FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

I want to commend you, America Online, and the other industry leaders for taking a proactive role in protecting our children from sexual predators. Your efforts -- our efforts -- amount to a common sense approach. We want unfettered access to information everywhere. Simultaneously, we want to stop those who exploit new technology to commit crimes against children. Instead of denying or understating the problem, as some industries have done when faced with criticism, you have joined with law enforcement to arrive at solutions. That's the way it should be.

I also want to commend Ernie Allen and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Before coming to the Treasury Department, I had the great privilege of serving on the board of the national Center. So I had the opportunity, firsthand, to see how the Center helps exploited children. The Center keeps the plight of exploited children on the front burner and keeps them in the forefront of the national conscience.

Attorney General Janet Reno has been a steadfast champion of the same cause. She puts the safety of our children and adherence to the law first. The Treasury Department is proud to be part of this team.

Treasury's enforcement bureaus have been engaged in this fight for a long time and we are in it to stay. Unfortunately, the sexual exploitation of children is nothing new. It pre-dates the Internet by far. The Internet is just another means to an end for the pornographer or the pedophile. The automobile has been used by generations of pedophiles to lure an abduct children. Law enforcement's answer was not to ban the car. It was to warn children to stay out of stranger's cars. Now we are giving parents the tool to lock the strangers out of the house, or at least out of the children's room.

We at Treasury have no interest in limiting the vast informational reach of the Internet. The technology is inevitable. We want what law enforcement has always wanted: to keep the predator away from its prey. It is important for law enforcement to keep its eye on the crime, as opposed to the technology.

Child pornography, for example, is a crime we are committed to fighting, The delivery system is incidental. Long before the Internet existed, the Customs Service was making child pornography cases against importers who tried to smuggle the material into the United States, hidden among legal imports. Customs not only seized the material, but went after the recipients as well. Customs found that about half of the people receiving child pornography admitted to being child molesters.

The Internet is a faster, cheaper and safer way for child pornographers to move their product so the child pornographers are using it, as are pedophiles in search of their prey.

Customs has created a cyber smuggling center to help combat this phenomenon. The result is that Customs is making several arrest each week in this area. In the 1997 fiscal year, Customs activities resulted in 162 convictions and 167 seizures.

Because of the foreign nexus, we have been receiving an increasing number of referrals from abroad. Customs has produced training programs in computer-related child exploitation. It has provided training to police, prosecutors and judges in the United Kingdom, Argentina, Canada, Greece, Australia, Japan and Russia. Similar training has been provided to state and local police in the United States.

Another of Treasury's enforcement bureaus, the Secret Service, has been active in combating the abuse of the Internet and computer technology. The Secret Service is especially interested in combating financial crimes, but is also engaged in the fight against child abuse. The Secret Service has provided state and local police, as well as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, its expertise in various areas including age progression drawing, voice analysis, handwriting analysis, polygraph examinations and chemical analysis of materials.

In addition to being concerned about pornographers and pedophiles abuse of the Internet, Treasury and the Secret Service, are working to stop Internet use in credit card fraud. We are also fighting its use in the counterfeiting of currency, food stamps, money orders and stocks and bonds. Treasury is also concerned about the technology's money laundering potential.

Regardless of the various missions of the law enforcement community, nothing strikes a more responsive chord than when the threat is directed at children. That's true at Treasury and that's true the world over. Children have a way of uniting us better than anyone or anything else. As a result, we have dedicated partners in crime-fighting all around the world.

And I have the pleasure of knowing and working closely with one of them who is with us today. He is without doubt, one of the most knowledgeable and dedicated crime fighters on the planet. It is my pleasure to introduce our next speaker, the Secretary General of Interpol, the Honorable Raymond Kendall.