Gonzales Urged to Start New Porn Commission

A recently unsealed indictment of a Salt Lake City man said to have murdered, then raped a child shows anecdotal ties between use of mainstream porn and child porn, Bennett said. The defendant, who said he was reenacting a scene from a pornographic movie, claimed his porn addiction was a “major motive” in the attack, Bennett said. Noting “a great deal of ridicule” aimed at the 1980s commission led by AG Ed Meese, Bennett asked: “Isn’t it time we revisited” the idea of a porn panel, with so many technology changes having occurred?

DoJ has been looking at underlying “sources” of child porn activity and has acted on some Meese commission ideas, Gonzales said. The recommendations include recordkeeping rules for mainstream adult magazine and video companies, embodied in the so-called 2257 regulations that triggered a court fight between DoJ and the porn industry over extending the rules to websites (WID Aug 12/05 p6). DoJ recently got a conviction against the company behind Girls Gone Wild for improper labeling and failure to keep records, Gonzales said. The Protect Act of 2003 and Adam Walsh Child Protection & Safety Act (WID July 28 p6) also can be considered the Meese commission’s legacy, he said.

Gonzales couldn’t answer Bennett’s question about whether DoJ’s Juvenile Justice Div. has the funds to set up its own version of the Meese commission, but promised to investigate. Bennett urged Gonzales to exploit Chmn. Shelby’s (R-Ala.) role on an appropriations committee to seek commission funding. Gonzales will look into whether some states make it too easy for foreigners to set up shell companies used for child porn commerce, and whether Congress should intervene, he told Shelby.

Some nations’ “astonishingly lenient” sanctions, such as fines and jail terms of less than a year, make it hard to stop child porn, Gonzales said. Most of it is from eastern Europe and Asia, where enforcement needs improvement, he said. Child porn penalties and enforcement are like intellectual property protections -- raised on every official visit abroad, Gonzales said. Asked by Ranking Member Sarbanes (D-Md.) whether child porn is a priority at the G8, Gonzales said: “I believe that everything on that agenda” is high priority. He urged members to discuss child protection when they visit fellow legislators abroad.

Alternative payment means for child porn are on the rise, Gonzales said, a trend cited by National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) Pres.-CEO Ernie Allen. “Stored value cards,” which individuals can buy and use without having to identify themselves, make following the money more difficult, Gonzales told Shelby, who earlier said some states “flaunt” the availability of such systems. But criminals are “going to adjust to whatever we do,” Gonzales said.

Lack of information, worsened by privacy curbs, is the greatest obstacle to prosecuting child porn crimes, Gonzales told Sen. Allard (R-Colo.). Asked by Sarbanes if the U.S. should revise its privacy laws so law enforcement can share information from inquiries with financial institutions to cut off money, the AG again said he would look into it. Interagency cooperation in investigations -- among DoJ, FBI, DHS and their units -- is “very, very good,” Gonzales said. Responding to a question from Sarbanes about if the White House has a child protection unit or works with agencies “ad hoc,” Gonzales said the White House has an “understanding” with other agencies and “commitment” to be involved.

Gonzales plugged DoJ efforts to impose data retention rules on ISPs. He cited support in a letter to Congress from 49 state AGs. They usually tell Congress to butt out of state matters, he added.

State and local law enforcement also value DoJ help in obscenity prosecutions, which are on the rise and sometimes involve child porn, Gonzales said. Saying he’s “disappointed” in the prosecutorial track record, Gonzales admitted “these are tougher cases to make,” given the task of proving material obscene against the checkerboard of “community standards” by which obscenity is determined.

Sen. Bunning (R-Ky.) clashed with Gonzales over whether jurisdictional disputes hamper efforts against child porn. “We seem to be going backwards” with state, local and federal laws in conflict, “bumping into each other,” Bunning said. “I don’t know if it would make sense” to preempt state and local laws, but there is no “bumping,” Gonzales said: “We need them as partners, quite frankly.” Bunning pressed on, saying he knows of cases “stymied” by jurisdictional conflict. Gonzales asked to respond fully later, seemingly annoyed at Bunning’s follow-up on why DoJ’s Child Exploitation & Obscenity Section doesn’t belong to the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography. It’s a nongovt. group, Gonzales said, but all major law enforcement agencies have representatives “on premises” at NCMEC.

The likeliest weapon against child porn is education, Gonzales told Allard, who then voiced concern over how to measure success. Gonzales cited 2006 NCMEC data showing that solicitation of children online fell about 6% since the previous survey in 2001.

Gonzales uncharacteristically urged govt. restraint when Sen. Stabenow (D-Mich.) asked about legislation requiring age verification by porn sites. “Parents have a responsibility,” Gonzales said: “We are in a war” and ordinary citizens must participate too.

A $20 billion value assigned the commercial child porn industry in a spate of child porn hearings (WID April 12 p8) and subsequently challenged as inaccurate was trotted out again. Unlike previous references, speakers Tues. cited the source -- financial consultants McKinsey Worldwide, which said the market could hit $30-35 billion by 2009. Sarbanes dodged specificity, citing a “multibillion-dollar” market.

Use Trade Agreements to Stop Child Porn

At a 2nd hearing Tues., Senate Commerce Committee members offered ways to reduce child porn that may have been overlooked. Chmn. McCain (R-Ariz.) asked whether the U.S. should include in trade agreements a provision that partner countries must have “sufficient” laws to address child porn as a condition of trade. Asst. Attorney Gen. Alice Fisher said she would defer to the State Dept. on the wisdom of that, but called it an example of how “we all really need to think creatively” about solutions.

Sen. Pryor (D-Ark.) asked whether the proposed .xxx domain (WID May 19 p4) could reduce availability of child porn. He compared the domain to the “blinders” that must be placed on adult magazines in convenience stores, an analogy that a DoJ official recently used to justify mandatory labels on adult websites (WID Sept 18 p1). Fisher made that connection to the DoJ Web labeling proposal, and said DoJ would review the idea with respect to child porn. “I'm not sure how much it would cut down on predators on the Internet,” said Jim Finch, FBI asst. dir-Cyber Div., saying that sexual predators frequent sites popular with kids, not mainstream porn sites.

How many people in the U.S. possess child porn? asked Sen. Ensign (R-Nev.). Finch said he didn’t have estimates, prompting exasperation from Ensign that agencies have estimates for other illegal activities such as drug use. Fisher said she had seen estimates in the “tens of thousands,” and noted that DoJ found one child porn website with 70,000 paying customers -- but she wasn’t sure how many were in the U.S. Bedford County (Va.) Sheriff Mike Brown said the most recent estimate of total child porn websites worldwide was 100,000, and he said annual revenue was estimated as high as $27 billion.

New challenges are confounding child-porn fighters, said NCMEC’s Allen. There are indications that child porn is going wireless on mobile devices, especially in Europe, and NCMEC is working preemptively with the FCC stateside on the issue, he said. Some ISPs and service providers aren’t submitting suspect content to NCMEC -- in fear of violating federal law by transmitting it -- and NCMEC is working with the U.S. Internet Service Providers Assn. to correct that mistaken impression, Allen said. U.S. law also impedes NCMEC’s ability to send child porn leads to foreign law enforcement agencies. Allen spoke in favor of data retention mandates, saying prosecution is impossible without date-and- time logs from suspicious accounts. Most companies keep data too briefly for “meaningful prosecutorial value” and policies and follow-through vary widely among ISPs, he added.