The threat of the sexual exploitation of children on the Net brought out the muscle on Monday, as a coalition of legislators, law enforcement officers and tech industry leaders pledged to battle child pornographers and online predators with a new way for netsurfers to deliver tips to the authorities.
At a high-profile press conference featuring FBI Director Louis Freeh, America Online CEO Steve Case, Treasury Undersecretary for Enforcement Raymond Kelly, and Senators Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) and Ernest Hollings (D-South Carolina), the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children announced the launch of CyberTipline, an online resource for the reporting of crimes related to the sexual exploitation of children in cyberspace. The project's undertaking was highlighted in a statement made at last October's Internet summit by Vice President Gore.
The press conference, held at the NCMEC headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, also marked the publication of Teen Safety on the Information Highway, an update of a popular brochure on safe online conduct for teens and parents written by Larry Magid, syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
In a statement, Sen. Gregg said that the coalition of public and private groups sponsoring the CyberTipline - including Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and Computer Associates - was united by a commitment "to make the World Wide Web a safe place for children to explore and learn, without the threat of victimization."
The 24-hour-a-day CyberTipline project will employ 26 full-time staff members funneling tips about the trafficking of child pornography and the online solicitation of children to various international law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the US Customs Service, Scotland Yard, and Interpol.
The project has an initial budget of US$600,000, paid for by a combination of federal funds and private sector donations. The Center's yearly operating budget is $10 million.
NCMEC President Ernie Allen said that the program and the brochure were not intended to fan the flames of public hysteria by exaggerating the prevalence of pornographers and pedophiles on the Net.
"The message is not that the Internet is not a safe place for kids," Allen said, but that "prevention, education, and information" - coupled with the use of filtering technologies like SurfWatch and Net Nanny - can help parents feel secure that their children are not in danger while engaging in online activities.
The Center was encouraged to create the CyberTipline project by "the leaders of the online industry," Allen said. "They don't want to be a sanctuary for these people [online sexual predators]."
At Monday's press conference, a New Hampshire police detective cited 60 cases of children and teenagers who had allegedly been lured away from home by contacts made online.
Magid's brochure offers a set of basic guidelines for teens and parents, emphasizing the importance of not revealing personal information to strangers online.
Other sections of the brochure encourage teen netsurfers to "avoid any topic area that makes you feel uncomfortable." Among the sites that teens "should avoid" are those that are "violent, racist, sexist, and demeaning." Young netsurfers are warned repeatedly that people they meet on the Net may not be who they say they are.
In an interview, Magid - who calls himself a "freewheeling cyberlibertarian" - acknowledged that the brochure was written for a "very broad audience," and that many of the issues touched upon in it are more complex than he was able to address in that form.
Magid is less enthusiastic about the use of filtering software to automatically screen out certain content than the NCMEC, for instance.
"If you stick a filter on a machine for a 15- or a 16-year old, personally, I think you owe the kid an explanation," Magid said. "In my family, that would be a difficult discussion."
Magid conceded that in a "sticky situation" where "children were being suppressed by their parents" - say, in the case of a gay or lesbian teenager growing up in a homophobic household - filtering software and close parental surveillance of online activities might offer little help.
While affirming the importance of the CyberTipline as a resource for parents and law enforcement, Magid made the observation that some of the coverage in the press of the incidence of online predation was "too extreme."
"It's not nearly as extensive as people would have you believe. More kids are sexually molested by relatives, or die in bicycle accidents, than are ensnared on the Net," he said.
The biggest threat to children online "doesn't come from pedophiles," he added, "but from marketing by companies that you and I know well."
Magid pointed to a contest on the Ben and Jerry's Web site, attractive to children, that requested personal information like participants' addresses and telephone numbers, as an example of the kind of Net-based information gathering that kids should be cautioned about.
"It's not a focus of [the CyberTipline] campaign," he said, "but this kind of online marketing to kids is a very important issue."
