A Congressional Panel Would Like To Be Added

MySpace causes legislators to start thinking of the children.

By Katie DeWitt, Yale University
Wednesday August 2, 2006

For two days in July, a group of concerned members of the U.S. House of Representatives gathered on Capitol Hill to discuss the role of internet service providers (ISPs) and social networking sites in making the internet safe for kids. The hearings, before a subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, somewhat clumsily lumped together two different yet related online sex-crime issues: child pornography and the use of social networking sites by sexual predators. This conflation of all things online was not particularly surprising because the majority of these lawmakers probably had to ask their own kids to explain the verb “to Facebook” and the long-hand for “gtg.”

Child predators have existed for ages, but they have come to the public’s attention again with horror stories related to the 55 million-strong community on MySpace.com. Recently, an older man, having befriended young girls on the website, sexually assaulted seven Middletown, Conn., girls aged 12 to 16 after meeting them in person.

Internet child pornography has also been an issue in the media and in Washington for years. According to a National Children’s Homes report, the number of internet child pornography images has increased 1500 percent since 1988, and the demand for pornographic images of babies and toddlers on the internet is soaring. The report suggests this is due at least in part to the fact that internet pedophiles are increasingly adopting counter-intelligence techniques to protect themselves from being traced. Unlike divisive “values”-driven issues like gay marriage or flag-burning, stopping child predators seems like something that everyone on both sides of the aisle could get behind. But is anyone advocating any real solutions? While it’s laudable that lawmakers are seriously addressing this issue, little effective action has emerged from these lengthy discussions.

Since it was formed in 1996, a partnership between government, police, and business in the United Kingdom known as the Internet Watch Foundation has reduced the U.K. share of the world’s child pornography content to less than 1 percent. The Internet Watch Foundation offers a web-based, government-endorsed system for reporting illegal material, thus encouraging dialogue between law enforcement and the public. The United States, which has no comparable initiative, hosts 40 percent of the world’s child pornography. To replicate the British tactic, however, the U.S. government would have to take an active role in regulating online content, something many Americans fear could lead down a slippery slope toward substantial censorship.

The hearings came in the context of the “Net Neutrality” debate. Net neutrality, which has been codified in many European countries, would require providers of high-speed internet access to offer all websites the same speed of service so that big, established companies do not gain an unfair advantage over small start-ups. The legislation seeks to prevent big phone and cable companies from acting as gate-keepers, thus protecting consumers’ rights to a “free and open internet.”

The movement behind net neutrality indicates Americans value an internet without barriers, but when it comes to child predators prowling this relatively unrestricted space, should the government be doing more?

The legislators were clearly alarmed by the problems. Committee chairman Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said he had “never been more revolted in preparing for a hearing than in reading the materials that I’ve had to read for this one.” Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) said he was astounded to find that according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, internet child pornography is a $20 billion industry, generating seven times more revenue than music downloads.

The first day of the hearing focused on whether ISPs are doing enough to protect children, and the second day examined the problem of teenagers publishing private information on popular social networking sites such a MySpace and Facebook.com. Even though the committee members were learning unfamiliar material, most of the hearing was old news to anyone on Facebook or MySpace.

One solution discussed was data retention—the storage of internet traffic and transaction data by government and commercial organizations for later investigations. There is currently no requirement as to how long and to what extent ISPs must keep records. While companies expressed a willingness to hold onto information longer to track predators, they worried about the costs and privacy implications of a nationwide mandate.

Another problem is age verification and privacy protection on social networking sites. Facebook’s chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, explained some key aspects of his site’s privacy system: Members must have a school-issued e-mail address, and their profiles are only visible to others at the same school and Facebook friends (who, of course, become friends by mutual consent). Meanwhile, MySpace’s key protective mechanism is to partially shield the profiles of members who say they are under 15. Left unaddressed is whether MySpace will do more about the issue of teens carelessly revealing private information to strangers, be it within or outside of their school community.

In an MIT News Office interview, the co-director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program, Henry Jenkins, said social networking sites have important value in providing youths with grounds for identity development and cultural integration. He emphasized parental responsibility in protecting children. “We think decisions about youth access to digital technologies should be made in the context of individual families and not form the basis of one-size-fits-all federal legislation,” Jenkins said.

But for parents and children to make better decisions, they will have to better understand the risks. In order to demonstrate the risks to young people, Frank Dannahey, a Connecticut police officer, posed online as a 19-year-old man and gleaned personal information such as phone numbers and meeting times and locations from more than 100 MySpace members, to demonstrate the risks to young people. Dannahey cited two major factors that make the internet dangerous to children: a lack of knowledge among parents about new technology, and a perception among teens that they will not fall victim to predators. Both Jenkins and Dannahey believe that education programs and public service announcements provide a key way for government to combat online child predators.

With a new generation of technologies, competing interests naturally arise, but it is a common human inclination to protect innocent children. If nothing else, it is time for parents to learn that “poking” on Facebook.com does not actually hurt and that AIM is not a verb only used in rifle practice.  It is time for teens to take more responsibility for scrubbing their profiles of any private information that they would not want their parents, potential employers, or strangers to see. And it is time for Barton and his committee to invite some younger, more technologically-savvy thinkers to teach them about the implications of the legislation they consider.

 
Katie DeWitt is a rising senior at Yale. She is a Features Editor and staff reporter for the Yale Daily News.