WASHINGTON – Attorney General Alberto Gonzales used strikingly graphic language Thursday to focus attention on online child pornography and said Internet services companies are not doing enough to combat the problem.
“It is graphic, but if we do not talk candidly, then it is easy for people to turn away and worry about other matters,” Gonzales said in a speech at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va.
“Viewing this was shocking and it makes my stomach turn,” said Gonzales after being shown images of child porn. Gonzales was accompanied by his wife, Rebecca.
It was their second visit to the center, created in 1984 as a clearinghouse for information about missing and exploited children.
Ernie Allen, the center’s president, said many Americans continue to hold mistaken impressions of the issue. “We hear all the time that this is really just adult porn, 20-year-olds in pigtails made to look like they’re 15,” Allen said. “This is about children being sexually victimized.”
Without identifying companies, Gonzales said some investigations have been hampered by the failure of Internet service providers to retain certain records long enough to help authorities identify purveyors of child pornography. He did not propose a remedy Thursday.
But he did support tripling the criminal fines for companies that fail to report apparent violations of child pornography laws – to $150,000 for the first incident and $300,000 for subsequent failures.
Kate Dean, director of the United States Internet Service Provider Association, said AOL, Earthlink, BellSouth, Verizon and other association members “currently have robust policies in place to ensure that law enforcement can obtain the information they need to prosecute child pornographers.”
The Internet companies last year made 34,939 reports to the missing children center, which forwards them to law enforcement authorities, said Michelle Collins, director of the center’s exploited children unit.
Last week alone, there were 938 reports, Collins said.
“Several people a week are being arrested somewhere in the country because of information provided by a service provider,” she said.
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