<DOC>
[106th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:64763.wais]
OBSCENE MATERIAL AVAILABLE VIA THE INTERNET
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS,
TRADE, AND CONSUMER PROTECTION
of the
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 23, 2000
__________
Serial No. 106-115
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
64-763 CC WASHINGTON : 2000
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE
TOM BLILEY, Virginia, Chairman
W.J. ``BILLY'' TAUZIN, Louisiana JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan
MICHAEL G. OXLEY, Ohio HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
MICHAEL BILIRAKIS, Florida EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
JOE BARTON, Texas RALPH M. HALL, Texas
FRED UPTON, Michigan RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
CLIFF STEARNS, Florida EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
Vice Chairman SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
JAMES C. GREENWOOD, Pennsylvania BART GORDON, Tennessee
CHRISTOPHER COX, California PETER DEUTSCH, Florida
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
STEVE LARGENT, Oklahoma ANNA G. ESHOO, California
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina RON KLINK, Pennsylvania
BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California BART STUPAK, Michigan
ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
GREG GANSKE, Iowa TOM SAWYER, Ohio
CHARLIE NORWOOD, Georgia ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland
TOM A. COBURN, Oklahoma GENE GREEN, Texas
RICK LAZIO, New York KAREN McCARTHY, Missouri
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming TED STRICKLAND, Ohio
JAMES E. ROGAN, California DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico BILL LUTHER, Minnesota
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona LOIS CAPPS, California
CHARLES W. ``CHIP'' PICKERING,
Mississippi
VITO FOSSELLA, New York
ROY BLUNT, Missouri
ED BRYANT, Tennessee
ROBERT L. EHRLICH, Jr., Maryland
James E. Derderian, Chief of Staff
James D. Barnette, General Counsel
Reid P.F. Stuntz, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
______
Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection
W.J. ``BILLY'' TAUZIN, Louisiana, Chairman
MICHAEL G. OXLEY, Ohio, EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
Vice Chairman RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
CLIFF STEARNS, Florida BART GORDON, Tennessee
PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
CHRISTOPHER COX, California ANNA G. ESHOO, California
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
STEVE LARGENT, Oklahoma ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming BILL LUTHER, Minnesota
JAMES E. ROGAN, California RON KLINK, Pennsylvania
JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois TOM SAWYER, Ohio
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico GENE GREEN, Texas
CHARLES W. ``CHIP'' PICKERING, KAREN McCARTHY, Missouri
Mississippi JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan,
VITO FOSSELLA, New York (Ex Officio)
ROY BLUNT, Missouri
ROBERT L. EHRLICH, Jr., Maryland
TOM BLILEY, Virginia,
(Ex Officio)
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
Page
Testimony of:
Burgin, Joseph W., Jr........................................ 31
Flores, J. Robert, Vice President and Senior Counsel,
National Law Center for Children and Families.............. 13
Laaser, Mark R., Executive Director and Cofounder, Christian
Alliance for Sexual Recovery............................... 7
LaRue, Janet M., Senior Director of Legal Studies, Family
Research Council........................................... 26
Gershel, Alan, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Criminal
Division; accompanied by Terry R. Lord, Chief, Child
Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Criminal Division,
Department of Justice...................................... 49
Stewart, Tracy R., Head of Technology, FamilyClick.com, LLC.. 18
Material submitted for the record by:
Largent, Hon. Stene, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Oklahoma, letter dated June 8, 2000, to Hon. W.J.
``Billy'' Tauzin, enclosing material for the record........ 77
(iii)
OBSCENE MATERIAL AVAILABLE VIA THE INTERNET
----------
TUESDAY, MAY 23, 2000
House of Representatives,
Committee on Commerce,
Subcommittee on Telecommunications,
Trade, and Consumer Protection,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:10 a.m., in
room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. W.J. ``Billy''
Tauzin (chairman) presiding.
Members present: Representatives Tauzin, Oxley, Stearns,
Deal, Largent, Shimkus, Pickering, Ehrlich, Bliley (ex
officio), Luther, and Green.
Staff present: Linda Bloss-Baum, majority counsel; Mike
O'Reilly, professional staff; Cliff Riccio, legislative
assistant; and Andy Levin, minority counsel.
Mr. Tauzin. The subcommittee will please come to order.
Today the subcommittee convenes to discuss the perplexing
subject of obscenity and sexually explicit material available
on the Internet. I say that it is perplexing because while the
law governing obscenity has been well established for years,
many pornographers and others that broadcast sexually explicit
material today online seem to be immune from prosecution under
applicable Federal law.
In fact, an example of the apparent Justice Department
reluctance in this matter was exhibited just this morning. The
Attorney General's office at the Department of Justice was here
today to testify, and they exercised their discretion in
leaving this committee room and refusing to testify because we
made a simple request that they sit and listen to the witnesses
first and comment on their testimony. They claim the Department
of Justice will not sit and listen to constituents at a
hearing, and so they have taken upon themselves to leave this
hearing room and have refused to testify in the order in which
the Chair has set the testimony.I find this absolutely a great
example of the arrogance of our current Justice Department.
Let my say it again: They wouldn't sit and listen to the
witnesses who want to complain about the fact that the Justice
Department has refused or somehow been totally negligent in
enforcing the obscenity laws of this country.
So we will not hear from the Justice Department this
morning, but you can rest assured that the Attorney General
will be hearing from this committee in regards to the
performance of her witnesses this morning who have, as I said,
chosen to leave this hearing room rather than testify following
the testimony of the witnesses who are gathered to discuss this
important subject with us today.
Not even the Supreme Court has denied that sexually
explicit material exists on the Internet. Material extends from
modestly titillating to the hardest core material you can
imagine. Disturbing enough, a great deal of this material is in
fact legally obscene under the so-called 3-point Miller test
established by the Supreme Court because it appeals to prurient
interests, is patently offensive and lacks any literary,
artistic or political value in any community where viewing such
material is possible. This material therefore is unprotected by
the first amendment, which means that it can be regulated at
all levels of government. Not surprisingly, both the Federal
Government and every State that I know of have implemented
obscenity laws that restrict the distribution of obscene
material to varying degrees and ban child pornography
altogether.
And with reference Title 18, Sections 1462, 65, 66, 67 and
1470, the Supreme Court stated in Reno versus ACLU, the very
case which struck down challenged provisions of the
communications act, the decency act, the CDA--this is a quote
from the Supreme Court--``Transmitting obscenity, whether via
the Internet or other means, is already illegal under Federal
law for both adults and juveniles.''
Despite that the main point of the decision in Reno versus
ACLU was that the challenged provisions of the challenged
decency act did not pass constitutional muster, the case is
just as important for the Federal courts' observation of
existing Federal obscenity law.
I quote from a U.S. District court's opinion which was
upheld by the Supreme Court. ``Vigorous enforcement of current
obscenity and child pornography laws should suffice to address
the problem the government identified in court and which
concerned Congress when it enacted the CDA. When the CDA was
under consideration by Congress, the Justice Department itself
communicated its view that CDA was not necessary because it,
Justice, was prosecuting online obscenity, child pornography
and child solicitation under existing laws and would continue
to do so.''
Well, ladies and gentlemen, the point the court is making
is very simple. Regardless of what happened to CDA, the laws
already on the books are clear and strong, strong enough to
control obscenity. Unfortunately, however, one does not get
that impression when reviewing the DOJ's record of prosecuting
purveyors of obscene material online under Federal law.
We are not here today to entertain or consider specific
legislation. To the contrary, we are here to better understand
why the Clinton administration refuses to enforce existing
Federal obscenity laws against purveyors of this absolute filth
that is accessible to just about every man, woman and child on
the Internet. Frankly, I think the Justice Department's record
in prosecuting online obscenity is an embarrassment, and I am
not surprised that Justice Department witnesses walked out of
this hearing room today, and I find it appalling that despite
the sufficiency of our laws, Justice has broken its promise to
appropriately prosecute.
Under this administration it cannot be denied that we have
witnessed the most explosive growth in distribution of
obscenity to all ages in American history, hardly the result we
intended when we amended Title 18.
So today I look forward to getting to the bottom of this
quagmire. We certainly hoped that the Department of Justice was
ready to talk to us and answer questions after they had heard
the presentation of our witnesses. That hope was apparently
misplaced this morning as the Justice Department has decided to
walk out of this hearing.
The Chair will yield to the gentleman from Ohio for an
opening statement.
Mr. Sawyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I suspect that there
is another side to the story in terms of why the Justice
Department chose not to be here, and I don't take issue with
anything that you have said, particularly in terms of raising
questions about what that motivation might be.
Mr. Tauzin. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. Sawyer. I prefer just to continue if I could. I don't
take issue--I don't question what you are saying, only to
suggest that there is, I would suspect, another side to the
story.
Mr. Tauzin. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. Sawyer. I would be happy to.
Mr. Tauzin. I will extend the gentleman time. I simply want
to point out, if there is another side we didn't hear it this
morning. The Justice Department's only objection was that they
didn't want to sit and listen----
Mr. Sawyer. Reclaiming my time, I am as frustrated as you
are that they didn't stay to make that point clear, but I
suspect that there is another side to that story, and I hope
that people who are interested will pursue that as I can assure
you I will and I hope you will do as well, Mr. Chairman.
My frustration is, as you suggest, that there is strong and
powerful law with regard to the enforcement of existing
statutes against pornography and indecency, and the medium
through which that is transmitted ought not to make a
substantial difference. It is particularly true at a time when
we see media merging, where the kind of findings that we are
seeing through the courts with regard to television will
increasingly apply to similar kinds of depiction on the
Internet.
As we see these media merge, as we have already seen on a
basic level, we come back to questions that we have reviewed in
other contexts: Should the Internet be treated any differently?
Would it be wise to regulate TV in one way and the Internet in
another? Are current filters really feasible? Are they
effective? If they are not, what can be done? What Federal
regulations can be effective if technologies are not available?
How can we apply the Miller test using contemporary community
standards when the community that we are talking about,
particularly with regard to the Internet, is virtually global
in its scope?
There are serious questions, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased
that you have called this hearing. I am frustrated that we will
not hear from everyone today, but having said that, I would
hope that there would be an opportunity for an additional
hearing at which the Department of Justice might have a chance
to testify.
Mr. Tauzin. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Sawyer. Yes.
Mr. Tauzin. Apparently the Department of Justice witnesses
have just informed the subcommittee that they are now prepared
to visit with us after the first panel. So apparently we will
hear from them now.
Mr. Sawyer. Good. I am as comforted by that as I suspect
you are.
Mr. Tauzin. I am very comforted.
Mr. Sawyer. With that, Mr. Chairman, let me just say that
this is not only a matter of standards and values, this is a
question of technical feasibility and a question in this
digital environment of what we mean by community standards when
that community is as large as all of humanity.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tauzin. I thank the gentleman. I point out, however,
that they have left the room. Apparently they may or may not be
here when the first panel discusses the issue. I would hope
that they return, at least sit and hear from citizens of this
country who are concerned about the matter. But we will see how
that progresses.
The Chair is now pleased to welcome the chairman of the
full committee, the gentleman from Richmond, Virginia, Mr.
Bliley.
Chairman Bliley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing. I would also like to thank our friend Steve Largent
for his work on the issue of obscene material that is being
made available via the Internet. He should be commended for his
due diligence.
People who make obscene material and child pornography
available on the Internet should be investigated and prosecuted
to the fullest extent of the law. Frankly, I do not feel that
the Justice Department has done enough in this area. The fact
remains that people are breaking the law every day. Obscene
material and child pornography have always been against the
law. Through the Communications Decency Act, we made it illegal
on the Internet as well, but there needs to be a cop on the
beat to keep things secure and to protect society from the
deviants who sell, show or promote this type of material.
This is the job of the Justice Department, and I do hope
that they do come back and testify today. I think it is
shameful that they would not listen to citizens and to hear
their complaints. We see that too often in Federal agencies
that they go their own way and they are not interested in
listening to the people who they are supposed to be looking out
for, and that is a shame.
Congress established the COPA commission to come up with
ideas that help parents protect their kids from indecent
material on the Web. I look forward to completion of the work
of the commission. I am hopeful that their recommendations to
Congress will provide further insight on how to help cut down
on the exposure to the material we are discussing today.
I want to thank the witnesses for coming today. It is
important to help the many folks who have fallen prey to the
massive amounts of obscene material available over the
Internet. This whole discussion, Mr. Chairman, sort of reminds
me back in the early eighties when we were trying to stamp out
the Dial a Porn, if you remember, and what a time we had. You
would think that common sense would prevail, but it took us
about 5 or 6 years before we could get a handle on it. I hope
it doesn't take that long this time.
Thank you.
Mr. Tauzin. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair is now pleased to welcome the gentleman from
Oklahoma, Mr. Largent, with the Chair's thanks for his
extraordinary diligence in pursuing this matter with the
committee, and Mr. Largent is recognized.
Mr. Largent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing. I think it is a very important hearing and I am glad
that this subcommittee has the opportunity, hopefully will have
the opportunity to discuss with the Department of Justice their
efforts to prosecute Internet obscenity.
Publications for the adult industry have been puzzled over
how likely it is that the adult entertainment industry will
enjoy the same, and I quote, ``benevolent neglect'' under the
next administration that the industry has enjoyed under Janet
Reno. It is my understanding that there have been no
prosecutions of Internet obscenity by the Department, and I am
eager to hear from our Department of Justice witness on this
issue.
I am deeply concerned with the type of easily available
obscene content on the Internet today. By definition, obscenity
is patently offensive, appeals to the prurient interest in sex
and has no serious literary, artistic, political or scientific
value. It is illegal to distribute to any person including
adults, and yet the level of filth and vile on the Internet is
inconceivable, with estimates for the number of adult Web sites
ranging from 40,000 to over 100,000 or more.
The amount of material on the Net is growing exponentially
and nobody is quite sure how many sites exist. Such material
would never be allowed in a bookstore or on television. Do we
think the social costs and community problems previously
associated with adult bookstores and hard core strip clubs have
diminished because it is on the Internet? Certainly not.
Instead they have become more prevalent, more internalized and
more destructive.
The aggressive marketing tactics of the adult industry have
brought such material directly into the family rooms of
millions of Americans and also into our schools' libraries and
into the schools themselves. By such aggressive tactics as spam
e-mail, page-jacking and mouse-trapping, innocent adults and
children are lured into a world they did not wish to see and
from which it is difficult to escape once online.
Furthermore, the lack of prosecution has given a false
sense of legitimacy to this industry. Revenues generated by
pornography exceed the revenues generated by rock and country
music combined. Adult entertainment sites on the Internet
account for the third largest sector of sales in cyberspace,
only behind computer products and travel, with an estimated $1-
$2 billion per year in revenue.
I would ask the committee to remember the following facts.
Obscenity is illegal under Federal law. Obscenity has been
defined by the Supreme Court. Obscenity is not protected by the
first amendment. It degrades women and diminishes a child's
ability to conceive of a healthy view of adult relationships.
It is a destructive force which is polluting the minds of
adults and children alike. We must aggressively prosecute
obscenity in order to uphold the law, protect all Americans
from such illegal material and especially protect our children
from such material.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tauzin. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair will call the panel forward, please. I am sorry;
Mr. Shimkus has arrived, the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just applaud the
work of my colleague, Mr. Largent, and look forward to the
panel discussion. I yield back my time.
Mr. Tauzin. I thank the gentleman.
[Additional statement submitted for the record follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Michael G. Oxley, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Ohio
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe this is a serious matter, and
I'm glad the Subcommittee is reviewing it.
Let me say up front that I believe some agencies, the FBI and the
Customs Service in particular, are doing excellent and very important
work in this area. These agencies are staffed by law enforcement
professionals who take stalking, abduction, and child pornography cases
very, very seriously.
I also want to praise the Department of Justice for its vigorous
defense of the Child Online Protection Act. We are currently awaiting a
ruling from the Third Circuit, although I must say yesterday's deeply
disappointing Supreme Court decision regarding unscrambled sexually
explicit cable programming would not appear to bode well. The issues in
the two cases are not the same, but I must say that I'm perplexed that
five Justices would vote to strike those rather modest provisions of
the Telecom Act.
What the ruling shows, I think, is that for the time being we-may
need to rely on existing law to protect American families from the
corrosive effects of hardcore pornography. Fortunately, existing law is
rather strong, and as Presidents Reagan and Bush demonstrated, can be
used to great effect in the fight against hardcore porn.
Unfortunately, the present administration has utterly abandoned the
war against obscenity. In this area, there is nothing remotely
resembling leadership coming from the White House or the Vice
President's mansion.
For anyone who doubts this, let's look at some recent facts: In
1997, U.S. Attorneys prosecuted only 6 obscenity cases. In 1998, there
were 8 prosecutions. In 1999, as near as I can tell, there were none.
The level of federal obscenity enforcement dropped more than 80% during
the first six years of the Clinton administration. Adult Video News,
apparently the trade publication of the porn industry, actually
endorsed Bill Clinton for re-election in 1996.
Also from Adult Video News, in an article entitled ``A Ridiculous
Amount of New Adult Product,'' comes this tidbit: 5,775 new adult
releases hit the market in 1995, marking a staggering 80% increase from
the year before. In 1996, there were 7,800 new hardcore video releases.
Contrast this with some of the reports during the Reagan and Bush
years. Here's a quote from a 1986 New York Times article entitled ``X-
Rated Industry in a Slump:'' ``The pornographic industry's plight is
due partly to legal challenges . . . with a little help from the Reagan
administration, an unlikely alliance of conservatives and feminists has
persuaded many retailers to stop carrying adult magazines and videos .
. . Said Martin Turkel, one of the largest distributors of adult videos
in the country, `Next year is going to be the roughest year in the
history of the industry.' ''
And from Billboard: sales of adult videos at the wholesale level
dropped from $450 million in 1986 to $386 million in 1987. That's
compared to $3.9 BILLION in 1996.
And to sort of sum it up, here's a quote from a Los Angeles Daily
News article about one year into President Clinton's first term:
``Before Clinton took office, Los Angeles police were deputized by the
federal government so they could help prosecutors conduct monthly raids
on Valley pornographers. Under Clinton, there have been no raids,''
said Los Angeles police Lt. Ken Seibert. Seibert said, ``Adult
obscenity enforcement by the federal government is practically
nonexistent since the administration changed.''
Even more than new laws, Mr. Chairman, we need more enforcement of
existing obscenity statutes. I yield back.
Mr. Tauzin. Will the witnesses please step forward? They
include Mr. Mark Laaser, the executive director and cofounder
of the Christian Alliance for Sexual Recovery; Mr. Robert
Flores, vice president and senior counsel of the National Law
Center for Children and Families; Ms. Tracy Stewart, the head
of technology at FamilyClick.com; Ms. Jan LaRue, senior
director of legal studies for the Family Research Counsel here
in Washington, D.C.; Mr. Joseph Burgin of Cincinnati, Ohio. And
we had Ms. Kathie LeRose on the agenda today, and apparently
she lost a family member, her father, so we want to keep her in
our thoughts today. She is not able to attend. Apparently her
father suffered a heart attack today.
So we want to welcome our panel, and under the rules
panelists are reminded that we have a timing system. You should
look at these devices in front of you. They accord you 5
minutes to summarize your statements, hit the keep points for
us.
Your written statements are already a part of our record.
By unanimous consent, without objection, all written statements
of members and panelists are made a part of our record. So
ordered, and we will ask you, as I call you forward, to
summarize within 5 minutes so that we can get to Q and A as
rapidly as we can.
We will start with Mr. Mark Laaser, the executive director
and cofounder for the Christian Alliance for Sexual Recovery.
Mr. Laaser.
STATEMENTS OF MARK R. LAASER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND COFOUNDER,
CHRISTIAN ALLIANCE FOR SEXUAL RECOVERY; J. ROBERT FLORES, VICE
PRESIDENT AND SENIOR COUNSEL, NATIONAL LAW CENTER FOR CHILDREN
AND FAMILIES; TRACY R. STEWART, HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY,
FamilyClick.com, LLC; JANET M. LaRUE, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF LEGAL
STUDIES, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL; AND JOSEPH W. BURGIN, JR.
Mr. Laaser. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
honorable members of this committee. You have my written
testimony in front of you, and it summarizes some key points as
I was able to ascertain them from the existing research in the
field of the damaging effects of obscene material available on
the Internet. I would direct you to the summary statement and I
will just briefly go over that at this time.
Research has shown that 60 percent of all Web site visits
access sexually related sites containing obscene material. It
is estimated and one research study has in fact confirmed that
60 percent of all----
Mr. Tauzin. Let me explain, those bells are advising
Members of votes on the House floor. This is going to happen
during our hearing process. This in effect is saying we have a
15-minute vote followed by two 5-minute votes which will take
us away for about a half hour. So we will go on for about 10
more minutes and then we will recess for about a half hour and
come back. Mr. Laaser.
Mr. Laaser. I was just saying that it is estimated that 60
percent of all male computer time at work is dedicated to
accessing pornography, and of course, as most of us are aware
and as you said, the growth of the Internet is exponential. It
is estimated that by the year 2001, 95 million Americans will
have online access.
I should say before I continue that I am here today in my
role as an expert in the field of Internet pornography, and one
of the reasons I got into the field was because prior to the
development of the Internet, I was myself addicted to
pornography for 25 years of my life. It would be unfair for me
not to say that I obviously have some biases because I am
myself a person who was lost in this world, and I thank God
that the Internet was not available to me, because if it had
been, I would certainly have been farther down the road than I
was.
The major thing that concerns I think all of us is the
growth of child pornography that is available. As you will see
in my written testimony, even the United States Department of
Commerce has recognized that the growth of child pornography is
a major threat to the welfare of children.
Pornography that is violent in nature is certainly
available in a variety of forms. The other day in preparing for
my testimony, I pulled up a menu that included 25 forms of
sadomasochistic activity, including bloodletting, so that we
know that violent pornography exists, and I got into it in less
than 60 seconds.
Pornography has the ability, according to all psychological
theory, to program children early. We are now seeing research
that is telling us that whereas in my generation of men, the
average age a person first saw pornography was age 11, now it
is age 5. A child who has the ability, and we are teaching them
in school to do this, can get into these sites very easily; 4-,
5-, 6-, 7-year-olds now are seeing things that in my extensive
history with pornography I never saw, pornography that is being
seen as violent, it is degrading, it humiliates people and is
teaching our children very immature, immoral and damaging roles
about themselves.
All psychological theory would certainly confirm that this
kind of material, even if it is in its softest form, has the
ability to affect a child's attitude, sexual orientation and
sexual preferences for the rest of their life.
Internet pornography also can become very addictive.
Addiction is progressive and leads to more destructive forms of
sexual acting out later in life. All of us who work in this
field have seen tremendous social, legal, vocational, financial
and physical consequences as a result.
I would point you to a case study that I put in my written
testimony of a family that I have been treating. The 8-year-old
daughter was doing a research project on Cinderella, put in the
word ``Cinderella'' to a search engine. The Web site that came
up to her was the picture of a woman who was named Cinderella
but was using an artificial penis to self-stimulate herself. So
this 8-year-old girl, who had been doing what the parents
considered to be healthy research, was immediately exposed to
very harmful and violent material.
I would also tell you that our anecdotal experience would
suggest now that women are being exposed to pornography in
greater and greater numbers and rates. Women are now becoming
equally addicted to forms of pornography on the Internet. We
are seeing an epidemic rise in the number of cases that we are
treating. The belief is in the psychological community that
every person has the ability to be hard wired and to be
programmed into various kinds of sexual preference. I believe
that we are literally changing the way women view sexuality in
themselves.
In the third section of my written testimony I describe
what I believe is one of the unique problems with the
availability of the Internet, in that we call it the triple
engine, and that is, that it is accessible. It used to be that
when I was addicted to pornography you had to go to some far-
off bookstore. Now today you it can do it in your own home. It
is affordable. A lot of the Web sites offer loss leaders and
free material, and it is certainly anonymous, so that many of
the prohibitions that may have stopped people historically are
not present.
But I think No. 2 here in my summation, the thing that
concerns me the most is the accidental nature that even adults
or children who are accessing the Internet for healthy purposes
will be bombarded and barraged. And I would say, Mr. Chairman,
that all of us in the field would consider that the accidental
nature of Web sites that can come up, pictures that can come
up, e-mails that can come up, is a form of sexual assault that
is not being regulated in this country and I would emphasize
the word ``sexual assault.'' We would get very upset if we knew
that any of our children were being sexually assaulted in any
way.
That would conclude my summation. I will leave you to read
any recommendations which may or may not be relevant to this
committee.
[The prepared statement of Mark R. Laaser follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mark R. Laaser, Director, Christian Alliance for
Sexual Recovery
Mr. Chairman and honorable members of the Commerce Committee: It is
my honor to be able to testify before this committee. The issues of
pornography and of violence on the Internet are vitally serious ones.
The damaging effects on millions of lives is profound.
My background is that I am trained as a Christian minister and a
doctoral level counselor. I have authored several books in the area of
sexual addiction, sexual compulsivity, and sexual abuse. Perhaps more
importantly, I have been in recovery from a sexual addiction to
pornography and other forms of sexual acting out for thirteen years. My
own life is an example of how damaging the effects of pornography can
be. Thankfully, my ``sobriety'' which started in 1987 precedes the
availability of Internet pornography. My remarks based on the limited
research that is available in the field and on my work with hundreds of
men, women, and teenagers who have been effected by Internet
pornography.
My remarks can be divided into three areas: 1. The Damaging Effects
of Internet Pornography; 2. Unique Dangers Presented by the Internet;
and 3. Suggestions For What Might Be Done.
the damaging effects of internet pornography
Prevalence
Various research studies have demonstrated the escalating usage of
sexually oriented sites on the Internet. In a 1998 study of hundreds of
on-line users, Dr. Al Cooper found that 15% had accessed one of the top
five sex web sites. A follow up study in 1999 reported that 31% of on-
line users visited web sites dedicated to pornography. In the most
recent study, the Sexual Recovery Institute of Los Angeles conducted a
research survey and found that 25 million Americans visit cyber-sex
sites every week and that 60% of all web site visits are sexual in
nature. It is estimated that by next year 95 million Americans will
have access to the Internet.
In the most recent issue of the journal Sexual Addiction and
Compulsivity several authors contend that accessing sexually oriented
web sites is not confined to the home but is a primary problem at work.
One study by a leading Fortune 500 company found that 62% of male
computer time was spent in cyber-sex sites. A friend of mine, who is a
vice-president of one of our large Twin Cities based companies,
recently had to fire 20 top level executives because of uncontrolled
pornography usage on company owned computers.
It is commonly accepted by all researchers that sexually oriented
web sites are a tremendous growth industry around the world. Hundreds
of new ones are added every week. Entering even remotely sexually
related words into any search engine will result in thousands of
sexually based web site possibilities.
In 1986, the Attorney General's Select Commission on Pornography
sent a report to Congress. This report was unanimous in a number of
findings: 1. It condemned all sexually explicit material that was
violent in nature. 2. It condemned all sexually explicit material that
depicted women in positions that are humiliating, demeaning, and
subjugating. 3. It was opposed to child pornography in any form.
There is no debate that violent pornography proliferates on the
Internet. In preparing for this testimony, for example, I pulled up a
cyber-sex web site menu through my AOL search engine that contained
listings for 25 different forms of S&M including blood letting. The
forms of violent sexual deviance that can graphically be displayed are
almost beyond description. Sadly, I am also aware through several of my
clients that depiction of mutilization and death, so called ``snuff''
material is available.
Since the Attorney General's commission report, it is my opinion
that all forms of pornography are degrading to whomever is being
portrayed. It is not just women who can be portrayed in humiliating
fashion. The growing number of females who are visiting sexually
oriented web sites along with a heavy percentage of male homosexual
usage has caused an increase in the amount of degrading pornography
depicting men.
In the 1970s and 1980s, changes in pornography laws sharply reduced
the availability of child pornography. The Internet, however, brought
massive amounts of it back into the world. The U.S. Customs Service
says on its current web site, ``The presence of child pornography on
the internet and on BBS services is a disturbing and growing
phenomenon.''
While there has been some success in regulating web sites devoted
to child pornography, most of this kind of pornography is trafficked
through bulletin board systems (BBS) with ``picture files'' that can be
hidden in a variety of ways, and with Usenet News groups. These last
use binary groups, digitized photographs, which can be transformed, in
a variety of ways. This is not to mention the transmission of e-mails
with photo attachments. While the most common depictions are of child
nudity, children in erotic poses, and depictions of children in sexual
activity, there is an incredible amount of depictions of rape, bondage,
S&M, and adult-child intercourse.
Various forms of Damage
Specialists in the field of sexuality can be divided about sexual
material available on the Internet. Some even suggest that it has
educational value, decreases some unhealthy inhibitions, and is an
otherwise unavailable social outlet. Few would disagree, however, that
certain forms of pornography, as just described above, are universally
damaging
Of chief concern should be possible damage to children. There can
be little doubt for any of us parents that our children are more
computer literate than we are. Even a five year old might have the
computer skills to access any form of web site. Some have even
suggested, as a result, that the average age a child first sees
pornography has decreased from age 11 to age 5. We can't discount the
other forms of pornography that are more readily available today than
when I first say pornography in 1961.
According to the book Protecting Your Child in Cyberspace by Steve
Kavanagh, a licensed mental health professional, ``There are many
studies that suggest that exposure to pornography can make kids act out
sexually against other children . . . It seems clear that viewing
deviant sexual behavior on the internet can cause a child to develop
sexual deviance, which can shape sexual preferences that carry over
into adulthood.'' In computer terms, a child's brain can be programmed
neuro-anatomically for various forms of sexual orientation. While the
brain can't manufacture new brain cells it continually manufactures
connections between them.
Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University first described the
theory that the brain is most critically programmed sexually during
early childhood in his 1986 book Lovemaps. Dr. Money's groundbreaking
work suggests that most forms of sexual deviance can be traced to
experiences in childhood. Simply exposing a child to images of deviant
sexual activity can have a profound effect. My own personal experience,
and the experience of over a thousands clients would confirm this
theory. I would emphasize that it is not just hard-core pornography
that can have this effect. Many psychologists, such as Dr. Judith
Riesman, argue that even the so-called ``softer'' forms, such as in
popular magazines, can be just as damaging.
Theories of sexual addiction and compulsivity are controversial in
the clinical community. There is no doubt that the majority of on-line
Internet users don't become addicted to the pornography that can be
found there. There is also no doubt in my mind that many do. Some
researchers are even starting to suggest that some who might not
otherwise have become addicted to sex, are now doing so because of the
Internet.
One of the stumbling blocks in the clinical debate about whether
sex can be an addiction centers on the concept of chemical
``tolerance.'' Many in the medical community feel that for substance or
activity to be addictive it must create a chemical tolerance.
Alcoholics know, for example, that over the lifetime of their
addiction, they must consume more and more alcohol to achieve the same
effect. New research, such as by Drs. Harvey Milkman and Stan
Sunderwirth, has demonstrated that sexual fantasy and activity, because
of naturally produced brain chemicals, has the ability to create brain
tolerance to sex.
I have treated over a thousand male and female sex addicts. Almost
all of them began with pornography. The number one source of
pornography currently, and in epidemic proportions, is the Internet. It
used to be that only men accessed sexually oriented web sites. Sadly,
we are beginning to see an increase in the number of women who are
addicted to pornography of all kinds, but mostly on the Internet.
The consequences of Internet pornography can be catastrophic. All
of us who work in the field of sexual addiction have seen a marked
increase in Internet addiction in the last year. Typically, our cases
present as people who have lost jobs, vocations, and marriages due to
Internet addiction. In a study of 91 women whose husbands were so
addicted, for example, Jennifer Schneider, M.D. found that all felt
hurt, betrayed, and rejected. All of these women felt unfavorably
compared. 68% reported that their partner had become disinterested in
sex with them. 22.3% attributed their divorce from these partners as
due to the Internet.
As an addiction, Internet pornography can escalate. It may lead to
other forms of sexual acting out. For some with accompanying personal
pathologies, it may lead to sexual offenses. The physical and legal
consequences to the addict and to others are obvious.
Finally, we should be aware of the dangers of Internet chat rooms
as a place where sexuality can be problematic. We are aware that sexual
predators can be present in chat rooms disguised in a variety of ways.
Pedophiles may even send pornographic pictures to prospective child
victims as a way of ``softening'' them up to eventual encounters. This
has been a known form of pedophilic ritual for years. We have all
warned our children against talking to strangers, but the Internet
makes healthy decisions in this regard less likely. A number of well-
known cases in which children and teenagers have been recruited for
eventual sexual activity should warn us of the dangers of chat rooms.
Adults, also, may get caught up in chat rooms. I have a client
whose husband gave her a computer for Christmas. She says that she
doesn't remember the month of January. She became addicted to the
``romance'' of online chat. Researchers and experts in the field of
romance addiction, such as Pat Carnes, Ph.D. have clearly describe that
romance creates neurochemicals such as phenylethylamine (PEA) which
would explain the addictive reaction of my client. My client's romance
addiction escalated and she wound up actually meeting four of the men
in person and developing a sexually transmitted disease as a result. I
have had a number of clients who would fit this same profile.
On-line pornography and chat rooms appeal to those who are
isolated, lonely and bored. When other emotional and neuro-chemical
vulnerabilities are present addictions can be the result.
The Uniqueness of the Internet
One of the reasons that the Internet is so dangerous is because of
its certain uniqueness. Al Cooper, Ph.D. (mentioned above) was the
first to suggest the concept of the ``Triple A Engine'' of the
Internet. He says that its uniqueness is that it is Accessible,
Affordable, and Anonymous.
When I saw my first pornographic magazine, I had to be a detective
to find what drug stores kept it in some hidden cabinet. As an adult I
had to go to many fairly sordid places to find what I was looking for.
The point is both as an adolescent and as an adult I had to go looking.
Today, the Internet has made it completely accessible to the youngest
of users. There are forms of pornography available today that weren't
available even in the most perverse of locations just five years ago.
Every year we see a rise in the kinds of material that are easily
available. Many communities, such as my own in Minneapolis, are facing
the problem of the easy accessibility of pornography using computers in
public schools and libraries. We are a free speech society. Recently,
even the voters of a conservative city like Holland, Michigan rejected
putting filtering devices on public library computers.
Internet pornography is affordable. We know that many people who
may have paid for something originally can transmit it to others for
free. We also know that many sexually oriented web sites offer free
pictures as an enticement to log in with a credit card. Such free
enticements led one of my clients to become addicted to sex on the
Internet. He eventually spent $85,000 in the month of February. If
there are people who might otherwise restrict their use of pornography,
or various more expensive forms of it, because of money, there is
enough free material available to keep them going. The majority of my
clients who are addicted to Internet pornography don't pay for it.
Several psychologists, such as Dr. Mark Schwartz director of the
Masters and Johnson Institute, have said that the anonymous nature of
the Internet makes many more people vulnerable to it. He says that some
who might not become compulsively involved in deviant sexual activities
because of having to go to ``dangerous'' places and risking exposure,
are now getting involved in the obscurity and ``safety'' of their
homes. What this means is that more and more people are becoming more
and more involved in sexually deviant forms acting out. It used to be
than ``normal'' people might have an aversion to going to places that
catered to sexual deviance, such as S&M bars. Now through on-line
pornography, chat, and exchange, it is much easier to become involved
in these activities.
To the triple A engine I would add a forth ``A,'' accidental. Those
who have sought to protect the free speech rights of pornographers have
long claimed that it is an individual's free choice to view
pornography. On the Internet, however, pornography may come looking for
you. All of us are familiar with the unsolicited e-mails that advertise
sexually oriented web sites. That is one thing. The greater danger for
those who otherwise seek to use the World Wide Web for constructive
purpose is that they will accidentally be exposed to sexually oriented
cites.
Recently, for example, parents that I know told me the story of how
their 8-year-old daughter was researching the fairy tale Cinderella on
the web. She entered Cinderella in the search engine of her on-line
service provider. She was given a number of options. One of them
included the title, ``See Cinderella for Yourself.'' This little girl
of course wanted to see Cinderella, so she clicked in. She was
immediately confronted with the picture of a nude female using a
artificial penis to stimulate herself. I would consider this to be a
form of sexual assault.
Robert Freeman-Longo, a well-known sexologist and researcher,
conducted a recent study using AOL, the largest on-line service
provider. He entered the words ``parental control'' into the search
engine. 12.508 sites came up including a wide variety of sexually
oriented ones. Can there be any doubt that even if you are looking for
certain types of materials, they may accidentally come to you? Some
might even question whether or not some of this is accidental.
Estimates are that 85% of the production of pornography in this country
is controlled by organized crime. Do we doubt that this faction of our
culture would be aggressive in ``purveying'' their product?
As a recovering sex addict, I am personally offended by the
aggressive and unique nature of Internet pornography. If I were an
alcoholic, there would be no one bringing free alcoholic beverages to
my door. Yet, in my work I have a professional need to be on-line
frequently. I am assaulted daily by sexual opportunities that I have
not invited into my life or pursued.
What Needs To Be Done
Briefly, let me suggest some points to think about concerning what
might be done.
1. Regulation--As Americans we are generally afraid of censorship,
as we should be. In that fear, however, we should not avoid the
questions of when it might be necessary. To be truly free we should
continually seek to control any form or oppression. It is clear to me,
and many of my colleagues, that if we don't seek to regulate the cyber-
sex industry, we are allowing a form of sexual abuse to continue
unchallenged.
The law enforcement community in this country is capable of
regulating pornography that is destructive. I would refer this
committee to the report of Louis J. Freeh, Director of the FBI, to the
Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for the Departments of Commerce,
Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies of March 10,
1998. This report centered on effort to control the proliferation of
child pornography. When we are in agreement that something is offensive
and destructive we can devote energies that can bring it under relative
control. Existing laws could be enforced if we could come to such
agreement. Does there need to be special commissions to make
recommendations as to what really are the dangers of Internet
pornography?
2. Parent Education and Awareness--We might all agree that parents
and child caregivers should be our main defense against children
becoming involved in the dangers of the Internet. I would suggest
however, that most parents are either ignorant of or apathetic toward
the dangers of the Internet. Education and awareness similar to that
provided about drugs, alcohol, and smoking seems appropriate.
3. Child Education and Awareness--Similarly, we should implement
programs to educate our youth about Internet dangers similar to those
that are available for drugs, alcohol and smoking. This might include
the use of requiring that all sexually oriented web sites print warning
on them similar to those that we require for tobacco. Remember, that
this material may be addictive and, as such, even physical consequences
are likely.
4. Mandate That Filtering Devices Be Used by Computers in Public
Places--Given the four ``A's'' described above, we should especially
protect children using computers in public places from getting
assaulted by pornography. The same can be said for adults. Many kids
may be able to ``hack'' around these filters, but that should not stop
us from protecting those who can't.
5. Reward Employers Who Provide Filters At the Workplace--We are
becoming more aware of the lost productivity that Internet pornography
leads to. This is already having an impact on countless American
businesses. We should encourage employers to educate employees about
dangers, provide monitoring and filtering, and provide treatment for
employees in trouble.
6. Fund Research About Effective Treatment of Internet Addiction--
We already know that many of the forms of treatment that are effective
with alcoholics and drug addicts can be applied to those who suffer
with Internet pornography addiction. Little research exists to date
about the specific modalities that are beneficial with this population.
Since this is a growing problem, we need to act now. My belief is that
we need to be concerned about the supply of pornography on the
Internet, but that we must be equally concerned about the supply.
7. Tax Pornographic Web Sites--Monies from the taxation of alcohol
and tobacco are used for research, treatment, and education. Why could
this not also be done for pornography? All of my other recommendations
could be funded by such a tax. We should be willing to enter the debate
that will inevitably ensue as to what is pornographic. There are enough
sites that are obviously pornographic to the vast majority of Americans
to begin with
I believe that Internet pornography is a great plague on this
nation. I hope that these observations are helpful to the committee. I
am willing to answer any questions and to provide members with any
specific references to research that I have quoted.
Mr. Tauzin. We will take one more witness before we do a
half-hour break for these three votes that will be on the
floor. So we will go now to Mr. Robert Flores, vice president
and senior counsel of the National Law Center. Mr. Robert
Flores.
STATEMENT OF J. ROBERT FLORES
Mr. Flores. Mr. Chairman, honorable members of the
committee, thank you for providing me with an opportunity to
testify this morning on the important and troubling issue of
the explosive and uncontrolled growth of obscenity on the
Internet. In my career as an assistant D.A. In Manhattan,
acting deputy chief of the Department's Child Exploitation and
Obscenity Section and as a special law enforcement advisor with
the National Law Center, and now as a commissioner on the
congressional COPA commission, I have seen the vicious tactics
of the pornography industry, the syndicates, and the
destruction that they hand out, as well as the actions of
pedophiles, and I am sure of one thing: that law enforcement
has value, and effective law enforcement will be able to deal
with a substantial amount of this criminal problem.
I know that vigorous and fair enforcement of the law can
solve many of those problems when prosecutors use the laws
given to them by the Congress.
In the past 5 years, much has changed about the industry.
In late 1995, few of the major pornographers had a major
presence on the Internet. While the amount of material that was
then available was overwhelming, today it is available in
quantities and formats which make it a ubiquitous commodity.
Today, obscenity merchants have become so bold because of the
lack of action by the Justice Department that they have gone
public, and I mean public, by being on the NASDAQ, launching
IPOs on the New York Stock Exchange, and Forbes magazine, as
well as Forester Research and other publications report that
pornography to the tune of $1 billion already flows over the
Internet and it is expected to double or triple within the next
1 or 2 years alone.
In addition to the change in the amount today, adult
pornography sites have moved to feature as a predominant theme
sexually explicit material which is marketed as depicting teen,
young, Lolita, virgin and high school girls and boys. The term
``barely legal'' is all over the Internet. Now, many of these
terms were once the sole province of child pornographers. Yet
this jargon and code has become a stable of adult obscenity
marketers.
Pornographers are also the most aggressive marketers. They
have used newly developed push technologies, alongside
offensive and fraudulent marketing ploys. The Internet user
community is bombarded with advertisements, tricked into
visiting sites, given hot links to porn when search engines are
asked for innocent sites, sent unsolicited porn spam e-mails
and trapped in endless mousetraps that bounce them from porn
site to porn site when they try to leave.
In spite of all of this, the Department of Justice has
refused to take action, in spite of the fact that the Congress
has specifically earmarked a million dollars for activity to
target obscenity online. It is critical that the Congress
understand and recognize that the refusal of the Justice
Department to enforce existing obscenity laws is unjustified
and inexcusable.
In 3 short years, between 1989 and 1992 approximately, we
were able to prosecute more than 120 major obscenity
distributors and we took in more than $21 million in fines and
forfeitures. The obscenity test works. These prosecutions are
difficult. They do need expertise but it can be done. And the
record should be clear that there is no question that the test
that is going to be applied is the same test that was applied
in 1989, in 1992, and has been applied by State and local
prosecutors throughout the United States over the past years.
As the Supreme Court stated in Reno, transmitting
obscenity, whether via the Internet or other means, is already
illegal under Federal law for both adults and juveniles. The
reach of this criminal prohibition is also the same. Thus we
can prosecute obscenity where somebody stores it on their
computer, any District through which it travels on the Internet
and the District into which it is received.
In 1996, Chairman Hyde moved to make sure that it was clear
to everyone, including Federal prosecutors, that Federal laws
apply and Congress amended sections 1462 and 1465 of Title 18
to specifically include interactive computer services. Now, we
weren't powerless before that. The Thomas case, which the
Justice Department will probably talk about, was prosecuted
before that amendment under existing law because it is illegal
to use wire communications, the telephone lines.
Finally, even the question of foreign transmissions into
the United States has been answered. Most of the world's hard-
core obscenity comes from America's porn syndicates, and they
are subject to U.S. Law no matter where they send their
criminal materials to or from. Hiding their Web servers
overseas won't save them. We can prosecute American criminals
in U.S. district courts and seize their assets.
Contrary to complaints made by some, our law reaches
overseas. As a practical matter, we can prosecute Web site
owners who directly profit from the exploitation, the people
who produce and distribute the movies, even the recruiters and
procurers of women who run virtual prostitution operations,
making live images available, and finally those who bankroll
this industry.
Our Constitution protects speech, not obscenity, and the
President and the Justice Department in particular must
recognize that difference and fulfill their obligations. I
would ask that the appendices also to my written record be
included in the record.
Mr. Tauzin. Without objection so ordered. The Chair thanks
the gentleman.
[The prepared statement of J. Robert Flores follows:]
Prepared Statement of J. Robert Flores, Vice President and Senior
Counsel, National Law Center for Children and Families
Mr. Chairman and Honorable Members of this Committee, thank you for
providing me with an opportunity to testify this morning on the
important and troubling issue of the explosive and uncontrolled growth
of obscenity on the Internet. In my career as an Assistant D.A. in
Manhattan, acting Deputy Chief of the Department of Justice's Child
Exploitation and Obscenity Section, as a special law enforcement
advisor with the National Law Center for Children and Families, and now
as a Commissioner on the Congressional COPA Commission, I have seen the
vicious tactics of the pornography syndicates, the destruction handed
out by pedophiles, and the value in effective law enforcement over the
years. I believe in the law as an answer to criminal social problems
and I know that vigorous and fair enforcement of the law can solve many
of those problems when prosecutors use the laws given them by their
Legislatures.
It is obvious that the uncontrolled growth of this criminal
activity must be effectively addressed, and soon, or Congress will
continue to be confronted with the need for increased regulation,
rising levels of sexual abuse and dysfunction in adults and children,
increased health care costs to treat those dysfunctions and the victims
of sexual abuse and addiction, the poverty that results from broken
homes and marriages over sexual abuse and addiction, and even the
slower growth of Internet use by children and families who are rightly
afraid of its dark side.
In the past five years, much has changed in the size and nature of
the Internet based pornography industry, mostly on the World Wide Web
and Usenet newsgroups. In late 1995, few of the major pornographers had
a major presence on the Net. While the amount of material that was then
available was astounding by anyone's count, today it is available in
quantities and formats that make it a ubiquitous commodity. Today,
obscenity merchants have gone public, as in the NASDAQ and other
capital markets. Forbes reports that ``pornography to the tune of $1
billion already flows over the Internet.''
In addition to the change in the amount of material on the
Internet, a look at what now comprises a sizeable and growing portion
of hard-core obscenity, should send shivers up the spine of every
person of good will. Today, adult pornography sites have moved to
feature, as a predominant theme, sexually explicit material which is
marketed as depicting ``teen'', ``young'', ``Lolita'', ``virgin'', and
``high school'' girls and boys. Once the sole province of child
pornographers, this jargon and code has now become a staple of adult
obscenity marketers.
Does this threaten children? You better believe it does. Our kids
and grand-kids see it and become indoctrinated by it. Pedophiles and
porn addicts see it and become incited by it. Even the U.S. Supreme
Court recognized that the mere existence of child pornography images is
an ongoing danger to children, because of the stimulating effect it has
on pedophiles and the seductive effect it has on children. See Osborne
v. Ohio, 495 U.S. 103, at 111 and n. 7 (1990). That's why Congress
criminalized the possession of child pornography in Title 18, U.S.
Code, Section 2252, and added computerized child porn in Section 2252A.
How strange indeed, if alone among all other speech, adult obscenity
did not also stimulate and encourage people to action.
The pornography industry has also become among the most aggressive
marketers on the Internet, using newly developed ``push'' technologies
alongside offensive and fraudulent marketing ploys. Thus, even if it
were ever true, and I doubt it, that only those who sought out
obscenity could find it, today only a lucky few are able to avoid it,
as the Internet user community is bombarded with advertisements,
tricked into visiting sites, given hot links to porn when search
engines are asked for innocent sites, sent unsolicited porn spam e-
mails, and trapped in endless mousetraps that bounce them from porn
site to porn site when they try and leave.
In spite of the explosive growth in the distribution of obscenity,
aggressive marketing efforts which assault and trap unwilling Web
surfers, and a focus on material which portrays children as a suitable
sexual interest for adults, the Department of Justice has refused to
take action.
It is critical for the Congress to recognize that this refusal of
the Justice Department to enforce existing obscenity laws is
unjustified and inexcusable. Members of this Congress and your
predecessors have provided the tools and means to address this problem,
but those federal statutes are not being used.
The record should be clear that there is no question as to what the
test is that will be applied when prosecutions are brought involving
Internet distribution or pandering of obscene material. Even in the
Communications Decency Act and Child Online Protection Act cases, cases
which are well known to the pornography industry, the Supreme Court and
federal District Courts, recognized that federal obscenity law, based
on the Miller test, applies to the Internet. As the Supreme Court
stated in Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 2347 n. 44
(1997): ``Transmitting obscenity and child pornography, whether via the
Internet or other means, is already illegal under federal law for both
adults and juveniles.'' While this is not a point to which some may
want to draw attention, that is the law. Moreover, those courts offered
enforcement of existing obscenity and child pornography laws as part of
the solution to the problem of protecting minors from sexually explicit
material. Moreover, the Department of Justice represented to the courts
that they would do so, though they have yet to prosecute a single case
of substance.
Just as the test for obscenity remains the same, the reach and
applicability of the criminal prohibitions to Internet distribution and
pandering of obscenity also remains the same. Thus, someone who sells
obscenity may be prosecuted in the place where he stores the material
on his computer, any district through which it passes, and the district
into which it is received. Under Section 1462, for instance, it is a
felony to use the phone lines and other communications carriers and
facilities of interstate and foreign commerce to knowingly upload,
download, or transmit obscenity.
In 1996, in order to clarify that federal laws apply to the
Internet, Congress amended Sections 1462 and 1465 of Title 18 and
specifically included ``interactive computer services'' among those
facilities which may not be used to traffic obscenity. Even then, the
Department was unwilling to move forward to address this criminal
activity and in four years not a single Internet based obscenity case
has been brought by main Justice.
Finally, even the question of foreign transmissions into the United
States has been answered and there is no serious debate that we cannot
reach conduct which originates in foreign countries. The frequently
heard argument that we really can't do anything about Internet
obscenity because so much of it comes from overseas is specious. Most
of the world's hard-core obscenity comes from America's porn syndicates
and they are subject to U.S. law no matter where they send their
criminal materials from or to. Hiding their Web servers overseas won't
save them, we can still prosecute American criminals in U.S. District
Courts and seize their assets and credit card receipts from U.S. banks.
Moreover, I can't imagine it could be used by the Justice Department to
justify its lack of effort. For in testimony on March 9, 2000, before
the Committee on the Judiciary, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kevin
Di Gregory, took justifiable pleasure in announcing that the week
before his testimony, ``a jury in federal district court in New York
found Jay Cohen, owner of an Internet gambling site in Antigua, guilty
of violating 18 U.S.C., section 1084, a statute that makes it illegal
for a betting or wagering business to use a wire communication facility
to transmit bets or wagers in interstate or foreign commerce.''
Contrary to the complaints made by some, the courts have
consistently made clear that federal obscenity law applies in
cyberspace as it does in real life. Thus, the answer to the question of
who and what may be prosecuted under federal obscenity law is as well
known to the ACLU and pornography industry lawyers as it is to
Government prosecutors. Title 18 sections 1462, 1465, 1466, 1467, and
1470 apply to Internet distribution and pandering and may be used today
by prosecutors interested in protecting children and families from this
scourge.
As a practical matter, I believe that federal investigators and
prosecutors can and must bring cases which would make a difference for
average families and which would be a giant step towards stopping
sexual exploitation. For example, prosecutions can be brought against
the Web site owners who most directly profit from this form of human
exploitation. The producers and distributors of movies, pictures, and
other obscene material who wholesale them to the Web sites for resale
can also be pursued under existing law. The recruiters and procurers of
women who run virtual prostitution operations making live images
available through the Internet may also be prosecuted for transmitting
obscenity. And finally, those who bankroll these operations, many of
whom have historically been organized criminal operations, may also be
investigated and prosecuted.
Leaders and businesses in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and our
other trading partners look to the United States to see what we, the
major source of obscenity worldwide, will do with this form of
exploitation. In fact, there is a 1911 Treaty on the Suppression of
Obscene Publications that would provide an existing framework for
international cooperation to deal with hard-core obscenity on the
Internet and World Wide Web.<SUP>1</SUP> That Treaty is still in force
and now has at least 126 member countries as signatory nations,
including most of the Americas, Europe, and Asia. We seek to lead in
every other Internet related area, why not here as well. Can money be
made by this industry? Of course. In fact, it is one of the few
guaranteed ways to succeed financially on the Internet. But at what
cost? It is not free, either to the people who consume the products or
the society where it runs rampant. We cannot fail to lead simply on the
assumption that some amount of obscenity comes from overseas. To do
that would be to turn over our Country and its safety to pornographers
and sex business operators who are savvy enough to move their servers
and remote offices overseas. We don't do it in any other area of
criminal law, why would we start here?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Agreement for the Suppression of the Circulation of Obscene
Publications, 37 Stat 1511; Treaties in Force 209 (US Dept State, Oct
31, 1956).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Constitution protects speech, it does not protect obscenity.
The President and the Justice Department in particular must recognize
that difference and fulfill their obligation to pursue violations of
the laws passed by Congress. Mindlessly investigating and prosecuting
cases, whether child pornography, child stalking, or even obscenity,
will not make children and adults safe from being assaulted by material
that is not only offensive but illegal. A comprehensive and coherent
strategy which addresses each of the major aspects of the obscenity and
sex business operations is necessary. Whoever is blessed with the
opportunity to lead in November will bear the responsibility of
choosing a path down which we will all walk. It is hard to imagine
leadership on this issue being worse than today, when the pornography
trade association is able to ask the question in its March 2000 trade
publication, ``how likely is it, would you say, that we are going to
enjoy the same benevolent neglect that the industry has enjoyed under
Janet Reno?'' It is shameful that the American porn industry has come
to look at law enforcement in that way.
Thank you for the opportunity to address this Committee, and I
would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. Tauzin. Let me ask you all now to stand down for a half
hour. We understand there are 3, possibly 4 votes on the floor.
We will reconvene in a half hour. So we will come back at
11:10, and we will reconvene with this panel, complete it, and
then invite our second panel.
We thank you very much. The committee stands in recess.
[Brief recess.]
Mr. Tauzin. The subcommittee will please come back to
order. We will ask our witnesses again to take seats. As we
recessed, we had just heard from Mr. Robert Flores, vice
president of the National Law Center, and we are now going to
hear from Tracy Stewart, the head of technology,
FamilyClick.com. Again, our admonition is to please adhere to
the 5-minute rule. Ms. Stewart, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF TRACEY R. STEWART
Ms. Stewart. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee. My name is Tracy Stewart, head of technology for
FamilyClick, a nationwide filtered Internet service provider
and family oriented Web site. The role of our company is to
provide for families that have freely chosen filtered access to
a safe Internet experience.
Filtering used to be easy, but due to the bold and
aggressive marketing by the porn industry of their product,
very sophisticated software and hardware is now required to do
our job. I will quickly discuss several techniques used by the
porn industry which causes technological challenges for filter
companies and makes it virtually impossible to guarantee a safe
online experience. I will provide complete details of the
techniques in my written testimony.
Spam. Mail addresses are harvested by bulk e-mail and from
many places on the Internet: chat rooms, message boards,
auctionsites such as eBay. Book mailing lists are inexpensive
for the pornographers to purchase. The goal of the pornographer
is to send out millions of unsolicited messages containing, for
example, a sample image and link to a porn site. They know most
will not generate a positive response, but due to the sheer
volume of mail sent, they will pick up some customers. A 10-
year-old boy is just as likely to get the unsolicited porn
message as a 40-year-old man. Over 30 percent of unsolicited e-
mail contains pornographic information.
Banner ads. Many legitimate Web sites that would not be
blocked by filters carry banner ads to porn sites. Also, once
on a porn site, it may contain dozens of ads to other porn
sites. Porn sites have developed an almost unbroken circle of
links between each others' sites which maximizes their
profitability and traffic. Once on a porn site you have access
to dozens, if not hundreds, of other porn sites.
Innocent or innocuous or misspelled domain names. These
porn Web masters have registered many innocent sounding names
that you would not expect you would need to filter: Boys.com,
girls.com, coffee bean supply.com, BookstoreUSA.com, and the
infamous WhiteHouse.com. These all lead to very explicit and
graphic porn sites. Also legitimate companies which spend
millions of dollars building brand names, porn Web masters
commonly register misspelling of these brand names. For
example, my favorite is Yaawhoo.com, takes you to a porn site.
Suggestive or graphic exit consoles. Once you stumble into
a porn site, leaving may not be easy. Normally you would just
hit the back button on your browser, but many porn sites force
you to continue to look at what they have to offer by opening
new windows each time you close a window, and each one has an
image or invitation to preview or join. Each window you close
opens up another new window. They are hoping you will find
something you like while you are trying to exit. Sometimes
these windows completely lock up your PC and system resources,
forcing you to reboot and maybe lose any unsaved information
you had.
The final one is search engine manipulation. Meta tags are
short descriptive comments placed in a Web page. They are not
displayed when you view a page. They are placed there by the
programmers and developers of the Web page. Many search engines
use these meta tags to categorize a Web site. There are no
rules that say a meta tag description has to match the content
on the site. Porn sites often use common search terms such as
brand names in their meta tags to get higher placement or
recognition within the search engines. A porn site can have a
meta tag of family friendly, safe ISP if they want.
How can our users protect themselves? First of all, you
cannot use the Internet, which is really not an option in
today's society, or you can use a service that offers a
whitelist, which is a very restrictive list of preapproved
sites really only appropriate for small children. Filters
installed on home computers put the responsibilities completely
on the parent to maintain the software and the subscription to
a filtering list.
Then there is service site filtering where all the
filtering lists and software resides outside the home. The
burden is removed from the parent but it is up to the
technology industry to keep up with what the pornographers are
doing. Families bring filters into their home to protect, not
to censor, their family. They also expect them to work 100
percent of the time. Believe me, I have found that out.
The aggressiveness of the pornographers present a
technological challenge that we, the filtering companies, are
constantly trying to keep up with. Our goal is to provide the
safest possible experience for our customers while online.
This concludes my statement.
[The prepared statement of Tracy R. Stewart follows:]
Prepared Statement of Tracy R. Stewart, Head of Technology,
FamilyClick.com LLC
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am Tracy Stewart, Head of
Technology at FamilyClick.com LLC; a nationwide filtered Internet
service provider based in Virginia Beach, VA. I would like to thank you
for the opportunity to speak with you today concerning a subject that
I, my co-workers, and family and friends have spent a great amount of
time dealing with. That is the growing influence that the online
pornography industry has on this wonderful new learning tool that we
know as the Internet.
Background
Almost everybody realizes that pornographic web sites are out
there. The sex trade is arguably the world's oldest profession and has
long been one of the most profitable. Its influence has been felt
within every culture since the beginning of recorded history and it
should come as no surprise that the porn industry has established a
strong foothold in cyberspace. Pornography was the first consistently
successful e-commerce product and the online porn industry is credited
with pioneering many of the security, electronic payment, advertising
and site management techniques that are used today by mainstream web
site operators.
Many believe that the online porn industry operates in a niche;
hidden away in a back room and visible only to those who come looking
for it. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Free of
the restrictions that pornographers in the print, film and
paraphernalia industries face, the online pornographer has become very
bold and aggressive when it comes to marketing his product. He is
willing to force his message to be viewed by thousands, even millions,
of unsuspecting persons, both young and old, because he knows that some
of these people, perhaps only a few, will eventually become his
customers. He is willing to trick you into visiting his site when you
are really looking for something completely different because he knows
there is a slight chance that you will like what he has to offer. And
he is willing to hold you hostage when you stumble through his door
because he knows that you might just give in after your first attempts
at escape fail.
As a businessman, the online pornographer has the same goals that
any legitimate businessman has: profits. But without the legal, social
and moral restrictions to hold him back, the online pornographer has
aggressively and ruthlessly marketed his product and now ranks third in
total sales on the Internet; trailing only computer products and
travel.
Formula For Web Site Success: Traffic = $$
One of the first goals of any web site operator, whether the site
is ``legitimate'' or pornographic, is to generate traffic or ``hits''
to that site. Without hits, the commercial electronic storefront will
not have any customers and the free portal will not have many ad
impressions. With over four thousand new web sites coming online every
day, generating traffic is a much more difficult task than it appears
on the surface. Competition for traffic is fierce and even with the
advent of faster networks, more efficient software and swifter
computers, users only have so many hours in a day in which to explore
the web. The site that adheres to the ``If I build it, they will come''
principle is doomed to fail.
Pornographic web site operators have been pioneers in the field of
web site traffic generation and have come up with some very
imaginative, and often aggressive, methods of driving traffic to their
sites. In fact, many of the techniques currently used by legitimate
sites to increase traffic were first implemented and perfected by
pornographic web sites.
What the Porn Industry is Up To
Pornographic web site operators have been so successful in
generating traffic for their web sites that it is now virtually
impossible to spend any significant amount of time surfing the web
without stumbling across pornographic or otherwise offensive web sites.
In fact, it has now become a challenge to get through an online session
without encountering lewd, vulgar or risque sites. Increasingly, the
expectation of many adults and most teen aged web surfers is that they
will encounter at least one inappropriate web site during a typical
online session. And for those that are looking for online porn, it's
only a mouse click away.
Lacking the fear of prosecution, pornographic web site operators
have perfected methods of generating traffic to their sites that are
often as offensive and immoral as the material they are attempting to
promote. Employing methods meant to deceive, lure, tease, trick and
capture, new porn web sites can expect a steady flow of traffic in a
fraction of the time that it takes a legitimate web site to generate
the same amount of traffic.
Spam--One of the earliest and most time-honored methods of
increasing exposure and generating traffic for a porn site is spam; the
sending of thousands, or even millions, of unsolicited email messages
or Usenet postings. It is estimated that over 30% of all unsolicited
email messages are pornographic in nature. In many Usenet newsgroups,
close to 100% of the postings are advertisements for a pornographic web
site. These messages and postings often include an attached binary
image intended to serve as a ``free'' sample of what's available on the
main web site.
Spamming is, perhaps, one of the easiest known methods of web site
promotion. The creation of mailing lists for the purpose of unsolicited
bulk mailings has grown into a healthy cottage industry. Bulk emailers
harvest email addresses from Usenet postings, message boards, auction
sites such as www.ebay.com and www.bid.com and from less than reputable
bulk email ``opt out'' or ``unsubscribe'' services. These mailing lists
cost pennies to generate and are easily affordable by web site
operators with the most modest of budgets. Bulk mailing and posting
software is also very affordable and easy to setup and operate. To add
insult to injury, the messages are usually delivered to the victims by
``borrowing'' the services of an unsuspecting third party that
installed an email server and forgot to turn off third-party mail
relay. The spammer then delivers his message to thousands, or even
millions, of people who did not ask to receive it and uses the
networking and computing resources of an innocent bystander to do all
the grunt work.
Bulk emailers do not lose a lot of sleep worrying about targeting
their mailings. Since they are paying next to nothing to send their
messages out, they are more concerned with volume than they are with
hitting a particular target audience. A ten year old boy is just as
likely to receive an email message explaining the virtues of the latest
weight loss plan as he is a message exhorting him to visit Bambi's
Naughty Playground. He may not actually visit the site but the free
sample picture of Bambi cavorting with her friends won't be easily
erased from his impressionable mind. Bulk mailers expect that the vast
majority of their messages will not generate a positive response. All
they are looking for is a handful of adults with credit cards handy so
they can recoup their small investment.
Banner Ads--By now, everyone who has spent any time on the web has
seen banner ads. Many of the worlds most visited web sites derive all
or a major portion of their income by displaying these ads. These
click-through images that bring the surfer to other sites translate to
real traffic and money. But it was the online porn industry that
originated and perfected the use of the banner ad. Today, the online
porn industry continues to pioneer new and often revolutionary methods
of using online banner ads.
Go to almost any adult web site and you will see, prominently
displayed, dozens of ads linking to other pornographic web sites. By
any definition, these are ads for competitive sites. While General
Motors might not be willing to place a link to a Chrysler web site on
its page, such an arrangement is not only common in the online porn
industry, it is expected. All a surfer needs to do is wind up on a
single adult web site, which is very easy to do, and he's got easy
access to dozens, if not hundreds, of additional sites. While you would
not expect Macy's to send you to Nordstroms'' web site if they don't
have the pair of shoes you want, you can expect a porn site
specializing in blonde's to direct you to a site featuring redheads if
that's what you prefer. The almost unbroken circle of links developed
by the online porn industry has proven very effective at maximizing
profitability and traffic.
Porn sites have gone beyond the easily abused pay-per-click payment
system, which is commonly used by legitimate web site operators.
Arrangements to pay the referring partner a flat fee or a percentage of
the first sale are becoming prevalent. Often there is no money involved
and deals are consummated over a drink and a handshake. This
cooperation is more than a traffic and revenue generating technique in
the online porn industry; it is interwoven into the very fabric of the
industry.
Banner ads for pornographic web sites don't appear only on other
porn sites. Legitimate sites, hungry for the dollars paid out by porn
operators, often eagerly place these ads on their own sites. Porn ads
placed on legitimate sites are normally less graphic and suggestive
than the ads that porn operators share with each other. But the sites
that these ``clean'' ads lead to are every bit as offensive as the
sites advertised by the more graphic ads.
Innocent or innocuous domain names--It often is not very difficult
to determine the address for a particular web site. For example,
FamilyClick's web site is at www.familyclick.com and the web site of
the National Football League is at www.nfl.com. Many users can derive
these site names without the need to resort to search engines or web
directories. Most experienced users try obvious domain names directly.
But that doesn't always yield the expected results.
Consider ``Teenagers Hideout''. Seen in a TV listing, one could
safely assume that Teenagers Hideout was a new addition to the
Nickelodeon Television lineup. At Barnes and Noble, it could easily be
the title of the latest installment in the Goosebumps series. A parent
who's teenage daughter wanted to watch ``Teenagers Hideout'' on
Nickelodeon or buy the ``Teenagers Hideout'' paperback at the local
mall probably wouldn't feel alarmed. But there is no such presumption
of safety in cyberspace. The web site www.teenagershideout.com
redirects the surfer to the PrivateTeens.com porn site.
Unencumbered by ratings systems or V-Chips, porn webmasters have
registered many innocuous or innocent sounding domain names for their
sites. Boys.com, teens.com, coffeebeansupply.com and bookstoreusa.com
all lead to very explicit and graphic porn sites. While legitimate web
site operators strive to come up with domain names that are meaningful
and descriptive, porn webmasters just try to cover as many bases as
they possibly can. The legitimate webmaster wants you to visit his site
when you are looking for the types of goods or services that he offers.
The porn webmaster wants your traffic regardless of your reason for
being on the net.
Misspelled Domain Names--With domain names being sold for hundreds
of thousands, and even millions, of dollars, it is perhaps not
surprising that the porn industry should try to take advantage of the
goodwill and trust that legitimate companies have spent years building.
For example, the creators of Yahoo! probably never imagined that a site
dedicated to nude photos of Britney Spears would be parked at
www.yaahwho.com. The Internet is full of sites that can be accessed by
using a common misspelling of a popular web site. Not surprisingly,
most of these misspelled web sites are pornographic in nature.
Porn site operators have become experts at taking advantage of some
of the more common and predictable mistakes that people make. If a
student just introduced to keyboarding places his or her hands on the
wrong keys, chances are a pornographer has it covered. How about the
middle school student doing research on the President of the United
States and goes to www.whitehouse.com instead of www.white
house.gov? The porn industry has taken care of that common error. And
if you're looking online for information about Disney, check your
spelling carefully because www.dinsey.com and www.dinseyland.com won't
get you to the Magic Kingdom.
Suggestive or graphic exit consoles--Once an innocent surfer
stumbles across a porn site, all the work getting him there will be
lost unless they take some steps to keep him from leaving. Porn
webmasters have become experts at building one way doors leading to the
Internet's Red Light district. Did you end up at a site that you didn't
intend to visit? It is normally not a problem; just hit the back button
or close your browser window and you're right back where you started
from. But if the site that you accidentally ended up at happens to be a
porn site, you may not be able to check out as easily as you checked
in. Hitting the back button or closing the browser window commonly
results in the opening of one or more 'exit consoles'; each a new
browser window showing you a site of the webmasters choosing. Many of
these exit consoles are at least suggestive; if not graphic. Many
feature ``free preview'' buttons that lead to the creation of still
more browser windows.
An example is the web site www.highsociety.com which bills itself
as ``The All Sex and Celebrity Web Site''. The initial page displays a
warning about ``explicit adult content to date banned from the U.S.''
and it admonishes the viewer that he or she MUST be 18 to enter. But,
18 or not, at this point you've already had an eyeful, you're already
in and you can't easily leave. Clicking the back button causes another
browser window to pop up; this one features the ``Lust Highway'' site.
Close the Lust Highway window and it is quickly replaced by the Chateau
deSade site which features ``Hardcore Sado-Masochism''. That is
followed by visits to sites offering ``Free Porn and Screensavers'',
``The Youngest Girls Allowed by Law'' and a site ``Where All Your
Sexual Fantasies Come Alive''. All together, the surfer leaves the High
Society site by way of 13 sexually explicit and graphic porn sites.
Each site features a graphic image on its front page and each gladly
accepts credit cards.
The ``Thirteen Steps Through Paradise'' exit route employed by High
Society is actually one of the easier and less obtrusive exit plans
used by the porn industry. The thirteen windows used to leave High
Society open up one after the other with the closing of each window
leading to the birth of exactly one successor. Other sites employ as
many as 23 new browser windows. Often a porn sites exit plan will
involve the creation of a dozen or more exit consoles, all starting up
at the same time and competing for the systems resources. New windows
are created as fast as the user can close them. In many cases, this
causes the system to lock up forcing a reboot; often resulting in the
loss of unsaved work.
The damage often goes beyond the lost work and the possible harm
caused by rebooting your system. As pages and images are downloaded
from the net, they are cached onto your systems hard drive. This speeds
up access during subsequent visits to a web site as the information
stored on the hard drive can be displayed if the information on the
site itself hasn't changed. Since the cache contains pages and images
from sites that you've intentionally visited as well as those that you
ended up at by accident, any person with access to the computer can
view these images without even being online. Many users do not even
realize that these images are there and would be appalled to learn that
such material actually resides in their home.
The porn industry takes advantage of a technique known as
Javascript Slamming to make this happen. Using onLoad and onUnload
methods, they can open new windows upon entry to or exit from a site.
The onUnload method is particularly iniquitous in that there is no
escape. It's possible to turn off the execution of Java entirely from
within the browser. Unfortunately, doing so blocks about 50% of the
good content available on the net. Browsers, such as Opera, can be
configured to never open new windows. Again, disabling this feature is
equivalent to disabling much of what is available on the Internet. Not
going to porn sites is one way of avoiding the exit console syndrome.
But since many porn site visits are the result of an accidental wrong
turn in cyberspace, avoidance isn't a very effective treatment for the
problem. And many non-porn sites, particularly sites dealing with
online gambling, have learned from the porn webmasters and adopted the
Javascript Slamming technique for their own purposes.
Manipulating Search Engines--Most web site operators, legitimate
and otherwise, spend a great deal of time trying to describe their site
by means of meta tags. Meta tags are short descriptive comments placed
within the body of a web page. Not readily visible using most browsers,
meta tags contain the keywords and descriptions used by search engines
to categorize web sites. Using FamilyClick as an example, the keywords
chosen were those that accurately describe the content offered on our
site and the filtered ISP service offered.
Unfortunately, there is no rule that requires that a keyword placed
in a meta tag has to accurately describe the site. The porn site
www.girls.com uses teens as a keyword as does FamilyClick. So a surfer
looking for information related to teens would be just as likely to
find www.girls.com as he would www.familyclick.com. While mainstream
web sites strive to use descriptive keywords, porn web site operators
use whatever the search engines are currently indexing. By posting
hundreds of test pages, porn operators can readily determine what the
major search engines are looking for. They then load up their sites
with meta tags this month, titles the next, and meta descriptions the
month after that. Many of these sites are temporary portal sites
customized for a particular search engine. These portal sites contain
nothing more than the information that the search engines want along
with a redirect to the actual site. Since the porn webmasters are so
good at generating traffic, when a portal site has outlived its
usefulness, it is quickly replaced with another.
And when it comes to spamming, the porn industry does not stop with
email and Usenet. They routinely spam the search engines by submitting
every page and subpage that makes up their site, as well as hundreds of
throwaway portal sites. Since the search engines will eventually detect
this spamming, porn operators are careful not to use their actual site.
They use phony portal sites that can be replaced without any trouble.
Usenet--Before there was a World Wide Web, there was Usenet,
commonly referred to as newsgroups. Originally intended as a huge
worldwide bulletin board where users could discuss a wide variety of
topics, Usenet has grown into a system where users can share not just
thoughts and ideas but files. Not surprisingly, an increasing
percentage of these files are erotic images, videos and sound clips. Of
the almost 36,000 groups carried by one major provider, almost 600 are
described as having content related to sex and another 500 carry
content which is erotic in nature. There are newsgroups specializing in
various fetishes; groups specializing in bestiality; groups that focus
on various parts of the body and, for material that just doesn't fit
anywhere else, groups that desire tasteless pictures and stories. The
trick of misspelling domain names probably originated with Usenet; the
group alt.binaries.pictures.boys.barefoot carries images of young boys
with nothing on their feet. Not surprisingly, it isn't only shoes that
some of these boys are going without. Many of the 12,000 or so groups
in the alt hierarchy are almost exclusively dominated by material that
is sexual in nature.
As an open system, anybody can post almost anything to any Usenet
group. While the posting of a message related to British soccer may not
be welcome in a group devoted to the breeding of tropical fish, it's
difficult to prevent off-topic posting. A user looking through a Usenet
group intended for web browser discussions is just as likely to come
across a nude image of a young actress, as he is information on the
latest Microsoft Explorer bug. The pornographers are well aware of this
fact and they habitually flood almost every newsgroup with free samples
and other enticements to visit their web sites. This has gone far
beyond spam, as many groups now carry nothing but invitations to come
visit various web sites. Using high throughput systems, porn operators
pump out gigabytes of graphic content.
Besides serving as a method of increasing hits to a site, Usenet is
also a rich mother lode of content for the porn webmasters. Usenet is
full of images, videos, stories, jokes and other material. Much of this
is posted by amateur photographers and videographers and consists of
pictures of wives and husbands, girlfriends and boyfriends, the girl or
guy next door, couples, trios, dogs, cats, hamsters as well as all
sorts of inanimate objects. With the introduction of affordable digital
cameras, scanners and web cams, the amount of material waiting to be
harvested by a porn webmaster is increasing everyday.
Avoiding the Net's Dark Side
The most sure-fire method of avoiding the seedy part of the net is
to stay off the net altogether. If your computer isn't hooked up to the
net, the only way that porn can work its way into your system is if
someone carries it in on a diskette. But staying completely off the net
denies access to a powerful learning and entertainment tool. There are
methods of taking advantage of what the net has to offer while still
offering your family some measure of protection from the aggressive
online pornographers.
Whitelists--A whitelist is simply a list of pre-approved web sites
that have been checked and determined to be safe. Some Internet Service
Providers offer a service that restricts its users from going to any
site not listed on its whitelist. Current database technology allows
whitelists to be quite large and can be updated and searched in almost
real time.
But with over four thousand new web sites coming online everyday,
maintaining a whitelist and keeping it up to date is a major challenge.
Since it's already known that the name of a site is not necessarily
indicative of its contents, each site needs to be manually visited in
order to determine if it should be included on a whitelist or not. And
since the contents of a site may change over time and domain names are
often sold, each site on the list needs to be revisited periodically to
ensure that it still merits inclusion in the list. However, as long as
the whitelist is properly maintained, it is a very effective method of
protection.
Due to these challenges, whitelists are only appropriate in limited
numbers of cases. The most common application of a whitelist is to
ensure safe Internet access for small children. FamilyClick offers, as
one of its access levels, access to a pre-approved list of sites which
have been determined to be appropriate for children seven and under.
The FamilyClick Children's Playroom is 100% safe but would not be
appropriate for an experienced user who may need to use the web for
research.
Local Filtering--A local filter is a software program, installed on
a users computer, that monitors a users Internet activity and decides
whether to allow that activity or not. The filters normally compare web
addresses, email addresses and Usenet group names against a list of
blocked addresses. If the address does not appear on the list, access
to that resource is permitted. Some local filters utilize word lists as
well as address lists.
Local filters have many of the same problems that whitelists have
and are usually much less effective at blocking inappropriate material.
Lists need to be maintained and the sheer volume of new web sites being
launched means that new porn sites might not be listed for weeks or
months. Often users are required to maintain a subscription in order to
ensure that the list is kept up to date.
The main problem with local filters is that they are installed on a
users computer. Many parents purchase copies of filtering software only
to hand it to a tech savvy teenager to be installed. Although some
local filters are password protected, they can be defeated either by
removing them entirely or by renaming a few files.
Proxy Filtering--The most effective filter is a filter that resides
on a server outside of the home. Often known as a server based filter,
the proxy filter operates by intercepting all requests from a user and
then deciding whether to pass the request on or not. Proxy filters
utilize lists of blocked sites as well as word lists. Server based
filters can take advantage of the latest database technology to
maintain lists of blocked sites and banned words. The most advanced
proxy filters scan outgoing web requests and incoming web pages and
perform context searches rather than simple word searches. This
provides protection against sites too new to have been catalogued.
Proxy filters are commonly used in businesses and educational
institutions where the network administrator can force the traffic to
flow through the filter as it travels to and from the users. In this
type of setup, a proxy filter is very difficult, if not impossible, to
defeat. Users can either access the net through the proxy filter or not
at all.
Increasingly, filtered Internet Service Providers are utilizing
proxy filters to protect their subscribers from unwanted pornography.
Several, such as FamilyClick, utilize various levels or tiers of
filtering. This allows parents to decide the level of access that is
appropriate for each of their children. FamilyClick and other top
providers force all the network traffic from subscribers to flow
directly through their proxy filters. A tech savvy teen that attempts
to bypass the proxy filters finds that network traffic not directed to
the proxy filters falls into a black hole.
Usenet and Other Parts of The Net--The Internet is far more than
just the World Wide Web. Cyberspace includes Usenet, Electronic Mail,
Chat and Instant Messaging, Bulletin Boards and multi-player gaming.
And just like the web, the pornographers have a foothold in every
corner of the net. Many filters deal only with web traffic and, while
some email providers such as FamilyClick include profanity and
obscenity filters for email and Usenet, other services available on the
Internet are currently unfiltered like Instant Messaging.
Providers deal with these unfiltered services by not offering them
at all, offering only a portion of the service or by issuing strong
warnings to subscribers who choose to use these services. Usenet, for
example, can be made semi-safe by screening out all but a few select
newsgroups and by dropping all binaries. Electronic mail can be
sanitized by comparing incoming messages against addresses of known
spammers and pornographers and by scanning messages for telltale signs
of porn and spam.
Staying Ahead of The Good Guys
As the masters of a billion-dollar enterprise, the porn web
operators have every reason to want to defeat any technology that
threatens to weaken their empire. For every step forward that the guys
in the white hats take, the online porn industry takes two. Where once
a simple word filter would suffice, it now takes sophisticated software
that can determine the context of a sentence or paragraph. Text
messages that were at one time expressed in ASCII are now embedded in
images that are impractical to scan. Porn site operators know who their
enemies are and they are usually among the first to purchase and test
new filters that come on the market. By the time a new filter gains
widespread acceptance, the porn operators have developed methods of
getting around the filters.
The technology that drives the Internet is advancing at breakneck
speed and no industry is pushing this advancement more than the porn
industry. Many of the first people to communicate with each other on
the net talked about sex using a bulletin board devoted to erotic
discussions. Pornographers were among the first to incorporate
streaming video and pioneered the use of community software such as
chat rooms and message boards. Each of these advancements has posed a
new challenge to those that seek to identify and screen out unwanted
material. The porn industry today is perfecting new technology and
techniques that will make current filters obsolete. The porn industry
is starting to incorporate 360-degree video and when digital scent
technology is perfected, it will be the porn industry that first brings
the sense of smell to your home computer. Filter writers that started
with a simple list of four letter words now face the challenge of
identifying and filtering different scents, sounds, textures,
expressions and colors. The college graduate who wishes to push the
state of the art would do well to seek a position in the online porn
industry.
Because of the speed with which a porn master can drive traffic to
a new site, web addresses that appear on blacklists are quickly
replaced with new addresses. Many filters do not track the IP addresses
of sites so porn operators often distribute addresses in the form
http://209.25.138.4/new/open/open1.html. Such addresses contain no
strings that might trigger a filter and the address normally leads to a
site that will simply redirect the user to the existing, blocked site.
These numeric sites are generally throwaway sites that are only
intended to last for a few days. By the time these sites are listed by
the major filters, new sites have replaced them.
Javascript Slamming is also frequently effective at defeating
filters. Even if a filter blocks the first page, it may not block the
rest. The porn operator who sends you through a dozen or more sites
stands a good chance that at least one of those sites can pass through
the filter.
Porn operators are also adept at hiding behind the first amendment.
With cries of censorship, porn operators throw up many legal obstacles
to the developers and providers of filtering services. Despite the
obvious fact that participation in a filtered service is something that
people elect, the porn operators have much support from free speech
advocates who are quick to denounce this 'censorship' of the Internet.
Many of these supporters maintain web sites such as www.peacefire.org
that make available information on how to defeat various filters.
Usenet groups such as alt.cracks contain information on how one might
workaround the security features of various software packages including
filters. Like all software, filters have flaws and the opponents of
filtering are quick to point out that filters have mistakenly blocked
sites such as the Quakers home page and the AIDS Memorial Quilt. They
are usually not so quick to tell you when the filters are fixed.
Also in the name of free speech and privacy, web sites known as
anonymizers have sprung up. These sites allow you to surf the web
anonymously by accessing other sites on your behalf; acting as an
intermediary between you and a filter. Most filters now block the
anonymizers but new anonymous surfing sites are being launched about as
fast as the filters can find them.
Even the best filters can't be expected to be 100% effective.
Filters sometimes block sites that shouldn't be blocked. Likewise, the
occasional inappropriate site sometimes slips through even the best
filters. But most providers of filtered access are quick to investigate
and correct any errors that are brought to their attention. Providers
such as FamilyClick form a partnership with their subscribers;
realizing that the most effective way to ensure safe access to the
Internet is to work together. Subscribers are encouraged to suggest
sites that should or should not be blocked and suggestions on how to
improve the service are gladly accepted.
People who invest in the protection of a filter expect that filter
to work 100% of the time. Unfortunately, that isn't currently possible.
The online porn industry is able to deploy resources that the good guys
can only dream about. The porn industry operates in an environment of
cooperation and trust unheard of in other industries. While traditional
technology companies zealously guard trade secrets, the porn industry
willingly shares these tricks of the trade with each other.
Conclusions
Pornography is a part of society and probably always will be. But,
away from cyberspace, one normally needs to seek it out in order to
access it. Erotic magazines and books exist but they are behind the
counter. You need to ask for them. Pornographic videos exist and many
video stores carry them. But they are in a back room; often protected
by a locked door. Many cable television and satellite providers carry
adult movies. But they are accessed via Pay-Per-View; they normally
cost more than mainstream movies and they often require a PIN number to
view. Your town may have a sex shop or X-rated theater but it's
probably not next door or across the street. More than likely it is
somewhere else in town along with all the other sex shops in a Red
Light District. Although movies, television shows, video games and
literature are becoming more and more suggestive, to access real porn
you need to go out of your way to get it.
But not on the Internet. Away from the net, you normally need to
look for porn. In cyberspace, it looks for you. On the net, pornography
isn't behind the counter and it's not in a locked room. It isn't
secured by a PIN number or access code and it's not on the other side
of town. It's in your neighborhood, it's in your schools and it's
across the street.
It's in your home.
Many families have brought filters into their homes, not to censor,
but to protect their families from people and influences they would
never allow through their front door. They rely on and expect these
filters to work and protect them. The technological aggressiveness of
the porn industry makes it very difficult to give families, that have
opted to utilize filtering, a guaranteed safe Internet experience.
Currently, technology is the only deterrent to accessing pornography on
the Internet and it is always a step or two behind the latest
techniques developed by the porn industry to drive traffic to their web
sites. The role of FamilyClick and other providers of filtered access,
is to provide the families, that have freely chosen filtered access,
the safest possible experience while on the Internet.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to discuss this important
matter with you today. FamilyClick is prepared to work with the
committee on this issue and I will gladly answer any questions you may
have.
Mr. Tauzin. Thank you, Ms. Stewart.
We will next hear from Janet LaRue, senior director of
legal studies, Family Research Council, here in Washington,
D.C. Ms. LaRue.
STATEMENT OF JANET M. LaRUE
Ms. LaRue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
subcommittee. Good morning. I am Janet LaRue and I am senior
director of legal studies at the Family Research Council.
Pornography law has been an area of expertise in my practice
for many years.
As you know, obscenity is not protected by the Constitution
because, by definition, it is patently offensive appeal to a
prurient interest in sex and has no serious value. It is
illegal to display or distribute to any person through any
medium, including the Internet. The Supreme Court has
reiterated that. It is the crass commercial exploitation of sex
by a worldwide industry now estimated by Forbes magazine at $56
billion per year. Much of this is controlled by organized
crime. This is an industry that exploits the basest nature of
human beings, including those who are most vulnerable to
addiction, especially children.
Minor children are no exception. If anyone doubts that, I
would encourage you to visit the commercial pornography sites
on the World Wide Web and see the plethora of free teaser
images that are there, available for any child to view. In
fact, I have with me today some photocopies of images that I
just downloaded from the Internet, and Mr. Chairman, I would
submit them for the record.
Mr. Tauzin. The Chair will withhold on that request if you
don't mind.
Ms. LaRue. These images include bestiality, mutilation,
torture, excretory functions, orgies and other perversions.
Internet pornography is estimated by Forbes magazine at $1.5
million per year at this current time. According to Adult video
News which is the online publication for the porn industry,
``48 million unique hits on the adult Net daily.'' Forty-eight
million daily. According to Nielsen net ratings, 17.5 million
surfers visited porn sites from their homes in January, a 40
percent increase compared with 4 months earlier. Forty percent
increase.
Researchers from Stanford and Duquesne University have now
estimated that we have 200,000 individuals in this country that
they define as cybersex compulsives, and I believe they have
set the bar very high. To be a cybersex compulsive, one must
visit a pornography Internet site at least, at least 11 hours
per week. They said that this is a hidden public health hazard,
exploding in part because very few are recognizing it as such
or taking it seriously. Treating a new public health problem of
this magnitude will place inestimable burdens on our health
care system and unimaginable stress on adults, their families
and society.
For several years, Family Research Council has been calling
on the Department of Justice to begin an aggressive enforcement
policy against major obscenity distributors. On October 28,
1999, I was one of several representatives of several profamily
organizations who met with the head of the criminal division of
the Department of Justice, Mr. James Robinson, and
representatives from other Federal agencies who have
responsibilities for obscenity investigations and prosecutions.
Once again we voiced our concerns and complaints about the lack
of prosecution. I personally provided Mr. Robinson with a stack
of materials, photocopies of commercial porn sites that
especially target teenagers. These hard-core images easily meet
the definition of obscenity under Miller versus California.
The response from Mr. Robinson in his follow-up letter to
our group was unacceptable and frustrating because nothing has
changed.
In addition, the accessibility of hard-core porn on the
Internet is turning America's public libraries into virtual
peep shows open to children and funded by taxpayers. I have
with me a publication recently released by the Family Research
Council, called Dangerous Access, 2000 edition, uncovering
Internet pornography in America's libraries. This is a result
of Freedom of Information Act requests that were mailed to over
9,700 of America's public library systems, asking for any
reports, complaints, or other memoranda having to do with
patrons in public libraries accessing pornography. After 6
months of going through those reports and compiling the result,
we have published it in this document. We show by libraries'
own records over 2,000 incidents of patrons, including small
children, accessing pornography; sex acts occurring in public
libraries; sex crimes occurring in public libraries. We have
mailed a courtesy copy to every Member of Congress, and I would
offer a copy for submission into this record.
Mr. Tauzin. The gentlelady again, we will withhold on that
request, and we are asking counsel to advise us frankly, Ms.
LaRue, as to what is the legality of introducing material into
the record that may itself constitute obscenity, and realizing
you want to make a point by showing us what you can download
from the Internet, but if you can withhold on those requests
until we get an answer I would appreciate it.
Ms. LaRue. My point is to make the committee aware of the
kinds of material we called to the attention of the Department
of Justice that is rampant on the Internet, to which they said
they would consider prosecution. As yet we have not heard of
any.
Mr. Tauzin. I think your report, without objection, will be
introduced into the record. So ordered. I am simply asking that
you withhold on the request. In fact, I would personally ask
you not to make the request so we don't have the issue. I don't
know the legality of putting in the record material that may in
fact be obscene and having a record that may be duplicated or
copied for the purposes of the public later on, as to whether
or not we ourselves would be doing something which might
violate the law. And I would frankly request that you not
request us to introduce the earlier material into the record.
Can I have that agreement perhaps?
Ms. LaRue. I would abide by your request. I would say that
I did offer a similar stack of material to another House
subcommittee, which was accepted, and I assume that----
Mr. Tauzin. We may be able to do that. I would just simply
ask you to withdraw it for the time being until we have a
chance to get an answer for that from legal counsel. I thank
you. You may proceed.
Ms. LaRue. Yes. Computerized cyberporn is a source of
potential legal liability for the creation of a hostile work
environment and specifically in violation of Title 7 of the
Federal law. As a matter of fact, seven librarians in
Minneapolis, Minnesota have recently filed a sexual harassment,
hostile work environment complaint with the Equal Opportunity
Commission. The complaint cites conditions in the library where
sex offenders congregate 6-year-olds to view hard-core porn,
men masturbate, and a porn surfer brandishes a knife when told
to terminate his Internet access. These are conditions one
would expect to find in a dirty bookstore, except for the
presence of 6-year-olds viewing hard-core pornography.
Month after month for the past 7 years, Adult Video News
has praised the Clinton Justice Department for not enforcing
the Federal obscenity laws. The March issue states: ``how
likely is it, would you say, that we are going to enjoy the
same benevolent neglect that the industry has enjoyed under
Janet Reno? Regardless of who is elected, our fortunes are
going to change.''
I would close by asking the members of this subcommittee to
consider that if a major drug cartel had a monthly publication
in which they praised the Drug Enforcement Agency for not
enforcing the Federal drug laws, how long would the people of
this country or this Congress tolerate such conduct? I suggest
that it would not be tolerated and especially for 7 years.
The Department of Justice refuses to enforce an entire body
of the Federal Criminal Code that prohibits the trafficking in
obscene materials. It must be called to account and be held
responsible. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Janet M. LaRue follows:]
Prepared Statement of Janet M. LaRue, Senior Director of Legal Studies,
Family Research Council
Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, good morning. My name is
Janet M. LaRue. I am senior director of legal studies for the Family
Research Council (FRC) in Washington, D.C. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify today regarding the problem of obscene material
available on the Internet.
Pornography law has been my area of expertise for many years. I
have lectured on the subject in numerous law enforcement conferences
across the country, testified before state and local legislatures on
pornography bills, and authored numerous appellate briefs that have
been filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, federal circuit courts of appeal,
and state appellate courts on various pornography law issues. The
protection of children, families, and society in general from the
serious harms of pornography, and especially obscene materials, is a
top priority of FRC and of my department, in particular.
As you know, obscenity is not protected by the Constitution
because, by definition, it is a patently offensive appeal to a prurient
interest in sex and has no serious literary, artistic, political, or
scientific value. It is illegal to display or distribute to any person,
including adults. It is the crass commercial exploitation of sex by a
worldwide industry now estimated at $56 billion dollars per
year,<SUP>1</SUP> much of which is controlled by organized crime. This
is an industry that exploits the lowest part of human nature and plays
on those vulnerable to addiction in order to attract a new generation
of customers. Minor children are no exception. Anyone who doubts that
need only visit the commercial World Wide Web porn sites that
flagrantly display scores of free teaser images of their product. These
images include bestiality, mutilation, torture, excretory functions,
orgies, and other perversions. I have copies of sample materials with
me today that I offer for submission into the record. Internet
pornography is estimated at $1.5 billion per year.<SUP>2</SUP>
According to Adult Video News Online, there are ``48 million unique
hits on the adult Net daily.'' <SUP>3</SUP> ``According to Nielsen
NetRatings, 17.5 million surfers visited porn sites from their homes in
January, a 40 percent increase compared with four months earlier.''
<SUP>4</SUP>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Richard C. Morais, Porn Goes Public, Forbes, June 14, 1999.
\2\ http://www.forbesfinder.com/forbessearch/
search.asp?act.search=1&q1=porn+business&RD=D
M&MT=porn+, visited April 10, 2000.
\3\ http://www.avonline.com/200003/corecontents/cc0300--01.shtml,
visited April 11, 2000.
\4\ Brendan I. Koerner, A Lust for Profits, U.S. News & World
Report, Mar. 27, 2000, at 36.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Researchers from Stanford and Duquesne University have estimated
that 200,000 individuals fit the definition of ``cybersex compulsive''-
spending at least 11 hours a week visiting sexually oriented areas on
the Internet. The Psychologists who conducted the research said: ``This
is a hidden public health hazard exploding, in part, because very few
are recognizing it as such or taking it seriously.'' <SUP>5</SUP>
Treating a new public health problem of this magnitude will place
inestimable burdens on our health care system and unimaginable stress
on addicts, their families and society.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Al Cooper, David L. Delmonico, Ron Burg, Cybersex Users,
Abusers, and Compulsives: New Findings and Implications, Journal of
Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity 25, 7:5-29, 2000.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition to the many other serious problems caused by the
proliferation of hard-core pornography in our country, its
accessibility via the Internet is turning America's public libraries
into virtual ``peep shows'' open to children and funded by taxpayers.
This is primarily due to failure of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to
enforce federal obscenity laws.
FRC has been calling this problem to the attention of the DOJ for
several years. On October 28, 1999, I was one of the representatives of
pro-family organizations who met with the head of the criminal division
of DOJ, James Robinson, and representatives from other federal agencies
who have responsibility for obscenity investigations and prosecutions.
Once again, we voiced our concerns and complaints about the lack of
obscenity enforcement by DOJ. I personally provided Mr. Robinson with
numerous photocopies of images that I downloaded free of charge from
commercial pornography Web sites. These hard-core images easily meet
the definition of obscenity under Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15
(1973). The response from Mr. Robinson and his follow-up letter to our
group was unacceptable and frustrating because nothing has changed.
FRC is especially concerned about the effect on America's public
libraries caused by the lack of obscenity law enforcement. With the
help of FRC, David Burt, a public librarian who shares our concerns,
mailed more than 14,000 Freedom of Information Act requests to the
nation's 9,767 public library systems, requesting copies of complaints,
reports and other documentation of incidents involving patrons
accessing pornography.
A six-month investigation of the responses received uncovered more
than 2,000 documented incidents of patrons, many of them children,
accessing pornography, obscenity, and child pornography in the nation's
public libraries. Many of the incidents were highly disturbing, as
librarians witnessed adults instructing children in how to find
pornography, adults trading child pornography, and both adults and
minors engaging in public masturbation at Internet terminals. Analysis
of computer logs from just three urban libraries revealed thousands of
incidents that went unreported, indicating that the 2,062 incidents
represent only a fraction of the total incidents nationwide. The total
number of incidents each year nationwide is likely to be between
400,000 and 2 million. FRC has published the results of the
investigation in a booklet titled Dangerous Access 2000 Edition:
Uncovering Internet Pornography in America's Libraries. I offer a copy
for submission into the record.
Dangerous Access, page 5
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Incident Reports, Patron Complaints, and News Stories Number
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Child Accessing Pornography..................................... 472
Adult Accessing Pornography..................................... 962
Adult Exposing Children to Pornography.......................... 106
Adult Accessing Inappropriate Material.......................... 225
Attempted Molestation........................................... 5
Child Porn Being Accessed....................................... 41
Child Accidentally Viewing Pornography.......................... 26
Adult Accidentally Viewing Pornography.......................... 23
Child Accessing Inappropriate Material.......................... 41
Harassing Staff with Pornography................................ 25
Pornography Left for Children................................... 23
Pornography Left on Printer or Screen........................... 113
Total Number of Incidents....................................... 2,062
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dangerous Access, p. 36.
Incidents included reports describing criminal conduct:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number Percent
Crime Number Reported to Reported to
Documented Police Police
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Accessing Child Pornography...... 41 5 12
Accessing Obscenity.............. 25 0 0
Exposing Children to Porn........ 106 0 0
Public masturbation/fondling..... 13 1 8
Total............................ 172 6 3.5
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whether exposure occurs in a public library, school, nonprofit
group, or business, workplace pornography and computerized
``cyberporn'' are a source of potential legal liability for those
vested with management or control over the respective work
environments. The viewing of pornography in public places creates an
offensive, uncomfortable, and humiliating environment (in addition to
unlawfully exposing or displaying such ``harmful'' material to minors).
Pornography in the workplace can constitute, or be evidence of, sexual
harassment in violation of state and federal civil rights laws and
create or contribute to a hostile environment in violation of Title
VII's general prohibition against sexual discrimination in employment
practices.<SUP>6</SUP>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ See 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-2; 29 CFR 1604.11; 18 U.S.C. Sec. 242;
42 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 1981, 1982. See Pornography, Equality, and a
Discrimination-Free Workplace: A Comparative Perspective, 106 Harvard
Law Review pp. 1075-92 (1993); Robinson v. Jacksonville Shipyards, 760
F. Supp. 1486 (M.D. Fla. 1991).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This month, seven Minneapolis librarians filed a complaint with the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because of the hostile and
offensive working environment caused by daily exposure to Internet
porn. The complaint cites conditions in the library where sex offenders
congregate; six-year-olds view hard-core porn; child porn is left on
printers; men masturbate; and a porn surfer brandishes a
knife.<SUP>7</SUP> These are conditions one would expect to find inside
a dirty bookstore, except for the presence of six-year-olds.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Paul Levy, Complaints filed over Web porn at Minneapolis Public
Library; Librarians say they work in a hostile environment, Minneapolis
Star Tribune, May 4, 2000, at 1B.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Month after month for the past seven years, the trade publication
of the porn industry, Adult Video News Online, has praised the Clinton
Justice Department for not enforcing the federal obscenity laws. The
March issue states, ``How likely is it, would you say, that we are
going to enjoy the same benevolent neglect that the industry has
enjoyed under Janet Reno? Regardless of who is elected, our fortunes
are going to change.'' <SUP>8</SUP>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ http://adultvideonews.com/legal/leg0300.html, visited April 11,
2000.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Members of the Subcommittee, if a major drug cartel had a monthly
publication that repeatedly praised the Drug Enforcement Agency for its
``benevolent neglect'' toward enforcing the federal drug laws, I don't
believe this nation or Congress would have tolerated it, and certainly
not for seven years. The Department of Justice refuses to enforce an
entire section of the federal criminal code that prohibits the
trafficking in obscene materials. It must be called to account and held
responsible.
Thank you.
Mr. Tauzin. Thank you very much, ma'am.
And our final witness on this panel, Mr. Joseph Burgin, of
Cincinnati, Ohio, brings to us his personal story. Mr. Burgin.
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH W. BURGIN, JR.
Mr. Burgin. Thank you. I am here today to represent what I
believe to be millions of men whose minds are being held
captive by electronic images. Each of us are experiencing
consequences to varying degrees but each of us are being
adversely affected. But more so than a representation of masses
of people, I am here to represent my two sons and my daughter
who experienced some crushing pain because of their father's
involvement with pornography.
In my case, humanly speaking, I have lost everything that a
man would hold onto to give himself meaning and perspective in
life. Because of my involvement with pornography, I lost my
marriage of 25 years. It also cost me the role of daddy, which
I cherished, to my 9-year-old daughter. My involvement with
pornography also cost me job opportunities and the career path
of my calling and choice. In addition to those things, I have
lost friends and trust and respect from many. The consequences
that are measurable and tangible in my own life have been
devastating enough. Through all of my legal proceedings I have
lost some $100,000 in support obligation, retirement funds, et
cetera, et cetera, all easily traced back upstream to my
involvement with pornography.
So in addition to those measurable consequences, my
involvement with pornography also affected me adversely
emotionally. It thwarted and hindered the normal development of
coping skills with life and an ability to manage my life on a
day-to-day basis. Instead of knowing how to do that, I was
simply turned to the sedating effect that I could find from
online pornography.
As a man in mid-forties, I am now having to go back and
relearn those things to have any hope of any future that is any
semblance of normal relationships.
Through an awful lot of professional counseling and hours
upon hours of attendance at support groups and with
accountability partners, I have been able to find freedom from
pornography.
But I can't talk about the consequences before you today in
the past tense. Because of my involvement with pornography, I
feel I am scarred, I am handicapped, I will move into my future
with a limp. I will always be affected because of my years of
involvement with it. The moment any forward progress stops,
then my regression begins.
So I am here today to make an appeal to do anything or
everything that is conceivable to thwart or hinder the
development of this industry. In my own personal life it has
brought devastating consequences, and as my oldest son Josh
said, tell them about it, Dad; it has gotten out of hand, it
has got to stop. So my family for one, we are fed up with the
industry.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Joseph W. Burgin, Jr. follows:]
Prepared Statement of Joseph W. Burgin, Jr.
I am 46 years old. I am divorced after being married 25 years. My
oldest son is a junior in college. My middle child lives with me and is
a junior in high school. I also have a 9-year-old daughter who lives
with her mom. I hold a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degree. For
20+ years I provided leadership and management for nonprofit
organizations in Ohio and Alabama. A major publishing company currently
employs me as a regional manager.
I consider myself a sex addict with Internet pornography being my
primary means of acting out. I feel I have been a sex addict for more
than thirty years. I have been in recovery for about two years. In my
active days of addiction I felt my self-esteem was very low. I feel
that in my addiction I struggled with depression. I consider myself in
recovery from sex addiction with no relapses for a year and two months.
My religious beliefs are protestant. The Internet was an active part of
my addiction. I have used Internet photos and videos for my addiction.
The Internet reactivated my addiction that was inactive for years. I
feel the Internet took my acting out to a different level because of
its ease of access. I believe my sexual orientation is heterosexual. I
acted out in my addiction only with myself. All of my sexual fantasies
in my addiction were about women I did not know. The type of porn I
would use was mostly hard-core (sex acts depicted). In my marriage I
had no affairs.
Since adolescence, I did a masterful job of concealing my struggle
with sexual addictions and pornography. My own self-hatred, other
personal handicaps and as well as relational weaknesses made me a prime
target for pornography. Internet pornography was extremely easy to
access and hide. I deal with men regularly who are caught in this trap
because of the ease with which it can be accessed. I was sought out as
a customer through banner adds, Spam, unsolicited email attachments,
etc.
The day of reckoning came in my life as a torpedo hit me with a
full broadside blow and my life sank. After going through an unwanted
job change along with the death of my father and other personal issues,
I returned to an old friend for relief--pornography. For a few days the
sedating effect from hour after hour immersion in pornography numbed me
out and I didn't feel any pain. But my life-long hidden addiction soon
came to light and my sons and subsequently my wife discovered my
darkest secret. As a result, my addictions cost me: my marriage; the
role I cherished as daddy; job opportunities in the field of my calling
and choice; legal problems resulting in over $100,000 of fees,
retirement income, and support obligations; significant financial
difficulties; loss of friendships; loss of credibility and trust in the
eyes of some; etc. I've felt the stinging backhanded blow of
professional peers and the abandonment of many alleged friends. The
consequences of pornography affected me emotionally with a deep and
permeating sense of shame and guilt. I've struggled with loneliness and
feelings of abandonment, rejection and betrayal. The pain at times has
been crushing. My anger toward pornography is intense--it cost me all
this and more while the pornographers make billions.
In addition to the external measurable consequences, addiction to
pornography also affected me emotionally and thwarted my development of
appropriate relational and coping skills. I feel it caused me to
objectify women seeing them as nothing more than a means to satisfy my
desires. I grew less satisfied with my wife's affection, physical
appearance, sexual curiosity, and sexual performance proper. Sex
without emotional involvement became increasingly important. It created
feelings of power and control and led to me becoming a manipulative and
controlling person to those closest to me.
Thousand of dollars, hours of guidance by a professional Christian
counselor, hours in support groups and with accountability partners
resulted in health and healing and freedom. But the road is uphill and
difficult. It is easily the hardest thing I have ever done in my life
to find freedom from pornography. I feel my relapse will begin when
active recovery stops. There is no standing still, taking a breather,
or pausing for a rest. When the forward motion ends, the backward
motion starts. A recovering addict likened it to a tide: It is either
coming in or going out, and it never stands still.
I'm glad the Lord I serve is the Lord of the Mulligan. My God has
helped me to get up off the ground and get back into the game. ``Hey
kiddo, let's take a Mulligan on that one, okay, and start again. But
this time let's don't include pornography in the game?''
Centuries ago, John Chrysostom wrote, ``The danger is not that we
should fall . . . but that we should remain on the ground.'' At times
over the last few years I have thought there is no tomorrow because of
pornography, but the sun has been coming up each day. I've been able to
come to a better place but not until I found freedom from pornography.
Sustained by God's unmerited favor, Jody Burgin.
Mr. Tauzin. Thank you very much, Mr. Burgin.
The Chair will recognize members in order for 5 minutes.
Let me begin by asking, I guess, the legal side of the
equation. We are told it is impossible, difficult or legally
indefensible to bring an obscenity case on the Internet because
of the concern that the Miller test by the Supreme Court does
have a community standard feature: that it, one, requires on a
national test the material be prurient, appeal to the prurient
interest; second, that it is patently offensive, which is also
a national test; but the third test which is based on a
community standard is that it has no artistic, political,
scientific or literary value based upon those community
standards.
Now, what is different about the Internet in regard to
enforcing the 3-point Miller test? Would anyone like to handle
that?
Mr. Flores. Mr. Chairman, what I would say is that first of
all, the test, what we call the LAPS test, literary, artistic,
political and scientific test, is actually judged by the
reasonable person, so that is much more akin to a national
standard which should not really put anybody at any substantial
distress. And let me just say that the Justice Department, if I
saw an accurate copy of the deputy assistant's testimony, is
going to talk to you about the Thomas case. The Thomas case was
prosecuted before the 1996 amendment. That was a specific
argument that was raised by the defendants and rejected by the
court of appeals, and the Supreme Court refused to accept
certiorari, so that case died right there.
Mr. Tauzin. Let me ask you in the offline world, if a
violator of the Nation's obscenity laws were to mail or send in
a package with UPS obscene material to a site elsewhere in the
country, would not the obscenity laws still provide a vehicle
for prosecution either at the site where the material was
mailed or at the site where it was received, based upon the
community standards test?
Mr. Flores. That is correct, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tauzin. I guess what I am asking, what is different on
the Internet, where a potential violator who wishes to send
obscene material over the phone wires, over a cable system,
over a satellite structure, over terrestrial wireless
structure, sends it from a point of location to another point
where it is being viewed or in some way copied, what have you,
in a way that does violate the obscenity laws of that
locality--could not a prosecution be made both at the point
where the material is first sent over those systems of
communications, over the Internet or over a phone line, or at
the point where it is being distributed in a community which
has community standards, that would clearly define that
material as obscene?
Mr. Flores. That is right, Mr. Chairman. Not only that, but
that is what guarantees that our communities are going to have
freedom, because if we had a national standard, then every
community would be forced to abide by one separate standard.
This is what allows Californians per se to have a different
community standard and those in Memphis or Maine or anywhere
else to have a separate one. And the fact that it is on the
Internet, I mean folks who use the Internet now should know at
least one thing; and that is, once they release that material,
they know that it goes into every community. In fact, that is
what they are banking on.
Mr. Tauzin. In fact, the fact that some of these companies
are actually going public, as you point out, going into IPOs
and raising incredible amounts of money, would that be
occurring on Wall Street absent this--what Ms. LaRue called
this ``benevolent neglect'' in terms of prosecuting these
companies for distributing obscene material?
Ms. LaRue. I don't believe so. In fact, I believe that Wall
Street and others assume that because this material is rampant
on the Internet, that these people are providing a legal
product. Certainly we wouldn't have the promotion by legitimate
business of an enterprise that is constantly producing material
that violates Federal law.
Mr. Tauzin. In regard to the laws here, can the State
authorities equally process these laws and bring cases against
companies that are located in, let us say California, that is
going forward with an IPO to distribute this material around
the country and around the world?
Mr. Flores. There is certainly a sphere of control that
States have in this area but they certainly don't have the
tools nor do they have the ability, because the Justice
Department has jurisdiction over the entire United States. They
don't have the jurisdictional problems and disputes, and they
have a unified Federal system. So this is what makes the
Federal Government the best place to spend the limited money
that is available to do this, but because of the abdication,
many States and localities are having to take this battle on
even against traditional pornographers because that is the only
people who do it.
Mr. Tauzin. You call it an abdication. You call it benign
neglect. I guess I want to ask the right question. Have cases
been brought to Justice and Justice refused to prosecute them,
or is Justice in your opinion just not looking to make a case?
What is the story?
Mr. Flores. Mr. Chairman, I know that when we met in
October, as Ms. LaRue indicated, I brought to their specific
attention the fact that Amateur Action, the subject of the
Thomas case, was back in action and this time they were selling
on the Internet movies which depicted amputees engaging in
different types of penetration. This material wasn't education.
It wasn't scientific. It wasn't offered as a way to teach those
who are disabled. This is incredibly prurient and patently
offensive material. I brought it to their attention and clearly
what came out of that was that simply they have a different set
of priorities.
Mr. Tauzin. Ms. LaRue, you had your hand up.
Ms. LaRue. Yes, I can attest to that. And also as to your
question about States enforcing obscenity laws on the Internet,
I personally assisted the pornography section of the Los
Angeles Police Department to prosecute a computer bulletin
board service operating in California. They got a conviction in
that case. And by the way, the same type of argument was raised
about community standards in that case, and I drafted the legal
memo that the court accepted, and that argument lost, just as
it did in the Thomas case to which Mr. Flores referred.
Mr. Tauzin. Thank you, Ms. LaRue. The Chair recognizes the
gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Sawyer, for a round of questions.
Mr. Sawyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me thank all
of our witnesses for your testimony today. It has been
illuminating, and, Mr. Burgin, in some cases just tragic.
We find ourselves dealing not only with questions of the
situs of prosecutions or origination of materials that all of
us would find offensive when we are talking about prosecutions
within the United States under U.S. law.
Have any of you given thought to the problems that arise
with sites that originate in the United States but which
actually transfer materials outside the United States; or the
reverse, where sites are generated outside the United States
and sending materials in? Do you have thoughts on how we
address that?
Mr. Flores. Mr. Sawyer, I would direct you to page 5 of my
testimony. I just note that on March 9 of this year, deputy
assistant Attorney General Kevin Di Gregory took justifiable
pleasure in announcing that the week before his testimony a
jury in Federal district court in New York found Jay Cohen,
owner of an Internet gambling site in Antigua, guilty of
violating Title 18, Section 1084, a statute that makes it
illegal for a betting or wagering business to use a wire
communication facility to transmit bets or wagers in interstate
or foreign commerce.
Under the same theory that the Justice Department used to
obtain the gambling conviction, there's no question that they
would have the ability to do it. In fact there are cases, these
deal with child pornography, which were prosecuted during the
time that I was at the Justice Department, where foreign
distribution, as soon as it went into the mailbox, they were
able to initiate the prosecution because it was destined to
come back to the United States. What the courts require is a
substantial connection to the United States. So the court has
oftentimes said that the only way to address these issues,
really, is globally. So the Justice Department, I believe, is
in the premier spot to really take some effective action.
Is it going to be perfect? I don't think so, but we don't
ask that of any other area of law enforcement, and so I think
that would be an inappropriate question for the Justice
Department, or a level of success that they would require from
this area they don't require from anywhere else. And we do drug
prosecutions all over the globe, we do fraud prosecutions,
copyright prosecutions. I mean, we are a very aggressive global
litigator in every other area.
Mr. Sawyer. Let me ask about problems that are perhaps
unique to the Internet. We have talked in a number of arenas
about the problems of mirroring, where one site transmits
another. Who is guilty in a circumstance like that, or does
everybody who touches digital pornography become guilty or
potentially guilty of the kinds of crimes that you would like
to see prosecuted?
Mr. Flores. With respect to that question, I guess I would,
if I were sitting back at Justice, the way I would answer that
question would be to take a look, first of all, to see whether
or not the major players really are hidden from view in that
way, because the reality is that there are, you know, tens of
thousands of sites out there, but they are not owned by tens of
thousands of discrete companies and individuals. And I think
very quick research by the FBI, which is very capable, as well
as my former colleagues at the Department, they could easily
identify the top 20 or 30 companies. Many of them operate out
in the open with a real office, real business records. They
have got those servers here in the United States as well as
overseas.
And so as we did when we started this fight in the late
eighties, early nineties, what we have to do really is pick out
the best targets. We do have limited resources. I don't think
the mirroring problem would present at all an issue, either
investigatively or legally, to prosecution of proper targets.
Mr. Sawyer. Finally, very quickly, as technologies merge,
do you see a need to treat television and the Internet
differently because of the nature of the medium or simply
recognize that these are pornography and obscenity laws that
need to be enforced regardless of the medium through which they
are transmitted?
Ms. LaRue. That is certainly the approach that we would
advocate. It also is what the Supreme Court has made clear,
again in the Reno versus ACLU case, that obscenity distribution
is illegal through any medium and the law applies to any
medium.
Mr. Sawyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tauzin. I thank the gentleman. The Chair recognizes the
gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Largent, for a round of questions.
Mr. Largent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Flores, I would
like to ask you, if I could, a few questions. We have had the
Attorney General up on the Hill before various committees. A
number of my colleagues have questioned her about this specific
issue, about the lack of prosecution on obscenity cases, and
when pressed for answer she would begin talking about the
prosecution rates on child pornography and stalking; basically
not addressing the real question, which is the obscenity issue,
which is the focus for this committee hearing. And I would like
you maybe to just give us a 2-minute primer on the difference
between child pornography and stalking and obscenity cases,
which is what we are trying to address here in this hearing
today.
Mr. Flores. Well, beginning first with probably the
easiest, child pornography, in 1982 the Supreme Court, in a
case we refer to as the Ferber decision, removed the whole area
of sexually explicit material dealing with children. They took
it out of the obscenity framework, so that it was no longer
necessary for a prosecutor to prove that the material lacked
value. In fact, Justice O'Connor in her concurring opinion
noted that it really didn't make a difference to the child who
was sexually exploited whether the material had value, and so
if you had an Ansel Adams-quality photograph, that child is
still being sexually abused. And for that reason, child
pornography stands separate and apart as a type of material
which is illegal. And recently the Congress took the last step
in closing out the last loophole, which is to simply say that
all possession of child pornography, even one item, is a
Federal violation.
Child stalking is a growing problem, and that deals with
people who are out there seeking children for the purposes of
sexual activity. This is not a new problem, but it is growing
at a phenomenal rate, to the point where I was at a briefing
that was held by Congressman Frank's office last year, where
the FBI let us know that for all intents and purposes, they
were now really focusing solely on child stalking, it had
become such a big problem, and that with the exception of very
significant child pornography cases, they were being forced to
really just address that issue.
Obscenity, however, captures a broad set of materials and
it is a term of art, a legal term of art, so that no lawyer
should ever be confusing child pornography with obscenity,
because obscenity is that material which passes a 3-part test.
The first two prongs of that test are judged by contemporary
community standards. The third is judged by the reasonable
person test, and so it is not confusing. In fact, in a 3-year
period, as I said I think earlier, we had over 120 convictions
against no losses, as I recall, and there were fines and
forfeitures of over $21 million in that period of time.
So the pornography industry certainly understands what we
are talking about because, as a result of that effort, they
stopped sending out, for the most part, unsolicited sexually
oriented advertisements which today on the Internet is spam.
They stopped carrying the most revolting material, primarily
real sadomasochism and bathroom-related sex, and they stopped
sending material entirely into certain communities where the
community standard was very well-known.
So the term ``obscenity'' is also known extremely well to
the ACLU and to litigants in the first amendment context,
because in the CDA case, in the COPA case, they have not even
begun to challenge whether or not those laws apply to the
Internet.
Mr. Largent. So what I hear you saying is that the 3-prong
test that was established in 1973 is just as applicable to the
Internet as it is to any porn shop that we traditionally think
of back in the seventies or the eighties. The Internet really
has had no effect on the legal term of art, the definition, the
execution, prosecution of the law that we had prior to the
Internet?
Mr. Flores. That is correct.
Mr. Largent. Okay. Ms. LaRue, I know that part of your
testimony you talked about the meeting that you had in October
with the Department of Justice. It is my understanding that at
that meeting that you submitted some specific porn sites to the
Department of Justice. What was their response in regards to
those specific porn sites?
Ms. LaRue. Well, in both the meeting and the follow-up
letter, Mr. Robinson said they found the suggestion that they
enforce that provision of COPA--which makes it illegal to
distribute obscene material to minors--be applied to the sites
that I suggested. And he said he found that interesting and
that they would consider it.
Mr. Largent. But the distribution of obscene material to
anybody, adult or child, is illegal under current law; is that
correct?
Ms. LaRue. Absolutely. But under COPA, Child Online
Protection act, there was a provision added to the Federal code
that brings an enhanced penalty for anyone who knowingly
distributes it to a minor.
Mr. Largent. So the law got better?
Ms. LaRue. Yes.
Mr. Largent. Not worse.
Ms. LaRue. Yes; doubled the penalty if you distribute to a
minor under the age of 16. And there is currently a bill
pending by Mr. Tancredo that would increase that to under 18.
If I might add to your comment about child stalking and
child pornography, while no one here on this panel, I know,
thinks that those aren't serious offenses, aren't we focusing
on lesser--if you look at what has happened in New York City at
the reduction of the crime rate, murder dropped 50 percent not
because New York police suddenly started enforcing the murder
statute they always had. It is because they started enforcing
the statutes against lesser crimes because the principle is it
flips upward. If you send out the message that obscenity will
not be tolerated in the United States, the pedophiles will get
the message that they better not have their child pornography
up there because certainly that isn't going to be tolerated
either.
And by the way, when it comes to child stalking, the
effective tool in the hands of a pedophile is to use adult
obscenity to desensitize children and to educate them into what
the pedophile wants. So when we are asking that the obscenity
laws be enforced, we truly believe that if it is done, that
these other crimes will take care of themselves.
Mr. Largent. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tauzin. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas,
Mr. Green, for a round of questions.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Flores, what years
were you at the Justice Department?
Mr. Flores. 1989 to 1997.
Mr. Green. Okay. So you were there during the beginning of
the explosion of the Internet in 1997?
Mr. Flores. Yes, sir.
Mr. Green. It started, I guess, even after I was elected to
Congress in 1993, still people didn't know what Internet was
back then.
I want to commend you on your statement on page 7 where it
says, ``Our Constitution protects speech but it does not
protect obscenity,'' and I agree. We--in Congress we have tried
for many years to pass laws that the Federal courts keep
explaining to us that there is a difference between obscenity
and pornography, and we can prohibit obscenity, but we have
trouble prohibiting pornography to adults.
Most recently Congress passed the Child Online Protection
Act and the President signed it in October 1998, a Federal
judge in Philadelphia then immediately issued a preliminary
injunction, and the Justice Department has announced they are
going to appeal that ruling. Is there any update in status?
That was in April of last year.
Mr. Flores. We are waiting for a decision in the Third
Circuit.
Mr. Green. I guess my concern is generally that testimony--
is that the Justice Department is not prosecuting as
aggressively as they should be and aggressively as they did
while you were there, and I know that is important to me
because I want to see it happen. I also know that you know we
pass laws and oftentimes the courts have a different
interpretation than we do as Members of Congress. And I also
agree that the legal definition of pornography and obscenity
shouldn't be changed or it shouldn't matter what the medium is,
whether it is the mail, the TV or the Internet. And it may be a
little more difficult, but as you said in your testimony, you
can prosecute even offshore facilities by attaching the assets
here in our country, and we do that in lots of cases, both
civilly and criminally.
Ms. LaRue, one of the questions when you talked about the
availability of the Internet in public libraries, I agree that
if I was sitting on a city council I would not want my Internet
capability in public libraries to have access to that type of
material, and put a filter on it. I don't know if Congress can
make that decision for the City of Houston or City of
Philadelphia. I wouldn't want it in the libraries any more than
I would want it in our committee records.
I notice you place significant emphasis on Internet
availability in libraries, and I am unclear. Should we not have
Internet capabilities in libraries without filters, or should
we just encourage the filters being on it in our public
libraries?
Ms. LaRue. We would encourage the Department of Justice to
enforce the Federal obscenity laws, and we wouldn't have the
problem that we have in public libraries.
Mr. Green. Well, again, the availability of the Internet in
a public library, I can walk in, whether it is myself or my
children who are no longer minors, or my children who may have
been minors at one time, and maybe our fight should not only be
on the Federal level but also on the local level to say at a
public library, I would hesitate to have my tax dollars being
spent for access to that kind of information. So, again, I
think it could be a 2-pronged effort and ensure the overall
prosecution because--whether it is a public library or
somebody's home computer. But do you believe libraries should
have access to the Internet?
Ms. LaRue. I have no objection to that at all. My objection
is to the bringing in of illegal material through taxpayer-
funded government facilities, and we wouldn't be having the
discussion here today, I don't believe, if the Department of
Justice were enforcing the law.
Mr. Green. Well, again, the courts have said that, you
know, again whatever medium, whether it is Internet, mail or
television, that pornography, we have a hard time defining
that, and so the pornography may still be available but it is
not obscene, at least under the definition, but that would
still be available in the public libraries.
Ms. LaRue. We are advocating the prosecution of hard-core
pornography that the court has clearly given us examples would
meet the definition in Miller versus California.
Mr. Green. Of obscenity.
Ms. LaRue. Yes. There is also State law available that
prohibits the dissemination of material harmful to minors, and
the Supreme Court in Reno versus ACLU took note of those State
laws that are applicable as well.
Mr. Laaser. Mr. Green, I would just point out that any of
us who are therapists in this field have seen cases of
teenagers, 11, 12, even 13-year-old children who have gone and
accessed pornography in public libraries. I personally am
treating a case of a child that accessed sadomasochistic
activity at the public library. So it is available there, and
they don't need to be that computer-sophisticated to get at it.
Mr. Green. I guess my concern is that we should--again, we
try to define what we don't want children to see, and of course
the Supreme Court has said adults can see it. How do we
differentiate between whether it is a child, 12-year-old or 13-
year-old sitting in that terminal, or adult? That is a local
decision.
Again, if I was sitting on a city council, I would say
well, wait a minute, I am so fearful of my child seeing it, I
would filter it out for anyone in the public libraries, and I
don't know if they would allow us to prohibit that.
Mr. Tauzin. The gentleman's time has expired. Anyone wish
to respond?
Mr. Flores. Just, Mr. Green, what I would say is that
everyone is struggling with this issue. I know State government
officials, library officials, who are struggling. The people
who apparently are missing from the discussion, missing from
the effort, is the Justice Department and that is a very big
absence.
Mr. Tauzin. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair
recognizes the Vice Chairman of the committee, Mr. Oxley, for a
round of questions.
Mr. Oxley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the author of the
Child Online Protection act, I take some particular interest in
this issue, and we are obviously waiting for the Third Circuit
decision, although I must admit I was somewhat taken aback by
the Supreme Court decision announced yesterday regarding cable,
which was a relatively minor effort to try to get some handle
on that issue. And we hope that the decision ultimately by the
Third Circuit or ultimately the Supreme Court has a different
ending, but in the meantime I guess we learned that we need to
rely on existing laws for our prosecution, and clearly
prosecution equals deterrence.
Ms. LaRue made a good point about New York City. All you
have to do is visit Times Square today and compare it to when I
lived in New York back in the late sixties, early seventies,
what a huge change that has meant to just that area but, as
well, the entire city. So, really, enforcement does provide a
great deterrent to that kind of behavior.
The unfortunate fact is that the prosecutions have declined
significantly. As a matter of fact, Mr. Flores, do you know of
any obscenity prosecutions in 1999 by the Department of
Justice? We couldn't find any.
Mr. Flores. Well, Mr. Oxley, there are a few obscenity
cases that were done, but none in the way I think that you are
asking the question. There have been zero cases done involving
a Web site or anyone doing business over the Internet. There
have been some people who have used the Internet to advertise,
but they are basically running a mail order business. I think
there is one case there, and then there may have been a few
others.
Oftentimes what you will see in child pornography cases is
that they will include obscenity charges, and because the
obscenity section is 1460 and following, as compared to the
child pornography section which is 2251 and following, the
obscenity charges lead off; and in the recordkeeping systems of
the Justice Department, oftentimes it is the top charge, the
lead charge that is recorded. And so unless you actually get
the name and docket number and then actually look to see what
the charges are that are brought, you cannot in fact identify
what is going on.
My best information, from talking to former colleagues and
from folks across the country, is that there maybe have been a
handful of cases done in the past 2 or 3 years that are really
obscenity cases, and many of those stem from cases that were
begun in 1993 and 1994.
Mr. Oxley. Well, I want to personally thank you for helping
us on COPA and all the work that your center did. Clearly we
made enormous progress but there is a lot more to do.
I was struck by a quote from a New York Times article in
1986. The article was entitled ``X-rated Industry in a Slump.
The pornographic industry's plight is due partly to legal
challenges. With little help from the Reagan administration, an
unlikely alliance of conservatives and feminists has persuaded
many retailers to stop carrying adult magazines and videos,
said Martin Turkle, one of the largest distributors of adult
videos in the country. Next year is going to be the roughest
year in the history of the industry,'' and indeed it was. The
sales of adult videos at the wholesale level dropped from $450
million to $386 million. That is compared to $3.9 billion, by
the way, in 1996 which I am sure that those numbers have
increased dramatically.
And last, from the Los Angeles Daily News article, this
says, ``Before Clinton took office, Los Angeles police were
deputized by the Federal Government so they could help
prosecutors conduct monthly raids on Valley pornographers.
Under Clinton there have been no raids, said Los Angeles Police
Lieutenant Ken Seibert. Seibert said adult obscenity
enforcement by the Federal Government is practically
nonexistent since the administration changed,'' end quote.
Well, indeed, we are really in a trap here because if we
have to rely on existing laws until COPA is determined to be
constitutional--and there is some question now with the recent
5-4 Supreme Court decision--so we are based in a situation
where we have to rely on existing laws, and we rely very
heavily on the Justice Department to carry out that law. And it
is just not being done, and that is what the purpose of this
hearing is about.
I commend my friend from Oklahoma for pursuing this so
doggedly, because it does point out, I think, that deterrence
comes about because of strong law enforcement, and just the
opposite happens when you don't, and we have seen those numbers
increase dramatically.
I was told during the COPA hearings, and I wonder if
anybody can bear this out, that there are over 10,000
commercial pornographic Web sites out there. Is that accurate?
Ms. LaRue. That is too low. The estimate is more like 40-
to 100,000 sites.
Mr. Oxley. Just domestically?
Ms. LaRue. Yes.
Mr. Oxley. That is a frightening figure. It gives you an
indication about how the pornographic industry really has
gotten the upper hand in this whole equation.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tauzin. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Florida, Mr. Stearns, for a round of questions.
Mr. Stearns. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank
you for having this hearing and I want to thank my colleague
from Oklahoma for his hard work on this.
Mr. Burgin, I am going to compliment you for your personal
courage. The witnesses we have today are here to testify and
the witnesses from the Department of Justice are here to
testify, but they don't have the personal courage and strength
that you have, and I want to compliment you for it and thank
you for it, and I think everybody who has a family should
certainly understand what you have been through.
I think the concern I have--Mr. Largent has given me a
chart here to show, you know, the difference between obscenity
and indecency and so forth. Because the Internet is so
pervasive, did you find this addiction, this sedating effect
because of its availability through the Internet, did you have
this feeling that because it is in--I guess what I am asking
is, did this start before the Internet or was the Internet the
start of this whole process? Because you can go into the
magazine stores, you can see it in television. As you know,
here in Virginia, in Metropolitan Washington, Maryland, the
cable TVs have scrambled the pornography, but the scrambling--
the voice is still available and scrambling is not complete. So
I mean, I think we have to pass laws, but I am concerned a
little bit about how this came about, I guess, and that is my
question.
Mr. Burgin. Okay. My own personal experience predated the
Internet. My father introduced me to pornography during my
adolescent years. I went underground for many years on and off
dealing with the issue. What happened in the eighties when I
discovered the Internet is that my addiction accelerated. It
took off and went to a completely different level, mainly
because of its ease of access and was so easy for me to hide
and to mask from my own family, from my wife, from my children.
So the Internet for me provided ready access, and it caused my
addiction with pornography to accelerate to a different level.
Mr. Stearns. Dr. Laaser, I would like you to participate
because I was going to ask you, in the patients you have
treated, how many would you classify as addicted to obscene
material, which is illegal, as opposed to those who are
addicted to legal pornography? That is the next question.
Mr. Laaser. I just wanted to commend you about your
question about etiology, about where does it start. And my
answer to that would be that we are seeing today a population
of addicts that might not otherwise become addicted because of
the easy access to the Internet. In other words, my clinical
colleagues are beginning to speculate that, you know, there are
a whole set of people whose prohibitions would be such that
would keep them from going to a bookstore, whereas the access
on the Internet is allowing them to get in and get addicted.
So there is, like Bill W. of Alcoholics Anonymous would
call a new level of low bottom of sexoholics out there, low
bottom drunks getting addicted that wouldn't have been. I just
wanted to say that even though Mr. Burgin represents a history
of pornography before the Internet, we now today have an
epidemic of sexual addicts who started on the Internet that
might not otherwise be addicted.
In terms of your question, you want me to go ahead and
respond?
Mr. Stearns. Sure.
Mr. Laaser. The percentage would be--it depends a lot on
how you define obscene. I would say that in my definition of
obscenity, would be a lot lower, or however you define it, in
terms of I think there are magazines available at the airport,
where I will be later this afternoon, that are obscene. So you
know, virtually 99 percent of the material that is available on
these Web sites in my estimation is obscene. I bring a certain
moral perspective to that that all might not share. So in that
case, 100 percent of my clients are addicted to obscene
material.
The percentage of those that might get into the violent,
those are all people that have, you know, emotional disorders
that are underlying the addiction that need to be present, but
what we are seeing is that more people are escalating to higher
levels of addiction today than would have been the case just 10
years ago.
Mr. Stearns. And now they are probably on a 56K modem.
Mr. Laaser. That's right.
Mr. Stearns. But wait until we have broadband in which we
have instant video and everything that goes with it, and
eventually the high definition television. So what we are
talking as a beginning stage here is if we think we have a
problem now, once we get broadband.
Mr. Laaser. All right. Today, with virtual reality
available, the prostitutes, the world's oldest profession, have
been certainly creative. You can access prostitution on the
Internet. As I say in my written testimony, I had a client this
February who spent $85,000 on prostitution on the Internet. In
other words, clicked in visual images being projected because
the prostitute had a camera focused on herself. Those kinds of
sites are available today all over the Internet for credit card
moneys. You can pay your $2- or $300 at a shot.
So as computer technology improves and virtual reality
improves, we are going to have interactive prostitution
exchange. So I would commend this committee to get on top of
this now because it is definitely getting worse.
Mr. Stearns. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Tauzin. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Maryland, Mr. Ehrlich, for a round of questions.
Mr. Ehrlich. Doctor, I worked with these issues in the
State legislature, particularly pedophiles and pedophilia.
Would you care to comment with respect to what you just talked
about, the unlimited--or what Mr. Stearns talked about--the
unlimited access that we are talking about here with respect to
studies that you are familiar with concerning organized
pedophiles? And I know there are actually groups out there that
march, that God knows will probably apply for 501(c) status
sometime. This is a very serious concern. It kind of gets lost
sometimes in the course of this debate.
Would you give me your knowledge with respect to how this
unlimited access problem has impacted numbers of pedophiles and
organization thereof?
Mr. Laaser. Obviously, we are dealing with a population
that is very secretive so academic research into the increase
of the number of pedophiles has been rather limited, but I
would say that all of my colleagues, including those who have
written in a recent journal devoted to the issue of Internet
pornography, are estimating that we are seeing a dramatic rise
in pedophilish activities.
One of the rituals that your average pedophile will use is
to show a child images of pornography, so that what we are
seeing today is that the pedophiles who are generally hiding
out in the chat rooms, disguised in a variety of forms, are
engaging the trust level of the child. And then they are able
now electronically to transmit images either of fairly soft
stuff to begin with, again to gauge the trust, but then of
themselves and other kinds of activities.
The easy accessibility of this, we believe, is increasing
the numbers of pedophiles and certainly increasing the number
of kids that are at risk to this.
Mr. Ehrlich. The empirical data I am familiar with reflects
the fact that pedophiles, almost to a person, were abused as
children.
Mr. Laaser. That is right.
Mr. Ehrlich. And of course what you are talking about plays
into that as well.
Mr. Laaser. Your average pedophile was abused as a child,
and the research would indicate that your average pedophile
will offend against a child within a 1-year variance of the
year at which they were abused. So that if a child was sexually
abused at age 5, a pedophile's victims will normally be between
the ages of 4 to 6. So that, yes, what you are calling is the--
it is kind of what we refer to as a trauma bond; in other
words, a victim becomes a victimizer. That is not a universal
principle, but certainly your average pedophile today is an
abuse victim.
Mr. Ehrlich. Your average pedophile, I guess the profile is
such that you are not talking about one instance, you are
talking about multiple offenses?
Mr. Laaser. No. Your average pedophile has at least 80
victims by the age of 35.
Mr. Ehrlich. To anybody on the panel, with respect to some
of the sites that you are familiar with, how many are out there
dedicated to the whole problem of child sex, pedophiliacs, et
cetera?
Ms. LaRue. They certainly advertise the material as appeals
to pedophiles because it refers to teen sex, barely legal,
little girls, Lolita, all of the kinds of terms that would be
meaningful to a pedophile looking for material. And so you see
individuals where, even if you cannot be certain that they are
under the age of 18, they are portrayed in that way, they are
advertised in that way, and they are engaging in all kinds of
hard-core sex acts.
Mr. Laaser. I would confirm the fact that we are seeing an
epidemic of disguised child pornography. In other words, the
models, you know, there is a fine print that says that the
models are 18, but they appear to be 12 or 13. I would even
say--and I am not going to mention the magazine--but there is a
cover of a recent magazine this month in which the model on the
cover would appear to me to be 13 or 14.
So I mean, this is affecting us culture-wide, but on the
Internet, particularly from some of the foreign Web sites, we
are having a lot of direct stuff coming. But if you go into any
bookstore today, you will see magazines like the Barely Legal
magazine, Just 18, things of that nature. There is an epidemic
rise in interest in this.
And, by the way, my clinical colleagues would want me to
say that pedophilia is technically sexual interest in a child
12 and under. What we are talking about here with this teenage
sexuality is 18 and under, and we refer to that as hebephelia,
but it is a rampant problem and, again to say it for the 10th
time, growing in epidemic proportions.
Mr. Flores. I would like to add two things. One is that the
Safeguarding Our Children, United Mothers and Cyber Angels has
a list, and their estimation is there are approximately 40,000
sites devoted to this type of topic. Whether they range from
actual child pornography or pseudo-child pornography, I don't
know.
Mr. Ehrlich. When you are talking about 40,000 sites, you
are talking about child pornography?
Mr. Flores. Sites which pander to what would most people
would think would be sex, interest of sex with children. But I
think that, you know, one of the things that you would normally
see is that in most of the Justice Department's prosecutions of
child pornography, they really focus on a very--and when I was
there, I did the same thing--we focus, we try to say from the
bright line, from the age of 18, because quite frankly there
are a ton of cases out there and it is like shooting fish in a
barrel.
But what it means is that because many of the men and women
or boys and girls that are depicted in this pseudo-child
pornography can be anywhere between 13 and 18, and they have
adult bodies, but these are bodies which also correspond to,
you know, a body type of someone without big hips or big
breasts or what you would normally acknowledge to be an adult
woman. We don't know, because we don't know who those children
are. We don't know how old they are. We don't know the
pornographer. Is the guy honest in telling us, yes, I have
verified, I have checked the birth certificate, I have checked
the driver's license? And this is a particularly vulnerable
age, especially today.
I remember as a teenager I wanted to be 21 in just a
horrible way, and so to be treated as an adult, to be treated
as mature, is of great interest. And so we have all of these
children that are out there, and I for one as I look at some of
these images that are offered as adult, barely legal, just over
18, I wonder if many of them are 13 or 14 and 15. And it would
seem to me, even if you didn't want to tackle some areas of
adult obscenity, this would be an area that cries out for
attention because these are our kids.
Mr. Ehrlich. Well put, and my time is up. Thank you all
very much.
Mr. Tauzin. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Mississippi, Mr. Pickering, for a round of questions.
Mr. Pickering. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you
for having this hearing today and allowing us a chance to
listen to the panel and to see if there is something that can
be done to gather and garner the attention of the public and
the Justice Department of the great need to protect our
children, to fully enforce both obscenity and child pornography
laws. I want to thank Mr. Largent for all of his hard work in
this area and being the force behind this hearing.
I think Mr. Largent is right: If we enforced our obscenity
laws, a lot of the other efforts that many of us are doing--I
have a bill, for example, that would require all schools and
libraries to have a filter or a blocking device if they accept
an e-rate. In many ways, that could protect our children from
many of the harmful effects of both obscenity and pornography
as well as other sites that induce violence or hatred that we
are seeing in school-age children that have access.
Let me ask Ms. LaRue and other members of the panel, if the
Justice Department continues its laissez-faire approach to
obscenity, would a national policy for our schools and
libraries of finding some protective filter or blocking or some
policy, do you think that would be a helpful step as well to
protect our children? Ms. LaRue.
Ms. LaRue. Mr. Pickering, this problem is so serious and so
pervasive that we have to do everything we can to protect the
children of this country and to prevent more victims who will
become addicts to this material and to do, as the Supreme Court
said, to hope to maintain a decent society.
However, with all due respect, and I certainly support your
bill wholeheartedly, and I think you will agree with me, when
we talk about filtering and all that parents can do, we are
talking about almost Band-Aid applications to an epidemic. To
me it is like telling the citizens of a particular community
where the dam is breaking. Well, you can go down to the local
fire department and get some free sandbags. It is time to fix
the dam. It is time to hold those accountable who have
jurisdiction over this dam that has burst on this society, to
enforce the law and to prevent us from having more victims and
turning our libraries into virtual dirty bookstores.
There is an incident in this book, one of the more than
2,000, where a 13-year-old boy in Phoenix, Arizona went into
the men's room of the public library and offered a 4-year old
boy 25 cents if he could perform a sex act on him. I have a
copy of the police report. When the police interrogated this
13-year-old boy about why he did this, where he learned this,
he said, I come in here every day and I look at pornography.
And, by the way, he just happened to get into a chat room with
a pedophile, who dared him to do that very thing, to try to
commit a sex act on a younger child.
And so, yes, while I support your bill and I applaud you
for it and for others like it, we just can't rely on that. We
have to have the Department of Justice enforcing our Federal
obscenity laws.
Mr. Laaser. I am sorry to keep interrupting.
Mr. Pickering. Let me ask you, Mr. Laaser, what are you
seeing in your practice as far as children who may be exposed?
You had mentioned one case, access of an 11-year-old boy who
acted out on what he was seeing at a public library. Are you
seeing other children, whether through their school or through
libraries, that are having the manifestations of problems that
can really be destructive?
Mr. Laaser. Very definitely. As I think I have said before,
we are seeing a rise in the cases of teenagers who are at that
age, 12, 13, 14, 15, addicted already to sexuality in general.
We are seeing an increase in the numbers of kids. It used to be
that you would not expect a 7-, 8-, 9-year-old to present with
problems of having seen pornography. Today we are seeing those
cases.
Mr. Pickering. Now, do many of them talk about their access
being schools or libraries?
Mr. Laaser. Yes, absolutely. Yes. I mean, you know, parents
of minors, parents who are providing Internet filtering devices
like the one presented here today, I mean they can still go to
their public schools and get it there. I would challenge--and I
get myself in trouble. We could go to any public school within
a 50-mile radius that has online access and we don't need very
many computer skills and we could get into the hardest and most
violent core types of pornography.
Mr. Pickering. Mr. Flores, let me ask, you are legal
counsel on the subject of filters for schools and libraries.
Yesterday I was very disappointed. When I was working on
Senator Lott's staff and on the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
I worked on the amendment that would require the cable systems
to fully scramble the pornographic or adult sites. That was
struck down on a 5-to-4 decision yesterday. It was the Lott-
Feinstein amendment.
Would you see any, based on current court precedent
decisions, would you see any legal or constitutional challenges
to a bill that would require schools and libraries to use
filters if they accept the e-rate?
Mr. Flores. The Supreme Court has provided broad latitude
to the Congress to condition receipt of its money on action by
State and localities. Obviously it has to be done within
certain limits. It is not carte blanche, and I don't think that
many Members of Congress really want to impose a straitjacket
on any community, but certainly I don't think that there would
be a constitutional problem with that. I think that falls
probably more into the area of just plain politics.
I would, if I could, just follow up on Dr. Laaser's
comments. One of the things that you will hear probably from
the Justice Department is about a case called the Orchid Club,
and I worked with the assistant U.S. attorneys who were
prosecuting that case, and it is such a revolting case that it
is hard to really conceive that actions like that took place.
But I think that is part of the issue, is that there is a sense
of lawlessness on the Internet because the marshal is not
there. I mean, there just does not seem to be--and this cuts
across a number of areas from copyright and fraud, penny stock
manipulation.
The other issue is that the Justice Department is spending
a substantial amount of money working on important efforts,
things like violence against women, trying to make sure that
there aren't unconstitutional glass ceilings, making sure that
girls get access to science and math programs. And all of these
are jeopardized if we have a generation of boys who are going
to grow up addicted to material which teaches them that girls
like sex with humiliation and pain; that the secretaries
really--that is her job, is to make the boss happy, not to
really carry out official business. I mean, this sends just
horrible messages which undermine--even the date rape drug,
Rohypnol, that Attorney General Reno focused on a number of
years ago, we are going to see an explosion in date rape
because this material teaches one consistent message: No does
not mean no. And the early Playboy philosophy was that it is
every man's job in life to relieve women of that nasty little
fact, their virginity. This is a consistent message and it
places even DOJ programs at jeopardy.
Mr. Tauzin. The gentleman's time has expired. We are faced
with a choice here that I want to perhaps ask your assistance,
Mr. Gershel. We are finished with this panel, and what I would
like to do is give everybody a lunch break and come back at
1:30 if that's acceptable to you.
Mr. Gershel. That will be fine.
Mr. Tauzin. While he is discussing it, let me take care of
a point of business and get back to you. Ms. LaRue, we have
examined with legal counsel your request. If you would like to
reenter your request we can accept your material provided that
it be filed in the permanent record of this proceeding, not for
duplication, which is the normal process I think. Is that
acceptable?
Ms. LaRue. It certainly is.
Mr. Tauzin. Then, without objection, her material will be
accepted by the committee, filed in our permanent record.
The gentleman from Texas.
Mr. Green. Mr. Chairman, I understand there is a committee
hearing in this room, at 2:30 in this room. Even more so, I
would like to follow up while we are discussing, and I
understand Ms. Stewart with FamilyClick.com actually has an
Internet service that libraries could buy that is between the
ISP and the libraries, and I would just like to know that
because I think--in fact, I agree with my colleague from
Mississippi's legislation, and I know the technology is there
to be able to do that.
Mr. Tauzin. Let me recognize the gentleman to ask that
question while I discuss with Mr. Largent.
Mr. Green. Is that correct? And I apologize for not being
here earlier because of votes and everything else. Is that true
that the Houston public libraries and my Harris County public
library in Houston can actually purchase that ability right now
to have that?
Ms. Stewart. Yes, sir. There are many filtering companies
that provide filters, some better than others. The filters do a
great job of protecting innocent searching, blocking, you know,
the things that I pointed out. But if you want to find
pornography, or you go in there for a specific purpose, you
will find it. There is no way for us to block it all because it
is coming online so fast every day. And also the images, we do
not have the technology available right now to scan the images.
We are testing with it. It runs on great multimillion dollar
computers and it is impossible for us to put that online right
now.
Mr. Tauzin. The Chair will put Mr. Largent in the chair and
we will continue the hearing so that we don't have to--
unfortunately, we won't have a lunch break, but that I think
will keep everybody in the room.
So, Mr. Gershel, we will proceed on time. Let me thank this
panel very much and we appreciate your attendance. The record
will stay open for 30 days. If you have additional information
or submittals, you are perfectly free to do so, and members may
have written questions within the 30-day period of time they
want to send you.
Again, thank you for your testimony and let me particularly
thank you the two of you for your personal observations on your
own personal history with this issue.
We will now call the second panel, Mr. Alan Gershel, the
Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division,
Department of Justice. Mr. Gershel, I was unhappy about the
discussion we had this morning. I am very happy you stayed and
listened to this panel, and what you have heard today may be a
backdrop in terms of what you want to tell us in terms of the
Justice Department's position on enforcing these criminal
statutes. I thank you for being courteous enough to sit through
the first panel and to hear their testimony.
The Chair will ask you again, as we ask all our panelists
to, without objection, that the written statement of Mr.
Gershel is a part of the record, without objection. Mr.
Gershel, we will be generous in terms of providing you
additional time to make your presentation, and the Chair now
recognizes you for that and recognizes Mr. Largent in the
Chair.
Mr. Largent [presiding]. Go ahead, Mr. Gershel.
STATEMENTS OF ALAN GERSHEL, DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL,
CRIMINAL DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE; ACCOMPANIED BY TERRY
R. LORD, CHIEF, CHILD EXPLOITATION AND OBSCENITY SECTION,
CRIMINAL DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, good morning. Sitting on my
right, I would like to introduce Mr. Terry Lord. He is the
chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. He is
joining me up here this morning as well.
Mr. Chairman, I welcome this opportunity to speak about the
achievements of the Department of Justice regarding its
prosecution of illegal use of the Internet to exploit our
children. In the brief time that I have today, I would like to
highlight what the Department of Justice has been doing. At the
outset, I have heard the testimony about the proliferation of
obscenity on the Internet. I know there are victims of Internet
obscenity and that obscenity has damaged the fabric of many
marriages.
The Federal Government takes seriously its mandate to
prosecute obscenity cases, and each year various United States
Attorneys bring obscenity prosecutions against material they
deem is obscene according to their own community standards.
In considering the question of how to address illegal
material that proliferates on the Internet, however, the
Attorney General has given the investigation and prosecution of
cases involving the use of minors in producing pornography the
highest priority, and I can assure you that the Department will
continue to do so.
The visual representations of children engaged in sexual
activity are the most pernicious form of obscenity because it
necessarily involves an unconsenting victim. I would like to
tell you about some of our efforts in this area.
Child pornography prosecutions are at a nationwide all time
high. According to figures provided to us by the executive
office of the United States Attorneys, in fiscal year 1999,
United States Attorneys filed 510 Federal child pornography
cases concerning 525 defendants. During that same period, 378
persons were convicted. In fiscal year 1999, the Department had
a 90 percent conviction rate. This increase reflects in part
our national effort to prosecute those who utilize the Internet
to exploit our children.
Here in Washington, D.C., the Criminal Division continues
to coordinate the Department's efforts to prosecute traffickers
of child pornography. Most recently, the United States
Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas indicted
five individuals.
Mr. Largent. Mr. Gershel, if you will excuse me just for a
second, we understand the Department has an excellent record on
prosecution of child pornography. However, that is not what
this hearing is about. So if you want to go ahead and cite
statistics about things that this hearing has nothing to do
with, that is fine, I will let you continue. But again, the
focus of this hearing is on the prosecution of obscenity, not
child pornography. You may continue.
Mr. Gershel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With all due respect,
we take the view that child pornography is the worst kind of
obscenity, and we believe that it is a primary mission of the
Child Exploitation Section at this time. I would like to
continue with my statement. It is much along the same lines.
As I indicated, here in Washington, the Criminal Division
continues to coordinate the Department's efforts to prosecute
traffickers of child pornography. In the case I just mentioned
it involved five individuals, two Americans, one Russian, and
two Indonesians, in a multiple-count indictment with sexual
exploitation of minors, distribution of child pornography,
aiding and abetting and criminal forfeiture. The two American
defendants operated a credit card verification service that
acted as an electronic gateway to the pictures and movies of
minors' sexually explicit conduct. Also as part of the
conspiracy, the American defendants operated a bulletin board
service to capture customers, notices, promotions,
advertisements and images of child pornography in order to
market, advertise, and promote child pornography by computer.
The Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section in
collaboration with the FBI also helped to coordinate the
Innocent Images project which was organized in 1995 to combat
the trafficking of child pornography over computer networks.
CEOS, as it is called, continues to work closely with the FBI
on the Innocent Images project. The FBI is currently creating
regional task forces to work these cases, and CEOS participates
in training with the task force personnel.
The CEOS works closely with United States Customs Service
and its Cyber Smuggling Center, which has several undercover
operations in effect. CEOS is working with the Customs Service
on Operation Cheshire Cat, an international child pornography
investigation. This operation was an outgrowth of the Orchid
Club case to which I have referred in my written testimony.
For the preparation for this project, CEOS worked with the
Customs Service in 28 Federal districts to develop search
warrant affidavits and provide other guidance. CEOS continues
to provide technical assistance on this and other Customs
Service child pornography projects.
The Department also works closely with the United States
Postal Inspection Service which has developed numerous
undercover operations targeting Internet child pornographers
who use the U.S. mail to ship child pornography materials. CEOS
is currently working with the Postal Service on projects
looking at the Web postings offering child pornography to be
shipped via the mail.
Our efforts to protect children using the Internet have not
stopped at the national level, however. The Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention, OJJDP as it is called, in
fiscal years 1999 and 2000 has provided funding for the
establishment of 30 Internet Crimes Against Children Task
Forces in several regions around the country that involve
local, State, and Federal law enforcement working together on
these crimes against children.
Two attorneys from CEOS have been assigned as legal
advisers to the task forces, and they regularly participate in
the training programs for the task force personnel.
We are also working with new tools enacted by Congress that
enable us to quickly acquire information about violators from
Internet service providers and to subpoena identifying
information. Pursuant to the Protection of Children from Sexual
Predators Act of 1998, Internet service providers are required
to report incidents of child pornography on their system
through the appropriate Federal agency. In November 1999,
Congress amended the statute to require providers to report
such incidents to the cyber tip line operated by the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which in turn
contacts Federal and State law enforcement.
The Protection of Children from the Sexual Predators Act
also granted administrative subpoena authority to the
Department in cases involving child abuse and child sexual
exploitation. The Attorney General has delegated the FBI,
criminal division of the Department, and the United States
Attorneys' offices with power to issue these administrative
subpoenas to Internet service providers who require specified
identifying information about those who unlawfully use the
Internet to sexually exploit children.
The Department has also facilitated prosecution of Internet
crimes against children on the international front as well. In
September and October 1999, the Department attended an
international conference on combating child pornography on the
Internet in Vienna, Austria. We played a major role in the
planning of this conference. During this conference, an
Internet service provider discussed the development of an
industry code of conduct to combat child pornography online and
made several recommendations for the type of issues that must
be covered.
CEOS also works internationally with the European Union and
the Council of Europe to develop protocols to combat child
pornography. These protocols, which are still being negotiated,
cover not only substantive criminal law regarding what conduct
all countries must prescribe but also procedural guidelines for
investigations that necessarily are international in scope.
What I have presented today highlights just some of our
efforts the Department of Justice has made to protect our
families online. We have made a strong commitment to our child
protection efforts and this commitment will continue.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before the
committee today. I will be happy to try and answer any
questions, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Alan Gershel follows:]
Prepared Statement of Alan Gershel, Deputy Assistant Attorney General,
Criminal Division, Department of Justice
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: I appear today to
discuss a matter of importance to us: the proliferation of pornography
on the Internet and the danger to children that can result from the use
of the Internet for unlawful activity.
1. In considering the question of how to address illegal material
that proliferates on the Internet, the Attorney General has given the
investigation and prosecution of cases involving the use of minors in
producing pornography the highest priority, and I can assure you that
the Department will continue to do so. Visual representations of
children engaged in sexual activity are the most pernicious form of
obscenity because it necessarily involves an unconsenting victim. As an
example, the Department recently prosecuted a child pornography
production ring, known as the ``Orchid Club.'' Members of the ``club''
requested and received real time images of children being molested in
front of video cameras that relayed the pictures to members via the
Internet.
Furthermore, with the prevalence of computers and easy Internet
access, there has been a rapid increase in crimes involving trafficking
in child pornography and use of the Internet to meet children for
sexual activity.
The Department has devoted a large portion of its resources to
prosecute aggressively this increased threat to children. Over the past
four years, the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section's (CEOS's)
original mandate to prosecute obscenity, including child pornography,
has been greatly expanded. The Section is now also tasked to prosecute
additional crimes that have child victims. Since Fiscal Year 1996, the
information we provided to Congress to support our budget request
included a description of the expanded mission.
The most recent budget submission to Congress (for FY 2001 now
pending) described CEOS as a section that prosecutes and assists United
States Attorneys in prosecuting persons who, under the federal criminal
statutes: possess, manufacture, or distribute child pornography; sell,
buy or transport women and children interstate or internationally to
engage in sexually explicit conduct; travel interstate or
internationally to sexually abuse children; abuse children on federal
and Indian lands; do not pay certain court-ordered child support
payments; transport obscene material, including child pornography, in
interstate or foreign commerce either via the mails, common carrier,
cable television lines, telephone lines or satellite transmission; and
engage in international parental child abduction.
CEOS attorneys assist United States Attorneys Offices (USAOs) in
investigations, trials, and appeals related to these statutes.
Additionally, CEOS attorneys provide advice on victim-witness issues,
and develop and refine proposals for prosecution policies, legislation,
governmental practices and agency regulations in the areas of sexual
exploitation of minors, child support and obscenity for USAOs, United
States Customs Service, United States Postal Service, and the FBI. CEOS
also conducts and participates in training of federal, state, local and
international prosecutors, investigators and judges in the areas of
child exploitation and trafficking of women and children.
The Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section has coordinated
several investigation and prosecution programs to combat the use of
computers and computer bulletin board systems that traffic in child
pornography. These programs specifically target the illegal
importation, distribution, sale and possession of child pornography by
computer, as well as individuals who attempt to solicit children online
for exploitation. These investigations often utilize undercover agents,
posing as children, but who are trained not to engage in activities
that might constitute entrapment.
Our efforts have produced striking results. In the past five years,
we have seen an increase in child pornography cases filed from 127 in
fiscal year 1995, to 510 cases filed in fiscal year 1999. We have seen
similar increases in cases filed under statutes prohibiting using the
Internet to entice a child for illegal sexual activity, and traveling
in interstate commerce for the purposes of meeting a child for illegal
sexual activity.
2. We have also worked closely with the Civil Division in defending
the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), as enacted by Congress in 1998.
As recently recognized by the district court reviewing the Child Online
Protection Act, it is undisputed that ``sexually explicit material
exists on the Internet,'' including the World Wide Web. This material
includes ``text, pictures, audio and video images,'' and ``extends from
the modestly titillating to the hardest core.'' The House Report on
COPA estimated that there were approximately 28,000 Web sites promoting
pornography, and that these sites generated ``close to $925 million in
annual revenue.'' H.R. Rep. No. 105-775, at 7 (1998).
Congress first sought to address the problem of children's access
to sexually explicit materials on the Internet in section 502 of the
Communications Decency Act (``CDA''), enacted in 1996. The CDA
prohibited the knowing transmission of obscene or ``indecent'' messages
over the Internet to persons under the age of 18, 47 U.S.C. Sec. 223(c)
(Supp. II 1996), as well as the sending or display of patently
offensive sexually explicit messages in a manner available to those
under 18 years of age. 47 U.S.C. Sec. 223(d). The statute provided,
however, that it would be an affirmative defense to prosecution for
those persons who had ``taken, in good faith, reasonable, effective,
and appropriate actions under the circumstances to restrict or prevent
access by minors'' to those communications covered by the statute, or
who had restricted access to a covered communication ``by requiring use
of a verified credit card, debit account, adult access code, or adult
personal identification number.'' 47 U.S.C. Sec. 223(e)(5) (Supp. II
1996).
On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court held the CDA unconstitutional
under the First Amendment. Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997). The Court
noted that it had previously agreed that the government has a ``
`compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-
being of minors' which extend[s] to shielding them from indecent
messages that are not obscene by adult standards.'' 521 U.S. at 869
(citation omitted). But, emphasizing that the ``breadth of the CDA's
coverage'' was ``not limited to commercial speech or commercial
entities,'' and that ``[t]he general, undefined terms `indecent' and
`patently offensive' '' would ``cover large amounts of non-pornographic
material with serious educational or other value,'' id. at 877, the
Court invalidated the statute because it ``place[d] an unacceptably
heavy burden on protected speech.'' Id. at 882.
With the invalidation of the CDA, Congress renewed its efforts to
address the problem of children's access to sexually explicit material
on the Internet. As the House Commerce Committee observed, while the
Internet is ``not yet as `invasive' as broadcasting, its popularity and
growth because of electronic commerce and expansive Federal subsidy
programs make it widely accessible for minors.'' House Report, at 9.
``Moreover,'' the Committee explained, ``because of sophisticated, yet
easy to use navigating software, minors who can read and type are [as]
capable of conducting Web searches as easily as operating a television
remote.'' Id. at 9-10. The Committee found that purveyors of sexually
explicit material ``generally display many unrestricted and sexually
explicit images to advertise and entice the consumer into engaging into
a commercial transaction,'' id. at 10, and that the availability of
such material to minors demonstrated a continued need for legislation
to protect children from the effects of unrestricted exposure to such
material. The Committee emphasized the government's compelling interest
in protecting children from exposure to sexually explicit material and
noted that legislatures have long ``sought to shield children from
exposure to material that could distort their views of sexuality,''
whether by ``requir[ing] pornography to be sold behind the counter at a
drug store, on blinder racks at a convenience store, in a shrink wrap
at a news stand, or broadcast between certain hours of the night.'' Id.
at 11.
In the end, after examining the matter in hearings by committees in
both Houses, Congress found that the ``widespread availability of the
Internet'' continues to ``present[] opportunities for minors to access
materials through the World Wide Web in a manner that can frustrate
parental supervision or control.'' Pub. L. No. 105-277, Sec. 1402(1),
112 Stat. 2681-736 (1998). Moreover, it stated, ``while the industry
has developed innovative ways to help parents and educators restrict
material that is harmful to minors though parental control protections
and self-regulation, such efforts have not provided a national solution
to the problem of minors accessing harmful material on the World Wide
Web.'' Id. Sec. 1402(3). As a result, Congress passed and the President
signed into law the Child Online Protection Act (``COPA''), Pub. L. No.
105-277, Sec. Sec. 1401-1406, 112 Stat. 2681-736 to 2681-741 (1998) (to
be codified at 47 U.S.C. Sec. 231).
COPA authorized the imposition of criminal and civil penalties on
any person who ``knowingly and with knowledge of the character of the
material, in interstate or foreign commerce by means of the World Wide
Web, makes any communication for commercial purposes that is available
to any minor and that includes any material that is harmful to
minors.'' 47 U.S.C. Sec. 231(a)(1). Under COPA, ``[a] person shall be
considered to make a communication for commercial purposes only if such
person is engaged in the business of making such communications,'' 47
U.S.C. Sec. 231(e)(2)(A). In addition, ``material that is harmful to
minors'' includes only ``matter . . . that is obscene as to minors.''
47 U.S.C. Sec. 231(e)(6).
Congress established an ``affirmative defense to prosecution'' if a
defendant ``in good faith, has restricted access by minors'' to the
material covered by the statute, by requiring, among other things, the
``use of a credit card, debit account, adult access code, or adult
personal identification number'' in order to access covered material.
47 U.S.C. Sec. 231(c)(1)(A).
In passing COPA, Congress meant to ``address the specific concerns
raised by the Supreme Court'' in invalidating the CDA. House Report, at
12. Thus, COPA applied, not to all Internet communications, but ``only
to material posted on the World Wide Web.'' Ibid.; see 47 U.S.C.
Sec. 231(a)(1). As a result, COPA ``does not apply to content
distributed through other aspects of the Internet,'' including e-mail,
listservs, USENET newsgroups, Internet relay chat, or real time remote
utilization, such as telnet, or non-Web forms of remote information
retrieval, such as file transfer protocol (ftp) or gopher, all of which
would have been affected by the CDA. House Report, at 12.
The character of the material covered by COPA was significantly
different than that covered by the CDA. The CDA applied to Internet
communications that contained ``indecent'' or ``patently offensive''
sexual material. 47 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 223(a)(1)(B), 223(d) (Supp. II
1996). By contrast, COPA applied to material that is ``harmful to
minors,'' 47 U.S.C. Sec. 231(a)(1), that is, material that not only
contains a patently offensive depiction or description of sexual
activities or sexual contact, but that the average person, applying
community standards, would find is designed to appeal to or pander to
the ``prurient interest,'' and, as important, lacks ``serious literary,
artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.'' 47 U.S.C.
Sec. 231(e)(6). See House Report, at 13.
Congress emphasized that, in using the ``harmful to minors''
formulation, it was employing a standard that ``has been tested and
refined for thirty years to limit its reach to materials that are
clearly pornographic and inappropriate for minor children of the age
groups to which it is directed.'' House Report, at 28.
In addition, COPA applied only to those Web communications that are
made ``for commercial purposes,'' 47 U.S.C. Sec. 231(a)(1), i.e., only
if the person is ``engaged in the business'' of making such
communications. 47 U.S.C. Sec. 231(e)(2).
Congress adopted COPA only after considering and rejecting
alternative means of protecting children from harmful material on the
Web, emphasizing that such alternatives ``generally involve[d] zoning
and blocking techniques that rely on screening material after it has
been posted on the Internet or received by the end-user.'' House
Report, at 16. In Congress's opinion, it was ``more effective to screen
the material prior to it being sent or posted to minors.'' Ibid.
The President signed COPA into law on October 21, 1998. The
following day, the American Civil Liberties Union, joined by a number
of individuals and organizations that publish content on the World Wide
Web, filed a suit in federal district court in Philadelphia, contending
that the statute violated their First and Fifth Amendment rights.
The Department vigorously defended the constitutionality of the
statute. Nonetheless, on November 20, 1998 nine days before the statute
would have gone into effect, the district court entered a temporary
restraining order (``TRO'') enjoining COPA's enforcement. After a five
day evidentiary hearing in January, 1999, the court entered a
preliminary injunction on February 1, 1999. Neither ruling affected
materials that are ``obscene'' or that are child pornography.
The Department appealed the decision to the Third Circuit, making
much the same arguments as in the district court. The case was argued
in November 1999. We are waiting for the Third Circuit to rule on the
cases.
In the meantime, we are prohibited from prosecuting ``harmful to
minors'' material, although we are free to prosecute material on the
Internet that is obscene and that is child pornography.
3. As I have stated, the Department is vigorously enforcing our
child pornography laws as they apply to the Internet. We are also
enforcing our obscenity laws, as they apply to the Internet. We do
investigate and prosecute transmission of obscenity over the Internet,
where appropriate. Last fall, the Assistant Attorney General for the
Criminal Division met with members of public interest groups who were
concerned about the prevalence of Internet obscenity, particularly on
World Wide Web sites. At the meeting, the groups submitted a list of
hundreds of Web sites that, in their view, were possibly illegal. The
Department agreed to review these sites for possible referral to an
investigative agency.
After a thorough consideration of each referral, the Department
concluded that the vast majority could not be referred. In our view,
many sites failed to meet the three prong test for obscenity as
delineated in the Miller v. California case. Nonetheless, several sites
were deemed appropriate for further investigation and were referred to
an investigative agency.
In conclusion, we all agree that we must continue to work to
protect our children and the public at large from those who use the
Internet to exploit children and to distribute illegal obscenity. We
look forward to working with you in achieving that goal.
Mr. Largent. Thank you, Mr. Gershel, and I would tell you
that if in fact this committee holds a hearing on child
pornography, that will be important testimony that you have
just submitted and we will reflect on that. However this
hearing is about obscenity and the lack of prosecutions
thereof.
How long have you been at the Department of Justice Mr.
Gershel?
Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, my background is I began with
the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit in 1980. I served there
for almost 20 years. I am currently there as both the criminal
chief and the first Assistant U.S. Attorney and I am down here
in Washington on a detail beginning in January for 1 year as a
Deputy Assistant Attorney General.
Mr. Largent. And how many obscenity cases has the
Department prosecuted since 1996? Not child pornography;
obscenity.
Mr. Gershel. I believe we have furnished statistics which
would indicate approximately 14, 15, perhaps as many as 20
obscenity cases.
Mr. Largent. Those are obscenity cases exclusive of child
pornography?
Mr. Gershel. Exclusive of child pornography.
Mr. Largent. In other words, child pornography had nothing
to do with the cases that were brought? It was strictly
obscenity cases in the last 4 years, 14?
Mr. Gershel. Excuse me 1 second.
Mr. Largent. The reason I ask the question, of course, Mr.
Flores testified that sometimes they are tacked together.
Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, if I might, Mr. Lord might be
able to specifically answer that question dealing with
statistics.
Mr. Lord. Mr. Chairman, in all of those cases, obscenity
counts were charged and there were convictions. There may have
been other charges brought in those indictments, but obscenity
counts were charged and those are the statistics. There is no
question about obscenity cases being brought.
Mr. Largent. Okay. So we have testimony that between 1989
and 1995 the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and
Obscenity Section, which you are a part of today, actually not
brought but had 126 individual and corporate convictions with
obscenity violations, not child pornography; 126 individual and
corporate convictions for obscenity violations which resulted
in the imposition or award of more than $24 million in fines
and forfeitures.
My question is: Since 1996, how many convictions have there
been of individuals or corporate entities for obscenity
violations--obscenity violations--and how many dollars in fines
and forfeitures have occurred?
Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, we don't have those figures
available. We can furnish them to the committee at a later time
and would be happy to do so.
Mr. Largent. I would take an estimate.
Mr. Gershel. We just don't have the information. Of
forfeiture, we don't have the information.
Mr. Largent. But you are responsible for the Child
Exploitation and Obscenity Section?
Mr. Gershel. I oversee that section.
Mr. Largent. Is it Terry?
Mr. Gershel. Yes, sir.
Mr. Largent. You are the head of the Child Exploitation and
Obscenities Section?
Mr. Lord. Yes, I am.
Mr. Largent. And you don't have any idea?
Mr. Lord. I can get you the exact amount of forfeiture
involved in those cases, Mr. Chairman. I wasn't asked to
provide those today.
Mr. Largent. That was the purpose of the hearing. I think
you got notice of that.
Let me go on. What is the problem? Is this a personnel and
money issue? Do you not have the personnel, don't have the
money available to prosecute obscenity?
Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, no, I think the answer is that
the current priorities are in fact child pornography, which is
the worst, most vile form of obscenity.
Mr. Largent. We all agree with that.
Mr. Gershel. That is where the resources of the Justice
Department, both here in Washington and in the 94 U.S.
Attorneys Offices, are being primarily devoted, to the
prosecution, investigation and conviction of those who
victimize our children.
Mr. Largent. Exactly. So what happened to the $1 million
that the Congress appropriated to the Department of Justice to
prosecute not child pornography but obscenity, what has
happened to that money? How have you spent that money?
Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, I don't want to quibble with you
but that money was earmarked, as I understand, for the
prosecution of obscenity cases. We continue to take the view
that child pornography is in fact obscenity, and that money was
utilized to hire more prosecutors to engage in those efforts.
We have instituted a number of sophisticated training
programs for prosecuting agencies around the country. We have
used that money to help buy equipment, laptop computers for
people engaged in that effort. That money was spent, well
spent, and devoted to the prosecution of the worst kind of
obscenity.
Mr. Largent. Well, frankly, I am astounded that the
gentleman that is responsible for this investigation is
confusing or merging two terms, legal terms of art, that
everybody understands are mutually exclusive. Obscenity is not
the same as child pornography. And so when Congress says we
appropriate $1 million to prosecute obscenity, we are not
talking about child pornography. We gave you money for that,
too. We are talking about obscenity. What happened to the $1
million to prosecute obscenity, not child pornography?
Mr. Gershel. I believe I have answered your question, sir.
Mr. Largent. I don't think you have answered my question.
Maybe you can submit that in writing at another time as well.
Mr. Pickering. Mr. Chairman, I am afraid he did answer your
question, if you would yield just a second. They didn't do it,
they don't know anything about it.
Mr. Largent. I think I have just a little bit of time left
before I yield. Mr. Gershel, do you have any idea who the
largest producers and distributors of hard-core, sexually
explicit material are?
Mr. Gershel. As we sit here now, I could not give you that
information, no.
Mr. Largent. Does the Department know?
Mr. Gershel. I believe that they have intelligent
information on some of those issues, yes.
Mr. Largent. But you are not sure?
Mr. Gershel. I believe they do.
Mr. Largent. Can you produce those?
Mr. Gershel. That would depend, sir. If those matters are
under investigation I would be reluctant to produce that
information at this point in time.
Mr. Largent. I would like to yield to the gentleman from
Ohio, Mr. Sawyer.
Mr. Sawyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I have some
substantial sympathy with the notion that there is no worse
form of obscenity than the exploitation of children for sexual
purposes and that I would take the view, Mr. Chairman, that the
question was asked several times and that in fact that $1
million was devoted to the pursuit of the worst form of
obscenity that the Justice Department deals with. It seems to
me we sat here for----
Mr. Pickering. Would the gentleman yield just for a second?
Mr. Sawyer. I am not going to yield. The Chairman went on
at some length, and we sat here this morning and we listened
for extended periods of time to testimony about just how
dangerous pedophilia is, how threatening it is in the lives of
ordinary people who wind up being victimized by this sort of
thing. And to argue that that somehow this is not obscenity I
think is to beg the question.
Having said that, this morning there was a good deal of
testimony about the failure of the Justice Department to
undertake the kind of work that at least the panelists who were
with us this morning felt ought to have been undertaken. Would
you care to comment on that testimony that preceded you this
morning?
Mr. Gershel. Congressman, a couple of comments. First of
all, the----
Mr. Sawyer. Could you bring the microphone closer? Those
are very directional mikes. You have really got to get it----
Mr. Gershel. First of all, I listened to most of the
testimony, both the statements and the questions, and it was
clear to me and I am sure to my colleagues that these are very
strongly held beliefs. I certainly cannot begin to understand
the trauma that the gentleman went through who was addicted to
pornography, and I am not going to try in any way to argue with
that. But what I would like to say, though, is that we have
established prosecutor guidelines for prosecution of obscenity
cases, that is, cases not dealing with child pornography, and
we believe those guidelines are appropriate under the
circumstances. They deal with the investigation of what we
believe to be major national and international pornographers.
It has been our belief and experience that oftentimes these
groups, as has been mentioned, are funded by organized crime
activities. We believe that these investigations are time
consuming, they are complex. They often involve charges in
addition to obscenity. They may involve RICO charges, money
laundering offenses and things of that nature.
I should also indicate, if I can have one more moment to
respond to your question----
Mr. Sawyer. Sure.
Mr. Gershel. [continuing] that one of the comments made by
Mr. Flores I do happen to agree with. There were more than one,
but this one in particular. When discussing child pornography,
I believe he used the expression ``tons of cases'' and
``shooting fish in a barrel,'' and unfortunately that probably
is true.
Shortly after I came to Washington I asked for a tour of
the Innocent Images project, and while touring the project we
actually had an online demonstration, and an FBI agent went on
line into chat rooms that had been determined to consist of
people engaging in this kind of activity; that is, child
pornography. He posed as a 14-year-old girl. And sir, within 5
minutes, with no effort on his part, he was able to engage in a
conversation with this person. Now, mind you, this is the
middle of the work day, and with a little more effort, I am
sure he could have arranged a meeting with this individual, and
that was pure happenstance, pure chance, just part of the tour
of the Innocent Images. They had their hands full,
unfortunately, with just keeping up with the work that is out
there, and that is again where the resources of the Department
are going to be devoted, to the prosecution of child
pornography.
Mr. Sawyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. I yield
to my friend from Mississippi.
Mr. Pickering. Yes, and let me just, you know, again for
the record, not of policy, not of emotion, but as I understand
it, the law, that there is a difference in the law between
child pornography and obscenity. And I can read the obscenity
statute or the definition of obscenity and I can read the
definition of child pornography. You know, the Justice
Department, I think, is fully aware of this. I don't want to--
--
Mr. Sawyer. I appreciate the gentleman's comment and I do
understand that. Reclaiming my time, would the witness care to
respond to the assertion?
Mr. Gershel. Excuse me one moment. Congressman, we do agree
they are not the same, but it is our view that they do
substantially overlap. So if I said it was exactly the same,
that was a misstatement. I stand corrected. We do believe there
is a substantial overlap.
Mr. Sawyer. Mr. Chairman, I would like to withdraw from
this conversation, and perhaps the gentleman from Mississippi
could----
Mr. Largent. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair
recognizes the gentleman from Mississippi for 5 minutes.
Mr. Pickering. And I think you just made my point for me.
There is significant overlap. There is significant interaction.
There is significant contribution, one to the other. A culture
of obscenity leads to a greater culture and exploitation of
children, and the Justice Department, although I would agree
with them in making a targeted effort on child pornography, and
most everyone in the country and on this committee would agree
that child pornography is the worst manifestation, but where
this committee is trying to go and trying to reach common
ground with the Justice Department is that you cannot just
address one.
You have probably seen at the Justice Department, I would
think you would agree, a rise in the exploitation of children
and child pornography over the last 3 to 4 years. Would that be
an accurate statement?
Mr. Gershel. Dramatic increase.
Mr. Pickering. A dramatic increase. One of the reasons I
believe you have the dramatic increase is because of the lax
enforcement or the lax effort to address obscenity. They
overlap, they are integrated, they contribute to each other.
And until you address both, you are going to continue to see a
dramatic increase.
So maybe let us see if we can find common ground. If we,
for example, we gave $1 million just for the enforcement and
prosecution of child obscenity, let us say that we gave you $10
million for the enforcement, $50 million--you pick the number,
whatever it would take for you to do it--if we did that, would
the Justice Department policy change from being a child
pornography-only to a child pornography and obscenity
enforcement and prosecution policy?
Mr. Gershel. Congressman, with all due respect, I take some
exception to the question because I don't believe that CEOS is
exclusively child pornography; primarily, but not exclusively.
Also, I am not in a position to comment about the change in
Department policy.
Mr. Pickering. Could I interrupt just a second? And, again,
I want to listen to you. One, you have been asked questions of
what is the status of your obscenity prosecutions since 1996 or
who are the major producers. You couldn't even tell the
committee those two questions, which is an indication that that
has not been your priority nor your practice. I yield back.
Mr. Gershel. I would stipulate it has not been a priority.
I should indicate though that we have not ignored the problem.
There was a reference during the previous panel's testimony
to a meeting that was had with the Assistant Attorney General
and some other individuals. Although I was not present for that
meeting, I understand that during the course of that meeting a
number of Web sites, for example, were furnished to the
Criminal Division for review.
I should indicate that the CEOS section has undertaken a
comprehensive review of those Web sites, taking several months,
and in fact a number of those have been referred to the FBI for
further investigation and they are currently under
investigation.
Mr. Pickering. Although in your testimony you say, After a
thorough consideration of each referral, the Department
concluded the vast majority could not be referred. Nonetheless,
several sites were deemed appropriate for further investigation
and were referred to an investigative agency.'' So out of
hundreds of examples, you referred how many for further
investigation?
Mr. Gershel. Mr. Chairman, may I allow Mr. Lord to respond
to this question?
Mr. Lord. Congressman, I am not going to comment on the
specific number that we referred. I do want to say that we gave
proper legal analysis to all of those referrals. That is not
normally done. Most of the time in these types of cases, the
investigators conduct that type of investigation, but we deemed
it important enough for section attorneys to make that review
and to give their comments to the FBI. Those comments were
given to the FBI in terms of what type of analysis we gave to
it. We didn't make any predisposition of how they should review
the case. So it's improper to say that we only referred a small
number. We actually turned over the same material that was
given to us to the FBI, but with our analysis.
I also want to comment----
Mr. Pickering. Just interrupting real quickly, I just read
from your own testimony. You describe it in your own testimony.
Mr. Lord. I am just clarifying that, Congressman. Another
point I want to make about this and your trying to separate
obscenity from child pornography, the techniques for
investigation of child pornography and obscenity, of course,
are very similar. It involves online undercover activities; our
work with the State and local Internet crimes against children,
training them to investigate online dissemination of the
materials; our work with the European Union, the Council of
Europe. I also serve on Interpol Standing Committee on Offenses
Against Children. All involve these types of techniques,
working with Internet service providers, attempting to have
data retention, zero tolerance for this activity. All relate to
obscenity just as well as child pornography.
So the funds that we were given to investigate online
obscenity were used to develop those types of techniques with
the European Union, with State and local investigators, which
will improve our efforts in investigating both obscenity and
child pornography.
Mr. Largent. The gentleman's time has expired. I recognize
the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
Justice Department being here today, and I apologize in some
cases for the adversarial relationship I guess we have, but
obviously you know how important it is for all of us. In fact,
I have had the opportunity to meet with the FBI in my own
district and talk to the FBI investigator about child
pornography on the Internet, what they can do to help us. In
fact, they have actually presented programs in our public
schools, and we are trying to do one for parents later on, what
parents can do to keep their children from being subjected to
pornography over the Internet.
And so I think it is a multifaceted effort, not just for
the prosecution, but also with the FBI doing what they can, and
also with Internet service providers, I know; not to say one,
but AOL also helped us.
One of my questions, Mr. Gershel, is the Department of
Justice, FBI, in your latest efforts on catching pedophiles and
using the Internet to track children and child pornography, how
is the Federal Government expanding the enforcement in this
area and what, if anything, are you doing with local
communities like, for example, the State agency, the Department
of Public Safety in Texas as well as our local police agencies?
Mr. Gershel. Congressman, we have, I believe, entered into
a very strong and solid partnership with our State and local
investigative and prosecutive agencies, and many of these task
forces that I referred to in my comments. They are devoted to
looking for instances of child pornography, but obscenity as
well. So we believe we have established a good relationship,
and cases are being developed both at the Federal and the local
level in these areas.
Mr. Green. The second question, let me ask--I know some of
the frustration often deals with our different roles we have;
and, as a Member of Congress, what I consider may be obscene is
not necessarily what the folks across the street at the Supreme
Court may agree. I know we heard in an earlier panel Dr. Laaser
talked about what he considered--I may share that, but, again,
the Justices of the Supreme Court may not--one of the
frustrations we have is that in 1998 this committee--or 1997 to
1998 passed the COPA Act, the Child On-line Protection Act, and
I know also in your testimony you discussed a Community Decency
Act that was struck down by the Supreme Court. And now the COPA
Act is being challenged, and the Justice Department is
appealing that, and I asked an earlier panel if there was any
update on that. Is that still before the appeals court?
Mr. Gershel. Still before the Third Circuit.
Mr. Green. Did the Department of Justice provide Congress
with any suggestions on how to improve the COPA legislation so
that we might pass legislation that would be perfected from
constitutional challenge?
Mr. Gershel. I am sorry, Congressman.
Mr. Green. Do you recall, did the Justice Department
provide Congress with any suggestions when we were considering
the child on-line pornography act on how we can try and pass
legislation that would withstand a constitutional challenge.
Mr. Gershel. I believe the Justice Department worked
closely with the committee to try and draft the statute that
would withstand challenges, and I think we were at the table
with this committee during that process.
Mr. Green. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask unanimous
consent to place in the record a letter sent on October 5,
1998, to our Chair, that is, from the Department of Justice,
discussing H.R. 3783, which is the Child On-line Protection Act
which I think might be--if the Justice Department's suggestions
have been taken, we might have at least dealt with some of the
issues that are now before the appeals court.
Mr. Largent. Without objection.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.006
Mr. Green. Do you recall Congress adopting any of these
suggestions that were made in this letter that is now in the
record or do you have a copy of this letter?
Mr. Gershel. I do not, sir.
Mr. Green. After reviewing it and looking at what I know
about the case, obviously, we made a decision--and, again, we
vote for lots of different reasons, but, again, our legislation
we pass, we have another branch of government that makes that
decision for us. And I may consider something unconstitutional
or constitutional, obviously protection against pornography,
but they may not be shared by the folks that actually serve on
the Supreme Court.
Did DOJ vigorously defend this law before the court that we
passed, the Child On-line Protection Act?
Mr. Gershel. I believe the Department was very vigorous in
its defense of this act both at the district court level and in
the Third Circuit in oral argument. I think a review of the
government's brief in this matter would demonstrate the strong
support we have given to this legislation.
Mr. Green. It is my understanding our committee didn't
accept the DOJ recommendations. In fact, if you could provide
us in later information to us what you know on that--again,
that was our decision not to accept those, but, again, you
know, we were well aware, at least from this letter, that there
were things in that act. I voted for it. I may very well have
been a cosponsor of it because of my concern.
Mr. Chairman, I would also like to put in the record
something we pulled off the Internet at the FBI library, is
available. Again, I talked with my own local agents in Houston,
and it is a Parents Guide to Internet Safety.
As I said earlier, I would like to ask unanimous consent to
place this in the record because not only the Justice
Department but also the Law Enforcement Agency of the FBI is
trying to do with Internet safety. And, again, as a parent, it
is important to us and someday be a grandparent.
If I could ask unanimous consent to put the Parents Guide
to Internet Safety into the record.
Mr. Largent. Without objection.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.011
Mr. Green. With that, I would like to ask unanimous consent
to place my own statement in the record, and then I will yield
back the balance of my time.
Mr. Largent. Without objection. The gentleman yields back.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Gene Green follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Gene Green, a Representative in Congress
from the State of TexasMr. Chairman:
I do not believe that any member of this subcommittee supports the
thriving Internet marketplace of obscene images.
I am sure all the witnesses here today are going to provide us with
ample evidence of the destructive nature this material can have on
individuals and their families.
However, Congress has had a checkered past when we have attempted
to limit the spread of this material.
The Supreme Court continues to find fault with our efforts to
regulate what they consider ``free speech.''
Their continued decisions to allow very offensive material to
circulate over the Internet has crippled efforts designed to protect
our children.
I now believe that Congress should intensify educational programs
for parents to teach them about the technology and material available
to protect children.
I do want to commend the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for their efforts to catch
pedophiles on the Internet.
There is no greater danger to our children then a faceless friend
who exists outside the knowledge of a parent. Pedophiles have
discovered the Internet as the perfect place to pursue their criminal
pleasure.
Their trade in child pornography and other obscene material is a
threat to communities across this country. The federal government
cannot be in every home, school, and library where people may try to
access this illegal material.
I believe we must empower parents to monitor their children's on-
line activities.
I have conducted community meeting with the ISP's, phone companies,
and the FBI to teach children and parents about what they can do to
protect their children.
These highlight the currently available blocking technology and
information resources that parents can access free of charge to help
protect their children on-line.
Mr. Chairman, it is unfortunate that as we seek to bridge the
``digital divide'' we are actually making it easier for obscene
material to flow into our communities like never before.
I appreciate the Chairman holding this hearing and I look forward
to the panel discussions.
Mr. Largent. I want to thank Mr. Gershel for your
attendance, for your patience, and it is my understanding that
there is just a couple of follow-up questions, and we are done.
And I would just like to reiterate, and correct me if I am
wrong, the Justice Department doesn't need the Child On-line
Protection Act to prosecute obscenity; is that correct? You
were prosecuting obscenity prior to----
Mr. Gershel. That is correct.
Mr. Largent. Whatever the Third Circuit does is irrelevant
in terms of prosecuting obscenity, be it on the Internet or
anywhere else; is that correct?
Mr. Gershel. That is correct.
Mr. Largent. Neither does it need the CDA. You were
prosecuting--we have testimony here in the ACLU versus Reno
that says the Justice Department itself communicated its view
that it was not necessary, CDA, that is. It was prosecuting on-
line obscenity child pornography and child solicitation under
existing laws and would continue to do so.
Mr. Gershel. That is correct.
Mr. Largent. So the whole debate over the Child On-line
Protection Act, CDA is irrelevant in terms of the job the
Justice Department or is not doing on obscenity; is that
correct?
Let me ask this one other question, Mr. Gershel. How do you
feel when the obscenity industry says and refers to the
oversight that you are giving, the prosecution that you are
giving and the industry refers to you as having a benign
neglect of the industry?
Mr. Gershel. Obviously, I would take exception with that. I
don't agree with that. We are--we continue to go after and
investigate major distributors. I think over time we will have
success there. These cases take time. While I may not have the
numbers right now to satisfy this committee, I do know from
working with the section that there are cases under
investigation that we believe satisfy the guidelines and
parameters we have established for the investigation and
prosecution of obscene pornographers.
Mr. Largent. I would like to ask also for--if you have
those guidelines written down--you mentioned earlier about the
Department had guidelines. I would like to see those
guidelines.
And, finally, you mentioned an effort with the local law
enforcement agencies, and yet we had testimony on the previous
panel that indicated that prior to 1994, 1993, that there was a
vigorous effort by the Los Angeles Police Department conducting
raids in the San Fernando Valley and that that had virtually
come to a stop in the last 5 to 6 years. Do you have a comment
on that?
Mr. Gershel. To back up to your first question on the
guidelines, they are published in the United States Attorneys
Manual, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy to get you a copy of
those guidelines.
Second, while I can't speak to the L.A. Experience, I have
no firsthand knowledge of that, I do know from firsthand
experience both in the district where I come from and in my
experience here thus far that there is a partnership with State
and local. They are involved in these cases. We are working
with them.
It is not unusual at all for many State cases to go through
the Federal system. It is not unusual, for example, for State
prosecutors to become Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys, to
prosecute those cases in Federal court. It is not unusual for
Federal prosecutors to be cross-designated as local district
attorneys for prosecution of State cases. So there is this
cross-pollination going on back and forth every day as it
concerns these matters.
So, again, I can't speak to the L.A. Experience, but it is
certainly a very positive working relationship I believe we
have today with State and local entities.
Mr. Largent. Concerning the fact that about, some people
estimate, 2,000 new sex videos are produced in the San Fernando
Valley every month, that might be something you want to look
into.
I will yield for a brief question from the gentleman from
Mississippi.
Mr. Green. Mr. Chairman, I thought it was customary----
Mr. Largent. I didn't know you had another question.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gershel, one of my frustrations I guess--and if you
share it with me--is that as Justice Stewart said one time he
knows what obscenity is when he sees it. It is just hard to
define it. Does the fuzziness of the definition of obscenity
make it more difficult for prosecutions to stick? And also I
can understand why it is easier oftentimes to prosecute child
pornography because that is not subject to some of those
fuzziness definitions. Can you share your feelings on that with
us?
Mr. Gershel. Every Federal prosecutor, Congressman, is
taught from day one that he or she is not to engage in a
prosecution unless he or she believes a substantial likelihood
of success on the merits. That is an appropriate burden for
prosecutors to have. When it comes to the examination and
review of cases dealing with obscenity, prosecutors are
required to review that material and make a determination on
their own whether or not they believe that material would, in
fact, violate whatever community standards this case would be
interfacing with.
That is a difficult burden. People might differ on that. We
might all find certain material very distasteful. We all know,
though, that all pornography is not obscenity. Pornography per
se is not illegal unless it is obscene. Prosecutors have to
engage in that kind of analysis every time they look at a case
dealing with obscenity.
So, yes, it is a challenge. It is difficult. We might
disagree on that, but that prosecutor has to be satisfied in
his or her mind that that case will pass muster with the jury
beyond a reasonable doubt. It is a hard burden.
Mr. Green. Is that generally the process the DOJ has--I
assume that is in their manual--on whether prosecution should
be pursued? Is that generally what you do?
Mr. Gershel. That is the policy of the Justice Department
in every case that we undertake.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Largent. I thank the gentleman.
I yield to the gentleman from Mississippi for a final
question, and we will finish the hearing.
Mr. Pickering. For the panel and for my friend from Texas,
just let the record show, between 1989 and 1995 the Justice
Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity section had 126
convictions, prosecutions and convictions of obscenity, not
child pornography but just slowly targeting obscenity and $24
million in fines and forfeitures. The problem that I think we
are dealing with is, it seems to be around 1995 and after, the
Justice Department changed their policy and their priorities
with--in relation to obscenity.
So just to follow up on that, Mr. Gershel, in your
testimony you say we do investigate and prosecute transmission
of obscenity over the Internet, but then you have a very
important qualifier, ``where appropriate''. Since 1996, can you
name one case or how many cases you found it appropriate during
this period of tremendous explosion of obscenity and
pornography and child pornography--since 1996, how many cases
have you found it appropriate--given the fact that you had over
126 convictions before 1995, how many have you had since 1996?
Mr. Gershel. I believe in the written statement,
Congressman, I cited some specific cases. But I should also
indicate, again without meaning any disrespect for that same
time period, the number of convictions for child pornography,
people engaging in that activity, trafficking with children has
exploded. In 1999 alone, 525 convictions--an increase of a
hundred convictions from the previous year.
Mr. Pickering. Mr. Gershel, let me again try to find common
ground. It seems like you are losing--you are fighting a losing
battle on child pornography. You are doing--you are fighting
hard. You are doing all you can on child pornography, but it
seems like your strategy is not working. The situation is
getting worse, not better. Would you reconsider having a dual
front, dual effort where you emphasize equally both obscenity
and child pornography? Would you consider a change in strategy,
a change in policy, and then can Congress help you implement a
new policy where you equally emphasize obscenity as well as
child pornography?
Mr. Gershel. Congressman, I have some difficulty with the
premise of the question because there is suggestion that, given
the explosion of child pornography, how successful have we
really been. I would like to answer that, first, two ways.
First of all, every conviction we get is one less person
engaged in that behavior; and, second, it is difficult to
quantify the deterrent impact those convictions have. We don't
know, for example, how many people who would have otherwise
engaged in that conduct have not.
In terms of the second part of your question, I believe we
have a strategy for the prosecution of obscenity cases. It is
obviously a strategy the Congressman is not content with and
not happy with but----
Mr. Pickering. Can you name me one prosecution since 1996
of obscenity?
Mr. Gershel. I believe I have cited some cases----
Mr. Pickering. You have not cited one case. Name me one
case right now.
Mr. Gershel. I can follow up that later to the Congressman
with cases that we prosecuted.
Mr. Pickering. Would it be less than five?
Mr. Gershel. I am not going to commit. I don't know.
Mr. Pickering. Versus 126? If industry calls your approach
benign neglect----
Mr. Gershel. Congressman, our priorities are where they
ought to be today I believe.
Mr. Pickering. What if I could help you have dual emphasis,
try a new approach, would you consider that?
Mr. Gershel. If you have suggestions and you would like to
make suggestions to the Justice Department, we are more than
willing to entertain those suggestions and look at them, that I
assure you.
Mr. Pickering. You would be willing--the Justice Department
would be willing to consider, if Congress made it a higher
priority and gave you the resources to do so, that you would
target both obscenity and child pornography?
Mr. Gershel. No. I agree we would engage in a dialog with
the Congressmen to see what the strategy is.
Mr. Pickering. The signals you are sending right now are
very disturbing. And, with that, let me yield back my time.
Mr. Largent. I thank the gentleman.
Again, thank you for your patience. Thank you for your
attendance. The hearing is concluded.
[Whereupon, at 1:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.028
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.034
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.036
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.039
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.043
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.046
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.050
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.053
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.054
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.055
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.056
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.057
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.058
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.059
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.060
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.061
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.062
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.063
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.064
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.065
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.066
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.067
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.068
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.069
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.070
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.071
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.072
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.073
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.074
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.075
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.076
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]64763.077