[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
COMBATING SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN: STRENGTHENING INTERNATIONAL
LAW ENFORCEMENT COOPERATION
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HEARING
before the
COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND
COOPERATION IN EUROPE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 17, 2008
__________
Printed for the use of the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
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Available via http://www.csce.gov
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COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
SENATE HOUSE
BENJAMIN CARDIN, Maryland, ALCEE HASTINGS, Florida,
Co-Chairman Chairman
RUSSELL FEINGOLD, Wisconsin LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER,
CHRISTOPHER DODD, Connecticut New York
HILARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
JOHN KERRY, Massachusetts G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey
GORDON SMITH, Oregon ROBERT ADERHOLT, Alabama
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia JOSEPH PITTS, Pennsylvania
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina MIKE PENCE, Indiana
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
DAVID KRAMER, Department of State
MARY BETH LONG, Department of Defense
DAVID STEEL BOHIGIAN, Department of Commerce
COMBATING SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN: STRENGTHENING INTERNATIONAL
LAW ENFORCEMENT COOPERATION
----------
June 17, 2009
COMMISSIONERS
Page
Hon. Alcee Hastings, Chairman, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.......................................... 1
Hon. Chris Smith, Commissioner, Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.......................................... 2
MEMBER
Hon. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Member of Congress from the
State of Florida............................................... 6
WITNESSES
Timothy Williams, Deputy Director, Interpol U.S National Central
Bureau......................................................... 4
Shawn Bray, Unit Chief, Ice Cyber Crimes Center Department of
Homeland Security.............................................. 6
James Finch, Assistant Director Cyber Division, Federal Bureau of
Investigation.................................................. 8
Ernie Allen, President and CEO, National Center For Missing and
Exploited Children............................................. 18
Tim Cranton, Associate General Counsel Worldwide Internet Safety
Programs, Microsoft Corporation................................ 21
COMBATING SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN: STRENGTHENING INTERNATIONAL
LAW ENFORCEMENT COOPERATION
----------
JUNE 17, 2009
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was held at 3:35 p.m. EST in B-138 Rayburn
House Office Building, Washington, DC, Hon. Alcee Hastings,
Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe,
presiding.
Commissioners present: Hon. Chris Smith, Commissioner,
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Witnesses present: Timothy Williams, Deputy Director,
Interpol U.S. National Central Bureau; Shawn Bray, Unit Chief,
Ice Cyber Crimes Center Department of Homeland Security; James
Finch, Assistant Director Cyber Division, Federal Bureau of
Investigation; Tim Cranton, Associate General Counsel Worldwide
Internet Safety Programs, Microsoft Corporation; and Ernie
Allen, President and CEO, National Center For Missing and
Exploited Children.
HON. ALCEE HASTINGS, CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND
COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. Hastings. If I could ask our hearing to come to order
and ask our witnesses to take their seats, I'd appreciate it
very much. I'm very grateful for all of you being here today.
Child pornography has exploded into a multinational,
multibillion dollar enterprise, with potential outlets in every
home and office connected to the Internet.
Sex tourism is on the rise as international travel has
become easier and cheaper. That may change a little bit with
the way gas prices are going out there and the number of
flights being changed, but I get the point here. There are
strong indicators that those who view and possess child
pornography are more likely to become predators and abuse
children themselves, further feeding the cycle.
As with other addictive behaviors, these individuals are
often driven into more extreme acts, preying on younger victims
or employing violence. Organized crime, including gangs, also
appears to be venturing further into the lucrative trade in
children. As a result, global criminal networks are springing
up, further complicating efforts to prosecute those responsible
for these horrendous crimes against children.
In my state of Florida, there have been several cases
involving sexual exploitation of children and in one recent
case, a man was convicted of traveling to Cambodia for the
express purpose of engaging in sexual activity with children.
In another, two men were convicted of producing pornographic
videos of children and posting them on the Internet.
Law enforcement, both in the United States and abroad, has
more cases to pursue than resources available. As many cases
involve leads in more than one country, effective and
expeditious international cooperation is vital to rescuing
children and prosecuting perpetrators. Regular exchange of
information and real-time access to leads is crucial to police
actions. Slow bureaucracies and differing laws among countries
are sometimes obstacles to investigations and prosecutions. Our
commission supported two OSCE ministerial decisions that commit
participating states to criminalize child pornography and
stepping up cooperation with other countries to fight it. This
political will is a good start, but it needs resources and
practical tools for implementation.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and what they
recommend the United States should do to help strengthen the
international toolbox. I do welcome the agreement announced
last week that Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have
agreed to block access to Internet bulletin boards and Web
sites nationwide that disseminate child pornography. Federal
law requires Internet providers to report child pornography to
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. But
because it took customer complaints to trigger a report, this
was not always effective. Before calling on my colleague,
Representative Smith, the ranking member and a leader in this
field, as the special rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly
of OSCE for trafficking in humans, I'd like to know the order
in which we will receive our testimony this afternoon.
Our first witness is going to be Timothy Williams, the
Deputy Director of the U.S. National Central Bureau of
Interpol, followed by Mr. Shawn Bray, the Unit Chief of the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center and in
the Department of Homeland Security, and then Mr. James Finch,
the Assistant Director of the Cyber Division in the Federal
Bureau of Investigation.
We will then hear from an additional panel of witnesses,
Mr. Tim Cranton, Associate General Counsel, Worldwide Internet
Safety Programs, the Microsoft Corporation, and Ernie Allen,
President and CEO of the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children.
I'd like now to turn to Representative Smith.
For the biographies of our witnesses, you will find them
available at the table outside, without me getting into all of
the credentials. Gentlemen, when you do testify, your full
statement will be entered into the record and you may summarize
as you see fit.
Representative Smith.
HON. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, COMMISSIONER,
COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for calling
this very important hearing on the critical question of how we
can strengthen international law enforcement cooperation to
combat child sexual exploitation. According to the recently
released State Department trafficking in persons report for
2008, an estimated two million children worldwide are subjected
to exploitation in the transnational sex trade.
A child who is forced into prostitution may be victimized
by anywhere from 100 to 1,500 perpetrators in one year. It is
estimated that more than four million Internet sites around the
globe contain exploitive material about children and as many as
500 new sites are created daily. The U.S. Bureau of Federal
Investigation estimates that $20 billion worth of business
revenue is generated annually from fee-based child porn sites.
Based on these numbers, it is apparent that sexual
exploitation of children is becoming an increasing
transnational crime, as travel becomes quicker and easier and
the Internet provides a platform for pedophiles to access vast
amounts of child pornography and to stalk children online.
Sexual predators travel to other countries with the express
purpose of abusing children. Such crimes committed by an
American, as we all know, can be prosecuted in the United
States, even if the crime took place in another country. Many
other countries are putting together and enacting similar laws,
and I would note, as the chairman said, they must be matched
with the resources. But that is only a start. We need to do
more to fight these horrific crimes against children and
because the crimes often involve more than one country, we need
to ensure that our law enforcement authorities work as
effectively as possible with their counterparts internationally
both to prevent and investigate possible crimes involving child
exploitation.
Mr. Chairman, in 1994, a seven-year-old girl in my district
was brutally raped and murdered by a repeat sex offender living
literally across the street, unbeknownst to the victim, her
family or her neighbors.
This tragic event resulted in what is now known as Megan's
Law--her name was Megan Kanka--which established a notification
system to provide the public with the knowledge needed to
prevent a similar crime from happening. But Americans are not
the only ones concerned with protecting their vulnerable
populations from predators. In the course of my work in
combating human trafficking, especially as special rapporteur,
I have met with numerous foreign government and law enforcement
officials who have asked me what the United States is doing to
prevent its citizens from traveling to their countries and
abusing their children. It has become apparent to me that a
global system must be established that gives notice of sex
offender international travel to the appropriate authorities.
We know that law enforcement officials in numerous
countries are working to provide such notice. For example, just
last month, a South Korean newspaper reported that the attache
from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency had
informed South Korean officials of 21 individuals listed on the
California sex offender registry.
These individuals have been identified as traveling
frequently to Asian countries and all of them have been
convicted in California of assaulting children under 14 years
of age. South Korea announced that, based on the notice, it was
banning any future entry by those sex offenders.
Foreign sexual predators also pose a significant threat to
children and others within our borders. Since 2003, U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested over
9,100 non-U.S. citizens suspected of being child predators and
sex offenders. Violations have included child pornography,
child sex tourism, trafficking of minors and those who
facilitate such exploitation.
Recently, U.S. officials learned that a lifetime registered
sex offender from the U.K. was intending to move to California
to live with a woman he met on the Internet and other young
girls in her household. It was thanks to the Interpol
communication of the U.K. sex offender travel notification
system that the man was refused entry and the woman and girls
in that house were spared possible victimization. While the
officials who are taking these measures to prevent the
exploitation of children are to be highly commended, the
magnitude of the problem requires a more sophisticated
systematic and comprehensive approach.
We have the data and the technology to seriously curtail
this burgeoning criminal activity. What is required is the
political will to implement and use it. That is why I've
introduced a bill, Mr. Chairman, H.R. 57822, to galvanize that
political will. The international Megan's Law aims to prevent
child exploitation across borders by sexual offenders,
specifically by establishing a system that provides notice to
foreign government officials when a known sex offender in the
United States intends to travel to their country, ensuring that
foreign nationals have a committed sex offense are denied entry
into the U.S., providing strict penalties for noncompliance by
sex offenders with their reporting requirements, and requiring
the State Department to report annually to Congress regarding
the establishment of systems globally to identify and provide
notice of international travel by sex offenders to authorities
in destination countries.
It is evident that cooperation between law enforcement in
each country is essential to accomplishing the goal of this
legislation and to ending the exploitation of any child
regardless of where he or she may live.
I look forward to hearing from our distinguished witnesses
about efforts that are currently underway to promote this
important goal and how we in Congress can support and further
strengthen those efforts. I want to thank you for this very
timely and important hearing.
Mr. Hastings. Thank you very much, Congressman Smith and
Commissioner Smith. Mr. Williams, you may proceed as you see
fit, sir.
TIMOTHY WILLIAMS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, INTERPOL U.S. NATIONAL
CENTRAL BUREAU
Mr. Williams. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Smith, I want to thank you
for the opportunity to address the commission concerning the
fight against sexual exploitation of children.
Preventing crime, especially preventing crimes against
children, is the goal of all law enforcement agencies. It is
also a priority for Interpol to provide quick and effective
responses to all incidences of crimes against children.
By way of background, my name is Tim Williams. I'm a U.S.
marshal, with 23 years of law enforcement experience and
detailed as the deputy director to the USNCB, as you said
earlier. To fight crime against children, police need to
cooperate on a global basis. Indeed, the Internet disregards
the borders and complicates the work of police in identifying
and locating offenders. Images of children can easily be taken
and uploaded in one country and then made available to anyone
in the world with a computer and an Internet connection.
Consequently, the existence of a central entity to collect,
store, analyze and disseminate images and information on the
exploitation of children through the use of the Internet is
crucial to effectively combating these offenses.
Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization,
with 186 member countries and an established communications
network for police cooperation, is ideally suited to serve this
role. In fact, the G-8, the European Commission and Europol
have all recently reached this same conclusion. Interpol's main
work involves serving as a secure communications network for
its member countries and coordinating international
investigations. Interpol also manages databases containing law
enforcement information. Each of Interpol's 186 member
countries has a national central bureau, like the USNCB, which
serves as its representative to Interpol and the point of
contact for all Interpol matters for the countries' national
authorities.
Interpol is currently developing a program to combat child
pornography, working in conjunction with member countries and
certainly our law enforcement partners here in the United
States. The program includes a child abuse image database,
called the International Child Sexual Exploitation Database, or
ICSE. That helps police in their efforts to identify both
victims of sexual abuse and the offenders. The program and the
database will allow specialized investigators in member
countries to access the database securely and examine and
analyze the images it contains. The Interpol system will also
allow member countries to provide the images to the database
for use by police in other countries.
Another key role that I believe Interpol will play is in
the tracking of dangerous convicted sex offenders. Interpol
will utilize its notice program to assist the U.S. Marshal's
Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI and other
law enforcement agencies track the most serious offenders who
travel internationally.
One recent example of Interpol's role in the international
cooperation was a case that you certainly made reference to
involving a few countries. But last month, our Interpol
headquarters sent out a worldwide message requesting assistance
determining the identity of an individual that was photographed
abusing young children. Within 48 hours after receiving
numerous tips from the public in response to the Interpol
notice, ICE agents arrested this individual in the state of New
Jersey. This successful arrest demonstrated the outstanding
cooperation between law enforcement officials in many countries
around the world and the effectiveness of Interpol as a
mechanism for this collaboration.
I want to thank you and I'm going to welcome any questions
you have after everyone is done.
Mr. Hastings. All right. Thank you, Mr. Williams.
We've been joined by our colleague, Debbie Wasserman
Schultz, my good friend and neighbor in the south Florida area,
who has championed this particular measure, having filed a
companion bill with Senator Biden that adds $1 billion over
eight years to improve the federal government's coordination in
child abuse, sexual exploitation cases.
Debbie also wears another label and there have been some
tragic situations in the last few days. She works very actively
to try to help families and others cause children not to drown
in swimming pools. In our neighborhood this past week, we had
yet another example of why that legislation is important.
But, Debbie, if there are any comments you would like to
make, you may.
HON. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, A MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM THE
STATE OF FLORIDA
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the
opportunity to join the commission. Since I don't have much of
a voice, I want to express my appreciation to you for extending
the invitation. Thank you.
Mr. Hastings. Thank you. Mr. Bray, you may proceed, sir.
SHAWN BRAY, UNIT CHIEF, ICE CYBER CRIMES CENTER, DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Bray. Thank you, Chairman Hastings, Commissioner Smith,
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Good afternoon. Start with that. My name
is Shawn Bray and I am the unit chief of the ICE Cyber Crimes
Center, ICE being Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I
appreciate the opportunity to discuss our authorities and
responsibilities to you in the U.S. with respect to
investigating trans-border and transnational child exploitation
crime.
In my written statement, I set forth many of our missions
and responsibilities, which I will not read or go through in
detail, partly because I'm sure you're familiar with them and
largely because I would rather focus on real examples of law
enforcement cooperation on an international level and real
cases, which is what I believe you would like to hear. I'd like
to put these examples and cases in context by highlighting the
responsibilities of the unit.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center
has three core missions. We investigate violations of
immigrations and customs law that occur in cyber space,
including sexual exploitation of children over the Internet.
This is a global explosion, partly due to the expansion of our
communications systems and information technologies, which has
been embraced by criminals and predators seeking to extend
their reach into new frontiers.
The trafficking of child pornography is a prime example of
this reach and is now facilitated and made easier through the
growth of the Internet. We work diligently to identify and
dismantle the international criminal organizations that operate
commercial child exploitation Web sites, as well as identify
those individuals that frequent and subscribe to these Web
sites. We use and develop sophisticated investigative
techniques to target those individuals, organizations and
others involved in the exploitation of children via the
Internet.
Now, I'd like to discuss the ways in which the Cyber Crimes
Center coordinates closely with our domestic and international
law enforcement partners and NGOs. First, communications are an
absolute imperative across all channels, government, law
enforcement, private and NGO. In order to be effective, it must
occur. We understand the need for cooperation and teamwork not
only within the United States, but with the international
community, as well.
Many of these groups that we work with nationally and
internationally include the Internet crimes against children
task forces and the various elements under the Department of
Justice, including Project Safe Childhood, our partners with
the FBI, the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.
Nongovernmental organizations, such as the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, are necessary to maximize the
effectiveness of the international investigations and our
efforts to protect children.
With regard to the national center, ICE is a partner there
and we do review, develop, de-conflict and assign leads from
their Cyber tip line to the field nationally and
internationally. We are also a member with the Financial
Coalition Against Child Pornography, which I'm sure you will
hear from President Allen later. We also conduct and have
developed a national child victim identification program. This
program is a technology-based solution, storing known victim
images which we can use to support prosecutions. The ICE Cyber
Crimes Center has populated this system with approximately 707
known victims series. These series consist of over 170,000
individuals images. These images are provided to law
enforcement at all levels nationally and internationally.
Since strengthening law enforcement cooperation is of
interest, I'd like to tell you some of the success stories that
we've had in significant international partnerships.
The Virtual Global Task Force has a very simple mission--to
make the Internet a safer place for children, to identify and
locate and help those children at risk, and to successfully
prosecute perpetrators of child exploitation. The members of
that include the Australian federal police, the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police, the United Kingdom's child exploitation online
protection center, the Italian federal police, our partners at
Interpol, and, of course, ICE.
Recent successes under the Virtual Global Task Force. Two
weeks ago, on an afternoon, when I was spending time with my
family, I received notification that we had rescued, within 24
hours, an 18-month-old that was being abused overseas. Images
were posted to the Internet. They were found by ICE agents in
the Midwest. They were communicated to headquarters. We took
those to the Virtual Global Task Force, passed those over into
the U.K., where they were able to affect an arrest, within 24
hours, rescuing an 18-month-old child. Based on information
from the Virtual Global Task Force that we received, we were
able to rescue an 11-year-old boy in Maryland one week after
the case was opened and the subject pled guilty, receiving a
sentence of 30 years in that investigation. This is immediate.
This is very direct and these kind of communications are
exactly what I'm trying to highlight and focus on.
As horrific as those are, we've had the International Youth
Advisory Congress, from July 17 to 21 of this year, over in
London, there will be the first ever Youth Advisory Congress
set up of 200 young people to meet with business, law
enforcement, government and representatives from the service
community. Their goal will be to discuss child protection in
their communities and child safety online. These young people
will be approximately ages 14 to 17. Their mission, their
charter for this first meeting is to establish a road map and
strategy, a partnership with industry, government, law
enforcement and education to sign up and eventually have a
product to present to the U.N. It's an ambitious goal, but it's
one that I'm sure that they're well suited for.
ICE will be representing the U.S. at this conference. We'll
be sending 20 young people over there, along with four
chaperones, school resource officers from the metro D.C. area.
In addition to the global task force, ICE also has 54 attach
offices worldwide. These attache offices are the foundation of
our law enforcement actions and partnerships, with particular
emphasis on child pornography and child sex tourism
investigations. Through these offices, ICE also serves to
notify foreign governments of any aliens that are being
deported with a history of child--or a sexual offense or a
child sexual offense that will be returning to their countries.
ICE also actively seeks information from these foreign
governments as to anyone who may be traveling here to the U.S.
Through these offices, we've had particular success, as you
may have heard, this past weekend about Leonard Auerbach, who
was recently returned from Cuba to face child sex tourism and
child exploitation charges. Within the past six months, we've
had the return of an international fugitive, Kenneth Freemen,
again, child sex tourism, child pornography, known for having
molested his own family members. That particular investigation,
ICE Special Agent Lisa Vlad received a special award from the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. These are
some of the few successes that we've had and I feel that they
are germane to the subject and the topic at hand today.
I thank you for this opportunity. I'd be delighted to
answer any questions you may have.
Mr. Hastings. Mr. Finch.
JAMES FINCH, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR CYBER DIVISION, FEDERAL BUREAU
OF INVESTIGATION
Mr. Finch. Good afternoon, Chairman Hastings and
distinguished members of the commission. On behalf of the FBI,
I would like to thank you for this opportunity to address the
FBI's role in combating the sexual exploitation of children
through the use of the Internet and technology.
The FBI has taken an aggressive proactive posture in
addressing the problem of child sexual abuse facilitated by the
Internet and technology. Our program, Innocent Images, a
national initiative, is comprised of over 40 task forces across
the country. In addition to our national operations, we enjoy
robust international relations that enhance our ability to
address the crime in a global manner. Since 2004, we have
operated an international task force from our office in
Calverton, Maryland. Over 21 countries have participated by
committing their officers to six months at our Calverton
location. And through this mechanism, we've enjoyed a number of
successes. And we continue to strengthen the capabilities of
our international partners through training. Currently, we have
personnel providing training in Australia and, next month, I'm
sending a team to Poland.
Providing training not only assists our partners in the
investigative methodologies, but provides a liaison bridge that
can be exploited during future investigations. My written
testimony contains specific details and statistical
accomplishments attributed to the FBI in this area.
I would like to express my appreciation to the commission
for addressing this very serious crime and thank Chairman
Hastings and distinguished members for the privilege of
appearing before you today. I look forward to answering any
questions you may have.
Mr. Hastings. I certainly thank all of you. And I sense
that there are a significant number of activities in progress
and perhaps it is that we don't have enough information about
them that causes us to continue along the path of trying to
find solutions.
One of the disturbing things that I find, in spite of the
extraordinary law enforcement that each of you has identified,
is that the media, and I guess because they don't have the same
limitations that you do, seem to go out and find these matters,
and then you have such a poignant display of child abuse as BBC
put forward in dealing with children in a number of countries.
The persons who exploited them, it appears, at least from that
crowd, nothing has been done and the United Nations says
``Thanks for your study and we'll look at it.''
The reason I raise this is because if there is a country in
the world that has had a continuing degradation of its fabric
in every aspect it were behaving and then to find peacekeepers
allegedly sexually exploiting children, I would like to know,
does that come under the portfolio of either or all of you--and
I want to deal specifically with Haiti--or is it when that kind
of thing gets uncovered, is it because the allegations are
against the U.N. peacekeepers that it hampers you in any way
from the activities that you all seem to do so well?
What happens in that kind of case when peacekeepers are
involved in exploiting children? It's gets studied, I gather.
That's not within your gambit?
Mr. Finch. I would say more with the State Department, sir.
Mr. Hastings. But the State Department or any other
division of the respective governments need enforcement
mechanisms and tools to be able to combat this kind of thing. I
guess it raises an issue for those of us as policy-makers
interfacing with the United Nations. I used Haiti, but that BBC
story uncovered issues in the Ivory Coast and southern Sudan,
as well. And it's particularly disturbing that you would have
people whose responsibility it is to protect somebody and then
go in and they wind up being abusers.
What would each of you say is the single most important
thing that is needed to further the global cooperation that all
three of you pointed to? Let me start with you, Mr. Williams.
Mr. Williams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would suggest that
right now we need to get more countries' cooperation outside of
the U.S. and several countries. We still need to have them
realize that this is a significant problem.
It's a worldwide problem, not just a U.S. problem, not just
a Western problem. It's a worldwide problem and that's where I
think we need to get that message across. It certainly can't
come from one country and I think utilizing Interpol as a
mechanism for training with our law enforcement partners here
and awareness, having them be aware of the things that are
going, because it's not just happening in any one country. You
mentioned several and it certainly is going on in other places.
Unfortunately, most of it, you're not going to hear about
because it's not someone like a U.N. peacekeeper or something
like that. It's the ones that you don't hear about and that's
the scary part, the ones that we don't know about going on.
Mr. Hastings. Mr. Bray.
Mr. Bray. I would say making sure that the countries with
which we're cooperating and partnering have a compatible system
of laws addressing these. In many areas, this is still not
criminal activity. To go along with that, I would say almost
equally important would be the establishment of training in
many of these areas. Some of these countries are expanding in
terms of technology and their laws simply are not either in
place or are, sadly, woefully lacking.
In each case where we are able to establish these and we
have outreaches, we're currently going into--we're sending a
team into Bulgaria and Macedonia to do training. They're now
coming online. We've spoken with countries and representatives
of law enforcement at the federal levels in Central and South
America, the Pacific Rim, who are now just coming to the table
and asking for assistance. Again, I would say helping them
build some sort of an infrastructure to work from would be
critical.
Mr. Hastings. Mr. Finch.
Mr. Finch. I would have to agree with my colleagues here
that laws pertaining to child pornography vary from country to
country. Right now, in over 80 countries, child sexual
exploitation is not illegal. Child pornography is not illegal.
Bureaucracy often thwarts the ability to pass information
efficiently and numerous other operational realities when it
comes to addressing this crime internationally exists, but I
think the laws, more consistent laws is absolutely necessary.
Mr. Hastings. Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me just
ask Mr. Bray, first of all. How does ICE learn that a pedophile
or a convicted sex offender is traveling or intends to travel?
Is it passive or is it better than that at this point as to how
we get our knowledge?
Mr. Bray. We actually get leads from many areas. We get
leads from our partners internationally. A lot of times, they
may be engaged in a chat or online or find information being
posted online that indicates that we have certain proactive
operations in which we reach out to our foreign counterparts
through the State Department and foreign countries and we
request this information.
A lot of times, we find out, sadly, after the fact. But if
subjects are arrested in a foreign country for these crimes or
have been picked up for these crimes and we can get that
referral through the State Department, we can then start
assembling that case back here stateside.
Mr. Smith. Would it be helpful if there were to be an
international Megan's Law so that countries would be noticed
prior to departure of a convicted sex offender?
Our legislation would require at least 21 days prior to
leaving and the hope is that if a country like Cambodia or
Thailand or Romania, where this kind of exploitation is
rampant, they simply would not allow them to come? In my
contacts with people who run the tip offices in these
countries, they seem very enthused at the prospect of having
actionable information in a timely fashion to deny such entry.
I'm wondering if you've looked, any of you, at our pending
legislation, which is ready to go, but we are always willing to
make any changes. It's got to move soon. I was recently in
Brazil and went to Brasilia and Rio, and I'd say, Mr. Chairman,
in answer to your question about, in part, you raised a very
important point about the peacekeepers in general, Haiti in
particular. I actually met with the people who train the
soldiers who are then deployed, and, in this case, they are on
their way to Haiti, and while the NGOs and the others seem to
be very well meaning, the lack of data, there was like a 45-
minute CD with a little bit of amplification by an instructor
and that seemed to be it. We find that that often is what
masquerades as in-depth training for peacekeepers and it falls
far short, obviously. It needs to be reinforced up and down the
command. I would say, to his credit, the president, our
president, when he initiated his zero tolerance policy in 2002,
there has been a robust implementation of it throughout the
chain of command and it's still not exactly where we'd all like
to be, but it is good.
The U.N., have a zero tolerance policy, as well, but it's
zero compliance when it comes to implementation. That's a bit
of an exaggeration. There are some units and some people who
are doing a magnificent job, but, by and large, it's still
falling short. I know it doesn't fall under your purview, but
it is an issue that the trafficking office and others take very
seriously.
One of the things we did do, Mr. Chairman, in the 2005
Trafficking Victims Protection Act reauthorization, we wrote in
specific language that said that governments that deploy
peacekeepers will be judged under the minimum standards as to
how well or poorly they're doing in trying to make sure that
people are vetted properly before deployment and if they commit
atrocities, like they did in D.R. Congo and elsewhere, they
will be held to account and prosecuted, and, if not, they will
fall perhaps even into tier three.
I think that gives an added tool. But I found, in some of
my travels, Mr. Chairman, including Brazil, that our tip
officers weren't even aware yet that that was a requirement and
their data calls needed to include that. We need to implement
that a little bit better.
But on this Megan's Law, do you think that international
legislation would be helpful? We know that there are a lot of
countries that don't have databases, but our hope is that this
will encourage the creation of databases so that they, too,
know who it is that's committing these heinous crimes against
their children, so we could bar them from entry into the U.S.
Mr. Bray.
Mr. Bray. We would do anything we could to protect children
and certainly knowing that a violator is on his way inbound is
extremely important. Our partners with CBP would certainly
benefit from that. The State Department for outgoing on the
Megan's list, as well. We have had a particular success, and
I'd point back to law enforcement international cooperation. It
probably wasn't a week ago, we turned back a traveler from
Australia. We had notification that he was on their registered
list. He had notified them prior to departure and we spoke to
him at the LAX and gave him the opportunity to wait about 17
hours before returning home. He was denied entry. That wouldn't
have been possible without the notification of the Australian
federal police.
Mr. Smith. I would hope that you would take a good look at
it. We did work with some people at ICE and at the tip office
in crafting it and others. I think the sooner we get something
like this enacted, the better. Otherwise, we've got to rely on
tips and all. But if we systematize it, it won't be perfect,
it'll have glitches galore, but at least we'll save more
children from this horrific abuse.
How does Interpol get its information about traveling
predators?
Mr. Williams. From our member countries, we receive
information if a sex offender is traveling, convicted sex
offender is traveling to the United States. They'll notify us
through messaging and we will obviously contact ICE, CBP to
have that individuals stopped. Usually when they know that it's
a convicted sex offender, they'll deny the entry. If they can
legally, they will deny and then send them back on the next
plane.
We work with like the Department of Justice SMART office,
sex offender management and registration tracking office, on
this whole new Adam Walsh Act and the new registrations and we
hope that, in the future, that we have more interaction with
the states as far as when they have sex offenders that are
traveling overseas, that they can notify us.
The state of Florida is certainly the example for the rest
of the country right now, as far as they notify us, a simple
message. We have a template. This sex offender is traveling to
this address in the U.K., being there three weeks, and we put a
message together and send it to the U.K. to let them know that
that individuals, convicted sex offender is going to be
traveling to there. It doesn't mean they can't travel there,
but that country should know that we certainly want to know
when sex offenders are traveling here and vacationing,
teaching.
I think the last couple weeks, we've had a few arrests by
ICE and the Marshal's Service of teachers, coaches, camp
counselors in various parts of the country. It's very
disturbing when people in those kind of positions have the
opportunity to hurt our children.
Mr. Smith. I have a lot of questions, but I'll just narrow
to just a final few. I wonder if you could tell us how many
repeat offenders do you find, particularly, and the nexus
between child pornography and the physical exploitation of
children? Do you find a connection? Like this man that brutally
raped and then killed Megan Kanka, he had spent more than a
dozen years in a prison, got out and then went right back to
his terrible deeds. Do you find that there are a lot of repeat
offenders and they're using the Internet and these sites to
feed on their evil?
Secondly, the Youth Advocacy Congress and the 20 young
people, how do they get picked? How do those young people
emerge as interested in this? I think it's great, but I was
just wondering who they are and how they are selected.
On the issue of the sites, and the sites are proliferating,
in a perverse way, the Chinese government has mastered the
blocking of sites using Google, Microsoft, Cisco and other
technologies that are out there, and they're trying to suppress
religious freedom and political freedoms. We know that
obscenity is not legal. It's not protected speech. I'm
wondering if more could be done with the Internet companies to
block these terrible sites, particularly as you identify them
and know that these are where these predators are feeding.
I'm wondering if there's a way of admonishing or maybe even
through legislation ensuring that this kind of demoralization
of a crime that perpetuates itself over and over again could be
blocked, so that you do a Google search and those things don't
show up. If you do a Google search in China, religious freedom,
Dalai Lama, Taiwan, none of that shows up. If you do a Google
search here for child porn and I'm sure, based on the numbers,
the number of hits are in the millions. I'm wondering if you
think that's an advisable course, doable technologically,
because I think that's going after it at its source.
Mr. Finch. Yes, sir. Technologically, it's doable. However,
in the effort or in an attempt to block certain sites, I think
there would be a degree of collateral damage or collateral
sites blocked, as well.
But it's certainly doable. Is it something I would advise?
I think I would leave that to companies like Microsoft and
Google who deal with that on a daily basis.
Mr. Smith. But as you answer that, you know better than
anyone and the teams that you work with what it is that's going
on. There might be plausible deniability here, for the sake of
argument, that a Google or a Microsoft their CEOs aren't
Googling that garbage.
Your guys see it and they know what it's doing to children.
If the collateral damage is done, and I'm not in any fear of
free speech ever going away in the United States, but if, for
the sake of hundreds of thousands or millions of children
globally, this market in the U.S., which is one of the prime
markets for all of this evil, that would be an acceptable
collateral damage, in my opinion, if one or two sites find
themselves out of business while you go after these terrible
child abusers.
Mr. Bray.
Mr. Bray. I would agree with Mr. Finch. I would say
technologically possible and feasible, absolutely. You have
tremendous minds at Google and Microsoft that could come up
with a mechanism for handling that, working with the ISPs, as
well. When we're looking at issues as far as collateral, I
would want to see that technology and I'd certainly want to see
its effect before we committed to such a thing. I've heard
great things about it in some countries and in other countries
it hasn't appeared to have been as effective, and a lot of it
just depends on the mechanism in which the child porn is
accessed there. I would say, with caution, it would certainly
be something to be looked at.
You asked about the International Youth Advisory Congress.
As far as the selection of those personnel, I'd like to thank
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They
were great partners in those selections through their school
outreach programs. We identified, again, from around the
country, just 20 phenomenal, outstanding students, not only in
terms of scholastics, but in terms of their knowledge of the
Internet and the use of computers. So we should acknowledge
that.
Mr. Hastings. Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I
appreciate the opportunity to participate in this hearing and
thank you for calling it. The sense that I get from the
testimony is that one of the major goals that we have in the
future is to begin with a lot more international cooperation.
Is that correct?
Are you aware, Mr. Finch, of the provision in the Senate
bill, the one sponsored by Senator Biden, that Chairman
Hastings referred to earlier, that allows for greater
international cooperation between ISPs and foreign governments
as long as proper treaty requirements have been satisfied?
Mr. Finch. I am familiar with it, ma'am. I am not
conversant in all aspects of that legislation.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Does the FBI support that provision
in that legislation?
Mr. Finch. The FBI is looking at the legislation. I can't
say that a decision has been made as to whether it is supported
or not in the FBI.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Is it fair to say that the FBI is
leaning against that provision in that they have not been
supportive thus far?
Mr. Finch. I can't say that they are not supportive of the
legislation, but I can't say with any certainty that they hold
a firm position on this legislation right now.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I'm not talking about the
legislation. I'm talking about that provision related to
international cooperation.
Mr. Finch. With the ISPs.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. If the goal is to move forward with
more international cooperation, it's hard to understand why the
FBI would be opposed to a section of the bill that would do
just that.
Mr. Finch. I know there are some concerns about the
legislation as far as creating possible intelligence gaps by
the information going abroad and intelligence gaps being
created here because we are not privy to what information or
intelligence has gone abroad.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I want to direct you to a letter
that you wrote to Senator Biden on July 11 last year that
indicated that the current number of personnel assigned to the
Innocent Images National Initiative located in Calverton,
Maryland was 32 members. Is that still the case that there's
still only 32 people that are employed at that project?
Mr. Finch. No, ma'am. That number is larger. The exact
number is 40-plus, but we have also created a forensics
laboratory dedicated to addressing only Innocent Images or
child sexual exploitation matters. That number has increased at
least by 10.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. So maybe there's 42.
Mr. Finch. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Forty-two individuals who are
dedicated to a problem the size and scope that we're talking
about here.
Mr. Finch. That's in the Washington, D.C. area at
Calverton. That's not including the 41 undercover operations
across the country in our field offices.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. In your letter, which was signed by
you, you indicated to Senator Biden that in fiscal year '05,
the Innocent Images project actually had to transfer $2.3
million to the Internet crimes complaint center. There was an
actual reduction in the funding and the number of staff that
were at that project, according to your letter. Is that the
case?
Mr. Finch. Money was transferred to the Internet crimes
complaint center, but the Internet crime complaint center
addresses the Innocent Images National Initiative. The Internet
crime complaint center receives complaints on child sexual
exploitation. They package that information and they forward it
to state, local, federal law enforcement agencies, depending on
the nature of the report.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I sit on the Judiciary Committee and
we had Marcus Mason testify in front of our committee in
October that the number of agents dedicated actually shrunk
from the level the previous year. He actually said there were
fewer agents dedicated to child exploitation investigations. I
asked him that question myself in October in a hearing in the
Judiciary Committee on this issue.
Mr. Finch. That number right now, and I am going to
approximate the number, but I think the number is in excess of
250 agents.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. But is it fewer than the year before
that?
Mr. Finch. That I can't be certain of.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. According to Marcus Mason, who is
someone that would know, I would think it was. And lastly, Mr.
Chairman, before I wear out my welcome here. Are you aware of
the studies that have been done by Special Agent Flint Waters
of the Wyoming Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force that
demonstrate that U.S. law enforcement is investigating fewer
than two percent of the activity that exists in the United
States?
Mr. Finch. I am familiar with that study.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And no one had disputed the accuracy
of that study and as a result, I'm wondering if you've asked
for more money so that you can investigate more of the crimes
that are out there.
Mr. Finch. I believe that tool being used in that--and I
can't speak to the accuracy or the procedures associated with
that particular tool being used. We use the different tools and
different procedures.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I just asked you whether you would
ask for more money.
Mr. Finch. As far as asking for more money--based on that
report?
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Based on the fact that no one has
disputed, in the over a year that I've been involved in this
issue, that we are only investigating less than two percent of
the crimes against children related to child pornography that
are out there right now. As a result, because that doesn't seem
like very much, I would think that the department would be
interested in expanding their funding that they could
investigate more of these crimes.
Mr. Finch. And we have received additional funding for our
Innocent Images National Initiative.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Have you asked for more funding?
Mr. Finch. Yes, we have.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. In this fiscal year? And I serve on
the Appropriations Committee, so I can certainly check.
Mr. Finch. I'd have to check with my budget person.
Mr. Hastings. Will the gentlelady yield just a moment?
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I'd be happy to yield.
Mr. Hastings. I guess put another way, do you have enough
resources?
Mr. Finch. The nature of this crime, you can put--as many
resources as you can dedicate to this particular crime, we can
use.
Mr. Hastings. Do you have enough now? I understand that you
could use money ad infinitum, but you also know that there
would have to be a low threshold.
Mr. Finch. What I normally do is look at the challenges
facing my people addressing this and discuss with them where
they need the resources, if they need them in the undercover
cases, if they need them in the overseas training, and then I
make that decision. But I can always use more resources, yes,
sir. And as far as have I asked, we usually ask for more
resources, sir.
Mr. Hastings. I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you very much. To conclude,
Mr. Chairman. I realize, Mr. Finch, that you are professing to
not know whether you are opposed to the Section 306 of Senator
Biden's bill, but my understanding is the department and the
FBI are opposed to that section and that your concerns are
related to the issues that you outlined a few minutes ago.
But it's perplexing to me, in a hearing where we're talking
about the need to move forward cooperatively on an
international basis, why DOJ and the FBI would stand in the way
of the very goal that we're talking about trying to accomplish
here, especially when you are investigating less than two
percent of the cases here in the United States. You don't
really ask for more resources in any kind of an aggressive way.
You shift money around and actually reduce the amount of
employees that are dedicated to investigating these crimes.
There are actually 2,342 investigators in the Department of
Justice for white collar crime and only 232 dedicated to child
exploitation investigations, and that I know to be true.
It's a continuing source of frustration for me to know that
the Department of Justice says that this type of investigation
is a priority, when it doesn't appear to be willing to back
that up with resources and manpower. Mr. Chairman, I realize
that I have taken an aggressive tact here, but I appreciate the
opportunity to be here.
Mr. Hastings. I appreciate it. Senator Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm wondering if any of
you have an opinion on the agreement that Andrew Cuomo in New
York, the attorney general, struck with Verizon, Sprint and
Time Warner Cable to block sites that carry child porn and
whether or not that might not be a model for a nationwide
strategy by the U.S. attorney general. They came to that
agreement last Tuesday.
Mr. Bray. Like everyone else, I believe I saw the release
on that. It was certainly interesting. It was a tact that
obviously we haven't seen taken before and to be honest with
you, sir, I'm going to be very interested to sit down and take
a look at how that works out overall. Again, we discussed the
fact that as far as technologies, is this available to us, what
are the ultimate results going to be and we'll have to wait and
see what that is. Very proactive and certainly congratulations
to them for taking that strong stance.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Finch.
Mr. Finch. Blocking sites can be effective. Many sites are
prepared for that and there are mirrored sites and they pop up
elsewhere. Vigilance is certainly necessary when one starts out
to block certain types of sites. Numerous techniques are used
to avoid being blocked, certain key words, but it can be
effective.
Mr. Smith. But even with a shadow or mirror site it seems
to me that if the effort were expended, and, as my good friend
and colleague from Florida mentioned, two percent of these
actions are being looked at and only two percent, it seems to
me it's another weapon or another tool in the toolbox. I hate
to say this, because I've introduced the Global Online Freedom
Act, which Microsoft and others loathe right now because of
what's happening in China, but reverse it and bring it here,
I'm not as concerned about collateral damage when children are
the victims and victims en masse.
It seems to me that if we think even inside the box,
because Cuomo's already doing it, and say let's take what
works, perhaps borrow from it, improve upon it, if that's
possible, and roll out a national strategy, and I would
certainly hope you'd get back to us as quickly as possible on
your reflections on it and, obviously, we'll pursue it as we've
been with the attorney general's office here in Washington. But
it seems to me it's like a war. If we are in a war to save
children, you use every weapon, every bit of intelligence,
human intelligence, every possible technological means to go
after the perpetrators of these crimes.
And I say this knowing that you're on the front line,
you're doing a magnificent job every day to stop these terrible
crimes, but I think as a policy, from a policy point of view,
we could do more and it means going after the ISPs, going after
these large companies. And it wasn't until Cuomo actually found
some things that made him want to negotiate that those three
that I mentioned were amenable to a negotiation. All of a
sudden, they found they can do it.
Mr. Hastings. I would appreciate an opportunity to follow-
up with you, as Representative Smith has just done, and if you
would be kind enough to answer his questions. One of the
things, Mr. Williams, I wish you would stress for me is, looked
at another way, when a person is a suspect and goes into
Interpol and it turns out that the individual hadn't done
anything, what's the procedure for getting out of the mess?
It's like credit reporting. Once you've been tagged--and I
won't bother you now, so you can get to other witnesses, but if
you would just drop me a line on that, it would be deeply
appreciated.
Mr. Williams. Yes, Chairman, I definitely will do that.
Mr. Hastings. All right. I thank you all. Now we would like
to ask our second panel, Mr. Tim Cranton, who is Associate
General Counsel of Worldwide Internet Safety Programs of
Microsoft, and Ernie Allen, President and CEO of the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And I thank all of
you for being here and our new witnesses. Mr. Allen, since you
sat down first, we will start with you.
ERNIE ALLEN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND
EXPLOITED CHILDREN
Mr. Allen. Well, Mr. Chairman, you have my written
testimony. With your permission, I'd like to briefly summarize.
Mr. Hastings. Without objection.
Mr. Allen. First, let me thank you and Mr. Smith for your
great leadership on our issue. We had the honor to work with
you on at the last Parliamentary Assembly at the OSCE. You led
the charge that passed a resolution that we believe is changing
law across the region and there's going to be another
resolution at the upcoming meeting in Kazakhstan. I wanted to
report to you that it is having impact and to thank you for
your efforts that made it possible.
Let me briefly report to you on behalf of our two
organizations, the national center and our sister organization,
the international center. The national center's longest running
program to address child sexual exploitation is its
congressionally-mandated cyber tip line. The 911 for the
Internet serves as the national clearinghouse for investigative
leads and tips regarding crimes against children on the
Internet. The cyber tip line is operated in partnership with
the FBI, ICE, the Postal Inspection Service, the Secret
Service, Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section at the
Justice Department, and the Internet Crimes Against Children
Task Force program. Reports are made by the public and by
electronic service providers who are required by law to report
to the cyber tip line. Our analysts review them, evaluate the
content, do additional public search, use search tools to
enhance, to determine the geographic location of the apparent
criminal act, and provide that information to the appropriate
law enforcement agency for investigative follow-up.
Next week, we will receive our 600,000th report since the
creation of the cyber tip line in 1998, more than 100,000
reports last year alone, and we're on track for 120,000 this
year. In addition, the electronic service providers have
reported to us more than five million images of sexually
exploited children. The categories in which we're receiving
those reports are all going up. In 2007, we saw an increase of
23 percent in child pornography reports, 66 percent in online
enticement of children reports, 58 percent in child
prostitution, 10 percent in child sex tourism reports, nine
percent in child molestation reports, and a 31 percent increase
in misleading domain names.
ICE forwards those cyber tip line reports about child
pornography to law enforcement agencies in other countries and
ICE attaches stationed abroad access our cyber tip line via a
virtual private network and, under this system, law enforcement
in 21 countries receive those reports, and we're currently in
discussions with law enforcement in three additional countries.
The cyber tip line also receives reports from members of the
International Association of Internet Hotline Providers,
INHOPE. To date, members have sent almost 50,000 reports of
apparent child pornography to our cyber tip line and there are
currently 33 INHOPE hotlines in 29 countries.
Another national center program is our child victim
identification program. Our analysts work with our federal law
enforcement partners to help prosecutors get convictions by
proving that a real child is depicted in child pornography
images and, secondly, we work with law enforcement to locate
and rescue those child victims. To date, our analysts at the
national center have reviewed 14 million child pornography
images and videos, seven million last year alone. We share
these images with international law enforcement officers who
provide vital information that helps us identify and rescue the
children.
We're also attacking child sexual exploitation in
partnership with industry leaders, much as Mr. Smith raised in
the last round of questioning, through our technology
coalition, which includes AOL, EarthLink, Google, Microsoft,
United Online and Yahoo. We are working with those companies,
including Mr. Cranton, to try to develop and deploy technology
to identify those specific illegal images in order to disrupt
their transmission. And let me interject here, 95 percent of
the content out there is out there forever and what we are
doing is trying to develop a database of those digital
fingerprints, hash values, so that we can identify the
transmission of identified unlawful images.
We're also working on an initiative with electronic service
providers and international law enforcement to limit access to
Web sites containing child pornography. Our cyber tip line
analysts identify active sites with illegal content and compile
a list of those sites' uniform resource locators, the URLs. As
you mentioned, last week, we entered into an agreement, through
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in New York, to provide that list
of URLs to the three participating companies in that agreement.
We're currently providing it to 14 companies and similar
techniques have been used for some time in the United Kingdom,
in Sweden, in Norway, in Denmark, in Canada. Last week, French
authorities announced that they were going to take steps to
block those images. We think this is an important step for us
to explore here in the United States.
Our national center and our international center also
coordinate the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography,
whose goals is to eradicate commercial child pornography.
Currently, that coalition is made up of 30 companies, including
MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup,
Internet industry leaders, like Microsoft, and others that
represent 95 percent of the U.S. payments industry. Based on
tips to the cyber tip line, the national center identifies Web
sites containing illegal images with method of payment
information attached. We forward this information to law
enforcement, which makes purchases on a particular site,
enabling law enforcement to identify who and where the merchant
bank is, where the account resides.
If law enforcement does not proceed with an investigation,
we are notifying the financial company and they are taking
action based on their terms of service agreement. Already we're
seeing progress. In less than two years, credit cards have now
virtually disappeared as a method of payment for this kind of
content and the purchase price of the content has increased
dramatically. We are now working to expand the financial
coalition on the international level. We have discussions
underway in the Asian Pacific region and the European Union is
currently considering the creation of a similar coalition. On
the international level, in partnership with Microsoft and in
conjunction with Interpol, we are also trying to build law
enforcement capacity around the world. Thanks to Microsoft's
support, we have trained law enforcement officers from 111
countries in how to investigate computer-facilitated crimes
against children. The goal is to build a worldwide cadre of
experts that we can mobilize to attack this problem.
I know this is a daunting challenge, but let me just
briefly mention a few recommendations. First, you worked with
us as a result of our 2006 report reviewing the law on child
pornography in the 186 member countries of Interpol. As you may
recall, in 95 of those countries, there was no law at all. In
135 of those countries, they did not criminalize the possession
of child pornography. We were honored to have the opportunity
to work with you, but the challenge remaining is daunting. Two
countries criminalized the possession of child pornography last
year, Costa Rica and the Czech Republic. There's a lot more to
do.
Second, we need to make crimes against children a priority
on the national agendas of so many more of these countries.
Even when countries have adequate child protection law in
place, and most do not, if these countries don't make this a
national priority, law enforcement will struggle to investigate
the crimes without sufficient funding or proper infrastructure.
Lots of governments are focusing on financial crimes and
terrorism, not realizing that child sexual exploitation
contains elements of both. We think we need to educate
governments and work with the regional organizations.
Third, despite the progress that we've made, we believe
that we need additional training for law enforcement around the
world and this needs to be a topic for discussion at more
international conferences. There needs to be a forum for law
enforcement and government officials to share best practices
and discuss ways to cooperate and share information more
effectively.
Fourth, those countries that have built the capacity need
to be encouraged to coordinate with ICE so that they're able to
receive our cyber tip line reports via the VPN. These cyber tip
line reports contain lead information about crimes against
children that are being committed abroad, that are being
committed all over the world, and law enforcement agencies can
and must use them to help prosecute offenders in their own
countries.
Fifth child sex tourism is a devastating problem and
continues to grow in many new countries. We need to ensure that
the necessary resources are provided to these countries where
children are most at risk, and those resources can be used for
public education, for counseling, for medical services for the
victims, for law enforcement, and, to the extent possible,
international law enforcement needs to share information that
would enable them to better track these offenders who move from
country to country in order to get access to these children.
Finally, we were very pleased that the United States Senate
ratified the Council of Europe's convention on cybercrime. We
think it's an important step forward. More countries need to do
it.
Mr. Chairman, I don't have a lot of easy solutions, but
we're thrilled by your leadership and eager to be of
assistance.
Mr. Hastings. Thank you very much, Mr. Allen. You were very
clear. I appreciate the fact that you gave us recommendations
that we can certainly build on, and that's very much
appreciated by you. In addition to the fact in a number of
places, Chris Smith doesn't have any peers here in Congress in
dealing in human trafficking. Many of us support his efforts.
But it is good to know and I'm sure he was pleased, as he is
here, to know that when we do these resolutions, like we did in
Brussels, that somewhere along the line, it may have an impact.
Sometimes we don't get to feel that impact, because the
problem is so huge. Thank you again for that testimony. We'll
have questions in a few minutes. Mr. Cranton.
TIM CRANTON, ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL, WORLDWIDE INTERNET
SAFETY PROGRAMS, MICROSOFT CORPORATION
Mr. Cranton. Thank you, Chairman Hastings, Ranking Member
Smith. I'd like to thank you for allowing Microsoft to speak
here today, specifically to address what industry can do to
help advance law enforcement information sharing
internationally.
I'd like to recognize, first, and express gratitude for
both of your leadership in this area and for helping advance
this very important issue, particularly on a global and an
international level, because we feel that's the right way to be
looking at this, as a problem, and recognizing that these
crimes are global and that we need to develop global solutions
to address them that enable the type of information sharing
that can capture the criminals that are involved in child
exploitation issues.
It's also much a privilege for me and for Microsoft to
share the panel with Ernie Allen, who is truly a visionary in
advancing global cooperation both through the national and
international centers, which are model child advocacy centers
around the world, and we're delighted to be here to share in
this conversation.
I've submitted detailed testimony that goes through a
broader explanation of Microsoft's approach as industry in
advancing this information sharing and advancing this issue.
What I'd like to focus on today is one specific topic and
that is how industry can do what it does best, which is develop
technology or at least the IT industry, to try to make a
difference here and to develop technology solutions that can
really help facilitate across all the different stages, and Mr.
Allen has outlined it really well, from the service provider
through to the clearinghouses and then on to law enforcement
and having a very effective information sharing mechanism and
technology tools across all three of those stages is critical
for success here, and that's where we feel industry can make a
real difference.
If you'll indulge me for a minute, I have PowerPoint slides
and would just like to very briefly walk through a scenario
relating to a tool that we have developed, called the Child
Exploitation Tracking System, also known as CETS.
When CETS was first developed, the vision or the aspiration
of the tool is to create this global information sharing
community among law enforcement.
The demonstration that I'll provide is hypothetical and
aspirational and this is where we're trying to go. This is what
we hope eventually technology can enable.
Very quickly, CETS is a tool for law enforcement. It was
developed directly in conjunction with law enforcement not only
to help them manage their investigations, law enforcement is
very familiar with case management systems, but we tried to add
some additional functionality on top of that that would really
enable law enforcement to share information across agencies and
across national boundaries and to search that information.
Once you build this global database of information, any
time that an investigation occurs, you can be searching across
all the various pieces of information in those investigations.
To bring those law enforcement agencies together. That's what
the tool is designed to do. What's very critical, and it's been
mentioned several times during the hearing, is the legal
framework. This is a technology tool that enables this. But the
only way that it works is if the legal framework is in place
that enables the law enforcement sharing, especially when you
start talking about global law enforcement sharing.
We've designed the tool so that it actually has different
levels of sharing to try to facilitate the complexities that
occur across countries. There are three levels of sharing that
you have. You can have no contact sharing. If there are two
countries that are contributing into the CETS system that don't
have legal agreements in place or don't have the level of
trust, they can say, ``We're not going to be sharing
information between those two countries.''
Secondly, you have contact level sharing. There might be a
certain level of understanding or trust between those countries
or those agencies and they would say, ``We would prefer not to
actually give access to our investigative database, but what
we'd like to have is, if there is a link between
investigations, to just identify and flag it on a contact
basis.'' And then there's extended information sharing, which
essentially reflects a full trust and sharing of investigative
details between agencies. I'll very quickly walk through an
example of how this might play itself out.
In this particular scenario, there's a police officer in
Vancouver, in Canada, which is one of the countries that has
deployed CETS, and they get a tip from an ISP, a service
provider, of an image, a known child pornography image. This
officer would go into CETS, and this is the homepage that they
would see, and they'd click on the ``import image'' screen.
When they do that, they're able to upload the image. A new
functionality that we've built in here is actually that image
can then be searched across the entire database. You can see if
there's any other investigation that involves that same image
and that would be triggered.
In this particular case, the image doesn't trigger, but
there is the computer address that has been added into the
report from the law enforcement officer. In this case they say
there's been a child pornography image across our services and
it looks like it's coming from this computer that's located in
Europe. Then the officer can actually update the report to
reflect that fact and to reflect the ISP and actually make a
referral to the law enforcement agent in Europe. Then they
enter all these information in. They enter that IP address and
flag it for that other law enforcement agent in Europe. That
when the Europe police department opens up CETS that next day,
they see in their notification, ``Oh, there's a case that you
might want to look at.'' In this scenario, they would actually
be able to subpoena the service provider in their jurisdiction
and find out who the individual is that belongs to that IP
address. Quickly wrapping that up, then in this scenario, once
the record has been update with that name, again, it does a
complete search and, in this particular case, for example, if
that individual was suspected of sex tourism in Asia and there
was an open investigation relating to that, it would trigger
the link.
This is an example of contact only information, so they
might not have an agreement to share their data, but at least
they now know, ``Oh, there is actually an active investigation
in Asia that relates to this.''
Ideally, what you then have is what started as a report
from a service provider in Canada linking back through to the
actual abuse that is that image that's happening, that's being
displayed in Canada, and you find the person who's committing
that abuse and hopefully save that child and arrest the
perpetrator. That's the ideal and that's where we'd like to go.
Today, how far we are along in getting to that vision, CETS
has been deployed in eight countries, Canada, Brazil, Chile,
Indonesia, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and Romania. There are
several other countries that we are in kind of launch
deployment phase, as well. We have now over 850 investigators
worldwide who have been trained and are active users of CETS in
the 173 different locations. Microsoft has made a significant
investment in this over $10 million to develop the CETS
technology and then to support the deployments, as well as to
donate all the software associated with the deployments.
We also have an ongoing commitment to continue to donate
the software and to support global deployments and what I call
kind of the software development life cycle, where we will
continue to come with upgrades to CETS and to fix bugs as they
arise and to support the technology worldwide.
That's the end of the demonstration. I think Mr. Allen did
an excellent summary of kind of in addition to technology
tools, what we should be looking to as solutions, because
technology is only as good as the system that uses it. We do
need to have those minimum laws in place, defining child
pornography in a consistent way and providing for information
sharing across law enforcement agencies.
I would add one additional point from an industry
perspective is the need for laws that help support the industry
sharing of information, including safe harbors or immunities
for industry when they do want to be proactive on these issues,
because a lot of reluctance around child exploitation cases is
the radioactive nature of child pornography and child
exploitation images. It's very helpful to have clear laws that
empower service providers to be proactive in addressing these
issues.
With that, I thank the commission for the opportunity to
speak here today and I'm happy to answer any questions you
might have.
Mr. Hastings. Thank you very much, Mr. Cranton. In your
opinion, does U.S. law enforcement take full advantage of your
Microsoft Groove system that you mentioned?
Mr. Cranton. We work closely with law enforcement across
the U.S. and we have some law enforcement that use the Groove
system to share information. We also have been working with
them around the CETS technology to see if we could develop a
solution for the United States that would deploy the CETS
technology in the U.S., which is a priority for Microsoft to at
least support some type of technology solution.
It's important. CETS itself is every interoperable with
other systems. If we can piece together or put together the
right solution, we'd be delighted to support that.
Mr. Hastings. What about your new computer online forensic
evidence extractor, COFEE?
Mr. Cranton. Yes. That's still in beta form, but it's been
a huge hit with law enforcement. We've been distributing it
widely to U.S. law enforcement, as well as law enforcement
around the world. There's now over 2,000 officers who are using
the COFEE tool, which is a simple tool that just enables them
to extract information from a computer while it's still
running. If they come to the scene of a crime, they don't want
to shut the computer down. They want to be able to capture the
information right there.
Mr. Hastings. Mr. Allen, you have followed developments in
the OSCE countries quite closely and Chris and I have had an
opportunity to work with you and those that you work with,
particularly in terms of the legal framework and law
enforcement.
The two are interrelated, as you mentioned in your
testimony. Which of the countries would you point out, when you
speak of some countries having national priorities that
encapsulate this, others do not, which countries do you think
are in particular need of encouragement?
Mr. Allen. There is a particular need in the Eastern Bloc.
We have spent a good deal of time, including at our meeting in
Brussels, meeting with the delegation from the Russian
Parliament and we met with others from Eastern Europe.
Historically, the role of organized crime in that part of the
world has been significant in this area. I would think
certainly that is a key area. Of the 56 OSCE countries, the
countries that are not members of the European Union, by and
large, lack the kind of law that we think is necessary.
On the positive side, the United Kingdom has played an
extraordinary leadership role in this area. We work very
closely with the French and the Belgians, who are also, doing
important things in this regard. The point I would make is when
there are 186 countries in Interpol and 135 of them have yet to
criminalize the possession of child pornography, it's far
easier to point out the ones where there's need than the ones
that are doing all the things we think they should.
It's a long list.
Mr. Hastings. Does the fact of a lack of computer and
technical equipment come into play in your training process and
what do you do?
Mr. Allen. Absolutely. One of the big challenges that we
faced, and with the support of Microsoft, in training law
enforcement, building a cadre of experts, is that in many of
these countries, law enforcement doesn't even have computers.
How do you investigate computer crime? We're trying to work
with them simultaneously and help them get the tools they need,
at least in a targeted way, that those specialists can work
these investigations. I came from a meeting in which law
enforcement indicated that 80 percent of these sites are still
hosted in the United States and one of the reasons why we
believe that the United States remains a priority area of need.
A member of the Russian Parliament said to me at that meeting
in Brussels, ``We'll help, but you've got to do something about
the demand,'' because the reason organized criminals are
involved in this activity is not because of any sexual
predilection for children, it's because it's profitable.
It's easy and it's profitable. So because of the
penetration of technology in this country and because of high
speed and broadband and the ability, we're now finding images
on computers with terabytes of data.
The forensic challenge for law enforcement is huge. This is
truly--and I think it's why your hearing is so timely. This is
not a problem that any single country, including the United
States, can attack alone. It really requires global approaches
and global solutions.
Mr. Hastings. How much of a barrier is language to
cooperation or access to international databases?
Mr. Allen. I think it's a barrier, but I think it's
becoming less so. We've worked very closely with Interpol that
communicates in six languages and we've found--and one of the
things we've tried to do in our training with Microsoft is not
do it in the usual places, not conduct it in London and Paris.
We've done the training in Beijing. We've done it in Bangkok.
We did it in Bucharest. We've done it in Vilnius. We've gone
places that traditionally have not done this kind of training
and we have found enormous receptivity and enormous commitment
to try to do something about it.
Mr. Hastings. That's certainly illuminating and both your
testimonies have been, as well. In advance of my having to
leave, I have to go to the Rules Committee in just a few
minutes and I just want to personally thank both of you for
some of the most poignant testimony on this subject and you've
given us sort of a guide as policy-makers that we can now go
forward and try to assist better and some things that perhaps
we can do that will assist in implementing many of the things
that you are doing and to find some resources to fill some of
the gaps that might exist out there.
It is an area of prominent concern, but regrettably, it
competes with a significant number of areas of prominent
concern here in this institution and, for us, sometimes things
aren't moving fast enough.
It's good to know that what we are doing can and does have
some impact and I look forward to Kazakhstan in July, where
Chris will take the lead and our delegation will be very
insistent that these matters continue to remain the highest
priorities of the participating states. But we're operating in
that 56 participating limited sphere and it's a big old world
out there, where this ongoing crime against children is taking
place.
My personal thanks to both of you, and we will be able to
follow-up. And I'm going to leave the remaining portion of the
hearing in the hands of my colleague, chairman, Ranking Member
Smith.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I want to
thank you for your leadership and for especially calling this
very timely and important hearing so we can move the ball
further down the court. I deeply appreciate your leadership on
this.
Let me ask you, Mr. Allen, first. You talked about the tips
and how many tips are conveyed to law enforcement. I'm
wondering, do you have confidence that those tips are being
properly investigated? Are jail sentences being meted out that
would be commensurate with the crime? Are people going to jail
that should?
You mentioned 14 million images and someone at some point
looks at some, but hopefully not all of those sad and tragic
images, but I know that when we talk to people who go to mass
graves, the pathologists and coroners have to deal--I mean,
they steel themselves against what they're looking at, knowing
that it's for the greater good, whether it be in Srebrenica or
some other place where genocide has occurred.
When you're talking about these crimes, which are ongoing,
it has to take a toll on your staff and the staffs of people
who are looking at this in law enforcement. I'm wondering, how
is that dealt with?
Mr. Allen. It's very demanding work and, in my judgment,
it's heroic work that these young people are doing. We do have
a program at the national center called Safeguard, in which we
have a psychologist who comes in weekly, who does group work
with these folks, as well as available for individual work.
What we have found is that the motivation and the success
that flows from that work overwhelms the horror and they tell
me that what these analysts do is learn to look past the child.
They look past to the child to the background. They look for
unique identifiable characteristics. In many ways, it is needle
in a haystack type work. We are working with law enforcement
all over the world, because these children could be anywhere.
Our goal in the work is to place the child somewhere on
planet Earth and then to provide cropped images and the
additional information to the appropriate law enforcement
agency so that they can locate the child. We are being
sensitive to that. I don't minimize the difficulty of it, but I
think that the answer to the first part of your question flows
from the second part. That is, in our judgment, the sentences
that are happening today are the most significant at any time
in our history. The law certainly in the United States and
other countries has caught up and serious sentences recognizing
the seriousness of these crimes are being provided.
Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz talked about the reality
that there are so many offenders. Can we possibly investigate
and prosecute all of these people? In our judgment, the answer
to that is, no, we can't, just like the war against drugs and
other recent problems. What we try to do, even with our cyber
tip leads, is triage them. We try to determine is the child
currently being harmed, is a child at immediate risk, and those
get the priority.
The other reason why some of these other techniques, none
of them panaceas, but if there are simply too many offenders
for law enforcement to deal with then what we've tried to do is
to develop some parallel tactics, like following the money and
trying to eliminate the profit motive, shut down the commercial
side, like following up to what that Russian senator said,
you've got to do something about the demand, using appropriate
legal constitutional tools to keep images that are not
protected speech, according to the Supreme Court of the United
States, from reaching the computers of would be consumers,
using technology innovation Microsoft and others are providing.
I think it's a complex attack, but I think you can't do it on
one front alone.
The other point I would want to make, to what Congresswoman
Wasserman Schultz said earlier, is we agree with her point. Mr.
Finch and Mr. Bray sitting here representing those federal law
enforcement agencies can't say to you that they need more
resources, but they do. We need more people to do the work. We
need more forensics capability simply because of the enormity
of the challenge, and my hope is that Congress can get them
some additional help.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask you. How do they pay, the exploiters,
if they can't use their credit cards?
Mr. Allen. They're gravitating in other means. There are
customized payment mechanisms, third-party payment, alternate
payment systems. In a meeting this morning, we learned that--
that this is a multibillion dollar industry. Some leaders in
law enforcement think, because of the efforts attacking
commercial child pornography, that it's now a multimillion
dollar industry, that it's gotten a lot smaller. Some of them
are paying cash. They're wiring money. Our goal is to make it
so difficult and so burdensome for these folks to make money,
that they will gravitate into some other illicit enterprise
where it's easier.
Mr. Smith. Is Western Union brought in and others where
money is wired?
Mr. Allen. Western Union is a party to our financial
coalition. They are working with us to try to deal with--and
our goal from the beginning was--we were skeptical that this
was an enterprise that could survive if it was solely dependent
on cash payments, and I think we're seeing that.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask you. As you can see, the effort here
couldn't be more bipartisan. But there was a time when that
wasn't the case, and I'd just back up for a second.
I don't know if you know this, but the original Meese
commission was my idea and Frank Wolf's idea. It was even
before Meese became attorney general. William French Smith was
the attorney general at the time. It took us six months to
persuade the White House that this was something that the old
ACLU, which was Nixon and, before that, Johnson, but Nixon
finally got the final product, saying there's no connection
between abhorrent behavior and pornography, including child
pornography, was a farce, it was based on incredibly faulty
data and science.
What the Meese commission found, after 18 months of
probing, that it was a multibillion dollar industry that was
feeding demand and leading to rape, a desensitization to rape,
and the exploitation of children. We went through eight years
where our child porn statutes were not enforced and front line,
of all things, ``PBS'' did a very, very incisive commentary, a
two-hour piece on the fact that it was an engraved invitation
for these pornographers, particularly child pornographers, to
just proliferate and, with the rise of the Internet, it became
a multibillion dollar industry. We're almost like doing
backpedaling to try to catch up to lost years and, as you said,
once it's on there, it's there forever. There were the eight
years of the Clinton administration.
This is not something that's partisan. It's a matter of
fact. I offered a resolution challenging the Knox decision,
where the prosecutorial strategy by the U.S. government was to
side with the pornographer and say that lascivious behavior has
to emanate from the child rather than the intent of the
photographer. It was nuts, in my opinion, and it passed
unanimously in the House and the Senate. We lost precious
ground there and I'm wondering, with
9/11, with all the other problems we had, whether or not we
also lost some years in the early Bush administration when it
comes to these crimes, where more money and resources and
hurry-up offense could make a difference.
I wonder if you could answer that, because I think Frank
Wolf has tried desperately to get more money into this effort,
particularly when he was chairman of State Justice and Commerce
Appropriations Committee, but we need to know from the experts
like you how much more.
I know many of those who can testify are always bound by
OMB as to what it is that they can ask for and I appreciate
that, but we need to know what the upper limits are to really
wage war against these predators.
Mr. Allen. My response to you is that I think the nation
has awakened to the problem. I think as it relates to child
pornography, we've had to overcome the perception expressed by
many about isn't this just adult pornography, aren't these 20-
year-olds in pigtails made to look like they're 15. What we
found, as a result of those 600,000 reports and those 14
million images that our staff has reviewed, is that
overwhelming these victims are prepubescent children and
they're getting younger and younger. This is not the problem
that America thinks it is. We know what the demands are on
federal law enforcement as it relates to homeland security and
the fight against terrorism and all of that.
In our judgment, this is domestic terrorism and, in our
judgment, and my friends at the FBI and ICE and other agencies
may shudder when I say this, but I think they badly need more
resources. I don't know whether law enforcement is only able to
work two percent of the cases or five percent of the cases or
20 percent of the cases, but whatever it is, what they've tried
to do, as law enforcement always tries to do, is to focus on
those most responsible in the key positions where they can have
the greatest impact with their investigations.
I think Innocent Images and the work done by the Cyber
Crime Center at ICE, I think the work they've done is heroic. I
would argue that America has awakened to this problem and that
now is the time to generate more resources and more help for
those agencies so that we can have more impact on it.
Mr. Smith. Let me ask you, Mr. Cranton. First of all, thank
you for the initiative, the CETS initiative. That is certainly
an extraordinary initiative on behalf of Microsoft. I have a
couple of questions about it.
I'm wondering, you mentioned the eight countries, and I
think that's a great start. Russia was not on it. I'm wondering
if there's a contemplation of putting them on it, because so
many images do emanate from that country. I'm wondering whether
or not the Gates Foundation, which probably has more money than
virtually any other foundation in the world, and they do
wonderful work in the area of HIV/AIDS and other things,
whether or not some of their charitable work is being targeted
at developing countries to help the information.
I would note, parenthetically, Sheri Rickert and I were in
Nigeria a year and a half ago on a human trafficking trip and
they have a tip office. They do wonderful work. They are
certainly dedicated. They absolutely lack the infrastructure.
Their police can't talk to each other. They got a donation from
the Italians that wasn't compatible with their existing
hardware. They want to do better. They don't have the resources
and they have a serious problem of child exploitation in
Nigeria and a serious problem with trafficking, and the two
usually go hand-in-glove.
I'm wondering if this is something the Gates Foundation
might be contemplating making some significant contributions
towards.
Mr. Cranton. Thank you. With respect to Russia or other
countries, our approach has been to make the technology
available to law enforcement and there is an advisory committee
of the law enforcement agencies who have adopted CETS that we
treat as more of the decision-making community that supports
the CETS deployment.
Certainly we would support technology deployments in Russia
if they were appropriate and if the law enforcement kind of
community making those decisions was comfortable with how the
deployment would go.
As I mentioned, we have the different information sharing
and what's critical is that you can bring it together in an
effective sharing across different countries.We try to stay
somewhat out of the business of deciding who gets CETS or who
doesn't get CETS.
In terms of the Gates Foundation Microsoft is in the
position of any other entity who wants money from the Gates
Foundation and we could submit a request along with everyone
else. However, the point is very well taken and on the
infrastructure side, we have a program called Unlimited
Potential which reaches out, in particular, to developing
countries to help build the technical infrastructure that, in
particular, has been used for trafficking situations in South
Asia-Pacific region and is an excellent resource to look for
the kind of infrastructure growth, bringing the countries to
the point in which you can actually deploy CETS.
I mentioned Indonesia as one of the countries that we
worked with and certainly one of the biggest challenges that we
faced there was trying to get the infrastructure in place that
enables the information sharing. When you start looking at some
of those countries, you're absolutely right, we need to look to
other sources and Unlimited Potential or some of the other
things within Microsoft itself are programs that we look to
help support that type of infrastructure building. And then, of
course, we'll always submit a request.
Mr. Smith. I hope you do, because I think you would get as
much as you ask for.
In terms of Brazil, that's one of the countries you
mentioned, I met with a number of their people in law
enforcement, their parliamentarians and other people, their
ministries, about the whole child pornography and child
prostitution issue. Our tip reports suggest there may be as
many as 500,000 child prostitutes. Many people there told me,
including their NGOs, they thought it was closer to 250, but
may be more. Nobody has a census on it. But it's mostly
Canadians, Americans and Europeans that are flying in and
exploiting the kids. I'm wondering this goes to the importance
of notice, like our international Megan's Law idea.
I wondered how your initiative helps with that problem,
because they seem overwhelmed. The NGOs I met with were very
street savvy and very computer literate, but they lack
resources. I'm wondering--and that was the NGOs and certainly
the government could do better in terms of money.
Mr. Cranton. It has the capabilities of doing that. When
you look at the CETS tool, it can be treated as an
investigative database across different issues and has the
ability to track individuals, search. If you have, for example,
registered sex offenders, you can enter that information into
the CETS tool and we've built in the Microsoft Virtual Earth
technology into CETS so you can actually have the ``show map''
function. If you had an incident, for example, you can pinpoint
the address of that incident and even do a ``show me all known
sex offenders within two miles of that point.'' It's only as
good as the information that's entered into it, but it
certainly has the functionality that advances those types of
reviews.
Now, I think there are other databases that are managed
through Interpol that are probably better positioned for some
of the other type of information sharing. So we always kind of
look at what our tools can do to complement existing databases
and solutions.
Mr. Smith. I have a lot of questions, but I'll narrow it to
just three final ones, since the time is late, and you've been
very generous with your time. The issue of Verizon, Sprint and
Time Warner and their agreement with Cuomo, is that something
Microsoft has done, will do, is contemplating?
I asked earlier about the capability to simply block site
and to--even if we err on the side of something, collateral
damage, as was mentioned earlier, being swept into that, it
seems to me the good outweighs the potential loss of one site
or even several ties being swept in as opposed to this horrific
crime that's being committed.
Is that something Microsoft would consider doing? Is the
capability there in the first place?
Mr. Cranton. I think that there are two areas. There's
blocking sites that have known child pornography images or URLs
that have been identified by law enforcement or by government,
which is critical, and then there's other filtering
technologies that could be addressing the actual images
themselves.
Taking them separately--and I think the New York settlement
might have addressed both of those. We currently do have a
system where we are blocking URLs that are provided to us from
the Internet Watch Foundation in the United Kingdom and we are
very open and in discussions to extend that also to track along
with voluntarily working with the national center to do that.
We've built it into our search technology. It's different.
When you look at the entities who entered into that agreement,
they're offering different types of services than our core
services. You need to think how you would be able to extend a
similar type of blocking to our services.We're definitely open
to coming up with something.
Then when you get to the actual image detection, there's
two technologies that we are looking at. First, kind of the
hashing technology that takes known images and kind of applies
this algorithm to it so that you can actually filter out known
images without having to have possession of the images, which
is one of the challenges industry faces.
We're currently exploring and working on developing a
system to do that with the known images, in partnership with
the national center and through the technology coalition that
Mr. Allen mentioned, which is other companies also working
together to implement these types of solutions. The problem is
that exact matches are difficult, because images get resized.
The Microsoft research team has developed what's called fuzzy
hash technology, or at least that's what I call it. They are
more technical in describing it, but essentially it tries to
capture the essence of images and capture matches through a
similar type of technology, but without requiring exact
matches. We made that technology available royalty-free to the
technology coalition. There are many patents that are built
into that, but we are sharing it across the industry. Now we're
just looking at how we can effectively implement it into our
systems so that it could be useful or helpful.
We are doing a lot of different things around both sides.
The challenge is coming up with something that's effective that
removes those images, because certainly, from our perspective,
our goal is to get this stuff off our systems.
Mr. Smith. Sure. Let me ask you. Censorship is something
most Americans bristle at. I don't like censorship, none of us
do. But I don't think this is censorship. This is protection.
In China the Internet companies are censoring especially
Google, and you might not want to take a shot at Google. But I
asked them, in a hearing on the Global Online Freedom Act,
three years ago, and we've been working ever since, what is it
that you censor, how do you do it. If you go to China, you're
blocked from getting information. I mean, there are some that
think they can pierce the firewalls, but it's questionable
whether or not that technology is working. But all these taboo
things, like the Falun Gong, like Catholics, the Uighurs, are
all not only off limits, you type that in, somebody will visit
your home from the secret police.
They have 35,000 cyber police working the problem against
religious freedom and peaceful democracy promotion. They've got
this incredible network interlinked with the police to find the
best and the bravest and the brightest of China. It seems to
me, if the technology works there, without violating our civil
liberties, we could do more to block this kind of thing here.
Is that Pollyannaish on my part or is it--how do they do it?
They won't tell me. They say they can't reveal both the means
and what it is that they're censoring in China.
But the human rights activists, and one of them was just
here, Harry Wu, on a totally unrelated issue that he brought
some stuff over on, spent 20 years in lao gai in China, they'll
tell you that the list of things that are off limits pursuant
to government policy there is legion and, as a direct result,
all of this information never gets to the students. They don't
know what's going on in the world. They block ``Radio Free
Asia,'' ``Voice of America.'' And if it can be done there, why
can't, for a noble cause like this, we can't do more of it
here?
Mr. Cranton. The parallels and the complexities are evident
in that description.
Here we have a situation where we know that Microsoft and
industry wants to partner with law enforcement in order to stop
child exploitation and we need to, and then, on the flipside,
we need to be very careful to protect freedom of expression and
civil rights. Industry is in the position of trying to find
that right balance in the things that we do and because there's
security, there's privacy, there's human rights, there's child
safety, there's many different issues and we are not
government, we are not law enforcement, and so we need to take
the appropriate balance.
Critical issues for us, and Microsoft is trying to lead
across all these different areas to find the right balance. The
simple answer is that, yes, we can do different things to
address the images, to address known URLs, and to look across
our systems, but we definitely want to do it in a way that
preserves the constitutional rights of Americans and respects
First Amendment rights.
We have to balance all those things. I think we have a very
robust conversation with the national center and the
international center and other NGOs and with law enforcement to
try to figure out the best balance.
Mr. Smith. As we all know, obscenity is not protected
speech, as you reiterated. Mr. Allen, let me ask the two final
questions. One would be on--and maybe Microsoft could help us
on this.
We're facing challenges in our legislation in identifying
sex offenders who intend to travel abroad and the issues comes
down to the ability to communicate between agencies like the
data that we get from state sex offenders lists and integrating
passport identification data. We've got these huge data systems
and very often the left hand can't talk to the right hand, and
I'm wondering if those kind of logical obstacles you might be
helpful with at Microsoft.
Mr. Cranton. I think we can help with technology solutions.
The barriers are probably more along the legal agreements and
making sure that there's a comfort in sharing the information.
As I was mentioning with CETS, the tool is only as good as the
legal agreement that supports the information sharing around
it, and that's probably more in the area that would need to be
explored that's outside of industry.
Mr. Allen. I agree with that. I think the clear challenge
is, as we had discussed, particularly internationally. There
are only six countries in the world that currently have sex
offender registries. Here in the United States, the challenge
is to make systems talk to each other and I think it's a noble
goal. There needs to be a global system. The reality is these
guys do travel. They take advantage of transportation to evade
detection and gain access to children. It's an important goal,
but the implementation hurdles are significant. You said to us
we need to start somewhere and we need to build a system, and
we certainly espouse that.
Mr. Smith. I would note, parenthetically, as you know, Mr.
Allen, I was the prime sponsor of the Trafficking and Business
Protection Act. When we started that legislation, it took two
years to get it enacted and brought it up at the Russian St.
Petersburg Parliamentary Assembly, people were either not for
it or very much, Since enactment of that law, over 100
countries have either initiative brand new laws or
substantially updated and reformed their laws. I do think our
law becomes a great teacher for everyone else if we're serious
about.
The final question to you, Mr. Allen, would be on those who
would fudge the line between adoption, which is a wonderful way
of building a loving family, and those who call adoption
trafficking. We ran into a problem in an OSCE country and I'm
fearful it may spread to others, and that was Romania, where a
woman by the name of Lady Nicholson, a U.K. MEP, was the
special rapporteur for ascension of Romania into the EU.
One of her preconditions to the Romanian parliamentarians
was to ban inter-country adoption and, as a result, 200
Americans, something on the order of 700 to 800 Europeans, a
lot of them Italians, majority of them, who already knew their
child, were in the process of adopting, had that process
stopped in its tracks. Maura Harty did a great job, tried to do
much to get that changed. We had the ambassador here at a
Helsinki Commission hearing from Romania and he, was unable to
get a change.
We've talked to the president, everybody under the sun.
There's no inter-country adoptions in Romania and kids are
languishing in orphanages, which are infamous in Romania, and
that also becomes an area or a venue where kids can be
exploited, trafficked or used in other exploitive ways, and
they're certainly not getting the loving attention of an
adopted family. Lady Nicholson, acquaints trafficking and
adoption as one and the same. We have invited her to testify,
submit testimony. I've read all of her writings.
You're an expert Mr. Allen, you are a walking point on
these issues. While we've got to guard against any child being
adopted under less than stellar circumstances, you need Hague
type of protections, which couldn't come at a better time, the
Hague inter-country adoption convention. But it seems to me
that Romania has made a serious mistake in bowing to that view.
Your view, if you would, on adoption and trafficking.
Mr. Allen. Well, that's not our special expertise at the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I'm
conveying my personal view. In a previous life, I used to be a
lawyer who handled international adoptions for Catholic
Charities.
I believe in it. I think it has changed countless lives.
Clearly, there need to be stronger protections in place. The
horror stories, like we saw a couple of years ago with the
child adopted from Russia by a pedophile who used and abused
that child for many years, there need to be the strongest
protections in place.
In my view, the Hague convention on adoption is an
excellent framework that countries around the world have become
signatories to and we need to embrace. Clearly, I do not
espouse the views of Lady Nicholson nor the Romanian
government. I think this is something that can and is being
done properly, with the right kinds of precautions around the
world, and I think it needs to be encouraged, not eliminated.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, to both of you. Thanks to our
previous witnesses and their expertise and their leadership.
The hearing is adjourned.
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