File Sharing Program: Users of Peer-to-Peer Networks Can Readily 
Access Child Pornography (06-MAY-04, GAO-04-757T).		 
                                                                 
The availability of child pornography has dramatically increased 
in recent years as it has migrated from printed material to the  
World Wide Web, becoming accessible through Web sites, chat	 
rooms, newsgroups, and now the increasingly popular peer-to-peer 
file sharing programs. These programs enable direct communication
between users, allowing users to access each other's files and	 
share digital music, images, and video. GAO was requested to	 
determine the ease of access to child pornography on peer-to-peer
networks; the risk of inadvertent exposure of juvenile users of  
peerto- peer networks to pornography, including child		 
pornography; and the extent of federal law enforcement resources 
available for combating child pornography on peer-to-peer	 
networks. Today's testimony is based on GAO's report on the	 
results of that work (GAO- 03-351). Because child pornography	 
cannot be accessed legally other than by law enforcement	 
agencies, GAO worked with the Customs Cyber- Smuggling Center in 
performing searches: Customs downloaded and analyzed image files,
and GAO performed analyses based on keywords and file names only.
-------------------------Indexing Terms------------------------- 
REPORTNUM:   GAO-04-757T					        
    ACCNO:   A09970						        
  TITLE:     File Sharing Program: Users of Peer-to-Peer Networks Can 
Readily Access Child Pornography				 
     DATE:   05/06/2004 
  SUBJECT:   Children						 
	     Computer networks					 
	     Federal agencies					 
	     Internet						 
	     Internet service providers 			 
	     Investigations by federal agencies 		 
	     Sex crimes 					 
	     Web sites						 

******************************************************************
** This file contains an ASCII representation of the text of a  **
** GAO Product.                                                 **
**                                                              **
** No attempt has been made to display graphic images, although **
** figure captions are reproduced.  Tables are included, but    **
** may not resemble those in the printed version.               **
**                                                              **
** Please see the PDF (Portable Document Format) file, when     **
** available, for a complete electronic file of the printed     **
** document's contents.                                         **
**                                                              **
******************************************************************
GAO-04-757T

United States General Accounting Office

GAO Testimony

Before the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection,
Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives

For Release on Delivery

Expected at 10:00 a.m. EDT FILE SHARING

Thursday, May 6, 2004

PROGRAMS

      Users of Peer-to-Peer Networks Can Readily Access Child Pornography

Statement of Linda D. Koontz
Director, Information Management Issues

GAO-04-757T

                                  May 6, 2004

Highlights of GAO-04-757T, a testimony before the Subcommittee on
Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, Committee on Energy and
Commerce, House of Representatives

The availability of child pornography has dramatically increased in recent
years as it has migrated from printed material to the World Wide Web,
becoming accessible through Web sites, chat rooms, newsgroups, and now the
increasingly popular peer-to-peer file sharing programs. These programs
enable direct communication between users, allowing users to access each
other's files and share digital music, images, and video.

GAO was requested to determine the ease of access to child pornography on
peer-to-peer networks; the risk of inadvertent exposure of juvenile users
of peerto-peer networks to pornography, including child pornography; and
the extent of federal law enforcement resources available for combating
child pornography on peer-to-peer networks. Today's testimony is based on
GAO's report on the results of that work (GAO03-351).

Because child pornography cannot be accessed legally other than by law
enforcement agencies, GAO worked with the Customs Cyber-Smuggling Center
in performing searches: Customs downloaded and analyzed image files, and
GAO performed analyses based on keywords and file names only.

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-757T

To view the full testimony, click on the link
above.
For more information, contact Linda Koontz at
(202) 512-6240 or [email protected].

FILE-SHARING PROGRAMS

Users of Peer-to-Peer Networks Can Readily Access Child Pornography

Child pornography is easily found and downloaded from peer-to-peer
networks. In one search, using 12 keywords known to be associated with
child pornography on the Internet, GAO identified 1,286 titles and file
names, determining that 543 (about 42 percent) were associated with child
pornography images. Of the remaining, 34 percent were classified as adult
pornography and 24 percent as nonpornographic. In another search using
three keywords, a Customs analyst downloaded 341 images, of which 149
(about 44 percent) contained child pornography (see the figure below).
These results are in accord with increased reports of child pornography on
peer-to-peer networks; since it began tracking these in 2001, the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children has seen an increase of more
than fivefold-from 156 in 2001 to 840 in 2003. Although the numbers are as
yet small by comparison to those for other sources (45,035 reports of
child pornography on Web sites in 2003), the increase is significant.

Juvenile users of peer-to-peer networks are at significant risk of
inadvertent exposure to pornography, including child pornography. Searches
on innocuous keywords likely to be used by juveniles (such as names of
cartoon characters or celebrities) produced a high proportion of
pornographic images: in our searches, the retrieved images included adult
pornography (34 percent), cartoon pornography (14 percent), child erotica
(7 percent), and child pornography (1 percent).

While federal law enforcement agencies-including the FBI, Justice's Child
Exploitation and Obscenity Section, and Customs-are devoting resources to
combating child exploitation and child pornography in general, these
agencies do not track the resources dedicated to specific technologies
used to access and download child pornography on the Internet. Therefore,
GAO was unable to quantify the resources devoted to investigating cases on
peerto-peer networks. According to law enforcement officials, however, as
tips concerning child pornography on peer-to-peer networks escalate, law
enforcement resources are increasingly being focused on this area.

Classification of Images Downloaded through Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing
Program

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for inviting us to discuss our work on the availability of child
pornography on peer-to-peer networks.

In recent years, child pornography has become increasingly available as it
has migrated from magazines, photographs, and videos to the World Wide
Web. As you know, a great strength of the Internet is that it includes a
wide range of search and retrieval technologies that make finding
information fast and easy. However, this capability also makes it easy to
access, disseminate, and trade pornographic images and videos, including
child pornography. As a result, child pornography has become accessible
through Web sites, chat rooms, newsgroups, and the increasingly popular
peer-to-peer technology, a form of networking that allows direct
communication between computer users so that they can access and share
each other's files (including images, video, and software).

My testimony today is based on our report on the availability of child
pornography on peer-to-peer networks. 1 As requested, I will summarize the
results of our work to determine

o  the ease of access to child pornography on peer-to-peer networks;

o  	the risk of inadvertent exposure of juvenile users of peer-to-peer
networks to pornography, including child pornography; and

o  the extent of federal law enforcement resources available for combating

  Results in Brief

child pornography on peer-to-peer networks.

We also include an attachment that briefly discusses how peer-to-peer file
sharing works.

It is easy to access and download child pornography over peer-to-peer
networks. We used KaZaA, a popular peer-to-peer file-sharing program, 2 to
search for image files, using 12 keywords known to be associated with

1U.S. General Accounting Office, File-Sharing Programs: Peer-to-Peer
Networks Provide Ready Access to Child Pornography, GAO-03-351
(Washington, D.C.: Feb. 20, 2003).

2Other popular peer-to-peer applications include Gnutella, BearShare,
LimeWire, and Morpheus.

child pornography on the Internet.3 Of 1,286 items identified in our
search, about 42 percent were associated with child pornography images.
The remaining items included 34 percent classified as adult pornography
and 24 percent as nonpornographic. In another KaZaA search, the Customs
CyberSmuggling Center used three keywords to search for and download child
pornography image files. This search identified 341 image files, of which
about 44 percent were classified as child pornography and 29 percent as
adult pornography. The remaining images were classified as child erotica4
(13 percent) or other (nonpornographic) images (14 percent). These results
are consistent with observations of the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children, which has stated that peer-topeer technology is
increasingly popular for the dissemination of child pornography. Since
2001, when the center began to track reports of child pornography on
peer-to-peer networks, such reports have increased more than fivefold-from
156 in 2001 to 840 in 2003.

When searching and downloading images on peer-to-peer networks, juvenile
users can be inadvertently exposed to pornography, including child
pornography. In searches on innocuous keywords likely to be used by
juveniles, we obtained images that included a high proportion of
pornography: in our searches, the retrieved images included adult
pornography (34 percent), cartoon pornography5 (14 percent), and child
pornography (1 percent); another 7 percent of the images were classified
as child erotica.

We could not quantify the extent of federal law enforcement resources
available for combating child pornography on peer-to-peer networks. Law
enforcement agencies that work to combat child exploitation and child
pornography do not track their resource use according to specific Internet
technologies. However, law enforcement officials told us that, as they
receive more tips concerning child pornography on peer-to-peer networks,
they are focusing more resources in this area.

3The U.S. Customs CyberSmuggling Center assisted us in this work. Because
child pornography cannot be accessed legally other than by law enforcement
agencies, we relied on Customs to download and analyze image files. We
performed analyses based on titles and file names only.

4Erotic images of children that do not depict sexually explicit conduct.

5Images of cartoon characters depicting sexually explicit conduct.

Background

Child pornography is prohibited by federal statutes, which provide for
civil and criminal penalties for its production, advertising, possession,
receipt, distribution, and sale.6 Defined by statute as the visual
depiction of a minor-a person under 18 years of age-engaged in sexually
explicit conduct,7 child pornography is unprotected by the First
Amendment,8 as it is intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of
children.

In the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996,9 Congress sought to
prohibit images that are or appear to be "of a minor engaging in sexually
explicit conduct" or are "advertised, promoted, presented, described, or
distributed in such a manner that conveys the impression that the material
is or contains a visual depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit
conduct." In 2002, the Supreme Court struck down this legislative attempt
to ban "virtual" child pornography10 in Ashcroft v. The Free Speech
Coalition, ruling that the expansion of the act to material that did not
involve and thus harm actual children in its creation is an
unconstitutional violation of free speech rights. According to government
officials, this ruling may increase the difficulty of prosecuting those
who produce and possess child pornography. Defendants may claim that
pornographic images are of "virtual" children, thus requiring the
government to establish that the children shown in these digital images
are real. Recently, Congress enacted the PROTECT Act,11 which attempts to
address the constitutional issues raised in The Free Speech Coalition
decision.12

6See chapter 110 of Title 18, United States Code.

7See 18 U.S.C. S: 2256(8).

8See New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1982).

9Section 121, P.L. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009-26.

10According to the Justice Department, rapidly advancing technology has
raised the possibility of creating images of child pornography without the
use of a real child ("virtual" child pornography). Totally virtual
creations would be both time-intensive and, for now, prohibitively costly
to produce. However, the technology has led to a ready defense (the
"virtual" porn defense) against prosecution under laws that are limited to
sexually explicit depictions of actual minors. Because the technology
exists today to alter images to disguise the identity of the real child or
make the image seem computer-generated, producers and distributors of
child pornography may try to alter depictions of actual children in slight
ways to make them appear to be "virtual" (as well as unidentifiable),
thereby attempting to defeat prosecution. Making such alterations is much
easier and cheaper than building an entirely computer-generated image.

11Public Law No. 108-21 (Apr. 30, 2003).

12S. Rep. No. 108-2, at 13 (2003).

The Internet Has Emerged as the Principal Tool for Exchanging Child
Pornography

Historically, pornography, including child pornography, tended to be found
mainly in photographs, magazines, and videos.13 With the advent of the
Internet, however, both the volume and the nature of available child
pornography have changed significantly. The rapid expansion of the
Internet and its technologies, the increased availability of broadband
Internet services, advances in digital imaging technologies, and the
availability of powerful digital graphic programs have led to a
proliferation of child pornography on the Internet.

According to experts, pornographers have traditionally exploited-and
sometimes pioneered-emerging communication technologies-from the dial-in
bulletin board systems of the 1970s to the World Wide Web-to access,
trade, and distribute pornography, including child pornography.14 Today,
child pornography is available through virtually every Internet technology
(see table 1).

13John Carr, Theme Paper on Child Pornography for the 2nd World Congress
on
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, NCH Children's Charities,
Children &
Technology Unit (Yokohama, 2001).
(http://www.ecpat.net/eng/Ecpat_inter/projects/monitoring/wc2/yokohama_theme_child_p
ornography.pdf)

14Frederick E. Allen, "When Sex Drives Technological Innovation and Why It
Has to,"
American Heritage Magazine, vol. 51, no. 5 (September 2000), p. 19.
(http://www.plannedparenthood.org/education/updatearch.html)
Allen notes that pornographers have driven the development of some of the
Internet
technologies, including the development of systems used to verify on-line
financial
transactions and that of digital watermarking technology to prevent the
unauthorized use
of on-line images.

      Table 1: Internet Technologies Providing Access to Child Pornography

Technology Characteristics

World Wide Web	Web sites provide on-line access to text and multimedia
materials identified and accessed through the uniform resource locator
(URL).

Usenet 	A distributed electronic bulletin system, Usenet offers over
80,000 newsgroups, with many newsgroups dedicated to sharing of digital
images.

Peer-to-peer file-sharing programs 	Internet applications operating over
peer-to-peer networks enable direct communication between users. Used
largely for sharing of digital music, images, and video, peer-to-peer
applications include BearShare, Gnutella, LimeWire, and KaZaA. KaZaA is
the most popular, with over 3 million KaZaA users sharing files at any
time.

E-mail 	E-mail allows the transmission of messages over a network or the
Internet. Users can send E-mail to a single recipient or broadcast it to
multiple users. E-mail supports the delivery of attached files, including
image files.

Instant messaging 	Instant messaging is not a dial-up system like the
telephone; it requires that both parties be on line at the same time.
AOL's Instant Messenger and Microsoft's MSN Messenger and Internet Relay
Chat are the major instant messaging services. Users may exchange files,
including image files.

Chat and Internet Relay Chat	Chat technologies allow computer conferencing
using the keyboard over the Internet between two or more people.

Source: GAO.

Among the principal channels for the distribution of child pornography are
commercial Web sites, Usenet newsgroups, and peer-to-peer networks.15

Web sites. According to recent estimates, there are about 400,000
commercial pornography Web sites worldwide,16 with some of the sites
selling pornographic images of children. The child pornography trade on
the Internet is not only profitable, it has a worldwide reach: recently a
child pornography ring was uncovered that included a Texas-based firm
providing credit card billing and password access services for one Russian
and two Indonesian child pornography Web sites. According to the U.S.
Postal Inspection Service, the ring grossed as much as $1.4 million in
just 1 month selling child pornography to paying customers.

15According to Department of Justice officials, other forums and
technologies are used to disseminate pornography on the Internet. These
include Web portal communities such as Yahoo! Groups and MSN Groups, as
well as file servers operating on Internet Relay Chat channels.

16Dick Thornburgh and Herbert S. Lin, editors, Youth, Pornography, and The
Internet, National Academy Press (Washington, D.C.: 2002).
(http://www.nap.edu/html/youth_internet/)

Usenet. Usenet newsgroups also provide access to pornography, with several
of the image-oriented newsgroups being focused on child erotica and child
pornography. These newsgroups are frequently used by commercial
pornographers who post "free" images to advertise adult and child
pornography available for a fee from their Web sites.

Peer-to-peer networks. Although peer-to-peer file-sharing programs are
largely known for the extensive sharing of copyrighted digital music,17
they are emerging as a conduit for the sharing of pornographic images and
videos, including child pornography. In a recent study by congressional
staff,18 a single search for the term "porn" using a file-sharing program
yielded over 25,000 files. In another study, focused on the availability
of pornographic video files on peer-to-peer sharing networks, a sample of
507 pornographic video files retrieved with a file-sharing program
included about 3.7 percent child pornography videos.19

Several Agencies Have Law Enforcement Responsibilities Regarding Child
Pornography on Peer-to-Peer Networks

Table 2 shows the key national organizations and agencies that are
currently involved in efforts to combat child pornography on peer-to-peer
networks.

17According to the Yankee Group, a technology research and consulting
firm, Internet users aged 14 and older downloaded 5.16 billion audio files
in the United States via unlicensed file-sharing services in 2001.

18Minority Staff, Children's Access to Pornography through Internet
File-Sharing Programs, Special Investigations Division, Committee on
Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives (July 27, 2001).
(http://www.house.gov/reform/min/pdfs/pdf_inves/pdf_pornog_rep.pdf)

19Michael D. Mehta, Don Best, and Nancy Poon, "Peer-to-Peer Sharing on the
Internet: An Analysis of How Gnutella Networks Are Used to Distribute
Pornographic Material," Canadian Journal of Law and Technology, vol. 1,
no. 1 (January 2002).
(http://cjlt.dal.ca/vol1_no1/articles/01_01_MeBePo_gnutella.pdf)

Table 2: Organizations and Agencies Involved with Peer-to-Peer Child Pornography
                                    Efforts

Agency Unit Focus

Nonprofit

National Center for Missing Exploited Child Unit Works with the Customs
Service, Postal Service, and the FBI to and Exploited Children analyze and
investigate child pornography leads.

Federal entities

Department of Justice Federal Bureau of

     Proactively investigates crimes against children. Operates a national

a

                                 Investigation

"Innocent Images Initiative" to combat Internet-related sexual
exploitation of children.

Criminal Division, Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section Is a
specialized group of attorneys who, among other things, prosecute those
who possess, manufacture, or distribute child pornography. Its High Tech
Investigative Unit actively conducts on-line investigations to identify
distributors of obscenity and child pornography.

    Department of Homeland U.S. Customs Service Conducts international child
                   pornography investigations as part of its

                                       b

Security

a

                            CyberSmuggling Center ,

mission to investigate international criminal activity conducted on or
facilitated by the Internet.

a

Department of the Treasury U.S. Secret Service	Provides forensic and
technical assistance in matters involving missing and sexually exploited
children.

Source: GAO.

aAgency has staff assigned to NCMEC.

bAt the time of our review, the Customs Service was under the Department
of the Treasury. Under the Homeland Security Act of 2002, it became part
of the new Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a
federally funded nonprofit organization, serves as a national resource
center for information related to crimes against children. Its mission is
to find missing children and prevent child victimization. The center's
Exploited Child Unit operates the CyberTipline, which receives child
pornography tips provided by the public; its CyberTipline II also receives
tips from Internet service providers. The Exploited Child Unit
investigates and processes tips to determine if the images in question
constitute a violation of child pornography laws. The CyberTipline
provides investigative leads to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
U.S. Customs, the Postal Inspection Service, and state and local law
enforcement agencies. The FBI and the U.S. Customs also investigate leads
from Internet service providers via the Exploited Child Unit's
CyberTipline II. The FBI, Customs Service, Postal Inspection Service, and
Secret Service have staff assigned directly to NCMEC as analysts.20

20According to the Secret Service, its staff assigned to NCMEC also
includes an agent.

Two organizations in the Department of Justice have responsibilities
regarding child pornography: the FBI and the Justice Criminal Division's
Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS).21

o  	The FBI investigates various crimes against children, including
federal child pornography crimes involving interstate or foreign commerce.
It deals with violations of child pornography laws related to the
production of child pornography; selling or buying children for use in
child pornography; and the transportation, shipment, or distribution of
child pornography by any means, including by computer.

o  	CEOS prosecutes child sex offenses and trafficking in women and
children for sexual exploitation. Its mission includes prosecution of
individuals who possess, manufacture, produce, or distribute child
pornography; use the Internet to lure children to engage in prohibited
sexual conduct; or traffic in women and children interstate or
internationally to engage in sexually explicit conduct.

Two other organizations have responsibilities regarding child pornography:
the Customs Service (now part of the Department of Homeland Security) and
the Secret Service in the Department of the Treasury.

o  	The Customs Service targets illegal importation and trafficking in
child pornography and is the country's front line of defense in combating
child pornography distributed through various channels, including the
Internet. Customs is involved in cases with international links, focusing
on pornography that enters the United States from foreign countries. The
Customs CyberSmuggling Center has the lead in the investigation of
international and domestic criminal activities conducted on or facilitated
by the Internet, including the sharing and distribution of child
pornography on peer-to-peer networks. Customs maintains a reporting link
with NCMEC, and it acts on tips received via the CyberTipline from callers
reporting instances of child pornography on Web sites, Usenet newsgroups,
chat rooms, or the computers of users of peer-to-peer networks. The center
also investigates leads from Internet service

21Two additional Justice agencies are involved in combating child
pornography: the U.S. Attorneys Offices and the Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention. The 94 U.S. Attorneys Offices can prosecute
federal child exploitation-related cases; the Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention funds the Internet Crimes Against Children Task
Force Program, which encourages multijurisdictional and multiagency
responses to crimes against children involving the Internet.

providers via the Exploited Child Unit's CyberTipline II.

  Peer-to-Peer Applications Provide Easy Access to Child Pornography

o  	The U.S. Secret Service does not investigate child pornography cases
on peer-to-peer networks; however, it does provide forensic and technical
support to NCMEC, as well as to state and local agencies involved in cases
of missing and exploited children.

Child pornography is easily shared and accessed through peer-to-peer
filesharing programs. Our analysis of 1,286 titles and file names
identified through KaZaA searches on 12 keywords22 showed that 543 (about
42 percent) of the images had titles and file names associated with child
pornography images.23 Of the remaining files, 34 percent were classified
as adult pornography, and 24 percent as nonpornographic (see fig. 1). No
files were downloaded for this analysis.

Figure 1: Classification of 1,286 Titles and File Names of Images
Identified in KaZaA Search

22The 12 keywords were provided by the Cybersmuggling Center as examples
known to be associated with child pornography on the Internet.

23We categorized a file as child pornography if one keyword indicating a
minor and one word with a sexual connotation occurred in either the title
or file name. Files with sexual connotation in title or name but without
age indicators were classified as adult pornography.

The ease of access to child pornography files was further documented by
retrieval and analysis of image files, performed on our behalf by the
Customs CyberSmuggling Center. Using 3 of the 12 keywords that we used to
document the availability of child pornography files, a CyberSmuggling
Center analyst used KaZaA to search, identify, and download 305 files,
including files containing multiple images and duplicates. The analyst was
able to download 341 images from the 305 files identified through the
KaZaA search.

The CyberSmuggling Center analysis of the 341 downloaded images showed
that 149 (about 44 percent) of the downloaded images contained child
pornography (see fig. 2). The center classified the remaining images as
child erotica (13 percent), adult pornography (29 percent), or
nonpornographic (14 percent).

Figure 2: Classification of 341 Images Downloaded through KaZaA

Note: GAO analysis of data provided by the Customs CyberSmuggling Center.

These results are consistent with the observations of NCMEC, which has
stated that peer-to-peer technology is increasingly popular for the
dissemination of child pornography. However, it is not the most prominent
source for child pornography. As shown in table 3, since 1998, most of the
child pornography referred by the public to the CyberTipline was found on
Internet Web sites. Since 1998, the center has received over 139,000
reports of child pornography, of which 76 percent concerned Web sites, and
only 1 percent concerned peer-to-peer networks. Web site referrals

have grown from about 1,400 in 1998 to over 45,000 in 2003-or about a
thirty-two-fold increase. NCMEC did not track peer-to-peer referrals until
2001. Between 2001 and 2003, peer-to-peer referrals increased more than
fivefold, from 156 to 840, reflecting the increased popularity of
file-sharing programs.

Table 3: NCMEC CyberTipline Referrals to Law Enforcement Agencies, Fiscal
Years 1998-2003

                                 Number of tips

                       Technology   1998  1999   2000   2001    2002     2003 
                           E-mail    117  165    120    1,128  6,245   12,403 
                     Peer-to-peer      -   -         -   156      757     840 
              Usenet newsgroups &                                     
                  bulletin boards    531  987    731     990      993   1,128 
                          Unknown     90  258    260     430      612   1,692 
                       Chat rooms    155  256    176     125      234     786 
                Instant Messaging     27   47       50      80     53     472 
           File transfer protocol     25   26       58      64     23 

               Web sites 1,393 3,830 10,629 18,052 26,759 45,035

                 Total 2,338 5,569 12,024 21,025 35,676 62,369

  Juvenile Users of Peer-to-Peer Applications May Be Inadvertently Exposed to
  Pornography

Source: Exploited Child Unit, National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children.

Juvenile users of peer-to-peer networks face a significant risk of
inadvertent exposure to pornography when searching and downloading images.
In a search using innocuous keywords likely to be used by juveniles
searching peer-to-peer networks (such as names of popular singers, actors,
and cartoon characters), almost half the images downloaded were classified
as adult or cartoon pornography. Juvenile users may also be inadvertently
exposed to child pornography through such searches, but the risk of such
exposure is smaller than that of exposure to pornography in general.

To document the risk of inadvertent exposure of juvenile users to
pornography, the Customs CyberSmuggling Center performed KaZaA searches
using innocuous keywords likely to be used by juveniles. The center's
image searches used three keywords representing the names of a popular
female singer, child actors, and a cartoon character. A center analyst
performed the search, retrieval, and analysis of the images. These
searches produced 157 files, some of which were duplicates. From these 157
files, the analyst was able to download 177 images.

Figure 3 shows our analysis of the CyberSmuggling Center's classification
of the 177 downloaded images. We determined that 61 images contained adult
pornography (34 percent), 24 images consisted of cartoon pornography (14
percent), 13 images contained child erotica (7 percent), and 2 images (1
percent) contained child pornography. The remaining 77 images were
classified as nonpornographic.

Figure 3: Classification of 177 Images of a Popular Singer, Child Actors,
and a Cartoon Character Downloaded through KaZaA

Because law enforcement agencies do not track the resources dedicated to
specific technologies used to access and download child pornography on the
Internet, we were unable to quantify the resources devoted to
investigations concerning peer-to-peer networks. These agencies (including
the FBI, CEOS, and Customs) do devote significant resources to combating
child exploitation and child pornography in general. Law enforcement
officials told us, however, that as tips concerning child pornography on
the peer-to-peer networks increase, they are beginning to focus more law
enforcement resources on this issue. Table 4 shows the levels of funding
related to child pornography issues that the primary organizations
reported for fiscal year 2002, as well as a description of their efforts
regarding peer-to-peer networks in particular.

  Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Are Beginning to Focus Resources on Child
  Pornography on Peerto-Peer Networks

Table 4: Resources Related to Combating Child Pornography on Peer-to-Peer
Networks in 2002

Organization Resourcesa Efforts regarding peer-to-peer networks

National Center for Missing $12 million to act as national resource center
and NCMEC referred 913 tips concerning peer-to-peer and Exploited Children
clearinghouse for missing and exploited children networks to law
enforcement agencies.

$10 million for law enforcement training

$3.3 million for the Exploited Child Unit and the CyberTipline

$916,000 allocated to combat child pornography

           Federal Bureau of $38.2 million and 228 agents and support

Investigation

                       personnel for Innocent Images Unit

According to FBI officials, they have efforts under way to work with some
of the peer-to-peer companies to solicit their cooperation in dealing with
the issue of child pornography.

Justice Criminal Division, $4.38 million and 28 personnel allocated to
Child Exploitation and combating child exploitation and obscenity offenses
Obscenity Section

U.S. Customs Service $15.6 million (over 144,000 hours) allocated to
CyberSmuggling Center combating child exploitation and obscenity

The High Tech Investigative Unit deals with investigating any Internet
medium that distributes child pornography, including peer-to-peer
networks.

The center is beginning to actively monitor peer-topeer networks for child
pornography, devoting one half-time investigator to this effort. As of
December 16, 2002, the center had sent 21 peer-to-peer investigative leads
to field offices for follow-up.

b

                                    offenses

Sources: GAO and agencies mentioned.

aDollar amounts are approximate.

bCustoms was unable to separate the staff hours devoted or funds obligated
to combating child pornography from those dedicated to combating child
exploitation in general.

An important new resource to facilitate the identification of the victims
of child pornographers is the National Child Victim Identification
Program, run by the CyberSmuggling Center. This resource is a consolidated
information system containing seized images that is designed to allow law
enforcement officials to quickly identify and combat the current abuse of
children associated with the production of child pornography. The system's
database is being populated with all known and unique child pornographic
images obtained from national and international law enforcement sources
and from CyberTipline reports filed with NCMEC. It will initially hold
over 100,000 images collected by federal law enforcement agencies from
various sources, including old child pornography magazines.24 According to
Customs officials, this information will help, among other things, to
determine whether actual children were

24According to federal law enforcement agencies, most of the child
pornography published before 1970 has been digitized and made widely
available on the Internet.

used to produce child pornography images by matching them with images of
children from magazines published before modern imaging technology was
invented. Such evidence can be used to counter the assertion that only
virtual children appear in certain images.

The system, which became operational in January 2003,25 is housed at the
Customs CyberSmuggling Center and can be accessed remotely in "read only"
format by the FBI, CEOS, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and NCMEC.

In summary, Mr. Chairman, our work shows that child pornography as well as
adult pornography is widely available and accessible on peer-topeer
networks. Even more disturbing, we found that peer-to-peer searches using
seemingly innocent terms that clearly would be of interest to children
produced a high proportion of pornographic material, including child
pornography. The increase in reports of child pornography on peerto-peer
networks suggests that this problem is increasing. As a result, it will be
important for law enforcement agencies to follow through on their plans to
devote more resources to this technology and continue their efforts to
develop effective strategies for addressing this problem.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be pleased to answer
any questions that you or other Members of the Subcommittee may have at
this time.

Contact and If you should have any questions about this testimony, please
contact me at (202) 512-6240 or by E-mail at [email protected]. Key
contributors to this Acknowledgements testimony were Barbara S. Collier,
Mirko Dolak, James M. Lager, Neelaxi

V. Lakhmani, James R. Sweetman, Jr., and Jessie Thomas.

25One million dollars has already been spent on the system, with an
additional $5 million needed for additional hardware, the expansion of the
image database, and access for all involved agencies. The 10-year
lifecycle cost of the system is estimated to be $23 million.

Attachment: How File Sharing Works on Peer-to-Peer Networks

Peer-to-peer file-sharing programs represent a major change in the way
Internet users find and exchange information. Under the traditional
Internet client/server model, access to information and services is
accomplished by interaction between clients-users who request services-and
servers-providers of services, usually Web sites or portals. Unlike this
traditional model, the peer-to-peer model enables consenting users-or
peers-to directly interact and share information with each other, without
the intervention of a server. A common characteristic of peer-to-peer
programs is that they build virtual networks with their own mechanisms for
routing message traffic.1

The ability of peer-to-peer networks to provide services and connect users
directly has resulted in a large number2 of powerful applications built
around this model.3 These range from the SETI@home network (where users
share the computing power of their computers to search for
extraterrestrial life) to the popular KaZaA file-sharing program (used to
share music and other files).

As shown in figure 4,4 there are two main models of peer-to-peer networks:
(1) the centralized model, in which a central server or broker directs
traffic between individual registered users, and (2) the decentralized

1Matei Ripenau, Ian Foster, and Adriana Iamnitchi, "Mapping the Gnutella
Network: Properties of Large Scale Peer-to-Peer Systems and Implication
for System Design," IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 6, no. 1
(January-February 2002). (people.cs.uchicago.edu/~matei/PAPERS/ic.pdf)

2Zeropaid.com, a file-sharing portal, lists 88 different peer-to-peer
file-sharing programs available for download.
(http://www.zeropaid.com/php/filesharing.php)

3Geoffrey Fox and Shrideep Pallickara, "Peer-to-Peer Interactions in Web
Brokering Systems," Ubiquity, vol. 3, no. 15 (May 28-June 3, 2002)
(published by Association of Computer Machinery).
(http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/g_fox_2.html)

4Illustration adapted by Lt. Col. Mark Bontrager from original by Bob
Knighten, "Peer-to-Peer Computing," briefing to Peer-to-Peer Working
Groups (August 24, 2000), in Mark D. Bontrager, Peering into the Future:
Peer-to-Peer Technology as a Model for Distributed Joint Battlespace
Intelligence Dissemination and Operational Tasking, Thesis, School of
Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama
(June 2001).

model, based on the Gnutella5 network, in which individuals find each
other and interact directly.

Figure 4: Peer-to-Peer Models

As shown in figure 4, in the centralized model, a central server/broker
maintains directories of shared files stored on the computers of
registered users. When Bob submits a request for a particular file, the
server/broker creates a list of files matching the search request by
checking it against its database of files belonging to users currently
connected to the network. The broker then displays that list to Bob, who
can then select the desired file from the list and open a direct link with
Alice's computer, which currently has the file. The download of the actual
file takes place directly from Alice to Bob.

This broker model was used by Napster, the original peer-to-peer network,
facilitating mass sharing of material by combining the file names held by

5According to LimeWire LLC, the developer of a popular file-sharing
program, Gnutella was originally designed by Nullsoft, a subsidiary of
America Online. The development of the Gnutella protocol was halted by AOL
management shortly after the protocol was made available to the public.
Using downloads, programmers reverse-engineered the software and created
their own Gnutella software packages.
(http://www.limewire.com/index.jsp/p2p)

thousands of users into a searchable directory that enabled users to
connect with each other and download MP3 encoded music files. Because much
of this material was copyrighted, Napster as the broker of these exchanges
was vulnerable to legal challenges,6 which eventually led to its demise in
September 2002.

In contrast to Napster, most current-generation peer-to-peer networks are
decentralized. Because they do not depend on the server/broker that was
the central feature of the Napster service, these networks are less
vulnerable to litigation from copyright owners, as pointed out by
Gartner.7

In the decentralized model, no brokers keep track of users and their
files. To share files using the decentralized model, Ted starts with a
networked computer equipped with a Gnutella file-sharing program such as
KaZaA or BearShare. Ted connects to Carol, Carol to Bob, Bob to Alice, and
so on. Once Ted's computer has announced that it is "alive" to the various
members of the peer network, it can search the contents of the shared
directories of the peer network members. The search request is sent to all
members of the network, starting with Carol; members will, in turn, send
the request to the computers to which they are connected, and so forth. If
one of the computers in the peer network (say, for example, Alice's) has a
file that matches the request, it transmits the file information (name,
size, type, etc.) back through all the computers in the pathway towards
Ted, where a list of files matching the search request appears on Ted's
computer through the file-sharing program. Ted can then open a connection
with Alice and download the file directly from Alice's computer.8

The file-sharing networks that result from the use of peer-to-peer
technology are both extensive and complex. Figure 5 shows a map, or
topology, of a Gnutella network whose connections were mapped by a network
visualization tool.9 The map, created in December 2000, shows

6A&M Records v. Napster, 114 F.Supp.2d 896 (N.D. Cal. 2000).

7Lydia Leong, "RIAA vs.Verizon, Implications for ISPs," Gartner (Oct. 24,
2002).

8LimeWire, Modern Peer-to-Peer File Sharing over the Internet.
(http://www.limewire.com/index.jsp/p2p)

9 Mihajlo A. Jovanovic, Fred S. Annexstein, and Kenneth A. Berman,
Scalability Issues in Large Peer-to-Peer Networks: A Case Study of
Gnutella, University of Cincinnati Technical Report (2001).
(http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~mjovanov/Research/paper.html)

1,026 nodes (computers connected to more than one computer) and 3,752
edges (computers on the edge of the network connected to a single
computer). This map is a snapshot showing a network in existence at a
given moment; these networks change constantly as users join and depart
them.

Figure 5: Topology of a Gnutella Network

One of the key features of many peer-to-peer technologies is their use of
a virtual name space (VNS). A VNS dynamically associates user-created

names with the Internet address of whatever Internet-connected computer
users happen to be using when they log on.10 The VNS facilitates
point-topoint interaction between individuals, because it removes the need
for users and their computers to know the addresses and locations of other
users; the VNS can, to a certain extent, preserve users' anonymity and
provide information on whether a user is or is not connected to the
Internet at a given moment. Peer-to-peer users thus may appear to be
anonymous; they are not, however. Law enforcement agents may identify
users' Internet addresses during the file-sharing process and obtain,
under a court order, their identities from their Internet service
providers.

10 S. Hayward and R. Batchelder, "Peer-to-Peer: Something Old, Something
New," Gartner (Apr. 10, 2001).

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright
protection in the United States. It may be reproduced and distributed in
its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this
work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the
copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material
separately.

GAO's Mission

Obtaining Copies of GAO Reports and Testimony

The General Accounting Office, the audit, evaluation and investigative arm
of Congress, exists to support Congress in meeting its constitutional
responsibilities and to help improve the performance and accountability of
the federal government for the American people. GAO examines the use of
public funds; evaluates federal programs and policies; and provides
analyses, recommendations, and other assistance to help Congress make
informed oversight, policy, and funding decisions. GAO's commitment to
good government is reflected in its core values of accountability,
integrity, and reliability.

The fastest and easiest way to obtain copies of GAO documents at no cost
is through the Internet. GAO's Web site (www.gao.gov) contains abstracts
and fulltext files of current reports and testimony and an expanding
archive of older products. The Web site features a search engine to help
you locate documents using key words and phrases. You can print these
documents in their entirety, including charts and other graphics.

Each day, GAO issues a list of newly released reports, testimony, and
correspondence. GAO posts this list, known as "Today's Reports," on its
Web site daily. The list contains links to the full-text document files.
To have GAO e-mail this list to you every afternoon, go to www.gao.gov and
select "Subscribe to e-mail alerts" under the "Order GAO Products"
heading.

Order by Mail or Phone 	The first copy of each printed report is free.
Additional copies are $2 each. A check or money order should be made out
to the Superintendent of Documents. GAO also accepts VISA and Mastercard.
Orders for 100 or more copies mailed to a single address are discounted 25
percent. Orders should be sent to:

U.S. General Accounting Office 441 G Street NW, Room LM Washington, D.C.
20548

To order by Phone: 	Voice: (202) 512-6000 TDD: (202) 512-2537 Fax: (202)
512-6061

To Report Fraud,	Contact: Web site: www.gao.gov/fraudnet/fraudnet.htm

Waste, and Abuse in E-mail: [email protected]

Federal Programs Automated answering system: (800) 424-5454 or (202)
512-7470

Jeff Nelligan, Managing Director, [email protected] (202) 512-4800

Public Affairs 	U.S. General Accounting Office, 441 G Street NW, Room 7149
Washington, D.C. 20548
*** End of document. ***