As the FBI looks for more money to beef up its effort to crack down on crimes against children, Director Louis Freeh once again appeared before Congress on Tuesday to testify about the dangers of child pornography and stalking on the Internet. But congressional interest seemed to be distinctly lacking - only two of eight members of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that called the hearing showed up.
Although the FBI director said no new laws are necessary, Freeh's upcoming request for an overall budget increase - to be heard before a Thursday subcommittee meeting - will include an extra US$9 million to $10 million increase for the FBI's Crimes against Children Unit.
During the nearly two-hour-long hearing, Freeh showed lone observers senators Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) and Ernest Hollings (D-South Carolina) the transcript of a chat room session that took place when an FBI agent entered a chat room claiming to be a teenage girl. The chat resulted in a successful sting when a man propositioned the FBI agent, then traveled across state lines to meet him in a mall.
So far, the FBI's two-year-old investigation of online kiddie porn and predation has resulted in the execution of some 20 search warrants nationwide, and an additional 400 criminal investigations which are now active.
Critics charge that fears of online porn are drastically overblown, and in Tuesday's testimony, Allen testified that since 1994, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had been notified of only 18 cases of child sexual exploitation online. He also noted it had learned of another 18 cases through the media and other nonprofits.
Joining Freeh before Gregg and Hollings were Ernest Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and an unidentified woman whose 11-year-old son was raped by four teachers who taped the session, then used a Prodigy chat room to hawk dubbed copies to other pedophiles.
Gregg, who recently drafted a publication called "Child Pornography and the Internet: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Child Should Know," has taken up the issue of child porn on the Internet with exceptional vigor. Perhaps anticipating the much-predicted demise of the Communications Decency Act (a broadly crafted piece of legislation aimed at protecting children from "indecency" on the Net), he asked Freeh if new legislation was needed to deal with the problems of cyberpredation and kiddie porn.
