Anti-pornography activists are endorsing bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate Wednesday to crack down on Internet service providers (ISPs) that do not report child pornography to authorities.
The Securing Adolescents From Exploitation Online Act of 2007, or SAFE Act, would require ISPs to report child porn to
The bill is sponsored by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz.
"There's a lot of good Web sites like AOL and others that routinely (report child porn)," McCain told Family News in Focus, "but there are thousands of Internet service providers that do not."
A companion bill will be introduced soon in the U.S. House of Representatives by Reps. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio; and Nick Lampson, D-Texas.
Daniel Weiss, senior analyst for media and sexuality at Focus on the Family Action, said the real problem is that the U.S. Department of Justice has never issued guidelines for ISPs.
"Some ISPs have used that as an excuse for not expending the staff or the energy or the money to comply with the law," Weiss said. "It's a legitimate point to make that when you are dealing with material that's illegal to possess, even sending the evidence of that crime to authorities would in itself be a crime. This legislation establishes the protocols necessary to legally report criminal acts."
Bob Peters, president of Morality in Media, said he is pleased that the bill would also require the Justice Department to provide Congress with statistics on how many child-porn prosecutions and investigations it launches.
"The more prosecutions there are, the more the risk goes up for people who are into this perversion," Peters said. "Over time, that acts as a deterrent and will hopefully put more people in jail for engaging in what is a burgeoning form of obscenity."
Schumer said the legislation will bolster law enforcement efforts.
"While we can't see everything that happens on the Internet," he said, "we can work hard to build the next best thing – a system to report the illegal activity that is discovered. This bill takes our efforts to the 21st Century."
The group ECPAT International estimates child pornography in the U.S. to be a $3 billion-a-year business. More than half of all Internet child-porn images are generated from the U.S.
McCain said 39 percent of those arrested for child pornography had images of children age 6 and under; 19 percent had images of children age 3 and under.
"These acts are heinous crimes against the most innocent members of our society," he said. "I will do whatever I can do ensure purveyors of child pornography are caught and jailed."
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(Paid for by Focus on the Family Action)
