, more graphic, and more sadistic, using younger and younger children,” Gonzales said.
The advent of the Internet, with its combination of anonymity and international reach, has created a “community” for pedophiles which never existed, previously.
“Before the Internet, these pedophiles were isolated – unwelcome even in most adult bookstores,” said Gonzales. “Through the Internet, they have found a community. Offenders can bond with each other, and the Internet acts as a tool for legitimizing and validating their behavior in their minds. It emboldens them.”
“The pedophiles seek to build larger collections of photographs and videos, as a license into their community,” added Gonzales. “As they become de-sensitized to the images they have, they seek more graphic, more heinous, and more disturbing material.”
