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The 'Creep Zone' Of The Internet
by Sarah Lai Stirland
As Illinois Republican Rep. Mark Kirk tells it, the top worry among high-school class presidents in his district is about questionable activity on social-networking Web sites.
"A couple of months ago, I met with class presidents from the 34 high schools in my district, and I asked them a very simple question," Kirk recalled. "I asked, 'What threat is emerging these days to you guys that your parents don't know about?' And they all said, 'MySpace.com.' It's just become a creep zone."
MySpace is the world's sixth-most-trafficked Web site and America's third, according to Alexa Internet, a software and online statistics company owned by Amazon.com. MySpace lets users create multimedia home pages with detailed personal information. The online service has been in the headlines regularly in recent months, both because of suspected child sex predators prowling its pages to find victims and because of teenagers who post racy information about themselves.
"We used to think of a pedophile as the creepy guy in the raincoat hanging out by the football field," Kirk said. "Now he's using a search engine and combing through hundreds and hundreds of kids who are registering online with MySpace.com and other social-networking sites."
Ideas From Congress And The Administration
Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., lamented that promising leads in investigations of online child predators can quickly go cold if Internet service providers do not preserve information that could link illegal online activities to subscriber information.
Sometime this week she expects to offer her amendment to require ISPs to retain customer contact and identifying internet address information for a year. "I have tremendous support from members of the committee on both sides of the aisle," DeGette said.
She is working with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., to craft language. They hope to have it ready next week or soon after, DeGette said.
The Bush administration also is paying attention. Perhaps responding to critical rhetoric from Congress over the role of the Justice Department in pursuing child pornographers, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recently proposed legislation to triple the criminal fines for ISPs that deliberately ignore the presence of child porn.
Such ISPs would be fined $150,000 for initial violations and double that amount for any additional violations. Gonzales also proposed that commercial Web sites include labels that would warn viewers of sexually explicit material.
The administration is currently fighting to uphold the constitutionality of a previous legislative effort to restrict minors' access to sexually explicit material online. But Assistant Attorney General William Moschella submitted the new proposal to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., in late April.
On Thursday, meanwhile, FTC Chairwoman Deborah Majoras agreed to issue two consumer alerts to parents and their children on the potential dangers of social-networking sites.
An Election-Year Push Against 'Indecency'
This being an election year, some observers said, lawmakers and others are trying to draw attention to the least savory aspects of both the Internet and the media. For instance, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., last week tried to push through legislation that would have boosted fines for broadcast "indecency," and several House members are working on legislation to protect children and teenagers from online predators.
Observers expect Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., to introduce legislation on the subject sometime in the near future, and that proposal could incorporate some of the ideas proposed by Justice. Brownback's press office did not return a call for comment by press time.
Reps. Kirk and Mike Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., plan to introduce legislation that would extend to social-networking sites rules under a 2000 law known as the Children's Internet Protection Act. The statute requires publicly funded schools and libraries to adopt Web filters and policies that prevent minors from accessing sexually explicit material online.
The idea of making ISPs retain customer information for a year to aid law enforcement already appears to be gathering steam. Gonzales noted that "the failure of some Internet service providers to keep records has hampered our ability to conduct investigations in this area."
Some responses to the legislative proposals have not been positive, however. "They're not even sure who this going to apply to," noted David McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association. "They don't have a good definition of who is an ISP and who is not an ISP."
DeGette's proposal could subject Internet cafe owners and municipal governments that offer wireless Internet access to strict record-keeping requirements, McClure noted. "It's one of those ideas that sound really good on paper, but if you sit down and try to figure out how this is going to be done, it's going to become unworkable very rapidly," he said.
The Court Challenges To Come?
But DeGette argues that any potential additional record-keeping requirement would be minimal. "I don't understand their objections," she said. "I'm not sure these ISPs are thinking this through. We're not asking them to preserve all of the communications, and we're not asking them to give the information out, except for under a subpoena or under their own subscription agreement."
Attorneys from the Center for Democracy and Technology, other public-interest groups and firms note that Gonzales' Web-labeling proposal almost certainly will be challenged in court. They note that the government bears the burden of proving that any proposed law is the least restrictive method of regulating the speech at issue.
"If there's any regulation in this area, it's certain to be challenged on constitutional grounds," said Jeffrey Neuburger, an attorney with Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner in New York City. "A number of states have tried to pass laws to regulate videogame violence, and they have all been struck down as unconstitutional."
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