[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 23 (Wednesday, February 7, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1714-S1715]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. McCAIN (for himself, Mr. Schumer, and Mr. Kyl):
  S. 519. A bill to modernize and expand the reporting requirements 
relating to child pornography, to expand cooperation in combating child 
pornography, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to be joined today by Senator 
Schumer in introducing the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-
Online Act of 2007, otherwise known as the SAFE Act. This bill would 
clarify and strengthen the requirement that has been a Federal law for 
almost a decade for electronic communications providers to report 
images of child pornography to the National Center for Missing and 
Exploited Children (NCMEC) and then law enforcement. Simply put, this 
bill is designed reduce the sexual exploitation of our children, and 
punish those who cause them physical and emotional harm through sexual 
exploitation.
  This bill would state specifically what information must be reported 
by electronic communications providers to NCMEC; impose higher 
penalties on companies that do not report child pornography; and 
require the Department of Justice to report on the number of 
investigation and convictions of sex offenders and purveyors of child 
pornography. In addition, the bill would make the use of the Internet 
for the exploitation of a child an aggravating factor to the underlying 
offense that would add 10 years imprisonment to a convicted offender's 
sentence.
  Almost 20 years ago, President Reagan inaugurated the opening of the 
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and called on the 
Center to ``wake up America and attack the crisis of child 
victimization.'' Today, thanks to the efforts of NCMEC and many others 
in the public and private sectors, America is more conscious of the 
dangers of child exploitation. Unfortunately, our children still face 
significant threats from those who see their innocence as an 
opportunity to do harm. The continuing victimization of our children is 
readily and all too painfully apparent in the resurgence of child 
pornography in our world via the Internet.
  Technology has contributed to the greater distribution and 
availability,

[[Page S1715]]

and, some believe, desire for child pornography. Cyberspace is host to 
more than one million images of tens of thousands of children subjected 
to sexual abuse and exploitation, according to a report by the Texas 
State legislature. The same report estimated that the over 14 million 
pornography sites on the Internet house an estimated one million 
pornographic images of children with 200 new images being posted daily.
  According to ECPAT International, a group dedicated to eliminating 
the sexual exploitation of children, the production and distribution of 
abuse images of children is estimated to be at least a 3 billion dollar 
business annually in the U.S. alone. Of all the child pornography 
images on the Internet, 55 percent are generated from the United 
States, according to the same group, but these images are also produced 
around the world.
  Just today, the Associated Press reported that Austrian authorities 
uncovered a major international child pornography ring involving more 
than 2,360 suspects from 77 countries, including over 600 in the United 
States, who paid to view videos of young children being sexually 
abused. According to authorities, the children shown in the videos were 
under the age of 14 and could be heard screaming in fear.
  This investigation would not have happened without the good work of 
an employee of a Vienna-based Internet file hosting service who noticed 
the pornographic material during a routine check and then approached 
authorities. The employee blocked access to the videos while recording 
the I.P. addresses of people who continued to try to download the 
material, and gave the details to authorities. Within a 24-hour period, 
investigators recorded more than 8,000 hits from 2,361 computer I.P. 
addresses in 77 countries ranging from Algeria to South Africa.
  The Federal Government already has a system in place for electronic 
communications providers to report these images to NCMEC. The Center is 
directed by law to relay that information to local, State and Federal 
law enforcement agencies. This reporting system has been useful, but it 
is in need of several vital improvements.
  Today, Federal law requires electronic communication service 
providers to report child pornography they discover to NCMEC through 
the CyberTipline, but the current reporting system does not specify 
exactly what information should be reported. This failure to set forth 
specific reporting requirements makes the current statute both 
difficult to comply with and tough to enforce. This omission may have 
led to less effective prosecution of child pornographers. During a 
Senate Commerce Committee hearing I chaired last September, NCMEC 
testified that, ``because there are no guidelines for the contents of 
these reports, some [companies] do not send customer information that 
allows NCMEC to identify a law enforcement jurisdiction. So potentially 
valuable investigative leads are left to sit in the CyberTipline 
database with no action taken.'' This is unacceptable.
  This bill would address the problem by requiring that reporting 
companies convey a defined set of information to the Center, which is 
in large part the information that is provided to NCMEC today by the 
nation's leading Internet service providers. Among other things, the 
bill would require electronic communications providers to report 
specific information about any individual involved in producing, 
distributing, or receiving child pornography. In addition, it would 
require reporting companies to provide NCMEC with the geographic 
location of the involved individual such as the individual's physical 
address and the IP address from which the individual connected to the 
Internet.
  To ensure that law enforcement officials have better odds of 
prosecuting involved individuals, the bill would also require online 
service providers to preserve all data that they report to NCMEC for at 
least 180 days. The bill would help to ensure greater compliance with 
the child pornography reporting requirements under Federal law by 
increasing the penalties three-fold for knowing failure to report child 
pornography to NCMEC. It would also move the reporting requirement from 
title 42, which relates to the public's health and welfare, to title 
18, our Federal criminal code. This is to underscore that a breach of 
the reporting obligations constitutes a violation of criminal law. In 
addition, the legislation would eliminate the legal liability of online 
service providers for actions taken to comply with the child 
pornography reporting requirements.
  The goal of this legislation, is to ensure more thorough reporting of 
child pornography to NCMEC. I expect that more and better information 
provided to the Center will lead to a greater number of prosecutions 
and enhanced protection of our children. However, let me stress that 
this bill does not require surveillance by electronic communications 
providers or require that they monitor the content of any 
communication. The legislation also does not require electronic 
communications providers to affirmatively seek out child pornography. 
Rather, it requires online service providers to report child 
pornography when they become aware of it, either through a report from 
a subscriber or user, or through a discovery of the material by an 
employee. As a result, the reporting requirement would protect children 
while not imposing a financial or administrative burden on online 
service providers.
  To emphasize the heinous nature of these crimes, this bill would make 
the use of the Internet in the commission of a crime of child 
exploitation an aggravating factor that would add 10 years to the 
offender's sentence. The Internet is likely the greatest invention of 
the 21st century; however, it has also allowed these children to be 
victimized again and again as these images are widely distributed via 
the Internet. The fight to protect our children from exploitation has 
moved from the playground to the Internet, and we must update our laws 
to reflect this reality.
  To address the international nature of child pornography, the bill 
would permit NCMEC to share reports with foreign law enforcement 
agencies, subject to approval by the Department of Justice. In 
addition, the legislation would state the sense of Congress that the 
executive branch should make child pornography a priority when engaging 
in negotiations or talks with foreign countries.
  The bill would authorize $25 million for our Nation's Internet Crimes 
Against Children Task Forces, which is identical to the amount 
requested by the Administration in its FY 2008 budget. NCMEC, the 
National Sheriffs Association, and others believe that such funding 
would significantly improve the efforts of local, State and Federal law 
enforcement officials dedicated to identifying and prosecuting those 
who use the Internet to prey upon our Nation's children.
  Lastly, in order to aid law enforcement, the bill would reiterate the 
position of the Administration that all suppliers of web site domain 
names should investigate and correct inaccurate data regarding 
registered domain names so that law enforcement can more easily locate 
the hosts of such vile pictures of children. To aid Congress in 
understanding the need for more resources or legislation to combat the 
proliferation and distribution of child pornography, the bill would 
require the Department of Justice to report on the number of 
investigations, prosecutions and convictions of crimes involving the 
sexual exploitation of children.
  This is the second bill Senator Schumer and I have introduced this 
session to protect our nation's children. Last month, we introduced the 
Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual-Predators Act of 2007, known as 
the KIDS Act, which would establish a database of e-mail addresses and 
other Internet identifying information of convicted sex offenders. The 
database information would then be available to commercial social 
networking sites for the purpose of screening their sites' to ensure 
convicted sex offender are not using the site to prey on children.
  Protecting our children is a top priority for all members of 
Congress. I look forward to working with my colleagues to eradicate the 
victimization and exploitation of our children, the most innocent 
members of society, by enacting the KIDS Act and the SAFE Act.
                                 ______