she committed suicide after being told by a boy talking to you on my space that the world would be a better place without her as we know the boy josh was really the mother of one of meghan's classmates retribution against meg an program within the justice department to find internet crime awareness and cyber crime prevention programs but i have to question whether a new grant program is what we really need a number of organizations with experts in this million chinese money that will have to borrow in order to ensure that the federal bureaucracy into a problem resolution begins at home congress should not try to replace the parent or the teacher home state of florida was convicted on child pornography charges he must now register for the rest of his life so what do we do about it there's no one answer or one silver bullet but we can either continue to shut our eyes to the reality or we can tackle this problem head on i believe that we must in a new era of education and we must teach children how to be good citizens unfortunately most parents and most teachers don't feel comfortable teaching kids how to be and responsible use of the internet crime awareness and digital literacy in the new media to our children education is important because it helps parents and children how to act in all kinds of real life situations education is vital because it can not to bully or harass their peers and how to report dangerous or threatening activity when we can teach them not to post inappropriate material about themselves or others we can teach them about privacy settings and about the risks of talking to strangers posting personal information online we can teach them that what they put online days online and we can teach them that the minute they hit that button they not only control over there where their photos go next they can also lose control of their future and we teach children how to be safe on the eight and thirty three percent of teenagers have been approached online by a stranger web strongly supports legislation to provide funding for internet safety programs new investment in our educational infrastructure will train and equip teachers and long fourth be enforcement with the tools they need to reach children to use the internet and other technologies safely children are integrating technology into their lives at lightning speed well this is a positive development in federal funding is inadequate to meet that growing need students receive a little education in ethical internet use the majority of responsibility for teaching internet safety falls on educators who are often unprepared to provide this type of education bedroll law mandates that elementary and secondary schools receive funding must have an internet education program however no funding has been provided to meet this requirement clearly parents play a significant role providing targeted resources to the school system janet counterpart sponsored by senator menendez menendez education this legislation is carefully crafted will provide much needed funding to support collaborative comprehensive and diversified approaches to online safety education in our school the bill centerpiece is a competitive internet safety education grant program for state and local education and nonprofit organizations to promote the state  digital technology where act identifies clear of the funding and include safeguards to assure an effective research in evaluation component of the program this legislation will go a long way to protect children and families online well administered by the department of justice strongly urges the concurrence of the department of education and health and human services in implementing this legislation interagency cooperation will allow for sharing inside information we applaud congresswoman sanchez for raising awareness of cyber bullying as a significant problem for children in the u substantial harm to our youth including serious and long term emotional and behavioral problems for the victim of cyber bullying there is literally no place to run prevention of cyber bullying through educating kids on how to respond to online harassment is paramount in our view imposing punitive sanctions requires careful examination targeted criminal penalties against might be appropriate if the legislation is able to withstand constitutional scrutiny the most effective impact congress can have is providing greater resources to promote internet safety education in our schools and prevent harm every magazine for the intentional infliction of emotional distress the constitutional issue here is clear you don't get nothing opinions of the supreme court where there's no constitutional problem  but my experience with harassment codes on college campuses tells me that this statute is going to cause a lot of problems not only legal but also it's going to prevent addressing this through education but we have significant concerns about this bill as currently drafted so i'd like to go into those first of all we have to understand that there's a lot of mistaken understanding in this area in fact the lori drew meghan meyers case was and accurately reported laurie did not create that profile she did not engage in a direct communications and she wasn't even home when the harmful communications were sent by information comes from the prosecutor in the community who presented as a mag conference that i presented that one in five teens have not been sexually solicited by adult sexual predators that was primarily teen on teen sexual harassment which they handled effectively the incidence of online predation is around in two thousand and six from crimes against children research center was around six hundred incidents about one percent of all young people who one percent of all arrests for sexual abuse of minors with a significant amount of techno panic going on here and until we get to an accurate understanding of the actual risk we're not going to proceed effectively so the actual real include electronic aggression going to say more but mr scott mr gohmert you've got a great understanding of these issues  risky sexual personal relationship issues there is sexual solicitation going on it's primarily among teens we've got unsafe cyber dating abusive partners who are using this technology for control and we've got the sexting issue we also have an issues that aren't even percolated up in our standing unsafe communities where kids are encouraging self harm anorexia self cutting and also dangerous groups online gangs and groups and mr scott could do some really excellent promise act to address some of these issues the research has indicated that the young people who are at greater risk offline world are at greater risk online these issues involved incidents between known peers the majority of young people are actually making good choices online and parents who are actively in positively teens whose parents are actively in positively engaged are making are engaging in less risky behavior we have to stop the negativity that we have the fear the kind of reefer madness just so you know approach to these issues to address these we have a three part program that we need to be doing we need to make sure that we've got web two point zero technologies in schools because we can't teach kids how to swim in the swimming pools  school we also one of the major barriers to doing that is the fear that is generated about online that is grounded in an accurate understanding of these in risk prevention we look at things from a universal approach and a targeted approach we need universal digital safety and media literacy in schools some of the challenges include a lot of the curriculum that's out there is reefer madness approach and that the lack of accurate understanding month teachers but the new requirement to the children's internet protection act is causing a shift schools are mobilizing to address these issues and there's a new curriculum coming out that is really excellent and actually very low cost to address these issues we could reinforce the reauthorization of the elementary secondary education act  i do not believe there is a significant need for the funding of the creation of curriculum in this area than it is targeted risk prevention and intervention we've got to address these more significant risks we need one of the biggest challenges is that you have a lemonade the block grant for state and local schools funding at exactly the time that we need to mobilize these people to address these new we need to ensure that our schools are addressing youth risk online in the context of school planning we could have a discretionary grant program to target funds to prevention and intervention programs much like you what you have tried to do but we absolutely have to have a triad of leadership in this area not the department of justice in consultation with the department of mental health and the department of education a joint program similar to the safe schools and healthy students program where all three agencies are working in joint collaboration and we also need to recognise that there will never be evidence based practices in this area takes about a decade to get an evidence based practice the research is just emerging technologies are changing rapidly we need to use the there are provisions within the school program to get a waiver from the principles of identifying potentials in this area i think no one disputes the notion that this work will require a series of different solutions different solutions with education at the core i think it also goes without saying that parents have the greatest obligation here and kids themselves this is something that is most sensibly that within the home but i think we should also look to opportunities using technology as part of the solution and working with companies who are in a way the overseers of these playgrounds in many respects and of course looking to the law i'd share the view that criminalization is not the answer with respect to this i won't go into that since others have touched on the constitutionality but also the effectiveness of that i think it's crucial that law enforcement play a very well is to track the research in the field it talks about public and private partnerships it looks at risk kids where we know many of the problems are and i think it's been drafted in such a way as to support those kinds of activities that need supporting and as someone working in this field keenly aware of the fact that there's not sufficient support for exactly this kind of work and that it is the most promising even though even that will not get the entire job done i would point to one other crime it was later overturned but there was enough evidence for a jury and a judge to determine that she was culpable and significantly involved in events that led to the suicide of a young girl and as a mother of young girls i find predation it doesn't matter if it's six hundred or one if it's your child it matters a whole lot so i wouldn't i really think it's offensive that you would trivialize the amount of assuming that your numbers are even correct but let organization and one of the reasons that you're opposed to it is because you have don't oppose funding from the department of justice no did it needs to be funded i have always had concerns with the funding to the department of well in fact with a focus supported on march twenty first two thousand and eight you sent out an action alert to your supporters when senator coburn put a hold on the very same bill that senator menendez is sponsoring this year correct yes ok and in that e mail for pressure from the field to be placed on senator coburn to release this whole this is money that can come to the state and direction and you recommended your followers contact their representatives and senators support this legislation you also emailed reporters from the associated press and the new york times asking them to write favorable stories about our legislat no i don't see any problems with that i didn't even mention it in my testimony that's just a question of whether you're likely to get your money's worth that's a judgment that i really don't have the experience to make about every night do of harassment concepts civil tort to the federal criminal arena it's just an invitation to what i call constitutional mischief and a lot of people are going to end