MAKING THE INTERNET SAFE FOR 

KIDS: THE ROLE OF ISP’S AND 

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES 

HEARINGS 

BEFORE THE 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND 

INVESTIGATIONS 

OF THE 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND 

COMMERCE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JUNE 27 AND JUNE 28, 2006 

Serial No. 109-123 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house 

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

WASHINGTON : 2006 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office 

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC area (202) 512-1800 

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30-530PDF 
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE 

JOE BARTON, Texas, Chairman 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

MICHAEL BILIRAKIS, Florida 

 Vice Chairman 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio 

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

CHARLIE NORWOOD, Georgia 

BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

CHARLES W. “CHIP” PICKERING, Mississippi 

 Vice Chairman

VITO FOSSELLA, New York 

ROY BLUNT, Missouri

STEVE BUYER, Indiana 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

MARY BONO, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

C.L. “BUTCH” OTTER, Idaho 

SUE MYRICK, North Carolina 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan 

 Ranking Member 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York 

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

TED STRICKLAND, Ohio 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

LOIS CAPPS, California 

MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

TOM ALLEN, Maine 

JIM DAVIS, Florida 

JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

HILDA L. SOLIS, California 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas 

BUD ALBRIGHT, Staff Director 

DAVID CAVICKE, General Counsel

REID P. F. STUNTZ, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky, Chairman 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

CHARLES W. “CHIP” PICKERING, Mississippi 

CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

JOE BARTON, Texas 

 (EX OFFICIO)

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

 Ranking Member 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan 

 (EX OFFICIO)

(II)
CONTENTS 

Page 

Hearings held: 

June 27, 2006...................................................................................................................... 1 

June 28, 2006....................................................................................................................... 178 

Testimony of: 

Hansen, Chris, NBC News................................................................................................. 20 

Ryan, John, Esq., Chief Counsel, Compliance and Investigation, America Online, Inc. .. 49 

Baker, Dave, Vice President, Law and Public Policy, Earthlink, Inc. ............................... 58 

Banker, Elizabeth, Associate General Counsel, Yahoo! Inc. ............................................. 79 

Dailey, Tom, General Counsel, Verizon Communications................................................ 90 

Lewis, Jr., Gerald J., Vice President, Deputy General Counsel & Chief Privacy 

Officer, Comcast Cable Communications ..................................................................... 

98 

Reitinger, Philip R., Senior Security Strategist, Microsoft Corporation............................ 122 

Wong, Nicole, Associate General Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer, Google, Inc............ 139 

Dannahey, Frank, Detective, Rocky Hill, Connecticut Police Department ....................... 191 

Kelly, Chris, Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Privacy Officer, 

Facebook.com, Inc. ........................................................................................................ 214 

Angus, Michael, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Fox Interactive 

Media, MySpace.com..................................................................................................... 218 

Hiller, John, Chief Executive Officer, Xanga.com, Inc...................................................... 249 

Harbour, Hon. Pamela Jones, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission ....................... 289 

Ruiz, Diego, Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, Federal 

Communications Commission ....................................................................................... 297 

Blumenthal, Hon. Richard, Attorney General, State of Connecticut ................................. 304 

(III) 

(1) 

MAKING THE INTERNET SAFE FOR 

KIDS: THE ROLE OF ISP’S AND SOCIAL 

NETWORKING SITES 

TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 2006 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in Room 

2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ed Whitfield 

(Chairman) presiding. 

 Members present: Representatives Whitfield, Stearns, Pickering, 

Bass, Walden, Ferguson, Burgess, Blackburn, Barton (ex officio), 

Stupak, DeGette, Schakowsky, Inslee, and Baldwin. 

 Staff present: Mark Paoletta, Chief Counsel for Oversight and 

Investigations; Alan Slobodin, Deputy Chief Counsel for Oversight and 

Investigation; Karen Christian, Counsel; Kelly Andrews, Counsel; John 

Halliwell, Policy Coordinator, Mike Abraham, Legislative Clerk; Ryan 

Ambrose, Legislative Clerk; David Nelson, Minority 

Investigator/Economist; and Elizabeth Ertel, Minority Staff Assistant. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. This hearing will come to order. 

 And I want to thank the panel of witnesses for taking time from their 

busy schedules to be with us today. 

 Today, we are holding the first day of a 2-day hearing entitled: 

“Making the Internet Safe for Kids: The Role of Internet Service 

Providers and Social Networking Sites”. 

 Our previous hearings explored issues relating to the sexual 

exploitation of children over the Internet. Those hearings made it 

apparent that we have a long way to go in making the Internet a safe 

place for our children. We heard wrenching testimony from two child 

victims of Internet predators, Justin Berry and Masha Allen. Their 

stories brought to life the horrors that can occur on the Internet to 

children. We also heard law enforcement agency representatives express 

their concern about the staggering number of children and child predators 

and pedophiles on the Internet today. 

 The Internet has created what one of our witnesses called a “virtual 

Sears catalog” for pedophiles to find and communicate with children, 
2

because the Internet has become, as you all know, a social gathering 

place for children. 

 We must minimize the likelihood of our children being exploited 

over the Internet, and we must do everything possible to assist law 

enforcement in their efforts to investigate and prosecute child predators. 

 I want to thank our first panel witness, Mr. Chris Hansen, from 

Dateline NBC for testifying today about his riveting investigative series 

called “To Catch a Predator”. This series showed how child predators in 

five different cities across America chatted with someone over the 

Internet that they believed to be a 13- or 14-year-old child and then 

actually travel to a home to meet this supposed child for sexual activity. 

 Mr. Hansen pointed out very clearly, and I think we will talk about it 

today, how predators come from all walks of life and are all different 

ages and backgrounds. And it is difficult to predict who really is a child 

predator. There certainly does not appear to be any profile of who over 

the Internet may be a child predator. This is particularly important for 

parents and children to understand, and I look forward to hearing more 

from Mr. Hansen about his investigative work in this series. 

 I want to thank also the representatives of the Internet service 

providers who are here today. We look forward to their testimony 

explaining what they are doing to assist law enforcement in cases 

involving this sexual exploitation of children over the Internet and what 

measures the companies are taking to minimize opportunities to sexually 

exploit children from their networks. 

 We certainly understand that Internet service providers are not law 

enforcement agencies, and I certainly am not asking them to become 

that. I do believe that having images or links to images that may be child 

pornography are, at a minimum, violations of their terms of use and may 

be criminal sites as well. 

 Taking measures to proactively look for this content on your 

network, reporting this content to the National Center for Missing and 

Exploited Children and to law enforcement will go a long way towards 

reducing access that pedophiles have websites with sexually exploitive 

images of children. If companies have concerns about performing 

proactive searches of this content, we hope you will express that today. 

This would be the appropriate time to talk about your concerns if you 

think it produces a burden on your company. I understand that several 

companies have undertaken proactive searching and filtering of these 

sites and images, and we look forward to hearing about that in their 

testimony today. 

 I am also interested in learning about the Internet service providers’ 

data retention policies for IP addresses in particular. A witness at this 

subcommittee’s prior hearing, Flint Waters, testified that in connection to 
3

an investigation about a child predator on the Internet, he was unable to 

get subscriber information for a 3-day old IP address from an Internet 

service provider. That is unacceptable. Law enforcement agency 

representatives have testified that retaining these IP addresses is critical 

to their being able to catch these people. 

 I understand that several companies today and tomorrow will make 

announcements about ways they are enhancing their networks to help 

combat the exploitation of children on their networks, whether it is 

increasing the length of time they retain the IP address, enhancing their 

filtering devices, or providing additional safety measures for parents and 

children to employ on their network. I commend all of those efforts, and 

we look forward to hearing more about it this morning. 

 We have a simple message: let us make it as difficult as possible for 

child predators and pedophiles to trade images, set up illegal websites, 

and find children on the Internet. 

 [The prepared statement of Hon. Ed Whitfield follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. ED WHITFIELD, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

TODAY WE ARE HOLDING THE FIRST DAY OF A TWO-DAY HEARING 

ENTITLED “MAKING THE INTERNET SAFE FOR KIDS: THE ROLE OF ISP’S 

AND SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES.” OUR PREVIOUS HEARINGS EXPLORED 

ISSUES RELATING TO THE SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN OVER 

THE INTERNET. THOSE HEARINGS MADE IT APPARENT THAT WE HAVE A 

LONG WAY TO GO IN MAKING THE INTERNET A SAFE PLACE FOR OUR 

CHILDREN. WE HEARD WRENCHING TESTIMONY FROM TWO CHILDVICTIMS OF INTERNET PREDATORS—JUSTIN BERRY AND MASHA ALLEN. 

THEIR STORIES BROUGHT TO LIFE THE HORRORS THAT CAN OCCUR ON 

THE INTERNET TO CHILDREN. WE ALSO HEARD LAW ENFORCEMENT 

AGENCY REPRESENTATIVES EXPRESS SHOCK ABOUT THE STAGGERING 

NUMBER OF CHILD PREDATORS AND PEDOPHILES ON THE INTERNET. THE 

INTERNET HAS CREATED WHAT ONE OF OUR WITNESSES CALLED “A 

VIRTUAL SEARS CATALOG” FOR PEDOPHILES TO FIND AND 

COMMUNICATE WITH CHILDREN BECAUSE THE INTERNET IS BECOMING 

THE SOCIAL NETWORKING PLACE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 

 WE MUST MINIMIZE THE LIKELIHOOD OF OUR CHILDREN BEING 

EXPLOITED OVER THE INTERNET AND TO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO 

ASSIST LAW ENFORCEMENT IN THEIR EFFORTS TO INVESTIGATE AND 

PROSECUTE CHILD PREDATORS. 

 I WANT TO THANK OUR FIRST PANEL WITNESS, MR. CHRIS HANSEN, 

FROM DATELINE NBC FOR TESTIFYING TODAY ABOUT HIS RIVETING 

INVESTIGATIVE SERIES CALLED “TO CATCH A PREDATOR.” THIS SERIES 

SHOWED HOW CHILD PREDATORS IN FIVE DIFFERENT CITIES ACROSS 

AMERICA, CHATTED WITH SOMEONE OVER THE INTERENT THEY 

BELIEVED TO BE A 13 OR 14 YEAR OLD CHILD AND THEN ACTUALLY 

TRAVELLED TO A HOME TO MEET THE CHILD FOR SEXUAL ACTIVITY. 

WHAT I FOUND MOST TELLING FROM WATCHING SOME OF THE EPIDODES 

IS THAT THESE CHILD PREDATORS COME FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE AND 
4

ARE ALL DIFFERENT AGES AND BACKGROUNDS. THERE DOESN’T APPEAR 

TO BE ANY PROFILE OF WHO—OVER THE INTERNET—MAY BE A CHILD 

PREDATOR. THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN TO 

UNDERSTAND. I LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING MORE FROM MR. HANSEN 

ON HIS INVESTIGATIVE WORK IN THIS SERIES. 

 I WANT TO THANK THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE INTERNET SERVICE 

PROVIDERS WHO ARE HERE TODAY. WE LOOK FORWARD TO THEIR 

TESTIMONY EXPLAINING WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO ASSIST LAW 

ENFORCEMENT IN CASES INVOLVING THE SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF 

CHILDREN OVER THE INTERNET AND WHAT MEASURES THE COMPANIES 

ARE TAKING TO REMOVE IMAGES, WEBSITES AND OTHER ILLEGAL 

CONTENT THAT SEXUALLY EXPLOIT CHILDREN FROM THEIR NETWORKS. 

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS ARE NOT LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS---

AND I CERTAINLY AM NOT ASKING THEM TO BECOME THAT—I DO 

BELIEVE THAT HAVING IMAGES OR LINKS TO IMAGES THAT MAY BE 

CHILD PORNOGRAPHY ARE, AT A MINIMUM, VIOLATIONS OF THEIR TERMS 

OF USE AND MAY BE CRIMINAL SITES AS WELL. TAKING MEASURES TO 

PROACTIVELY LOOK FOR THIS CONTENT ON YOUR NETWORK, REPORT 

THIS CONTENT TO THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED 

CHILDREN AND TO LAW ENFORCEMENT, WILL GO A LONG WAY TOWARDS 

REDUCING ACCESS THAT PEDOPHILES HAVE WEBSITES WITH SEXUALLY 

EXPLOITATIVE IMAGES OF CHILDREN. IF COMPANIES HAVE CONCERNS 

ABOUT PERFORMING PRO-ACTIVE SEARCHES OF THIS HORRIFIC 

CONTENT— WE HOPE YOU WILL EXPRESS THEM TODAY. I UNDERSTAND 

THAT SEVERAL COMPANIES HAVE UNDERTAKEN PROACTIVE SEARCHING 

AND FILTERING OF THESE SITES AND IMAGES—AND ARE LOOKING 

FORWARD TO THAT TESTIMONY. 

 I ALSO AM INTERESTED IN LEARNING ABOUT THE INTERNET SERVICE 

PROVIDERS DATA RETENTION POLICIES FOR IP ADDRESSES IN 

PARTICULAR. A WITNESS AT THE SUBCOMMITTEE’S PRIOR HEARING—

FLINT WATERS--TESTIFIED THAT IN CONNECTION TO AN INVESTIGATION 

ABOUT A CHILD PREDATOR ON THE INTERNET, HE WAS UNABLE TO GET 

SUBSCRIBER INFORMATION FOR A THREE-DAY OLD IP ADDRESS FROM AN 

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. LAW 

ENFORCEMENT AGENCY REPRESENTATIVES HAVE TESTIFIED THAT 

RETAINING IP ADDRESSES IS CRITICAL. 

I HAVE A SIMPLE MESSAGE: LET’S MAKE IT AS DIFFICULT AS POSSIBLE 

FOR CHILD PREDATORS AND PEDOPHILES TO TRADE IMAGES, SET-UP 

ILLEGAL WEBSITES AND FIND CHILDREN ON THE INTERNET. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. At this time, I recognize the distinguished Ranking 

Member, Mr. Stupak of Michigan. 

 MR. STUPAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for calling 

this hearing, and thank you for continuing to do this investigation in a 

bipartisan manner. 

 A growing scourge of what is called “child pornography and 

exploitation” on the Internet is a serious threat to all of our children. I 

say so because what this really involves is the rape and torture of 

children for profit or to satisfy some dark urges. It was a well-contained 

problem before the advent of the Internet. The anonymity of the Net has 
5

apparently brought out the worst in a small but growing number of 

Americans and allowed them to communicate with their counterparts all 

over the world. 

 The statistics are startling. Eighty percent of the pornographic 

images of children on the Net involve children ages 12 and under. Forty 

percent involve children ages 6 and under. Twenty percent involve 

toddlers ages 3 and under. 

 The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates 

that 40 percent of those that view child pornography have or will abuse 

their own children. We have had testimony that preliminary information 

from studies, soon to be published, that number may actually rise to 75 to 

80 percent. People that think viewing these images is a victimless crime 

simply do not understand the problem. 

 There is both good news and bad news. The bad news is that our 

children are at a substantial and growing risk. The good news is that if 

these predators can be denied easy access to the images that provoke 

them and if we can make it risky for them to groom young victims, we 

can, once again, make this dangerous behavior rare. 

 This will require the best efforts of all of us. Yes, we need to find 

effective ways to educate parents and children about the dangers of 

putting personal information out on the Net. Yes, we need to greatly 

expand the resources available to State, local, and Federal law 

enforcement agencies. Yes, we must make it clear to prosecutors that 

cutting deals for minimal jail time and/or probation is unacceptable for 

these men that terrorize our children and those that are caught “only 

enjoying the images” of these heinous acts. And yes, we must let judges 

know that they may no longer endanger society by releasing these 

criminals with a slap on the wrist. 

 As Members of Congress, we have a unique responsibility not only 

to ensure that Federal criminal laws are adequate and that Federal law 

enforcement is up to snuff, but also to deny access to the Internet of 

those that hunt our children and profit from the sale of these awful 

images. 

 Mr. Chairman, I am glad to see Mr. Chris Hansen here today whose 

Dateline NBC series on child predators has awakened America to the 

dangers our children face. This series of programs has shown us exactly 

what lengths these men from all walks of life are willing to go to to 

abuse children. 

 Testimony to date has revealed the following statistics: 50,000 

predators are online at any given time; 1 in 5 children will be solicited 

online; 1 in 33 of these solicitations, just about the size of an 

overcrowded classroom, will result in the successful contact of a child by 

phone, letter, or physical meeting. I suspect that what Mr. Hansen has to 
6

tell us will provide important context for the examining of the testimony 

of the social networking websites that will appear before us tomorrow. 

 I am also pleased that you have assembled seven Internet service 

providers to testify today. Certainly it is important for us to know the 

extent to which some ISPs have made to combat children pornography 

on their sites. Some ISPs have cooperated with law enforcement and are 

proactively attempting to eliminate child pornography from their 

networks while others seem to be in denial that they have children being 

abused over their networks. 

 But make no mistake about it, regardless of the level of effort 

expended so far, it is not enough. The problem is growing. Mr. 

Chairman, we have gathered witnesses that can provide some 

information, and some will be making very important announcements 

today. However, absent are the CEOs who can make the voluntary 

commitments of the resources and cooperation necessary to clean up the 

Web. 

 Voluntary action in the United Kingdom has made great strides in 

limiting the commercial use of the World Wide Web in that country to 

sell or view child porn. When these efforts began approximately 3 years 

ago, the UK hosted 18 percent of the commercial child porn sites 

worldwide. Today, that number is down to four-tenths of one percent. It 

is estimated that the United States hosts 42 percent of the worldwide forprofit sites. Since 2000, the CyberTipline operated by the National 

Center for Missing and Exploited Children has seen reports of these 

gruesome images grow from 20,000 to over 390,000 today. 

 I would like to see our Internet and telecom companies commit to 

taking down every identified site in the United States and blocking the 

American predators from using U.S.-based network platforms to access 

child pornography from any identified site worldwide. 

 As the author of an amendment to the House Telecommunications 

Bill to require broadband carriers to prevent child pornography from 

traveling on their networks, I am very interested in knowing the ISPs’ 

reaction to this idea. I also want to know if they will support tougher 

data retention policies for parent and known child pornography. Will 

this solve the problem? No, but it will make a substantial dent in the 

multi-billion-dollar industry that seeks to exploit children for profit. It 

will reduce the demand that drives much of the exploitation and will save 

many children from this terrible abuse. 

 With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Stupak. 

 At this time, I recognize the Vice Chairman of this committee, Mr. 

Walden of Oregon. 
7

 MR. WALDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I commend 

you for holding this hearing as we continue to investigate this terrible 

scourge that is on our population. 

 I want to congratulate Chris for the work he has done at NBC to 

really shine light for the whole country to see just how awful this is and 

how pervasive it is. I think most parents don’t have a clue that this could 

be going on in their own family room where a kid is hooked up to a 

computer, and yet we know, from our work on this committee, and you 

have identified from the work you have done, it is very easy to get 

caught up in the web of predators and perverts in this country who seek 

out children to do ghastly things to them. And so I commend you for 

that work, and I appreciate it as a parent. It has been most troubling to 

learn about what does go on out there, and I think most parents in 

America would share that, that they just can’t believe this happens and 

how easily and quickly it happens. I think one of the most disturbing 

things, Mr. Chairman, I have come to understand out of our hearings is 

within seconds, you can identify a predator online or they can identify 

you. And the grooming process begins, the manipulation begins, and the 

horror begins. And we have had witnesses before this subcommittee 

who have told us their stories and told America their stories, and 

hopefully, we will all learn from that. 

 I am pleased to see that the industry is responding in the way it 

should respond with the announcements today of their work that they are 

going to do with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children 

to develop both technological solutions as well as better enforcement 

tools and enhance their industry efforts. But I dare say there is more 

work to be done in terms of who is able to link to what site and who gets 

paid for that and how we filter that out. Some ISPs are better than others 

at that. And so our work continues. 

 But Mr. Chairman, I think the work of this committee and the work 

of journalists like Mr. Hansen come a long way toward exposing the 

problem, and frankly, shining light on a problem as horrific as this one is 

is a good first step and a good tonic. There are other things we can do 

legally, and there are certainly things the industries can do 

collaboratively to do everything we can to protect our kids and to clean 

up the Internet. 

 With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. 

 At this time, I will recognize Ms. DeGette of Colorado. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for tackling 

this series of hearings on a very important subject. 

 I have been amazed in these hearings, and as the mother of two girls 

ages 16 and 12, I have been scared about the data that we are hearing, 
8

because child pornography on the Internet is burgeoning. It is exploding 

out of control, and it is time for everybody involved in our society to take 

this seriously and to look at some serious steps to controlling it. 

 Only one percent of the images on the Internet are just simply nudity. 

This is very serious exploitation of children, and I am not going to go 

into the graphic details. Suffice it to say it is appalling, and it is easy to 

pull up on your computer. 

 I will also say, as Mr. Stupak noted, that the number of complaints 

that people are getting is burgeoning as well. The Department of Justice 

Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, in 2003, 3,700 reports of 

Internet crimes against children. In fiscal year 2005, it went up to 

198,000. So we really do need to get a grip on it, and we all need to do it 

together: the media, Members of Congress, and the providers. 

 And so, Mr. Chairman, sometimes we wonder if we do any good up 

here, but the fact that the ISPs are making some announcement of 

changes of policies today, I think that is based directly on the work of 

people like Mr. Hansen to bring this out and people like Paula 

Woodward in Denver at our NBC affiliate who has been working on this. 

I also think it is a result of these hearings. And I think it is 

commendable. I am eager to hear these announcements, and I am glad 

they are doing it, but I still think we need to do more. 

 And as probably almost everybody in this room knows, and 

everybody on this committee knows, ever since our first hearing, I 

started working on legislation that would require companies that provide 

broadband service to keep certain records that identify their customers 

for 1 year. Amazingly, even though we require telephone companies to 

keep records of every telephone call for 18 months so that law 

enforcement authorities can subpoena those records, there is no Federal 

law for Internet communications, and there is no industry standard. 

 As we have heard over and over in our testimony, this is hindering 

investigations, because when investigators want to go and get evidence, 

subpoena evidence that they can find these terrible criminal perpetrators, 

they find that the Internet service information has been destroyed. And 

so, Mr. Chairman, I have been working with you and your staff and also 

with Chairman Barton and his staff to make sure that the legislation is 

drafted so that it protects consumers’ rights to privacy. But I have said it 

before, and I will say it again, I don’t think that people who are raping 2-

year-old children on the Internet have any right to privacy, and nobody 

thinks that. 

 So we need to make our laws work. We need to make our laws work 

to have people retain records so that they can be subpoenaed in criminal 

investigations. 
9

 Let me just say one thing. I am not saying that the Internet 

communications should be preserved. And that has been a 

misunderstanding that has been out there. I am saying that certain 

identifying information that is readily available and is kept now by 

Internet service providers should be kept for a period of time so that law 

enforcement authorities can subpoena that information if they need it in 

an ongoing investigation. 

 I think that eradicating this pernicious practice is going to take a 

national and even a global partnership of citizens, parents, government, 

industry, and law enforcement. Every single one of us needs to be 

thinking about how we can do more. Every single parent in this country 

needs to be thinking about talking to their children about these Internet 

predators and how they can avoid being victims. And once we do that, 

just like we eradicated a lot of the child pornography in the mail in the 

1980s, I believe that we can rid our computers and our children of this 

scourge. 

 Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. 

 At this time, I recognize Mr. Ferguson of New Jersey. 

 MR. FERGUSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding another 

hearing on this subject that our committee has brought to the public’s 

attention over the course of the last few months. I am thankful that our 

committee has made a commitment to educate the public and the 

Government about a topic which really needs a lot of our attention. 

 I would also like to thank our witnesses for joining us today and 

testifying. The witnesses that are coming before the committee today 

have all made a commitment to bring this issue to light and helping 

working to protect our children who use the Internet, and for that, we are 

all very appreciative. 

 I also want to thank Chris Hansen for being here with us today and 

taking time to be here. There is no doubt that the “To Catch a Predator” 

series that recently aired on Dateline NBC came as a shock to all of us 

who were watching. Perhaps what was most shocking was the wide 

demographic of men who came with the intention of taking advantage of 

these children. Throughout the past few months, we learned that there is 

truly no pattern, profile, or overarching characteristic of these folks. 

They come from all walks of life, all professions, backgrounds, and 

education levels, and perhaps that is what is most frightening of all. 

 I want to thank Mr. Hansen again, and I am anxious to hear what he 

has to say today about his work with Dateline NBC. 

 I appreciate the chance to hear from the Internet representatives who 

are here with us today and what they are doing to stop the flow of child 

pornography and aid law enforcement in these types of investigations. 
10

There is no doubt that the technology to apprehend these predators has 

greatly advanced over recent years, and Internet services can be a 

tremendous resource for law enforcement in these types of crimes. 

 While we struggle with privacy issues regarding e-mail and Internet 

chat rooms involved in these cyber crimes, I look forward to finding 

solutions to this problem. Whatever privacy concerns are out there, we 

must make sure that we are doing everything we can to protect our 

children. 

 Although as Members of Congress, we have done right in bringing 

this issue to surface, and law enforcement and those in the Internet 

industry have taken great strides in making efforts to root out predators, 

there is always more that can be done. 

 I look forward to working with these groups to further enhance the 

safety of the Internet while still allowing our children to use it for the 

many benefits that it can provide. I am also looking forward to hearing 

from law enforcement and others who work in this area in what is being 

done in my home State of New Jersey regarding this issue. Our O&I 

Subcommittee will have a field hearing on July 10 in my district in New 

Jersey. I want to extend my early appreciation to our U.S. Attorney in 

New Jersey, Chris Christie, who has already agreed to testify at that 

hearing. 

 Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your commitment to these 

hearings and this issue. 

 And again, thanks to our witnesses for being here today. 

 I yield back. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Ms. Baldwin of Wisconsin. 

 MS. BALDWIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to commend 

you, Mr. Chairman, and this subcommittee’s work in prior sessions 

examining the proliferation of child exploitation over the Internet and its 

efforts to shed light on the abhorrent but burgeoning networks of child 

predators online as well as its efforts to educate the public and especially 

parents about the danger such individuals pose to children who use the 

Internet. 

 I, too, want to extend my welcome to Mr. Hansen to today’s hearing. 

Your investigative series “To Catch a Predator” provides startling 

revelations of just how easy it is for a child predator to initiate online 

contact with underage persons, how there is no easy way to profile a 

child predator, and how persistent such predators are in looking for child 

victims despite high-profile sting operations such as those featured on 

your program. 

 Perhaps it helps explain the staggering statistic that one in five 

children is solicited for sex while online. Your program helps parents 

understand just how crucial it is for them to be involved with their 
11

children’s online activities and to proactively use filtering technologies 

and safety settings provided by the Internet service providers. 

 I also appreciate the participation of various ISPs and search engines 

on the second panel in today’s hearing. In reviewing the testimony 

provided for today’s hearing, it is clear to me that different ISPs adopt 

very different policies in regard to how proactively and aggressively each 

filters child pornography on its networks as well as its policies of data 

retention, specifically the length in which IP address assignment and 

customer record information are retained. 

 I strongly believe that there ought to be national uniformity in this 

regard so users of ISPs, especially children, are guaranteed a certain level 

of protection and that law enforcement officers across the country are 

assured that their hard work chasing down child predators will not be 

undermined at the last minute by inadequate data preservation. 

 I note that several panelists in our second panel have suggested 

various legislative options in their testimony today, and I look forward to 

working with members of this subcommittee to produce legislation that 

will address the needs of law enforcement in investigating and 

prosecuting child pornography cases while balancing a consumer’s right 

to privacy. 

 Finally, I have serious concerns regarding the adequacy of the effort 

of some of the search engines and what they are devoting to monitor and 

filter child pornography. For example, on our desks here today, are the 

results of a Google search which uncovered sponsored links hosted by an 

advertiser with Google on Google’s website that purports to market child 

pornography. I hope that Google can fully explain its “Ad words” 

service that allows any potential advertiser to create and control their 

advertisement through an online program. It is clear to me that such a 

self-managed advertising program requires a substantial amount of 

resources on the part of Google to screen and enforce its policy 

prohibiting the promotion of child pornography. And I am doubtful that 

current efforts are adequate. 

 In addition, I hope that both Google and Yahoo! will address the 

issue of online bulletin boards or groups hosted by their websites that 

allow the exchange of sexually explicit images and material among 

group members. I am interested in any proactive efforts by Yahoo! and 

Google to monitor such bulletin boards for their trafficking and exchange 

of child pornography. 

 And I hope that this series of hearings will help lead to a reduction of 

such violent and heinous crimes against children, whether it is through 

informing parents of the dangers of online child predators, a greater 

oversight of Federal response to the issue of child exploitation on the 

Internet, or new legislative proposals that would deter online pedophilia. 
12

 Again, I want to thank the subcommittee and Mr. Chairman, Mr. 

Ranking Member for holding this important series of hearings, and I look 

forward to the testimony today. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. 

 Dr. Burgess, you are recognized for your opening statement. 

 MR. BURGESS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to join other 

members of our committee in welcoming Mr. Hansen here this morning 

and thank him for his groundbreaking work in this field. 

 Mr. Chairman, we have started this series of intensive investigations 

on sexual exploitation of children over the Internet, and we have heard 

from a range of parties: courageous child victims, journalists who bring 

stories to light, law enforcement agencies charged with prosecuting these 

predators. After each hearing, you can’t help but be troubled by what 

you have learned, and I am proud, Mr. Chairman, that this committee has 

taken the leadership role in dedicating itself to educating Congress and 

the public on this most dangerous situation. 

 As a father of three, I am unable to comprehend how people can 

commit these types of crimes against children. However, it is crucial, for 

the safety of our children, for all of us to know about these evils so that 

we can help curb this abusive practice. 

 Mr. Chairman, thank you for your leadership regarding this troubling 

but imperative topic. It is my understanding that after our last 

subcommittee hearing, Attorney General Gonzales announced that the 

Department of Justice, in conjunction with various Internet service 

providers, would study uniform data retention policies for IP addresses. 

Hopefully, this will enhance the effectiveness of law enforcements’ 

investigations for persons engaged in crimes against children. While 

some of the providers, like EarthLink, retain data for 7 years, others 

retain the IPs for as little as 31 days. 

 In light of the situation, my opinion, retaining this crucial data for 

only a month is, in itself, almost criminal. 

 I look forward to hearing from each of the Internet service providers 

today regarding their own current policies. I also think it would be 

useful to discuss some of the problems associated with a long period of 

data retention of these addresses. I believe that the providers have a 

responsibility to the public, and it will be extremely useful to know what 

type of safety features and filtering devices each company utilizes to help 

protect our children. 

 Further, it is my understanding that we may receive some new 

information today about new industry standards and new industry 

practice, and I look forward to learning that information today as well. 

 While the providers are an important component to this problem, the 

Government also has a vital role to play. During our last hearing, we 
13

heard how the Government let a young orphan from Russian, Masha 

Allen, be adopted by a single man, who, in turn, turned out to be a 

pedophile. There were all types of blatant clues that the Government 

ignored, including the fact that Masha would not have her own bedroom 

in this man’s home. 

 Mr. Chairman, how hard was that for the State Department that 

investigated this man for the suitability of being an adoptive parent, a 

single father, to ask: “Where is the little girl’s bedroom?” 

 Mr. Chairman, I look forward to us having the State Department 

back here before this committee to help us answer some of these 

questions, because the problems that we address in this country, as 

grievous and as troublesome as they are, pale in comparison to plucking 

a child out of an orphanage overseas and depositing her into that type of 

an environment. 

 As lawmakers, it is our job to create effective laws to keep children 

away from harm. While at times this is an almost impossible task, we 

have a responsibility to children and parents to diligently undertake this 

charge. We must not stop until we fulfill this important obligation to our 

most innocent and vulnerable segment of society. 

 Mr. Chairman, thank you, again, for your continued leadership and 

dedication to this grave situation. I look forward to working with you 

and others on this committee as we continue to find solutions to this most 

troublesome problem. 

 I yield back. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Dr. Burgess. 

 I might also add that we intend to bring in some of the adoption 

agencies as well that were involved in that. 

 At this time, I recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Stearns. 

 MR. STEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 This, obviously, is a very troubling hearing that we are having here. 

You would think with the advent of the Internet it would bring a lot of 

positive things, but obviously this is not a positive thing we are talking 

about today. 

 One in five children receives a sexual solicitation while on the 

Internet, and most never tell an adult. Between 2000 and 2004, Federal 

criminal referrals of sexual exploitation over the Internet increased by 

124 percent. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s 

CyberTipline reported it received more than 100,000 complaints a year 

regarding online child pornography. On March 15, Julie Myers, Chief of 

U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement, said in a press conference: 

“Tragically and frighteningly, the kids in these images are getting 

younger, and the images are getting more and more violent and graphic.” 
14

 In former hearings, we learned through the disturbing testimony 

from Mr. Justin Berry, a former victim of child predators, and Mr. Kurt 

Eichenwald, a reporter for the New York Times, that in this underground 

predator hunt for children on a legitimate site used by webcam owners 

and compare strategies and techniques. They simply compare strategies 

and techniques for luring children into this sordid world. 

 Pedophiles were all isolated from society and each other in the past, 

but no longer. The Internet creates a virtual community in which 

predators reinforce their sick desires. Online portal that advertises for 

paid webcam child pornography, there are 585 sites. Even after the 

children shut down these websites, the images remain and are traded 

online long afterwards. 

 We have heard about one website claiming to have 140,000 images 

of adolescents from their webcam. 

 My colleagues, it is illegal to manufacture and distribute child 

pornography whether in print form or online, and yet child 

pornographers produce images without fear or consequences. They are 

computer-savvy individuals, obviously, whose adaptive skills often 

outpace law enforcements’ ability to simply pursue them. 

 We need to strengthen our technological capabilities to track down 

and prosecute these criminals and instill such fear in them of capture and 

prosecution that they will not harm our children again. 

 It is also our duty to educate the adults, including all of the mothers 

and fathers, and to urge them to have close supervision. It is our duty, as 

Members of Congress, to do whatever we can in our power here this 

morning to protect the innocent. And certainly a hearing of this nature 

does help to inform others about this very serious offense. 

 So I am hoping the testimony will give us a greater insight into what 

efforts are currently being used to track down these criminals, perhaps 

also stimulating ideas for reform, either through legislative means or to 

tighten and enact more law enforcement. 

 And I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. At this time, I will recognize Mr. Inslee of 

Washington. 

 MR. INSLEE. Thank you. 

 I just want to thank Mr. Hansen for your work in this regard. You 

have helped move Congress. Thank you. 

 I look forward to your testimony. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Mrs. Blackburn of Tennessee. 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 I want to thank you for holding this series of hearings that we are in 

process with today. 
15

 Mr. Hansen, I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you 

for your interest and concern on this issue. And I want to thank you for 

being willing to take the time to come and be with us today. 

 In the past, child predators usually had to operate in person. They 

had to operate over the phone or through the mail in order to lure 

children. And now the Internet, with the availability and easy access to 

people, these child predators have many more tools at their disposal, and 

unfortunately, many times they are anonymous. 

 In past hearings, we have seen some of these tools that they use to 

solicit children, and today we are going to look at the methods that 

Internet companies can implement to protect children from being 

accosted by these despicable people. I know that some companies have 

recognized some of the means that the predators are using and are 

starting to implement more stringent steps to protect children from these 

predators. 

 But I want to remind the companies present at today’s hearing that it 

is incumbent upon them to use all of the available technological tools to 

prevent child predators from gaining access to our children. That is your 

responsibility. Our constituents want action with results. They do not 

want half-hearted efforts on anyone’s attempt. This is a problem that is 

out of control. It is a problem that we must arrest. It is a problem that 

we have to get our arms around, and collectively we have to solve this. 

We have to solve this. 

 These efforts are not a substitute for law enforcement, but more and 

more parents, including my constituents, are becoming increasingly 

concerned about online child predators, and they want to see children 

protected. They want to know that their children are safe when they are 

using the Internet. They want to know that you are their partner in 

protecting these children. 

 One issue that keeps recurring is how these companies are 

monitoring communications that would reveal either the transfer of child 

pornography or messages that would indicate that a user might be a child 

predator. 

 Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing from the companies today. 

I look forward to hearing from our first witness. And I thank everyone 

for their time. 

 [Additional statement submitted for the record follow:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE BARTON, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ENERGY 

AND COMMERCE

Thank you, Chairman Whitfield, for convening this hearing. 

 Over the last six months, this subcommittee has been investigating the sexual 

exploitation of children over the Internet. Our previous hearings have left no doubt that 

the war against online child pornography and sexual exploitation is not merely a problem 
16

for law enforcement to solve. Everyone must do his or her part to combat this epidemic 

of abuse if we are to succeed. And this includes the Internet Service Providers and social 

networking sites that will appear before this subcommittee today and tomorrow. 

 Law enforcement agents who testified during our previous hearings talked about 

what industry could do to help win the war against the online sexual exploitation of 

children. One of the problems the agents discussed was inadequate data retention. I 

think all the members of this subcommittee shared the agents’ frustration when they 

described how some of their investigations were thwarted because Internet Service 

Providers had not retained the data that would allow them to make a link between an IP 

address used by an online predator and that predator’s name and home address. In one 

instance, law enforcement was unable to find the man who was seen raping a two-year 

old child on an online video because the Internet Service Provider no longer had the IP 

address information that would have led the police to the predator. 

In response to incidents like these, the Department of Justice has been meeting with 

Internet companies, including some of those appearing before us today, and has 

proposed a two-year data retention period. Just last week, Ranking Member Dingell and 

I received a letter from the National Association of Attorneys General urging Congress to 

study the issue of a national data retention standard. Therefore, I look forward to hearing 

your thoughts on these proposals. I understand data retention is a complex issue and that 

an extended retention requirement might pose cost increases for your companies. I am 

hopeful a solution can be reached that will satisfy the concerns of law enforcement and 

the concerns of the industry. 

 Another area where Internet companies assist law enforcement is by making reports 

to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. While the Internet Service 

Providers and social networking sites that are testifying today and tomorrow all report to 

the National Center, there are many other providers and sites that either ignore or are not 

aware of this reporting requirement. In addition to your views on data retention, I am 

interested in learning your thoughts on mandatory registration of ISPs to facilitate 

increased reporting to the National Center, as well as other ideas you may have to help 

law enforcement find these criminals who seek to abuse our children. 

 While reporting and data retention are two key tools that will help bring an end to 

online child pornography, industry’s role in this fight cannot simply be limited to 

responding to law enforcement requests or reacting to the child pornography they 

discover on their networks. It is essential that industry get ahead of the problem — and 

the predators — by developing safeguards which will prevent these criminals from taking 

advantage of their networks and websites in order to send images of child abuse or to lure 

children. I understand that some of the companies that are appearing before us today 

announced just this morning that they are coming together to create the Center for Child 

Protection Technologies at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. This 

center will focus on developing technology solutions to detect and disrupt the 

transmission of child pornography. In addition, it will serve as a clearinghouse for 

known child pornography images that network operators can use to block child 

pornography. I commend the industry for launching this initiative. It is a valuable step 

towards winning the war against child pornography. We must make sure that every effort 

is brought to bear, as the price paid by the children who are victims of Internet child 

pornography and sexual exploitation is lifelong and devastating. 

 I look forward to hearing from the witnesses and yield back the balance of my time. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mrs. Blackburn. 

 And I believe that concludes the opening statements, so Mr. Hansen, 

thank you for your patience. 
17

 We are delighted to have Chris Hansen here with us today from NBC 

News. And Mr. Hansen, as you probably are aware, in this Oversight 

and Investigations Subcommittee, we have a practice of taking all 

testimony under oath. And under the Rules of the House and the rules of 

the Committee, of course, you are entitled to legal counsel. I am 

assuming you don’t need legal counsel today, so if you would please 

stand up, and I would like to swear you in. 

 [Witness sworn.] 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. 

 You are now under oath, Mr. Hansen, and you are recognized for a 

5-minute opening statement. 

STATEMENT OF CHRIS HANSEN, DATELINE NBC 

MR. HANSEN. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, 

thank you very much, and good morning. 

 I am Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC, and first off, again, I would 

like to thank the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for 

inviting me to testify today on this critically important topic. 

 I would also like to thank you for understanding and accepting the 

limitations in what I can say as a member of a news organization. 

 A little more than 2 years ago, we set out to investigate computer 

predators: adults who go online into chat rooms and try to meet underage 

boys and girls. 

 Volunteers from the online watchdog group, Perverted Justice, posed 

as young teens home alone and open to the idea of an encounter. We 

rented a home in Long Island, New York, and outfitted it with hidden 

cameras. The decoys set up profiles in chat rooms that included pictures 

of boys and girls that were unmistakably underage. The decoys waited 

to be approached by men in the chat rooms. They didn’t wait long. 

Within minutes sometimes, men were trying to start up inappropriate and 

often obscene conversations. There was graphic language, pornographic 

material, and a grooming process all geared at setting up a sexual liaison 

with a minor. The question was: would any of the men actually show up 

at our hidden camera house to keep their date with a young teen? 

 In the days before the shoot, I had wondered quietly to myself about 

the possibility that perhaps no one would show up. Maybe the anecdotal 

evidence we had seen on the computer predator problem was overstated. 

But as I was stuck in traffic on the Throgg’s Neck Bridge headed to the 

house, I received a call from my producer, Lynn Keller, who was frantic. 

A man was due to show up in 45 minutes, and I had to be there. 

Fortunately, I made it there in about a half hour, leaving just enough time 

to prepare to confront the man before he walked in the door right on 
18

schedule. For the next 21⁄2 days, we witnessed a parade of potential 

predators. There were men from all walks of life. Even a New York 

City firefighter surfaced in our investigation. 

 Last summer, we continued our investigation, this time setting up a 

home in Fairfax County, Virginia, just miles from where we are now 

sitting. Again, Perverted Justice members worked as decoys, and the 

home was outfitted with hidden cameras. In 3 days, 18 men walked into 

the hidden camera house expecting to meet an underage boy or girl. 

There was a rabbi, an emergency room doctor, a special education 

teacher, and a man who walked in from the garage naked, carrying his 

clothes and a 12-pack of beer. 

 Earlier this year, we set up in a home in Southern California. This 

time, however, law enforcement set up a parallel investigation so the 

men could be arrested after I confronted them. In 3 days, 51 men came 

to the house to meet a boy or a girl and were arrested. Again, there was a 

wide range of characters: a teacher, a lawyer, an actor, even a Federal 

agent assigned to the Department of Homeland Security. And there was 

something we had not seen before: a number of previously convicted sex 

offenders. One of them was a 68-year-old man who had recently pleaded 

guilty to having sex with a 15-year-old boy. He was on probation as he 

walked into our home to meet someone who told him online he was 13. 

Another man who showed up had an even darker past. Our investigation 

revealed that 20 years before he walked into our house, he had molested 

three children in the same family in Oregon. Their mother had met the 

man through a mentoring program. And the trail didn’t end there. It 

turns out he had yet another conviction in Palm Springs, California, after 

that. 

 The Southern California investigation drew men all of the way from 

Los Angeles to San Diego. We wondered if this was a big city crime or 

if we would find computer predators in small-town America as well. 

 Our next investigation took us to Darke County, Ohio, population 

13,000. Would potential predators travel miles of country roads, past 

cornfields and cow pastures to visit a child home alone? The answer was 

yes. 

 Even though word of our investigation leaked out in the small town 

of Greenville, Ohio, where we had set up, 18 men came to our house 

after explicit online conversations with a decoy from the watchdog group 

Perverted Justice. All of them were arrested after we confronted them. 

It was here in Ohio that we saw something new: a growing number of 

men who showed up had actually seen some of our past investigations 

and came anyway. 

 A sixth-grade teacher who came to meet a 13-year-old girl admitted 

to me that not only had he seen our past broadcasts, but he had actually 
19

discussed them with his fellow teachers. Another man who had showed 

up at our Ohio house late on a Sunday night was scheduled to go to jail 

in just 4 days for earlier soliciting a child online. Since then, he has 

pleaded guilty to molesting a young female relative in yet another case. 

 Our most recent investigation took us to Fort Myers, Florida, where 

in 3 days, 24 men showed up to meet a boy or a girl and subsequently 

were arrested. After five investigations in five different States, we 

thought we had seen it all, but no one was prepared for what we saw next 

in Fort Myers. Late on a sunny Sunday afternoon, our hidden cameras 

were rolling as a 40-year-old man parked his SUV in front of our home. 

He had set up a date for sex with a decoy posing as a 14-year-old boy. 

We watched as he got out and walked around the rear passenger door. 

We suspected he may be grabbing some beer or food, as we had seen 

some other visitors do. Instead, he takes his 5-year-old son out of the car 

seat and leads him by the hand up the driveway towards the back door of 

our house. There was an audible gasp inside the house. After he walked 

in, I told him who I was and what Dateline was doing. I didn’t want to 

scare his son. Fort Myers police, who had set up their parallel 

investigation in the nearby home, saw the man had brought his child. A 

female officer scooped up the boy so he did not have to further witness 

his father’s arrest. Police called the boy’s mother, who was at work, and 

she picked him up at the police station. 

 In all, nearly 130 men have surfaced in our five investigations. 

Ninety-eight of them have been charged criminally. Seven have pleaded 

guilty. The rest are awaiting trial and have pleaded not guilty. 

 What did these men have in common? The majority of the men 

don’t stand out in a crowd. Most look like the guy standing next to you 

in line at the dry cleaner’s or at the grocery store. They don’t have the 

word “predator” tattooed across their foreheads. 

 Virtually every day in this country, it seems a Federal or a local law 

enforcement agency does a sting operation targeting potential predators. 

Dateline has now done five in less than 2 years. You would think that 

would be a deterrent. Perhaps, for some. But for many other men, the 

desire to meet a teen for sex is too powerful. We have also seen men 

who think the odds of being caught are remote. In our last investigation, 

several visitors realized almost immediately what was going on. It was 

almost as if they were saying, “Oh, you are that guy. This is that show. 

And do you want me to sit over here?” 

 What drives these men? Based on our experience and what experts 

tell us, there is no one-size-fits-all characterization. Some are sexual 

opportunists who think they can take advantage of an inexperienced but 

curious teen. Some are evil. They are just wired wrong. Some are sick, 

perhaps victimized as a child. Many share an addiction to online chat 
20

rooms and pornography sites and, eventually, a compulsion to meet a 

young teen for sex. 

 The anonymity and 24/7 access to the Internet can fuel this 

compulsion. In our experience, potential predators will sometimes talk 

to someone posing as a child for weeks before suggesting a meeting. 

There is a grooming process that often starts with casual banter: talk of 

hobbies, sports, or a troubled relationship with a parent. The potential 

predator will many times say he has shared in a child’s experience. 

Often, the man will say early on that he is too old for the teen and he 

could get into serious trouble if they met. Then, however, the 

conversation will turn explicit. He will suggest different sex acts. A 

meeting is agreed to, and the next thing we see is him coming through 

the door. 

 Our reporting suggests it is not hard for a potential predator to find a 

teen to talk to. Regional chat rooms are often where our decoys are 

approached. The decoy never makes the first move. It is usually only a 

matter of minutes before he or she is contacted. The decoys pose as 

regular kids with regular issues. They are open to the idea of a visit and 

potentially a sexual encounter. 

 In our investigations, we have found that social networking sites are 

also popular trolling grounds for potential predators. MySpace, Xanga, 

and Facebook are places where teens often post personal pictures and 

information that they wrongly believe is only viewed by their friends. 

 The incredibly good news for parents and children is that experts tell 

us that there is no magic way for a potential predator to enter your home 

via the high-speed cable. Your child must provide information for a 

meeting to take place. That is why a dialogue between parent and child 

and teacher and student is so critical. It is really the same discussion our 

parents had with us years ago about strangers at the playground or 

accepting a ride from someone you don’t know. You just have to apply 

it to the Internet. 

 I have brought with me today a DVD that has excerpts from some of 

our reporting. I would like you to see that, and afterwards, I would be 

happy to entertain questions. 

 [The prepared statement of Chris Hansen follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHRIS HANSEN, NBC NEWS

Good Morning, 

I’m Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC. First off, I would like to thank the 

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for inviting me to testify today on this 

critically important topic. I would also like to thank you for understanding and accepting 

the limitations in what I can say as a member of a news organization. 

 A little more than 2 years ago we set out to investigate computer predators, adults 

who go on-line into chat rooms and try to meet underage boys and girls. Volunteers for 
21

the on-line watchdog group Perverted Justice posed as young teens home alone and open 

to the idea of an encounter. We rented a home in Long Island, New York and outfitted it 

with hidden cameras. The decoys set up profiles in chat rooms that included pictures of 

boys and girls that were unmistakably under-age. The decoys waited to be approached by 

men in the chat rooms. They didn’t wait long. 

Within minutes sometimes, men were trying to start up inappropriate and often 

obscene conversations. There was graphic language, pornographic material and a 

grooming process all geared at setting up a sexual liaison with a minor. The question was: 

would any of the men actually show up at our hidden camera house to keep their date 

with a young teen. 

In the days before the shoot, I had wondered quietly to myself about the possibility 

that perhaps no one would show up. Maybe the anecdotal evidence we’d seen on the 

computer predator problem was overstated. But, as I was stuck in traffic on the Throgs 

Neck Bridge, headed to the house, I received a call from my producer Lynn Keller. She 

was frantic. A man was due to show up in 45 minutes and I had to be there. Fortunately I 

made it there in about a half hour leaving just enough time to prepare to confront the man 

before he walked in the door right on schedule. For the next two and a half days we 

witnessed a parade of potential predators. There were men from all walks of life. Even a 

New York City firefighter surfaced in our investigation. 

Last summer we continued our investigation, this time setting up in a home in 

Fairfax County Virginia, just miles from where were are now sitting. Again Perverted 

Justice members worked as decoys and the home was outfitted with hidden cameras. In 3 

days 18 men walked into the hidden camera house expecting to meet an underage boy or 

girl. There was a rabbi, an emergency room doctor, a special education teacher and a man 

who walked in from the garage naked, carrying his clothes and a 12-pack of beer. 

Earlier this year we set up in a home in southern California. This time, however, law 

enforcement set up a parallel investigation so the men could be arrested after I confronted 

them. In 3 days 51 men came to the house to meet a boy or girl and were arrested. Again, 

there was a wide range of characters: A teacher, a lawyer, an actor, even a federal agent 

assigned to the Department of Homeland Security. And there was something we had not 

seen before: a number of previously convicted sex offenders. One of them was a 68-year 

old man who had recently pleaded guilty to having sex with a 15-year old boy. He was on 

probation as he walked into our home to meet someone who told him on-line he was 13. 

Another man who showed up had an even darker past. Our investigation revealed that 20 

years before he walked into our house, he had molested 3 children in the same family in 

Oregon. Their mother had met the man through a mentoring program. And the trail didn’t 

end there. It turns out he had yet another conviction in Palm Springs, California after that. 

The southern California investigation drew men all the way from Los Angeles to 

San Diego. We wondered if this was a big city crime or if we’d find computer predators 

in small town America as well. Our next investigation took us to Darke County, Ohio, 

population 13-thousand. Would potential predators travel miles of country roads, past 

corn fields and cow pastures to visit a child home alone? The answer was: yes. Even 

though word of our investigation leaked out in the small town of Greenville where we 

were set up, 18 men came to our house after explicit on-line conversations with a decoy 

from the watchdog group Perverted Justice. All of them were arrested after we confronted 

them. It was here in Ohio that we saw something new. A growing number of the men 

who showed up had actually seen some of our past investigations and came anyway. A 

6th grade teacher who came to meet a 13-year old girl admitted to me that not only had he 

seen our past broadcasts, but he had actually discussed them with his fellow teachers. 

Another man who showed up at our Ohio house late on a Sunday night was scheduled to 

go to jail in just 4 days for earlier soliciting a child on-line. Since then he’s pleaded guilty 

to molesting a young female relative in yet another case. 
22

Our most recent investigation took us to Fort Myers, Florida where in 3 days 24 men 

showed up to meet a boy or a girl and subsequently were arrested. After 5 investigations 

in 5 different states we thought we had seen it all, but no one was prepared for what we 

saw in Fort Myers. Late on a sunny Sunday afternoon our hidden cameras were rolling as 

a 40 year old man parked his SUV in front of our home. He had set up a date for sex with 

a decoy posing as a 14-year old boy. We watched as he got out and walked around to the 

rear passenger door. We suspected he maybe grabbing some beer or food as we’d seen 

some other visitors do. Instead he takes his 5-year old son out of his car seat and leads 

him by the hand up the driveway towards the back door. There was an audible gasp 

inside the house. After he walked in I told him who I was and what Dateline was doing. I 

didn’t want to scare his son. Fort Myers Police who had set up their parallel investigation 

in a nearby home saw that the man had brought his child. A female officer scooped up the 

boy so he would not have to further witness his father’s arrest. Police called the boy’s 

mother who was at work and she picked him up at the police station. 

In all, 130 men have surfaced in our 5 investigations. 98 of them have been charged 

criminally. 7 have pleaded guilty. The rest are awaiting trial. What do these men have in 

common? The majority of the men don’t stand out in a crowd. Most look like the guy 

next to you in line at the dry cleaners or the grocery store. They don not have “predator” 

tattooed on their foreheads. 

Virtually every day in this country it seems a federal or local law enforcement 

agency does a sting operation targeting potential predators. Dateline has now done 5 

investigations in less than 2 years. You’d think that would be a deterrent. Perhaps for 

some, but for many other men the desire to meet a teen for sex is too powerful. We’ve 

also seen men who think the odds of being caught are remote. In our last investigation, 

several visitors realized almost immediately what was going on. It was almost as if they 

were saying “oh, you’re that guy, this is that show, this is where you want me to sit?” 

What drives these men? Based on our experience and what experts tell us there is no 

one size fits all characterization. Some are sexual opportunists who think they can take 

advantage of an inexperienced but curious teen. Some are evil. They’re just wired wrong. 

Some are sick, perhaps victimized as a child. Many share an addiction to on-line chat 

rooms and pornography sites and eventually a compulsion to meet a young teen for sex. 

The anonymity and 24/7 access to the Internet can fuel this compulsion. In our 

experience potential predators will sometimes talk to someone posing as a child for 

weeks before suggesting a meeting. There is a grooming process that often starts with 

casual banter, talk of hobbies sports or a troubled relationship with a parent. The potential 

predator will many times say he’s shared in the child’s experience. Often the man will 

say early on that he is too old for the teen and he could get into serious trouble if they 

met. Then however, the conversation will turn explicit. He’ll suggest different sex acts. A 

meeting is agreed to and the next thing we see is –him- coming through the door. 

Our reporting suggests it is not hard for a potential predator to find a teen to talk to. 

Regional chat rooms are often where our decoys are approached. The decoy never makes 

the first move. It’s usually only a matter of minutes before he or she is contacted. The 

decoys pose as regular kids with regular issues. They are open to the idea of a visit and 

potentially a sexual encounter. In our investigations we have found that social networking 

sites are also popular trolling grounds for potential predators. My Space, Xanga and 

Facebook are places where teens often post pictures and personal information that they 

wrongly believe is only viewed by their friends. 

The incredibly good news for parents and children is that experts tell us that there is 

no magic way for a potential predator to enter your home via the high-speed cable. Your 

child must provide information for a meeting to take place. That is why a dialogue 

between parent and child and teacher and student is so critical. It’s really the same 

discussion our parents had with us about strangers at the playground or accepting a ride 

from someone you don’t know. You just have to apply it to the Internet. 
23

I’ll be happy to entertain questions. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Hansen. And we appreciate your 

bringing that videotape. And at this time, if you all would play it, we 

would like to look at it. 

 [Video.] 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Well, I don’t know what to say, Mr. Hansen. That 

was quite a compelling video. And it is unbelievable that you were able 

to get all of that on TV. And I guess it has been shown throughout the 

country. And you are continuing to do this. But it certainly 

demonstrates the widespread problem that we have throughout our 

country. 

 And I guess the first question I would just like to ask you relates to 

this group Perverted Justice. Now could you explain a little bit about 

that group? 

 MR. HANSEN. Mr. Chairman, this is a group started by a fellow 

named Xavier Von Erck, who lives in Oregon. And they started as 

volunteers who essentially would go online posing as kids in chat rooms. 

If they caught an adult trying to set up a meeting, they would actually 

post information about this adult on their website. And you know, 

people could check it out and see who was taking part in this alleged 

behavior. We became aware of the group and thought maybe we could 

use their expertise in terms of their decoy work. And if we were able to 

use our hidden cameras and our technology to cover this crime, that we 

could watch them in action and, get a pretty compelling picture of what 

is going on in some of these Internet chat rooms. And that is kind of 

how it started. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And so that group has been involved with you 

since that time? 

 MR. HANSEN. Each and every time. And I think you saw a woman 

named Del there, who is very talented when it comes to posing as a 

young girl or boy online. And she knows the teen speak of the Internet, 

as does Frag, the fellow you saw there. And they have contributors 

around the country who go online and they pose as kids in these chat 

rooms. And the information ultimately comes to the house where we are 

set up. Perverted Justice provides Dateline with the transcripts so we can 

go through them. And I read every word of them, so I am prepared when 

these guys come in. and in the last couple of investigations where law 

enforcement had a parallel investigation going, Perverted Justice would 

also provide transcripts of the chat log to the law enforcement, and they 

would be ready to take action on their part. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Are there some specific chat rooms that seem to be 

used more than others, from your experience? 
24

 MR. HANSEN. Typically, these are regional chat rooms. There have 

been some that apparently have a reputation for, perhaps gay romance or 

regular romance, but they are not anything specifically set up for 

something that people might find different or out there or alternative, 

generally. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. All right. And all of these men that participated in 

these events, were they all prosecuted, from your knowledge, or do you 

know? 

 MR. HANSEN. In the very first investigation in Long Island, we 

didn’t have law enforcement doing a parallel investigation, so to the best 

of my knowledge, the only prosecution that occurred there involved the 

firefighter who surfaced there. He pleaded guilty recently after facing 

Federal charges. In Washington, there was a handful of cases 

prosecuted, but to be honest with you, it is difficult for law enforcement 

and prosecutors to come in after the fact and, based on our broadcast 

and/or based upon Perverted Justice’s chat logs to prosecute all of these 

men. In Fairfax County, Virginia, they did as best as they could. Once 

law enforcement started having a parallel investigation, then, obviously 

they are in on it from their standpoint from the beginning, and they are 

able to make their cases. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Of course, you had one gentleman who brought his 

5-year-old son. You had one gentleman who came in nude. And did you 

have other examples of people bringing their children with them to these 

encounters? 

 MR. HANSEN. No, nobody has, in the past, brought their children, 

but to see that video is stunning, but we work with 20 or so people inside 

this house, and these are guys who have been with me in India and 

investigations in Cambodia. They have been in tough places, dark places 

all around the world. I don’t have to tell you that literally, I mean, these 

guys are people who have seen it and done it all. After this happened, I 

mean, these guys were in tears. That is how saddening this thing was. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. From the experiences that you all had with this 

program, most of the predators that showed up at the homes, did most of 

them have prior convictions or not? 

 MR. HANSEN. The vast majority did not have past contacts with law 

enforcement of any sort. In California, as you saw from the video clips, 

we saw the most previously-convicted sexual offenders of anywhere else. 

We had one case in Ohio, and there had been some other cases where 

guys that had actually been exposed by Perverted Justice. But the vast 

majority of the men who walked into our investigations had not had prior 

sexual convictions. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And it is my understanding that maybe one person 

showed up twice? 
25

 MR. HANSEN. There was a case in Fairfax County, Virginia, the 

fellow who also showed up naked there, the next day, we were in the 

course of our investigation, and the Perverted Justice people are set up in 

an upstairs bedroom on their computer, and one of them calls me up in 

disbelief, and says, “Remember the guy who walked in naked last night? 

He is in a chat room trying to set up a meeting with a decoy posing as a 

13-year-old boy.” 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Unbelievable. 

 MR. HANSEN. So they set up a meeting at a nearby McDonald’s 

restaurant, and we, of course, go out there. I mean, I didn’t think he 

would show up. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Right. 

 MR. HANSEN. But as we were sitting there with the crews, here he 

comes. He walks right into the McDonald’s and walks right out. I am 

standing there, and he said, “Well, I am just getting something to eat.” 

And I said, “Well, look, this is our second time down this road, and I 

have got the transcripts.” And he finally said, “I am sorry,” and, “I am 

seeing a counselor.” 

 MR. WHITFIELD. So were you ever personally threatened in any of 

these encounters? 

 MR. HANSEN. Nothing serious. I think, as you saw, the rabbi 

became upset and agitated, but it wasn’t-- 

 MR. WHITFIELD. I guess they are so shocked they can’t respond at 

all. 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I think a couple things happen. One, obviously, 

we have got the element of surprise in these investigations. Two, and I 

have seen this more and more as we have continued, I think some of 

these people have wanted to get help for some time and are almost 

relieved that they are caught. And I think because I am generally curious 

to know what these guys are thinking, they sometimes want to get it off 

their chests even though they know it could be on national television. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. I think the thing that is really disturbing about all 

of this is that these are examples that we know about that you were 

involved in, and just think of the thousands that are out there going on 

every day that no one knows about. And so you have got these adults 

chatting with young people. And we know from testimony that we have 

had here in these hearings that they meet these pedophiles, and some 

people are selling sex on demand. There was a couple in Texas who 

were generating, I think, around $2 million a month, sexually abusing 

their own 5-year-old child on demand. 

 Well, Mr. Hansen, thank you so much for being here, for focusing 

attention on this important matter. 

 And at this time, I will recognize the gentleman from Michigan. 
26

 MR. STUPAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 Mr. Hansen, thanks for your work. 

 Any females come forth? 

 MR. HANSEN. That is an excellent question. Five investigations, 

five States, in only one investigation did we even have contact with a 

female potential predator, and in that case, she did not show up. 

Perverted Justice will tell us that they have only seen it a couple times in 

the 4 years that they have been doing these investigations. Experts in 

this field suggest that while we do see female predators, and you have 

seen the stories about the teacher and the student, there have been a 

number of them, female predators prefer to know who that person is. 

They don’t like the anonymity. And the reality is, at least in our 

experience, it is a male-dominated crime. 

 MR. STUPAK. At any time, or in your conversations with Perverted 

Justice there, were you referred to other sites to view? From the time 

you have contact, maybe, until the time they would come to show up, did 

they-- 

 MR. HANSEN. There were instances where the potential predator 

would suggest to the decoy, “If you want to learn about this sex act, I can 

either send you pictures or I can refer you to a website where this stuff 

exists.” Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. How often did that happen or occur? Just a 

guestimation. 

 MR. HANSEN. Yes, I mean, I think it happened a half a dozen to a 

dozen times over the five investigations. 

 MR. STUPAK. Is it fair to say that most of these predators would 

have webcams? 

 MR. HANSEN. I don’t know if I would say most, but yes, I would say 

at least half have webcams. And we see more and more. And that is 

why in the Ohio investigation we introduced the webcam to what we 

were doing. And when we had the actress who obviously looked much 

younger than she was, that was a very convincing thing. And once the 

potential predator saw that, it really engaged them. 

 MR. STUPAK. So your decoy would indicate they had a webcam? 

 MR. HANSEN. Exactly. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. You testified that MySpace, Xanga, and 

Facebook are popular trolling grounds for potential sexual predators. 

Can you explain how these websites may perpetuate child exploitation 

and why these social networking sites are so appealing to pedophiles? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I think that potential predators know that there 

will be a lot of children on some of these social networking websites. 

And some of them have implemented controls, and there are ways that a 

child can prevent most strangers from visiting their website. But like 
27

anything else kids don’t always pay attention to the rules or to the 

protections that are out there. And so you do see the potential, in some 

cases, for contacts to be made. And we have seen adults, for instance, 

and there have been criminal prosecutions along these lines, who pose as 

a 14-year-old girl and set up an identity to make friends with other 14-

year-old girls and ultimately set up a meeting with somebody who is 

supposed to be a photographer, and you can imagine what happens next. 

 MR. STUPAK. Right. 

 MR. HANSEN. So there is the potential. 

 MR. STUPAK. Well, short of shutting these social websites down, 

can you think of any safeguards you would put on there? 

 MR. HANSEN. I think it really comes down to a parent having a 

realistic approach to this with their child, because kids will take the path 

of least resistance. You can’t just say, “I am going to pull the Internet 

out of the house.” In the first investigation, I had a group of kids, 

probably nine or ten, all 12 years old, and I said, “How many of you, a 

show of hands, have had an uncomfortable, sexually-charged contact on 

the Internet from a stranger?” Almost all of them raised their hands. I 

said, “How many told your parents?” None. They are looking at the 

ground. They are kicking their feet. And I said, “Well, why not?” They 

said, “We are afraid they are going to take the computer away.” You 

have got to tell the kid, “Look, if this is going to happen, and it can 

happen, come to me. We will contact the law enforcement authorities. 

We will contact the Internet service provider.” The Internet service 

providers don’t want this stuff going on. But you have got to team up 

with your kid. You can’t just bark orders and try and make the problem 

go away. 

 MR. STUPAK. I take it when your decoys were setting up their sites, 

they were easy to access, nothing real sophisticated to get into? 

 MR. HANSEN. Exactly. I mean, the chat rooms that they were in 

were, for the most part just basic regional chat rooms. 

 MR. STUPAK. We have estimates, and I think I used the figures in 

my opening statement that 1 in 5 will be contacted by a predator and 1 in 

33 is convinced to contact the predator offline through a phone call, 

letter, or actually a visit. Is that consistent with what you saw? 

 MR. HANSEN. The one in five number comes from a study that is 

quoted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 

 MR. STUPAK. Right. 

 MR. HANSEN. We actually commissioned a study on our own that 

we had as part of the Ohio investigation that showed the number might 

be more like one in three, depending on how you define a sexuallyexplicit or sexually-suggestive contact. And the other hard thing there, 

obviously, is it sexually-suggestive contact by another teen or is it from 
28

an adult? And that is not always easy to figure out. I mean the statistics, 

they are estimates, and you just have to keep that in mind that they are 

estimates, as best as we can get them. 

 MR. STUPAK. The other statistic I used in my opening, I indicated, 

and I think you brought it home with the man that showed up with his 5-

year-old son, that about 35 to 40-percent of these people are known to 

abuse children, either their own or a close relative or something like that. 

A new study is going to be coming out here soon. They estimate that 

might be as high as 75 to 80 percent. Would you take issue with those 

numbers? 

 MR. HANSEN. I have no evidence that disputes that, but I should be 

clear-- 

 MR. STUPAK. In your study, did you commission-- 

 MR. HANSEN. We did not specifically address how many people 

who are taking this behavior on the Internet who also may or may not 

have inappropriate contact with their child. But in the case of the guy 

you saw in Fort Myers, Florida, just to be clear, based on his questioning 

by police, he was not going to, or he did not intend to involve his son in 

any sex act. He just happened to be babysitting that day, and the thought 

was that he could watch a video in another room while the father 

contacted the teen, or who he thought was a teen. 

 MR. STUPAK. Did any of these individuals show up with their own 

video camera to record whatever was going to happen? 

 MR. HANSEN. We have not seen anyone bring a video camera, but 

we have seen disposable cameras and regular cameras. And obviously 

there are phones that can take video, and we have seen some of that. 

Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. You indicated in a question to the Chairman that you 

felt that some of these people were relieved to actually get caught. It 

seems like they are relieved to get caught, but where do you go with this? 

What do you do with this? How do you identify this? I guess that is 

what I am struggling with here. 

 MR. HANSEN. I think that what happens sometimes is we all want to 

just characterize these people as one sort of person, one solution, whether 

it is the criminal justice system or some sort of treatment, and it is just 

not the way it is. I mean, I have seen 21-year-old guys walk in there for 

a 14-year-old or 15-year-old girl, and they are probably lonely. I am not 

defending what these guys are doing, but-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Right. 

 MR. HANSEN. --they are sad cases. I have seen some real heavyduty cases of predators coming in there who if you read the chat logs, 

and you feel like you have to take a shower. So, I mean, are there guys 

who could go to counseling and be better if they are watched? Yes. Are 
29

there guys who just can’t be fixed by any other way than going to prison? 

There is that, too. But what has become clear is, and the experts we have 

interviewed on this topic say this as well, that there are not enough 

treatment opportunities. There is not enough counseling out there if a 

guy thinks he has got a problem. And I guarantee you, there are guys out 

there right now who are wondering about their Internet conversations and 

wondering if they are going over the line. 

 MR. STUPAK. This is more for the next panel, but just let me ask you 

this. We and our staffs, in preparation for these hearings, put in the 

words “pre-teen,” “sex,” and “video,” and we did a search. We did 

Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. And it is quite interesting the way each of 

these service providers handled it. By that, I mean not only did you have 

the website, but then you had sponsored links on some of them, and then 

others were very good that had the sponsored links and you had to have a 

combination of words in order to access some of this. I mean, I would 

imagine the folks you dealt with deal with these sites all of the time. 

And let us get their curiosity up and get things rolling for them. Is there 

something, any suggestions you have for the ISPs coming up next? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I am not here to take a policy position for the 

ISPs or on any legislation or self-regulation, but I can tell you this, that in 

our experience, it is not uncommon for one of these guys who shows up 

at our house to have a pattern that starts with viewing pornography 

online, getting into graphic chats, and having an obsession or a 

compulsion that will ultimately lead him to try to meet a teen in person. 

 MR. STUPAK. Thank you. Thank you again for your work. 

 MR. HANSEN. My pleasure. Thank you. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Mr. Walden. 

 MR. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 Mr. Hansen, I am curious. How long does it take you to set up one 

of these sting operations, if you will let me use that term? What kind of 

timeline is involved? What kind of cost? 

 MR. HANSEN. We are on site for about 5 or 6 days, so it takes the 

tech people about 3 days to set up the house. I usually get in a day 

before we actually start shooting just to see the set-up. I mean, I have 

been told all about it from the planning process on. 

 MR. WALDEN. Sure. 

 MR. HANSEN. And we will start getting transcripts of chat logs in 

the days before, and I will start reading them and going through them 

with a highlighter, and then usually we do the actual part where the men 

arrive for 3 days. 

 MR. WALDEN. So in a week’s time? 

 MR. HANSEN. In a week’s time. 

 MR. WALDEN. That is from start to finish in a community? 
30

 MR. HANSEN. Correct. 

 MR. WALDEN. And what sort of costs are involved to do this? 

 MR. HANSEN. I am just not the budget guy on this. 

 MR. WALDEN. Somebody else’s budget? 

 MR. HANSEN. That is somebody else’s budget, and it is not a cheap 

thing to do, but it involves the hidden camera guys who are very 

specialized. It involves the regular camera crew. 

 MR. WALDEN. Let us take the camera piece out of it. 

 MR. HANSEN. Sure. 

 MR. WALDEN. Take the NBC, on air, we are going to film this, we 

are going to do interviews, we are going to do all of this out of it. To run 

one of these sting operations, absent that, would it be that hard for 

somebody to set up and run? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I think it takes a certain skill on the part of the 

person playing the decoy, and that takes some training, but obviously 

that is a learned skill. And I think obviously it can be done, because law 

enforcement agencies around the country are doing it. Polk County, 

Florida, just announced today or yesterday that they had nabbed 21 

people, including some amusement park workers. 

MR. WALDEN. In your work, what is the fewest number of people who 

have shown up to one of these houses? And what is the most? 

 MR. HANSEN. The fewest was the very first one where 17 men 

showed up in 21⁄2 days, and the most was in Riverside County, California, 

where 51 men showed up in 3 days. And, I mean you could do it where 

you could have a guy showing up every 10 minutes, but from a practical 

standpoint and having time to talk to these guys and trying to get an 

understanding of what is going on in their heads you have to-- 

 MR. WALDEN. You have to schedule them. 

 MR. HANSEN. --space them apart. Yes, and no matter what, 

obviously you have people bumping into each other in the driveway and 

then you would have long stretches where nobody shows up. And I 

don’t mean to make light of it. 

 MR. WALDEN. No, and I don’t either. 

 MR. HANSEN. It is a very serious topic. 

 MR. WALDEN. It is phenomenal. 

 MR. HANSEN. But clearly there are some moments like that that we 

see. 

 MR. WALDEN. And talk to me about the relationship with law 

enforcement. At some point in your program, you decided, “We are 

attracting these evildoers, if you will. We ought to be doing something 

more about it.” Is law enforcement pretty interested in participating? 

 MR. HANSEN. Perverted Justice was contacted by the Riverside 

County Sheriff’s Department, and they said, “Look, if you are willing to 
31

work with us, we are willing to work with you. And if Dateline wants to 

do their parallel investigation that is fine, too.” And obviously, we don’t 

want to be an arm of law enforcement. 

 MR. WALDEN. Of course not. 

 MR. HANSEN. And law enforcement doesn’t want to be an arm of 

journalism. 

 MR. WALDEN. Right. 

 MR. HANSEN. So, we felt that with Perverted Justice kind of acting 

as the Chinese Wall in the middle, if you will, that we were able to 

preserve our integrity and they were able to preserve theirs, and we were 

able to operate. 

 MR. WALDEN. Have the Federal agencies shown an interest? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, the Federal agencies do this a lot, and I visited 

FBI offices around the country and watched what they do, and they do it 

very well. Thus far, to my knowledge, no Federal agency has ever 

partnered with Perverted Justice at this point. 

 MR. WALDEN. Have they attempted that, from your knowledge? 

 MR. HANSEN. I don’t know that. 

 MR. WALDEN. During the course of the e-mail chats, does anybody 

observe that? Have you ever been, sort of, caught by an outside entity 

watching a chat, saying, “Something is not right here”? 

 MR. HANSEN. Oh, in other words, while we are acting as a decoy 

and a potential predator is talking to us and having an outside Federal 

agency doing their investigation? To my knowledge, it has not 

happened. 

 MR. WALDEN. Okay. And the ISPs, no involvement there? 

 MR. HANSEN. In terms of-- 

 MR. WALDEN. They are not watching this? They are not-- 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I can’t speak for the policy of whatever 

monitoring goes on with the ISPs, but we have-- 

 MR. WALDEN. That you know of. 

 MR. HANSEN. --never been contacted by an ISP saying, “What are 

you guys doing?” 

 MR. WALDEN. Yes, but do you know from your discussions with 

Perverted Justice? Have they been contacted when they are-- 

 MR. HANSEN. Not to my knowledge. 

 MR. WALDEN. --being the decoy at all? 

 MR. HANSEN. I have never, honestly, asked them that question, but 

it would seem that that would be something that they would talk about 

and tell us about. 

 MR. WALDEN. Yes. It is just interesting how quickly you can attract 

51 people to a site in less than a week’s time. And this stuff is going on 
32

all of the time out there and you wonder who is kind of watching that, 

not that you want a lot of Big Brother on the Internet, but on this stuff-- 

 MR. HANSEN. It also speaks to how vast the Internet is. 

 MR. WALDEN. Exactly. 

 MR. HANSEN. And I think one of the reasons we have continued in 

these investigations to see guys come in the door, aside from the 

compulsion or the obsession, is that the reality is what are the odds that it 

is Dateline. What are the odds that is a law enforcement agency? 

 MR. WALDEN. Well, you talk about how vast the Internet is, and yet 

when you go phishing, there are a lot of phish out there. They are on to 

your chat room immediately, it sounds like. 

 MR. HANSEN. Yes. 

 MR. WALDEN. What is the quickest response you have gotten? 

 MR. HANSEN. Oh, in minutes depending on the chat room and 

sometimes, as I said in my testimony, these guys will spend a long time, 

days, and you have got to remember that in some cases, Perverted Justice 

volunteers are actually out in the chat rooms before we are actually set 

up in the house. 

 MR. WALDEN. Right. 

 MR. HANSEN. So if they know where we are going to be operating, 

they may go out a week or two ahead of time and just start-- 

 MR. WALDEN. Chatting. 

 MR. HANSEN. --putting them out there, chatting, and see what is 

going on. And so there might be a case where somebody shows up who 

has actually been in a conversation for a couple of weeks with 

somebody. 

 MR. WALDEN. But when you are talking about the vastness of the 

Internet, you are talking international. Here, you are talking about 

somebody who is going to drive or walk or take some mass transit to a 

site, so it is a very small circle, I would assume. What is the farthest 

away people have come? 

 MR. HANSEN. We have had people get on a bus and travel 4 hours to 

get from one side of Florida to the other. 

 MR. WALDEN. Wow. 

 MR. HANSEN. We had it happen in California, and we were in 

Riverside, and we had people come up from San Diego and up from LA 

and Hollywood. They are willing to travel. 

 MR. WALDEN. So it is not necessarily somebody in the 

neighborhood? 

 MR. HANSEN. Yes. I mean, in fact, probably the opposite is true. In 

Ohio, for instance, at least in the small town where we were, word got 

out that something was going on, and we had probably at least a dozen 
33

local guys online who backed out. But we still had people traveling up 

from Cincinnati or from Dayton or from 2 or 3 hours away. 

 MR. WALDEN. So in other words, within their own network, they 

figured out something was going on? 

 MR. HANSEN. Something was up. Yes, they saw a lot of activity 

around the house. I mean, if Darke County’s population is 13,000, it is-- 

 MR. WALDEN. Somebody would drive by and see. 

 MR. HANSEN. Right. Greenville is probably a quarter to half of that, 

so somebody had figured it out. 

 MR. WALDEN. In your work as a journalist, have you ever been 

involved in anything more disgusting or shocking? 

 MR. HANSEN. And I am telling you, we just really didn’t know 

what was going to happen the first time we were going to do it. 

 MR. WALDEN. Yes. 

 MR. HANSEN. But once they started coming in and it wasn’t 

stopping, it really was an eye-opening experience as to how many people 

are out there willing to travel and take part in this activity. 

 MR. WALDEN. At a pretty high risk if caught. 

 MR. HANSEN. Depending on the State and depending on what they 

have done. We have seen the seven men who surfaced in these 

investigations who have pleaded guilty, one man in Riverside, California, 

had received 21⁄2 years, and then we had another case in Ohio where a 

guy got 67 days time served and probation. 

 MR. WALDEN. That is it? 

 MR. HANSEN. I think that was the sentence. Now, there are other 

mitigating circumstances, and if you look at the chat, it may not have 

been as graphic as some of the others. 

 MR. WALDEN. All right. 

 MR. HANSEN. There is a whole lot that goes into it, so you can’t 

necessarily compare them head on. But, depending on where you are 

and what the guy has actually done there is a wide range in the sentences. 

I mean, the previously-convicted sex offenders in California will 

obviously be looking at-- 

 MR. WALDEN. Different issue. 

 MR. HANSEN. Yes. 

 MR. WALDEN. Any women involved? 

 MR. HANSEN. No. I mean, one time in the Virginia investigation we 

had somebody who identified themselves as a woman engaged in a chat 

but never showed up. And we just had not seen it in our investigations. 

 MR. WALDEN. And how many of the men then that have identified 

and participated, how many identified themselves as the age they are? 

Or do they try to mask it and say, “I am a 14-year-older, too,” or, “I am 

16.”? 
34

 MR. HANSEN. We don’t see so much people saying that they are 14 

or 16. We see 60-year-old guys saying they are 40. We see 40-year-old 

guys saying they are 30 and 25-year-old guys saying they are 20 or 19, 

closer to the age of the potential target. 

 MR. WALDEN. All right. I sure appreciate the work you have done. 

 MR. HANSEN. Thank you. 

 MR. WALDEN. Thanks for being here today. 

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Ms. DeGette. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

 Mr. Hansen, thank you for your testimony and also for your 

investigation. 

 As I mentioned in my opening statement, the NBC affiliate in 

Denver also did a similar investigation to what Dateline has been doing. 

Paula Woodward, who is a long-time investigative reporter there, did 

this. And it was the same result. They did it in conjunction with one of 

the local law enforcement authorities. I don’t know if it was Perverted 

Justice that was the middle man, but they had, like, 40 or 50 guys show 

up at a house, and they were all arrested, too. And it was as you said. 

They were teachers and I don’t know what all. But it is appalling. This 

is going on all around the country. So I bet you feel like maybe you 

should hang up your day job and just become an investigator someday. 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, you have seen it. There are stations in 

Milwaukee who have done it. You have seen it in Arizona, and I don’t 

think that there is any geographic region that is immune from this. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right. And it is just happening everywhere. 

 You deal a lot with law enforcement agencies in your investigations, 

and you talk to the State, local, and Federal investigators. Do they tell 

you about what kind of resources they have to try to find these child 

Internet predators? 

 MR. HANSEN. It is different in each jurisdiction. I mean, obviously 

the FBI has made this a priority issue. But like any other law 

enforcement agency, there is a lot going on at any given time. Darke 

County, Ohio, when we did that investigation, it was a big expenditure 

for them to do this over 3 days. But they felt it was important, and they 

did it. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Did they tell you they could use more resources? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I think, yes. Any law enforcement agency you 

talk to will tell you they could use more resources. But again, it is a 

matter of how often do you need to do it to get to the root of the 

problem? And I think that is different in every jurisdiction. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Well, as you said, though, apparently people weren’t 

worried at all. One guy showed up 2 days in a row. 
35

 MR. HANSEN. Right. 

 MS. DEGETTE. So just doing one sting every so often, that is not 

necessary deterring these criminals. As you said, it has to be a whole 

program. 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, as we have seen, and as most recently as this 

spring when we were shooting in Florida guys were coming in. And 

before I could say “I am Chris Hansen, Dateline NBC,” they were 

saying, “I know. I know. I know.” 

 MS. DEGETTE. And yet they showed up anyway? It is almost like 

Candid Camera only with criminals that get arrested and go to jail. It is 

unbelievable. 

 MR. HANSEN. It is. I tell you, between reading every word of the 

transcripts and the interviews the 3 days, you are pretty much 

emotionally and, physically exhausted by the end of it. It feels like you 

had run a marathon. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Yes, I am sure. Do you know, are there any 

estimates as to how often online sexual predators are actually able to 

make contact with underage children and how often they actually then 

meet up with them in person? 

 MR. HANSEN. I think that would be a tough number to quantify just 

because there is so much going on out there that we don’t know. I mean, 

again, we can go back to the figures that the National Center for Missing 

and Exploited Children uses or the figures that have come from our 

studies, but so many contacts potentially happen that you don’t know 

about. It is a hard number to get. It is a hard estimate. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And it is a lot easier to go on to these chat rooms and 

talk to kids. I always say in the olden days, the sexual predators used to 

sort of have to lurk around the edges of parks or shopping malls. Now 

they can just go online, and it is a lot easier. 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I also think that there are people perhaps who 

are taking part in this behavior, at least based on our experience, who 

would not necessarily have been hanging out at the movie theater or the 

park looking for a kid but have slipped into this behavior because of the 

obsession and compulsion that they have developed. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And you know, I was thinking about that when you 

were testifying, and I am wondering if you have an opinion as to what 

has suddenly caused so many more men to ease into that compulsion? Is 

it something in our society? Is it something about the anonymity of the 

Internet? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I think it is a little bit of both. I mean, the 

therapists we have interviewed who treat these men say it is a 

combination of the access, which is 24/7, the anonymity, which makes 

them bold, and the fact that, there are people out there to talk to who are 
36

willing to engage in this conversation. It is no different than an addiction 

to gambling or anything else. It’s just, for some people, a development. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And do you think those components kind of lead 

these men to think, “Well, it is all right if I do this?” I mean, of the men 

you have talked to, do they know, at some level, that it is wrong and, in 

fact, criminal? 

 MR. HANSEN. I think a lot of them do, and a lot of them have said to 

me when I have interviewed them that, “I was worried,” including the 

teacher you saw in Ohio. “I was worried that I kept getting older but the 

people I was talking to were staying in the 12-, 13-, 14-year-old range.” 

And he had talked about getting help, had thought about it, but didn’t 

want to admit to himself there was a problem. And subsequent to that 

story, we found out that he had been chatting with an undercover officer 

in Carmel, Indiana, posing as a child and had exposed himself on the 

website and now faces a number of other charges there. So, our decoy 

wasn’t the only one he allegedly was chatting with. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right. Right. And I mean, that led me to something 

when you were talking to other members of the committee. It is true of 

these seven who have pled guilty, they got various sentences. They also 

lost their jobs, correct? 

 MR. HANSEN. That is correct, to my knowledge, in most of those 

cases. 

 MS. DEGETTE. I mean, these are people who, many of them, like 

you say, are teachers, rabbis. They are professionals. Just by being on 

your show, even if they are not criminally prosecuted, they are going to 

likely lose their jobs. 

 MR. HANSEN. It can have a negative consequence, yes. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Yes. And it seems to me that is one way--I mean, 

that is not a law Congress could pass, but that is one way society can 

really let people know this is not in any possible acceptable range of 

normal behavior. I mean, I think if professionals know that they are 

going to lose their jobs as well as be criminally prosecuted, they may 

think twice before they go down this road. What do you think? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I think it obviously ends up being, a lot of 

exposure. And, it is not just the charge that they are ultimately facing. It 

is the detail of what was in the chat log. And in some of these cases, 

when you go through and read it there is little doubt as to what the plan 

was. 

 MS. DEGETTE. What their intent is. One thing, aside from 

legislation, that we can do, States can beef up. We found out, in our first 

hearings, for example, that in my State, Colorado, one of the first 

examples that came out was some perpetrators in Florida who were 

raping a 4-year-old online. And it was in Colorado, my State. And they 
37

tried to find the perpetrator through subpoenaing records through Internet 

service providers, and we found that the records had been destroyed, as 

they are routinely, so they never did find that perpetrator. And so that is 

one area that we think we can make legislation. And we are going to ask 

the second panel about that today. 

 The other thing we found out there is that, like in Colorado, it was a 

misdemeanor to be in possession of material like that. So I think my 

State legislators quickly fixed that in the end of the session. So there are 

different things that Congress can do. We can give more money to law 

enforcement agencies to prosecute and investigate these cases. 

 But one thing that I think you are saying, and I agree with you, it 

needs to be way beyond just passing laws. It needs to be sort of a 

societal, public service campaign involving the media and others. 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I think you have seen, and you are probably 

familiar with the group, for instance, and there are many groups like this, 

I-SAFE, for instance, who we have interviewed for our stories. And they 

go to schools, and they have a campaign. And they have a website, and 

parents can go there. And it is a tutorial. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Yes, they came and testified. Yes. 

 MR. HANSEN. Yes. But they will tell you, this is step-by-step how 

you talk to your child about this. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right. 

 MR. HANSEN. Your best defense, and I keep going back to this, and 

it is not a cop-out, I really believe it, is to start at home. And it starts 

with the parent and the child. 

 MS. DEGETTE. There is a group out of England who I met with, and 

they are actually part of an international group. They have got a public 

service announcement that they are showing in England that could be 

used everywhere. And Mr. Chairman, I think we should get them in and 

show this PSA. Maybe you have seen it, Mr. Hansen. It is targeted at 

these young kids and about how you get in a chat room and somebody 

starts taking you down this path, how you can get out of it. 

 MR. HANSEN. Right. 

 MS. DEGETTE. It is really an intense PSA. Oh, it is going to be 

shown tomorrow. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Tomorrow, right. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And the response around here is always really 

snappy, and I appreciate it. 

 But it is an incredible public service announcement. I think your 

network and other networks should really look at doing this. 

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. 

 Mr. Stearns. 
38

 MR. STEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 Mr. Hansen, when your group set up these chat rooms, are there chat 

rooms that almost everybody in this country knows about? I mean, I 

have three children, and they were on the Internet, and I cautioned them 

about any chat room they were in. But I mean, are there, like, two or 

three chat rooms that everyone goes to? I mean, how did you find which 

chat room to go to or even which one to concentrate on? 

 MR. HANSEN. The vast majority of cases, it is just regular, old 

regional chat rooms, accessible through AOL or Yahoo!. 

 MR. STEARNS. So you went to AOL and then worked-- 

 MR. HANSEN. And there were other ones, too. I mean, Perverted 

Justice sort of has a sense where there will be a lot of people where a lot 

of people from different walks of life will see this profile, which contains 

a picture of a boy or girl that is unmistakably underage, and they just sit 

there and wait. And you know, you will see a “Hey, what is up?” And 

“What is going on?” And “How old are you? You are way too young.” 

And you know, it goes on from there. 

 MR. STEARNS. So it is easy for a 12- or 13-year-old person to find a 

chat room? Easy? 

 MR. HANSEN. Yes, I mean, some of these chat rooms, and the rules, 

change pretty quickly because of the ISPs are trying to, obviously, do 

their best to prevent this sort of activity from happening. But it is my 

understanding that if you want to get in a chat room, and even if there is 

a restriction on age, kids are crafty and they can get in there, if they want 

to. 

 MR. STEARNS. So if somehow we could set up, either through a 

software program or just like we rate motion pictures and we have 

ratings for videos, CDs, and we have some type of ratings now for video 

games, should chat rooms be set up with some kind of control from the 

Federal Trade Commission? Or in your opinion, should software be 

developed to set up categories where you-- 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I can tell you this. From a parent’s point of 

view, software already exists that you can get for not a lot of money that 

you can set up at home that will actually sense if your child is giving out 

inappropriate or personal information. It will then e-mail you on your 

Blackberry, and you can pick it up and say, you know, “This is not good. 

I am going to call home.” And say, “What the heck are you doing?” 

 MR. STEARNS. What is going on? That is excellent. 

 MR. HANSEN. Yes, it is. I mean, a lot of this stuff is out there. 

Parents just have to know about it. And of course, you have to realize 

that it is an issue and that it could happen in your home and it could 

happen to your kid even though they are a good kid. But, you need to 

have the discussion. 
39

 MR. STEARNS. So we should encourage manufacturers of computers 

to provide that software maybe? 

 MR. HANSEN. It is there. 

 MR. STEARNS. It could be just like you get your Microsoft Windows 

as part of the computer package. You may be able to get this, too. Sort 

of like a V-chip in the TV, you would have this software program be part 

of the package that you would buy, and the parents, or even anybody that 

bought the computer, could make the software available and could type 

in an e-mail so then that would be automatic, and then when the child 

goes on, he or she wouldn’t know that they are being monitored by their 

parents. 

 MR. HANSEN. Yes. That technology exists as we speak. 

 MR. STEARNS. Okay. Okay. Well, I think all of us should realize 

and commend NBC for its trailblazing journalism here. I think what you 

are doing is highly commendable. I think you could take this same type 

of sting operation into many other areas, too. And I am sure it has 

crossed your mind. 

 MR. HANSEN. It has. 

 MR. STEARNS. The possibilities are endless. Out of the number that 

you saw in California and Florida, I thought it totaled about 190 people 

that came in. Just refresh my memory. How many? 

 MR. HANSEN. Fifty-one in California and twenty-four came in Fort 

Myers, Florida. 

 MR. STEARNS. Okay. So then that is 75. 

 MR. HANSEN. Correct. 

 MR. STEARNS. And you touched briefly on the profile of those 75. 

Some had past criminal activities. Verdicts of guilty and others were not. 

Was there any remarkable characteristic that you saw in terms of 

education of these people where they all seemed to be across? They 

either were rabbis, who obviously have a college education and beyond. 

They probably have a doctorate and a fireman who maybe had just a high 

school education. I mean, was there anything in the education area that 

came out at you? 

 MR. HANSEN. Not really. I mean, what most of these guys have in 

common is that they don’t stick out of a crowd. 

 MR. STEARNS. Yes, they just-- 

 MR. HANSEN. I mean, if you rode on a bus with them or a train they 

are regular guys, for the most part. 

 MR. STEARNS. Yes. Having raised three children and lots of them 

do go in chat rooms just to chat with their buddies or chat with other 

people, and I understand you have two children, too, what have you told 

your children or your wife or-- 
40

 MR. HANSEN. Well, unfortunately for my kids, dad is a little more 

involved in it than some of the others, so I know most of the scams 

before they are even brought up at home. But in all seriousness, they 

watch the shows with me and-- 

 MR. STEARNS. So they have watched-- 

 MR. HANSEN. --we had the serious discussion and the continuing 

discussion with them. They happen not to be, at this particular moment, 

all that into IM-ing or chat rooms. 

 MR. STEARNS. Yes. 

 MR. HANSEN. They are more into the computer games. So it just 

hasn’t been that big of an issue for us. But again, I just try to practice 

what I preach and say, “Look, you guys. This stuff is out there, and you 

have to be aware of it. And there are going to be people who try to trick 

you.” And I think kids don’t like to be tricked. And if you frame it that 

way you should get some response. 

 MR. STEARNS. Yes. Well, I think that is good, and I think it is also 

great that you brought to bear the understanding on this committee that 

there is software out there that monitors your children and what they are 

doing and can e-mail automatically to the parents. So in a way, the 

market can take care of this is what you are saying? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I certainly think that there are constructive 

software programs that we have seen and that we have showed in some 

of our stories that, as far as we know, work quite well. 

 MR. STEARNS. Yes. All right. 

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. 

 Mr. Inslee. 

 MR. INSLEE. Thank you. 

 One of the more chilling aspects of this story and other discussions 

that we have had in the previous hearings is about the grooming that goes 

on by these predators that try to appear sort of innocent as they begin this 

relationship with their targets. Is there anything that you can advise 

parents about how to advise kids about that, either to spot it, what the 

warning signs are? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I think if you see, for instance, a package arrive 

for your child and in it is a webcam and they are dodging as to where it 

has come from, if phone calls start to arrive from strangers, if suddenly 

they have got a cell phone and they are not quite clear as to how they 

were able to get that cell phone, I mean those, the experts tell us, are all 

signals that somebody is trying to develop a way to communicate with 

your kid. And you saw with the Justin Berry case and Kurt Eichenwald’s 

story in the New York Times how, you know, that webcam, for him was 

a gateway into this activity. So I am not saying there is anything 
41

inherently even with webcams, clearly, but if this stuff starts showing up 

at your house and you don’t know who is sending it, that is a signal. And 

we have seen it in our reporting that those are the kinds of things that a 

potential predator will offer. 

 MR. INSLEE. I wanted to ask you about what sort of observations 

you have for law enforcement. You have become an expert in sting 

operations, in a sense. Do you have any sense of what is possible for law 

enforcement? I mean, should we have, you know, 20 sting operations 

like yours up and running in this country at all times to have a more 

effective deterrent? Is that possible from a cost standpoint? Is it 

effective? Is it an effective deterrence? It is surprising to me that you 

have these shows on and these people still keep showing up, not only as 

viewers but participants. Do you have any thoughts about, for law 

enforcement, what they can do or should do? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I think law enforcement across the country is 

doing it, sting operations like this virtually on a daily basis. As I 

mentioned before, the FBI, on average, arrests, they call them 

“travelers,” a traveler every day. We just saw the results of the 

investigation that the Polk County Sheriff’s Office did. So there is a lot 

of this going on. And if you were to Google the subject, you would see 

in towns across America where it is happening. I don’t know the extent 

to which it is a deterrent. Obviously, for some people, it will be. For 

others, as we have seen in our stories, you know, the compulsion or the 

obsession is stronger. We had a guy in California, for instance, who 

drove by the house and saw a previous arrest, called the Perverted Justice 

decoy and said, “Hey, there are cops in front of the house. What is going 

on?” She said, “No, it is just a drug bust going on next door. It is all 

done. Come on over.” He comes in. It turns out Perverted Justice had 

caught him once before, and he had seen a previous story on Dateline. 

But this guy walked in the house anyway. Now whether that speaks to 

his lack of intelligence or the addiction or compulsion, it was probably a 

little bit of both, but, these guys, once they get it in their mind they want 

to do it, they want to show up. 

 MR. INSLEE. Right. Did you have any sense about sites that were 

particularly effective? Social sites that were either effective or 

ineffective in providing tools to protect kids? Did you have any sense of 

different approaches taken by sites that may work and may not work? 

 MR. HANSEN. Again, I think the best approach is the approach at 

home from a parent to a child. And if you are going to go on a social 

networking site, be smart about it. Don’t let just anybody in. what we 

have seen in some of these cases is that, for instance, the decoy will have 

a profile set up in the chat room, but then after the discussion goes on, 

the potential predator will say, “Well, do you have a spot on one of these 
42

social networking sites?” And the decoy will say, “Yes, and I will let 

you on,” or, “I will accept you.” And then it goes from there. 

 MR. INSLEE. Got you. Thank you very much for your work. 

 MR. HANSEN. Thank you. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. 

 Mr. Bass. 

 MR. BASS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 And I just have one question of you, Mr. Hansen. 

 In the course of your investigation, did you uncover a lot of 

individuals who communicated who were under the age of 18? 

 MR. HANSEN. Most of the men who surfaced in our investigations 

from what I can recall, I don’t think there was anybody under the age of 

18. 

 MR. BASS. So it is your conclusion or your observation, rather, that 

this communication is not occurring, then, between people under the age 

of 18 who are looking for other people under the age of 18 to have a 

relationship with? 

 MR. HANSEN. I understand. I don’t think I could draw that 

conclusion, because our story focused on adults who were seeking to 

meet children. 

 MR. BASS. Sure. 

 MR. HANSEN. We really didn’t-- 

 MR. BASS. Perverted Justice, they were your screen, is that right? 

 MR. HANSEN. Our decoys, correct. 

 MR. BASS. Your decoys. Are they testifying, Mr. Chairman, or not? 

 MR. WHITFIELD. No, they are not. 

 MR. BASS. Okay. I am just curious to know when they did the 

screen, what percent of the screen turned out to be people who were 

under the age of 18 versus over the age of 18. and there is no follow-up 

to that, because if this is a problem that is associated mostly, if not 

totally, with people who are over the age of 18 and that there really isn’t 

much interest in this kind of communication for pre-18 to pre-18, it is an 

interesting observation. Are you suggesting that this might be the case or 

not? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I just don’t think we know that. I mean, 

obviously there have been highly-publicized stories where kids have 

hooked up online, whether it is 18 and 16 or 19 and 16, as we saw the 

allegations most recently in Texas, but in our investigations the way they 

are set up, the decoy posing as a child is in a profile in a chat room and 

waits to be contacted. So I can only tell you that in our cases we haven’t 

seen, to my knowledge, a lot of contacts from 15-, 14-, and 13-year-olds. 

The contacts are coming from adults, in our investigations. 

 MR. BASS. All right. 
43

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Bass. 

 And Ms. Baldwin. 

 MS. BALDWIN. Thank you. I will be brief. 

 Thank you very much for your testimony. And watching the images 

earlier, it shows such a great example of how investigative journalism is 

serving such an important educational role and prompting, I hope, 

communication between parents and their children. 

 What frightens me, of course, watching those images, is the fact that 

everyone says this is just the tip of the iceberg. And it is terrifying to 

think about how many children are being exploited and there is not a 

camera crew when the person walks into the house. 

 We have had a few questions about the limitations on law 

enforcement and the resources that are being dedicated to this. I am 

wondering whether, in the context of your show or perhaps through 

public service announcements, as we have talked about, if there is advice 

offered for parents or kids of what to do when there is an inappropriate 

Internet contact, who to call, who to alert, who to ask for an 

investigation. It seems to me that that is sort of the missing ingredient in 

this conversation of okay, you are promoting the dialogue between 

children and parents to prevent this, but what if you haven’t prevented it? 

What does a parent do next? 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I think in this time, when this subject is getting 

so much publicity, that I would just be shocked if a police department 

wasn’t interested in investigating a case like this. I mean, every day 

another police department sets up, you know, a division dealing with this 

sort of thing, from Los Angeles to New York and everywhere in 

between. So you report it to the police, you report it to the Internet 

service provider. And I would say, in most cases, something will 

happen. 

 MS. BALDWIN. Thank you. 

 Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. 

 Mrs. Blackburn. 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 And I have got just a couple of questions. I am going to continue on 

Ms. Baldwin’s line of talk, because we know that many of the service 

providers are beginning to partner with PTAs and are looking at a 

multimedia, if you will, way of communicating with parents so that there 

are things going home with children in their backpacks and their money 

packs that they take home, that they are looking at partnerships, printing 

material, TV ads, as well as online information. 
44

 And all of that is good, but I want to look at what we should also 

consider doing as a legislative body. And I have been so intrigued with 

your partnership with Perverted Justice and the work that they have done. 

And what I would like to hear from you, and you can submit this in 

writing or your staff, but I would like to know what suggestions those 

guys that have actually worked the keyboard and assisted you with this 

investigation, Perverted Justice members and also your staff, as they 

have worked through this process. I am certain from time to time they 

have had a little nugget where they said, “They probably could do this,” 

or, “I bet you they could write this into the program that would boot 

something out.” And I would love to know if you were willing to share 

those nuggets with us what their thoughts have been, what their 

suggestions would be for us, and what they would have wanted us to 

know as we have worked on this hearing. 

 MR. HANSEN. Well, I can tell you this, that the people we have met 

from Perverted Justice are very savvy computer people, and I am sure 

that if you requested it, or if we requested it, I don’t want to speak for 

them, but I am confident that they would be more than willing to assist 

you and give you any thoughts they have on it. 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. And your staff, also. 

 MR. HANSEN. Absolutely. 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. I know that it takes a dedicated and hardworking 

staff to be able to work through a 2-year project, a 2-year investigation, 

and that there has to be an incredible amount of knowledge gleaned that 

would serve us well. 

 MR. HANSEN. Absolutely. 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. Thank you. 

 I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mrs. Blackburn. 

 And Mr. Hansen, we want to thank you once again for being with us 

this morning and afternoon and for bringing us a new perspective on this 

whole issue. And we look forward to continue working with you and 

following your investigative reports. 

 So with that, you are dismissed. And best wishes. 

 MR. HANSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. 

 Thank you all. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. At this time, I would like to call the second panel. 

 We have on the second panel Mr. John Ryan, who is the Chief 

Counsel, Compliance and Investigation, America Online. We have Mr. 

David Baker, Vice President, Law and Public Policy for EarthLink, Inc. 

We have Ms. Elizabeth Banker, who is the Associate General Counsel 

for Yahoo!, Inc. We have Mr. Tom Dailey, who is the General Counsel 

for Verizon Communications. We have Mr. Philip Reitinger, who is the 
45

Senior Security Strategist for Microsoft. We have Mr. Gerard Lewis, Jr., 

Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, and Chief Privacy Officer for 

Comcast Cable. And we have Ms. Nicole Wong, who is the Associate 

General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer for Google, Incorporated. 

 I want to welcome all of you. We thank you very much for your 

willingness to testify on what we consider to be a particularly important 

subject matter. And as you saw with the first panel, Mr. Hansen, we do 

take testimony under oath, and I would ask you, do any of you object to 

testifying under oath? And under the Rules of the House and the rules of 

the Committee, you are certainly entitled to legal counsel, but I am 

assuming you all do not need legal counsel. So if you would not mind 

standing and raising your right hand. 

 [Witnesses sworn.] 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you very much. You are now under oath. 

 And Mr. Ryan, we will recognize you for a 5 minute opening 

statement. Thank you. 

STATEMENTS OF JOHN RYAN, ESQ., CHIEF COUNSEL, 

COMPLIANCE AND INVESTIGATION, AMERICA ONLINE, 

INC.; DAVID BAKER, VICE PRESIDENT, LAW AND 

PUBLIC POLICY, EARTHLINK, INC.; ELIZABETH 

BANKER, ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL, YAHOO! 

INC.; TOM DAILEY, GENERAL COUNSEL, VERIZON 

COMMUNICATIONS; GERARD J. LEWIS, JR., VICE 

PRESIDENT, DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL & CHIEF 

PRIVACY OFFICER, COMCAST CABLE 

COMMUNICATIONS; PHILIP R. REITINGER, SENIOR 

SECURITY STRATEGIST, MICROSOFT CORPORATION; 

AND NICOLE WONG, ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL & 

CHIEF PRIVACY OFFICER, GOOGLE, INC.

MR. RYAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

committee. 

 My name is John Ryan, and I serve as Chief Counsel for America 

Online. In that capacity, I oversee our efforts to assist law enforcement 

and to keep criminal activity off our networks. Additionally, I am 

privileged to serve as a member of the Board of Directors at the National 

Center for Missing and Exploited Children and serve as chairman of their 

Law Enforcement Committee. 

 Prior to joining AOL, I was a prosecutor in New York where I 

investigated and prosecuted numerous high-tech crimes, including crimes 

against children. I am a founding members of the Electronic Crimes 

Task Force in New York, which has been used as the model for the 
46

cooperation between law enforcement and industry in the prosecution of 

electronic crimes. 

 AOL applauds the efforts of this committee in addressing the twin 

scourges of child pornography and child predation on the Internet. AOL 

has been fighting the spread of these plagues, both on our network and 

on the Internet for over a decade. The single guiding principle for 

America Online has been, and continues to be, the protection of children 

online. 

 AOL has pioneered the use of innovative technologies to protect our 

children. It has implemented industry-leading practices and policies that 

have been both adopted by others in the industry and included into State 

and Federal legislation. 

 AOL has staked its brand and reputation on providing a safe haven 

for children on our service. For AOL, these efforts make good business 

sense, but more important, are the right thing to do. 

 As this committee is well aware, these crimes represent a particular 

challenge, because they are facilitated by computers and the Internet. 

The challenges created by technology should be addressed by technology 

as well. Three years ago, AOL implemented extremely effective 

technologies to identify and remove abhorrent images of child 

pornography and to eliminate their transmission on our network. AOL 

developed a process that creates unique digital signatures from apparent 

pornographic images of children and uses those signatures to eliminate 

further dissemination of those images. AOL has assembled a library of 

these images and their signatures, and if AOL discovers that someone is 

trying to send a file over our network with a signature from that library, 

we prohibit the transmission of that file and refer that image to the 

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to be investigated 

and prosecuted. Once the signature of the image is identified and 

referred to NCMEC, AOL deletes all record of the image and only 

retains the signature for future identification of bad images. 

 At AOL, we believe that proven technologies such as these make it 

harder for criminals to use the Internet to commit these crimes against 

children. AOL is committed to developing and deploying more 

promising technology to take back the Internet from those who would 

exploit or harm our children. 

 Although AOL has taken a leadership role in the development of best 

practices and solutions, we recognize that as technology evolves and 

criminals become more sophisticated, much more needs to be done. It is 

also clear that many members of this committee are very concerned 

about protecting children and want more to be done. 

 In response, AOL has developed a proposal to address these 

concerns in the most effective manner. Specifically, AOL commits to: 
47

one, voluntarily preserve all relevant records relating to a report by an 

ISP to the National Center; two, support a legislative branch of authority 

to NCMEC to send preservation letters to ISPs upon review and 

determination that the referred images are child pornography; three, build 

and expand upon AOL’s digital signature technologies and to share it 

with other industry colleagues to expand its reach; four, investigate new 

and innovative technologies to make the Internet a dangerous place for 

predators but not legitimate users; and five, most importantly, work with 

law enforcement to identify tools that will assist them in their critical 

work. 

 As a demonstration of our commitment, AOL has joined with a team 

of companies, including EarthLink, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, who are with 

me here today, to develop effective technologies to investigate and 

prevent child pornography online and also to provide financial and 

personnel resources to the National Center to further these efforts. These 

measures will ensure that law enforcement has all of the necessary data 

resources and tools so that they can pursue a successful investigation. 

 The primary objective at AOL is to ensure that children never 

become victims of online predators or become exposed to inappropriate 

content. Over the past decade, AOL has developed state-of-the-art 

parental controls that give parents the ability to block their children from 

receiving harmful content. AOL parental controls are broken down into 

three age categories: kids only, for ages 12 and under; young teen, for 

13- to 15-year-olds; and mature teen, 16- and 17-year-olds. The controls 

provided include the ability to block e-mails, instant messages, or chat 

with unknown persons or specific individuals. Parental controls provide 

chat rooms if parents enable such access that are fully monitored by 

internal AOL enforcement teams. In light of the video that Mr. Hansen 

just provided, I think, and the questions were raised of this panel, of the 

concerns, AOL has addressed those concerns by providing a kids-online 

gated community where access to those chat rooms are controlled by the 

parent and are fully monitored by AOL staff. Anyone under the age of 

16, when parental controls are activated, are not able to get outside of 

that gated community and access the Internet at large. 

 AOL parental controls, in combination with its Web Guardian 

Program, also have other practical features to empower parents to 

manage their child’s use of the service, including: online timers to limit 

the amount of time a child stays on AOL; a report to parents, over one 

million weekly, a report card, so to speak, on the child’s activity online, 

such as every website their child visits, which sites they tried to visit but 

were blocked from accessing, and how many e-mails and instant 

messages they sent; state-of-the-art, real-time web filters that allow older 

teens to access a broader range of content while still blocking offensive 
48

material and controls to prevent bypassing of these protections. Only the 

master account screen name, which is controlled by the parent or 

guardian, is empowered to implement these controls and a sub account, 

which could be accessible by a minor, is disabled from amending or 

deleting those controls. We recognize that children are very Internetsavvy. Finally, our programs offer positive alternatives with a complete 

range of age-appropriate programming for these accounts, appropriate 

while blocking offensive sites. 

 Even with these extensive efforts, AOL knows that there are 

individuals who will send inappropriate content over our network or 

attempt to use AOL to lure children offline. To combat these attempts, 

AOL has long included a visible and convenient “Notify AOL,” a report 

button, which is in every service that we offer to our members. And this 

is directed to a trained staff dedicated 24/7 to receive and review these 

reports and take appropriate action, including the referral of potential 

criminal activity to law enforcement. 

 In addition, beginning in the 1990s, AOL established contacts with 

State and Federal law enforcement agencies throughout the United States 

to whom AOL could refer the child pornography images and other 

identifying information for follow-up investigations. In 1999, this 

practice was codified into Federal law, and this was subsequently 

amended to designate the National Center as the sole recipient for 

referrals of child pornography. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Summarize, please. 

 MR. RYAN. Let me summarize. 

 We are aware, despite these proposals and ongoing commitment that 

this committee must come up with new strategies, which one of them has 

been referred to as data retention. Our discussion is concerned about 

some of the potential drawbacks of data retention, namely the security of 

the databases that will be created. And more importantly, we believe at 

AOL the diversion of critical resources to maintaining and managing that 

repository of data from the real-time active investigations, which we 

currently support. So we welcome the ongoing dialogue, and we will 

work with this committee and others to come up with real solutions. 

 Thank you. 

 [The prepared statement of John Ryan follows:] 
49

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN RYAN, ESQ., CHIEF COUNSEL, COMPLIANCE AND 

INVESTIGATION, AMERICA ONLINE, INC. 
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MR. WHITFIELD. Well, Mr. Ryan, thank you. 
55

 And I would remind all of the witnesses that we do have your 

testimony, and we would urge you to try to stay within the 5-minute rule. 

And thank you very much for your testimony. 

 Mr. Baker. 

MR. BAKER. Chairman Whitfield, Ranking Member Stupak, 

members of the subcommittee, I am Dave Baker, Vice President for Law 

and Public Policy with EarthLink. 

 Thank you for inviting me to testify today as you continue to 

examine the critically important issue of how we all can make the 

Internet safer for our children. The Internet is a tremendous resource. 

As a father, I marvel at my own children’s ability to use the Internet to 

help them with their homework, to challenge them with knowledge that 

supplements what they learn in school, and to satisfy their genuine 

intellectual curiosity. 

 At EarthLink, we are proud to have worked for over 12 years to 

develop this important tool for learning, e-commerce, and legitimate 

communications and entertainment. And we have worked hard to 

combat each new public threat as it has arisen, including spam, spyware, 

and phisher sites. We are similarly engaged in an ongoing battle against 

those who would use the Internet to harm our children. 

 There is no question that the Internet’s capabilities provide criminal 

predators with new ways to attack children. The stories you have 

brought to light are chilling. Criminals, and they are just that, abusing 

children and then putting pictures of that abuse online. These are 

perverse and unlawful acts for which we should have no tolerance. 

 At EarthLink, we try to provide our subscribers with as safe as 

possible an environment for children to gain the benefits of the Internet 

while minimizing the risks. We focus on three strategies: one, 

prevention, empowering parents with strong parental controls and 

safeguarded communications tools; two, reporting, getting information 

on suspected child pornography and other abuse to the National Center 

for Missing and Exploited Children; and three, enabling prosecution, 

responding to law enforcement requests for data to assist the 

investigation and prosecution of abusers. 

 I will discuss each of these in further detail. 

 The first of our three strategies is prevention. Our website contains 

family safety information, such as the Kids Fighting Chance: 50+ Safety 

Tips, which EarthLink promotes in partnership with the Federal Bureau 

of Investigation. EarthLink is also proud to serve on the Steering 

Committee of GetNetwise, an alliance of industry and public-interest 

organizations, which provides tips on safe Internet usage, lists of familyfriendly websites, information on parental controls, and links to report 

trouble if it is found. Our free downloadable parental controls give 
56

parents options as to what access to permit their children to have to the 

Internet and what access to permit others to have to their children. For 

web surfing, parents can use parental controls to specify whether they 

want their child to be limited to a white list of 15,000 EarthLinkapproved websites or to be permitted to go anywhere other than sites 

EarthLink specifically blocks. 

 In addition, parents can customize these lists. Even for those 

websites not specifically blocked, EarthLink’s parental controls 

automatically check all webpage a child visits and remove inappropriate 

language before displaying them. In addition, children cannot create 

blogs when parental controls are activated. For e-mail and instant 

messaging, parents can use the Cyber Friends feature of our parental 

controls to create an approved list of persons that his or her child can 

contact. If the child is e-mailed by or attempts to e-mail someone who is 

not on the approved list, the e-mail is blocked and stored until the parent 

can review it. Parents can also specify whether their child can open 

attachments. 

 For parents of younger children, we provide the Kids Patrol browser, 

which includes its own filtered web browser, e-mail, chat, bulletin board, 

and instant message programs. Our parental controls also allow parents 

to limit the time of day and the total number of hours per day, week, or 

month their children may spend online. With these services, we work to 

empower parents to supervise and protect their children’s online use. 

 Finally, I note that while EarthLink does not operate its own chat 

rooms or provide social networking services, as more Web content is 

produced by individual users, the challenges facing all of us are greater. 

 The next step is reporting. Beyond prevention, we also report and 

facilitate the reporting of unlawful child exploitation to the National 

Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC. If a customer 

discovers suspected child pornography, they can e-mail complaints to 

abuse@EarthLink.net. In addition to handling customers’ reports of 

fraud, spam, and other violations of our acceptable use policy, when one 

of our abuse investigators receives a complaint about child pornography, 

the investigator immediately reports that information to NCMEC’s 

CyberTipline. Customers may also call us with complaints about 

suspected child pornography. All of our customer service representatives 

are specifically trained and given written guidance on how to facilitate 

the reporting of child pornography to NCMEC. 

 As mentioned by Mr. Ryan, EarthLink is also proud to ban together 

with AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and America Online to fund a new Center 

for Child Protection Technologies within NCMEC to develop 

technological solutions to combat online child abuse. 
57

 Prosecution. Finally, EarthLink cooperates with law enforcement 

investigations and prosecutions of child exploitation cases. We regularly 

receive subpoenas requesting subscriber information, such as when a 

customer uses a specified IP address at a given date and time or which 

customer is associated with a particular username. We retain this 

information in a readily-accessible live database for several months and 

then archive it in searchable and retrievable tape storage for several 

years. We receive approximately 1,000 subpoenas per year, 

approximately 15 percent of which involve allegations of child 

exploitation. We give legal process associated with child endangerment 

or exploitation the highest priority. 

 In conclusion, we believe that a combination of the proper use of 

prevention tools, like parental controls, the prompt reporting of 

allegations of child exploitation, and cooperation with law enforcement 

investigations and prosecutions can help make the Internet a safer place 

for children and their families. 

 Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on this important 

matter. 

 [The prepared statement of David Baker follows:] 
58

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVID BAKER, VICE PRESIDENT, LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY,

EARTHLINK, INC. 
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MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Baker. 

 And Ms. Banker, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 
76

MS. BANKER. Chairman Whitfield, Ranking Member Stupak, and 

members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to address 

the important topic of protecting children online. 

 My name is Elizabeth Banker. I am Vice President and Associate 

General Counsel for Yahoo!. For the past 7 years, I have managed 

Yahoo!’s Law Enforcement Compliance Team. During my time at 

Yahoo!, I have personally reviewed and reported child pornography, 

helped design our NCMEC reporting process, and responded to 

emergency calls from law enforcement to help find missing and abused 

children. I can tell you that Yahoo! has a long history and a deep 

commitment to making the online environment safer for children. We 

have done this by: one, building safer online spaces; two, identifying and 

removing users who engage in illegal conduct involving children; and 

three, working with NCMEC, law enforcement, and our industry peers. 

 Let me describe these efforts. 

 Yahoo! was an early leader in creating child-friendly spaces online. 

Ten years ago, we launched Yahooligans, a mini version of Yahoo! that 

is a safe place for kids. More than four million unique users each month 

use Yahooligans for news, music, and games. 

 We also work to protect children on our other services. We have put 

in place a series of age restrictions so that parts of our network, like 

Yahoo! Chat, are off limits to children registered as under the age of 18. 

We have even tighter restrictions for children under 13 who may not 

create a profile or play games at Yahoo.com. 

 We also provide filtering, blocking, and parental control tools. 

Parents who use Yahoo!, through our broadband partners, can restrict 

children’s activities both on and off of our network. For other users, we 

offer Safe Search to exclude adult content from responses to search 

queries. In addition, we provide tools to filter offensive language and to 

block and ignore unknown users or offensive communications. And 

Yahoo!’s Family Resource Center offers parents user-friendly 

information on these tools and other educational resources. 

 Yahoo! has policies and technology to help identify violators using 

our network to engage in illegal behavior. We have strict terms of 

service that prohibit harmful and abusive conduct, and we provide tools 

to enable users to report violations. For example, we have built report 

abuse links into Yahoo! Chat and webcam. When users report abuse, we 

review the reports, shut down violators’ accounts, and escalate 

appropriate reports to NCMEC. We also take affirmative steps to detect 

and remove child pornography through technology, such as filters and 

algorithms, as well as through human review. Each of these is tailored to 

our specific services. 
77

 We work closely with NCMEC and law enforcement to ensure that 

online child predators and child pornographers are promptly identified, 

investigated, and prosecuted. We have invested significant resources to 

develop effective systems for reporting child pornography, and we meet 

regularly with NCMEC to find ways to make our reporting more 

effective for law enforcement. For example, if child pornography is 

found on Yahoo! Groups or Yahoo! Photos, we can now report the IP 

addresses of the user who originally uploaded it. Law enforcement has 

said that our capability has been very helpful in their investigations. 

 In addition, we work closely with the United States Internet Service 

Provider Association, or USISPA, and NCMEC to develop a set of sound 

reporting practices for ISPs. Yahoo! supports law enforcement within 

the framework required by law and our commitment to the privacy of our 

users. Our compliance team is available 24/7 to respond to legal process. 

All child endangerment cases are given priority. We provide a manual to 

assist law enforcement with their investigations, and we train law 

enforcement personnel who focus on protecting children, such as the 

Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Also, we provide 

NCMEC millions of dollars of public service advertising placements on 

the Yahoo! network. 

 While we are proud of our progress, we recognize that there is more 

work to be done. One recent change that we have made builds on the 

success of Yahoo! UK’s partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation, 

or IWF. We are now removing child pornography sites on IWF’s list 

from our U.S.-based search results as well as from Yahoo! UK. 

 But the issue of child safety is bigger than any one company. I 

would like to describe two new industry initiatives that we support. 

 First, Yahoo! supports the USISPA proposal authorizing NCMEC to 

issue preservation letters to ISPs. This will eliminate the delays between 

when ISPs report and law enforcement issues preservation requests. 

 Second, all ISPs should follow USISPA’s Sound Practices for 

Reporting to NCMEC. Today, Yahoo! and certain major ISPs adhere to 

these practices, but others do not. If other ISPs follow these practices, 

law enforcement could better pursue cases referred to NCMEC and not 

just the cases from a select few providers. 

 Finally, I would like to highlight our announcement today with 

NCMEC, AOL, Microsoft, EarthLink, and United Online. Together, we 

are launching an aggressive campaign against child exploitation on the 

Internet through a new Center for Child Protection Technologies. 

Through this center, industry leaders will come together to develop and 

deploy technological solutions to disrupt predators’ ability to use the 

Internet to abuse children. Our industry peers are invited to join this 

effort. 
78

 Mr. Chairman, Yahoo! believe that our actions make our network 

safer for children, and the proposals I have described will make it more 

likely that violators will be identified, investigated, and punished. We at 

Yahoo! look forward to working with members of the subcommittee in 

the ongoing battle to keep children safer online. 

 Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. 

 [The prepared statement of Elizabeth Banker follows:] 
79

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ELIZABETH BANKER, ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL, YAHOO!

INC. 
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 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Ms. Banker. We appreciate the 

announcements made today by AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, EarthLink, and 

United Online Technologies in their new initiative. 

 Mr. Dailey, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

MR. DAILEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Ranking 

Member Stupak and to members of the subcommittee. 
88

 Good afternoon. My name is Tom Dailey, and I am the General 

Counsel of Verizon Online, which is Verizon’s consumer and small and 

medium Internet business offering DSL and other broadband services, 

fiber services, and so forth. I am also the former chairman of the U.S. 

Internet Service Provider Association. I was the chairman for 

approximately 4 years, and I am now the chairman emeritus of that 

organization. And I have been the General Counsel at Verizon Online 

for the past 8 years. 

 Like many in this room, I, too, am a parent. I have got two sons, 

each of whom, like many kids, is active on the Internet. I am as shocked 

as everyone by what I have seen this morning and other stories that I 

have seen and heard about as well as the work that we do from day to 

day in dealing with the types of people that we have been referring to as 

child predators. But they are really, often times, just common criminals, 

and we need more work. There is no question about it. And I agree with 

many of the comments that I have heard this morning from my 

colleagues and before. 

 Verizon shares the concerns that I think we all have. We are in a 

somewhat different place from Yahoo! and AOL, because we are a 

network service provider fundamentally. The services that we offer to 

our customers are primarily the Internet access component, the network 

component. When it comes to the services, the portal services, we have 

two very strong partnerships, one with Yahoo! and one with Microsoft, 

and they provide terrific services to our customers. We are primarily 

focused on the network access piece. We don’t provide our own search. 

We don’t provide our own chat rooms, so we are in a somewhat different 

position, as I indicated. 

 But Verizon has been a leader for many years in the area of online 

education, both in terms of the safety and security information that we 

provide to our customer, but also in terms of the Internet software and 

security software and parental control software that we make available 

both through our partners like Yahoo! and Microsoft but also through 

other services that we make available to our customers. 

 Verizon is also a proud participant in various cyber citizenship 

initiatives, including: GetNetwise, which is a campaign and website 

designed to give Internet users an online resource for information on 

Internet security; our participation with ICRA, the Internet Content 

Rating Association, is something that we value greatly; that association 

attempts to raise the level of awareness about content and threats online. 

Finally, our collaboration with i-SAFE America, which is creating a 

powerful set of cyber citizenship tools to educate K-12 students about 

responsible online behavior. 
89

 But Verizon does much more than simply provide online education 

resources, which we believe are, indeed, very important. We also are a 

very active participant in the investigation of online and real-world 

criminal activity involving crimes against children. We have a manual to 

help law enforcement to inform them about the types of services, the 

work and content and materials that we can provide to them and how 

they can come to us for help. And we provide a lot of help to law 

enforcement across the country at the State, local, and Federal levels. 

 Verizon has been active in a number of very important cases 

recently, and I mentioned several of them in my testimony. One I want 

to just highlight for you today, and that is the case in which Verizon 

provided key information to law enforcement that enabled the rescue of a 

13-year-old Pennsylvania girl who had been abducted and held by a 39-

year-old man as his sex slave. Through Verizon’s help, law enforcement 

was able to locate and free the child who was found chained to a bed, 

otherwise relatively unharmed. And the individual that committed that 

crime is now serving a 20-year prison sentence. But it was Verizon’s 

security group, Verizon’s ability to find that user that helped, I think, 

save that girl’s life. 

 I am not going to repeat all of the cases cited in my testimony, cases 

in which Verizon helped find runaways, in which Verizon helped prevent 

a child molestation, but we are proud of our role in assisting law 

enforcement to help in the area of child protection. 

 Verizon has been a participant, as have other members of the panel, 

with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s online 

CyberTipline program. We have done that for many years. Historically, 

because of our role as a network provider, we haven’t seen as much of 

the child predation, very little, in fact, as some of the other companies 

before you. We have typically seen images. We report those images 

when we get those. But the bad guys, as I think Mr. Ryan indicated, are 

changing their modus operandi, and we recently observed what appears 

to be online child pornography spam as a result of that. We have 

adjusted our reporting to NCMEC, which is why, if you have looked at 

the data, we have had a spike in our reports from very few to actually 

over 100 this year, which is a significant increase from previous years. 

But the reason is that we are not just reporting images. We are now 

seeing a change. And so we have adapted, and we are reporting these 

apparent e-mail solicitations as well. 

 Verizon supports the initiatives that have been described previously 

about enhancing the ability of NCMEC to facilitate investigations of 

child pornography through the granting of authority to NCMEC to issue 

preservation orders. We believe that will be helpful. It will help 

preserve data and make it available for law enforcement later on. And 
90

we support changes in the reporting statute under 13-032 to make it clear 

that ISPs that report to NCMEC can include images of child pornography 

with their electronic submissions without the risk of that being deemed a 

distribution of child pornography. We think that these changes will 

enhance reporting and improve law enforcement’s ability to investigate 

and prosecute those who prey on children. 

 I look forward to your questions, and thank you again for this 

opportunity to participate. 

 [The prepared statement of Tom Dailey follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF TOM DAILY GENERAL COUNSEL, VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS

 Mr. Dailey’s testimony focuses on Verizon’s efforts to fight online child 

exploitation through cooperation with law enforcement, the delivery of online tools and 

educational programs to Verizon Online subscribers, and cyber-citizenship initiatives 

targeted to all Internet users. With respect to Verizon’s retail Internet access services, the 

testimony describes the differences between Verizon Online’s role as a network provider 

and its use of third party portals to provide chat, forums and other online services and 

how this business arrangement affects reporting of child pornography incidents. The 

testimony further describes several instances in which Verizon, through collaboration 

with law enforcement and other ISPs, has successfully assisted in the rescuing of children 

(and the prevention of possible child molestation). Mr. Dailey’s testimony also describes 

how Verizon reports potential instances of child pornography under 42 USC §13032. 

The testimony concludes with the proposal of two statutory changes which Verizon 

believes can be fairly simply accomplished and which will significantly enhance the 

effectiveness of law enforcement efforts to track down and prosecute child exploitation 

crimes. 

I. Introduction 

Chairman Whitfield, Ranking Member Stupak members of the subcommittee, thank 

you for the opportunity to testify here today. The people of Verizon believe that the issue 

of online child safety is very important and Congress can help by making some 

improvements in the current laws. At Verizon there is a very strong belief in our 

responsibility as a corporate leader to do what is right. We believe helping to protect 

children from online predators, and assisting law enforcement in their efforts to track 

down those who would exploit children through the Internet, is the right thing to do. We 

are a part of a quickly transforming industry moving from the old world of basic 

telephone service to a new world of broadband networks. Not long ago people 

communicated through telephone calls and the Internet was something that only a techie 

could understand how to use. We are now in a very different era where people connect 

with one another around the globe in an instant and transmit and receive images via the 

Internet with the click of a mouse. As remarkably beneficial and enriching as the Internet 

has become, there comes with this technology a darker side that includes new ways to 

carry out old criminal activity. Child exploitation is one example. Verizon takes the 

issue of fighting child exploitation very seriously and we are here today with the goal of 

finding new ways to combat the spread of child pornography. We applaud the efforts of 

this Committee, of those at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and 

of others in the law enforcement and ISP communities, who are dedicated to the fight 

against child exploitation. In this spirit, Verizon offers the following testimony. 
91

II. Verizon as a Network Provider and its Online Safety and Security Services 

a. Verizon’s Internet Access Services Operations. Verizon is a wholesale and 

retail provider of communications, data and video services to a wide array of customers 

ranging from individual consumers to multi-national corporations. In the data world, 

Verizon provides two primary wireline Internet access technologies: (1) dial-up Internet 

access service that is provided primarily on a wholesale basis to large, consumer-focused 

Internet service providers; and (2) high-speed Internet access service, that is provided to 

retail consumer and business users. Verizon’s high-speed services for consumers use 

digital subscriber loop (“DSL”) and fiber-based (commercially know as “FiOS”) 

technologies. Both services provide high-speed Internet access and transmission 

capabilities. The Verizon business units that offer Internet access services include 

Verizon Online, which is retail focused and currently has more than five million 

consumer and small/medium sized business subscribers nationally; and Verizon Business, 

which sells a variety of wholesale and retail Internet access services to thousands of 

enterprise (large) businesses and government entities. 

The structure of Verizon Online’s consumer Internet service differs from many in 

the industry. All subscribers to the company’s retail consumer Internet access service, 

whether DSL- or fiber-based, receive a choice of portal providers when they register for 

their broadband service. Subscribers can choose to receive as part of their Internet access 

package co-branded premium portal services from Yahoo! or MSN. The services they 

receive from these companies are specially designed to combine certain Verizonprovided features (such as account management tools and email) with the portal 

provider’s own content, features and functionality (such as instant messaging, email, 

chat, search, entertainment and other online services). This unique blending of Internet 

access with portal features and services has an impact on the volume of child 

pornography reports Verizon refers to NCMEC, which I’ll discuss further in my 

testimony, below. 

b. Verizon Online’s Safety and Security Offerings. Verizon Online makes 

available to its subscribers a variety of Internet security services provided by Yahoo! and 

MSN. Each portal provides anti-virus, firewall, anti-spyware and parental control 

software, which currently are provided at no extra charge to Verizon Online subscribers. 

In addition to making the Yahoo! and MSN security services available to its subscribers, 

Verizon Online offers its own, private-labeled suite of security services. This security 

suite includes anti-virus, firewall, anti-spyware and parental control software and is 

available for an additional monthly charge. Historically, Verizon Online has also made 

commercially available parental control software offered by CyberPatrol and Cybersitter 

to its subscribers at a discount off the normal retail price. 

In addition to its history of providing subscribers with the tools they need to help 

protect themselves and their children from harmful viruses and objectionable content, 

Verizon Online has also worked to help educate its subscribers about Internet threats of 

all kinds. The company’s Safety and Security website, one of the first of its kind among 

network providers, gives our customers access to Internet sites designed to help parents 

learn about ways to protect their children online, including links to the National Center 

for Missing and Exploited Children’s (“NCMEC”) website and CyberTipline for 

reporting incidents of child exploitation or pornography, GetNetWise (a site dedicated to 

educating about dangers on the Internet), StaySafeOnline and OnGuard Online (an 

education site offering advice regarding the safe use of chat and community networking 

services). Verizon Online has participated in national events such as National 

CyberAwareness month, which it publicized to its subscribers, and the company 

periodically distributes helpful information through its newsletters on wide-ranging 

topics that include cyber-safety. 

c. Differences Between Verizon’s Internet Access Services and Other Online 

Services. Unlike AOL, MSN and Yahoo!, Verizon Online does not currently provide 
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chat rooms, online forums or blog sites. Although Verizon Online has provided web 

hosting services targeted to business users, and storage services for all users, these 

services to this point have not been particularly widely adopted. Thus, because Verizon 

Online is primarily a network access services company, and because the vast majority of 

its subscribers use one of the portal services provided by its portal partners, Verizon 

Online sees very few complaints involving actual images of child pornography and 

virtually no complaints of predatory activity. It is Verizon Online’s belief that 

complaints regarding child pornography and predation activity primarily go to the 

providers of the forums in which the illicit activity takes place, e.g., chat rooms and 

community network sites. The few reports of actual child pornography Verizon Online 

has historically seen have related more to content residing on its web hosting service. 

The vast majority of reported child pornography incidents that Verizon Online now

receives have been in the form of emails (largely spam-related) that the company’s 

subscribers forward to Verizon Online’s security abuse email box. 

III. Cooperation with Law Enforcement, Case Studies and Cyber-Citizenship 

Verizon has a long history of working cooperatively with law enforcement in the 

investigation of criminal activity, including fighting child pornography. Through these 

efforts Verizon has played an important role, among other things, in securing the safe 

return of missing children and even in saving lives. Outside the security context, Verizon 

has played a prominent role in the development of cyber-citizen initiatives, online safety 

programs and customer education websites designed to promote the public safety at large. 

a. Cooperation with Law Enforcement. Verizon as a corporation handles 

thousands of law enforcement subpoenas every month through its voice and data 

communications security organizations. In the Internet context, Verizon Online 

processes more than 100 criminal subpoenas a month (706 so far in 2006). The Verizon 

Online and Verizon Business security group work with local, state and federal law 

enforcement officials to investigate claims ranging from property crimes (fraud, phishing 

and identity theft) to threatened physical harm to child pornography. Verizon Online and 

Verizon Business each have dedicated personnel who work with law enforcement to 

respond to legal process (subpoenas, court orders and warrants) and to help law 

enforcement in their efforts to identify the information they need to track down illegal 

activity on the Internet. 

Verizon Online’s security group has worked diligently and cooperatively with law 

enforcement across the country, and with other ISPs, on investigations ranging from post 

9/11 watch-list cases to tsunami fraud schemes to tracking child predators and missing 

children. In one highly publicized case in 2002, Verizon Online played a critical role in 

tracking down and saving the life of a 13 year old Pittsburgh girl who had been abducted 

by a 38 year old Herndon, Virginia man named Scott Tyree. After abducting the girl, 

Tyree was observed in a Yahoo! chat room apparently bragging about what he had done. 

A participant in the chat room linked Tyree’s forum discussion to stories heard on the 

news and reported the incident. Law enforcement tracked Tyree through Yahoo! and 

ultimately determined that his Internet connection showed to a Verizon IP address, 

meaning he likely was a Verizon Online subscriber. Working with the FBI, Verizon 

Online’s security team was able to determine the exact location of the computer Tyree 

was using and provided this information to law enforcement. A waiting SWAT team 

then raided Tyree’s Herndon condominium to find the victim tied to a bedpost but 

relatively unharmed. Tyree is now serving a nearly 20 year prison sentence. 

The Tyree case is but one example of the successes that cooperation between 

Verizon security and law enforcement personnel has brought in child exploitation and 

endangerment cases. Verizon Online security has worked with noted Polk County 

Sheriff’s Department investigator Charlie Gates on child predation related cases and with 

local law enforcement personnel across the nation. Verizon Online has also worked 
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closely with its ISP colleagues to locate missing children. In one case, Verizon Online 

and AOL teamed up to track down a runaway who was logging into her AOL instant 

messenger account from Internet cafés across several states. As the child logged into her 

AIM account, AOL and Verizon Online security personnel tracked the child’s location 

based on the location of the Internet connection and ultimately to were able to help 

facilitate the child’s safe return. In yet another case, the quick action of a Verizon 

Business security team member in processing a subpoena helped police prevent the 

molestation of a minor. 

Finally, in a child kidnapping case, Verizon security personnel received notice from 

a Bridgewater, New Jersey, detective that a 5 month old child had been kidnapped from a 

babysitter. Verizon security performed record searches and was able to discover a series 

of cellular and voice over IP calls that seemed like a promising lead. Verizon’s 

investigator then coordinated with Verizon Wireless and Sprint regarding the cellular 

calls and with Level 3 Communications regarding the voice over IP calls, all after hours, 

to set up emergency assistance for the investigating detective. The next day, the detective 

handling the case called to inform Verizon security that the voice over IP investigation 

had helped lead them to the kidnapped infant and that the child was safe. These stories 

are but a few examples of the things Verizon security personnel do day in and day out to 

help law enforcement to do its job. 

b. Cyber-Citizenship Initiatives. Verizon has long been a major player in 

advancing cyber-citizenship principles and promoting online safety for children and all 

Internet users. As noted above, Verizon was one of the first major ISPs to develop an 

online safety and security website that offers Verizon Online subscribers a variety of 

information and tools to help protect against Internet threats and parents to help safeguard 

their children online. Verizon was one of the founders of GetNetWise.org, a campaign 

and web site designed to give Internet users an easy, online resource for additional 

information on Internet security, include (“ICRA”) to deliver an education campaign to 

raise the level of awareness about content threats in our converged world. Verizon and 

ICRA are working cooperatively to answer parents’ questions and point them to the tools 

they can employ to help protect their children from harmful online content. Finally, 

Verizon is collaborating with i-SAFE America, Inc. on a multi-year initiative to create a 

powerful set of cyber-citizenship tools that educate K-12 students about responsible 

access to entertainment, information and online communication tools, including issues 

related to social networking sites, chat rooms, and online bullying. 

Verizon has also participated with NCMEC and the US Internet Service Provider 

Association (“USISPA”) in crafting a series of industry best practices regarding the 

reporting of child pornography, and in finding ways to enlist the support of and to 

educate smaller ISPs about child pornography enforcement and reporting. The company 

is currently working with the Department of Justice and its task force on child 

pornography enforcement to look at ways in which the ISP industry can work with law 

enforcement to improve child pornography enforcement, whether through data 

preservation or retention or other means. In short, Verizon has been a prominent 

participant in the discussion on child pornography enforcement, and in outreach efforts 

involving its own customers and Internet users at large. Through these efforts, and its 

ongoing work with law enforcement, Verizon has demonstrated its firm commitment to 

helping safeguard children on the Internet and to assisting law enforcement in pursuing 

those who would use the Internet to exploit children. 

IV. Child Pornography Reporting 

Although Verizon Online does not receive the volume of child pornography related 

cases as other ISPs do, the company maintains a full-time security analyst who monitors 

Verizon Online’s abuse mail box for child pornography complaints and reports. 

(Virtually all reports of child pornography come to Verizon Online through its abuse 
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email boxes). Once identified as a reportable incident under 42 USC §13032, Verizon 

uses the NCMEC ISP Tipline to report the incident to NCMEC. Verizon is a registered 

user of NCMEC’s ISP CyberTipline. 

While Verizon Online has always reported incidents of child pornography to law 

enforcement, over time its approach to assessing what is and is not a reportable incident 

under 42 USC §13032 has changed. Historically, Verizon Online focused its reporting 

on instances of child pornography images found to be housed on Verizon Online servers. 

Because of its role as a network provider, with no chat or forum services of its own and 

only a small web hosting business, the volume of reportable child pornography incidents 

Verizon Online has received and made has been quite small (roughly 12 over the past 6 

years). We attribute this small number of cases to the fact that the circumstances under 

which Verizon Online subscribers most often encounter child pornography involve the 

use of services not provided by Verizon Online today (IM, blogging or chat/forum 

services), or involve websites not hosted by Verizon Online. If an Internet user 

encounters child pornography when visiting a third-party site, they are most likely in our 

experience to report the incident to the third-party, not Verizon. 

Recently, Verizon Online changed its reporting criteria to broaden the categories of 

child pornography complaints that it passes on to NCMEC. Verizon Online observed that 

the vast majority of child pornography complaints it was receiving pertained to email 

solicitations (often spam) relating to child pornography. In analyzing these complaints, 

Verizon Online concluded that the emails themselves could be viewed as facts or 

circumstances from which a violation of the child pornography laws was apparent under 

42 USC §13032. As a result, Verizon began reporting these email complaints to NCMEC 

in April 2006.1

 Since that time, Verizon Online has filed 116 reports using the 

CyberTipline, the vast majority of which were in the form of emails forwarded by 

customers, which Verizon Online in turn forwarded on to NCMEC via the CyberTipline. 

The balance was child pornography related emails actually received in Verizon’s own 

email boxes. Many of these emails contain URLs that purportedly link to content 

containing child pornography. None of the 116 customer complaints contained actual 

images of child pornography. 

V. Legislative Improvements to Child Pornography Enforcement 

Verizon supports improvements to current laws regarding child pornography 

enforcement, rather than the creation of new mandates. In particular, we see two areas in 

which Congress can make significant improvements in the enforcement effort, without 

engaging in a wholesale re-write of existing law. First, Congress should authorize 

NCMEC to issue preservation requests under 18 USC §2703(f). NCMEC is not a 

governmental entity, yet it has been charged with the responsibility to coordinate the 

investigation of child pornography and related cases by law enforcement. Securing the 

availability of electronic data is an important element to such investigations; empowering 

NCMEC to request preservation immediately upon receipt of a colorable report of child 

pornography makes sense and would significantly expedite the process of securing 

potentially relevant information. 

Second, Congress should clarify under 18 USC §2252A that submission by an ISP 

of images of child pornography as part of a bona fide report under 42 USC §13032 does 

not constitute the unlawful distribution of child pornography. The current statutory 

 

1

 There was a process delay in early 2006 that interrupted Verizon Online’s reporting early in the 

year as the company reorganized its abuse group and the reporting responsibility transitioned to 

a new staff member. At this time Verizon Online security also experienced network 

connectivity problems and delays in re-establishing its ISP Tipline account that contributed to 

the interruption in reporting. The connectivity issue was remedied and Verizon Online resumed 

reporting in April 2006. 
95

scheme is ambiguous on this issue and the ambiguity should be eliminated. Clarification 

that the submission of images as part of a report to NCMEC or law enforcement is not 

unlawful distribution of child pornography will encourage more ISPs to report images, 

and thereby facilitate investigations into the reported image. Verizon urges this 

Committee to clarify this point. 

Finally, there has been much discussion of late on the issue of data retention in the 

context of child pornography investigations. The expressed position of law enforcement 

is that data retention may be necessary to ensure that the data necessary to enable 

investigators to identify the user of an IP address assigned to a particular user’s Internet 

session is present when requested. The reason IP address assignments are useful to law 

enforcement is because an IP address is often an important link between illicit conduct on 

the Internet and the identity of the alleged perpetrator. While the debate over data 

retention is still forming, Verizon’s general view is that IP address assignment and 

customer record information collected in the normal course of business could be retained 

by network providers for a reasonable period of time, and if retention is required, that the 

period of retention should be long enough reasonably to enable law enforcement to 

conduct their investigations. Whether this obligation should extend to others in the 

Internet community is still open to debate, as is whether the period of retention should be 

24 months (as has been proposed) or a shorter period more in line with the retention 

policies of businesses in effect today. 

There are two important caveats to this position, however. First, any such data 

retention requirements should apply only to IP address assignment information, and it 

should apply only to data gathered in the normal course of business. Verizon Online 

believes that many network providers already capture helpful information in connection 

with their standard processes for providing and/or billing for services. A retention 

requirement for IP address assignment data currently gathered in the normal course of 

business may be a reasonable first step that balances the needs of law enforcement with 

the national desire to keep the Internet free from extensive regulation and regulationrelated costs. Second, the availability of data retention should not preclude granting 

NCMEC the data preservation authority discussed above. Data preservation will go a 

long way toward protecting data that might otherwise be deleted over the passage of time 

between the date an incident of child pornography is reported to NCMEC and the 

issuance of a subpoena or other legal process by a downstream law enforcement official. 

An order to preserve data will not guarantee that data will be present when requested, but 

it will greatly improve the chances that data which is captured will be available to law 

enforcement at the time it is subpoenaed. 

Thank you for this opportunity to present Verizon’s views on this important issue. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Dailey. 

 And Mr. Lewis, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

MR. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Stupak, and members of the 

subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today on 

behalf of Comcast regarding the important subject of making the Internet 

safe for kids. 

 My name is Jerry Lewis. I am the Vice President, Deputy General 

Counsel, and the Chief Privacy Officer of Comcast. 

 Comcast is America’s leading provider of high-speed Internet 

services with over 9 million customers. And the safety and security of 
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our customers, along with the quality of our service, are very important 

concerns. 

 We are committed to leadership in the area of online security and 

customer privacy and in cooperating with law enforcement to fight 

Internet-based criminal activity, such as child exploitation. At no extra 

cost to our customers, we provided a filtered Internet search option and 

easy-to-use privacy and parental control software that lets parents 

monitor chat and online activity, block inappropriate content, and 

prevent their children from sharing personal information. 

 We have a solid record in assisting law enforcement, and we have 

received numerous commendations for our efforts. We distribute a guide 

to law enforcement regarding how to obtain prompt handling of their 

requests. We conduct training for law enforcement, and we meet 

quarterly with DOJ and FBI law enforcement officials to discuss ways 

that we can work together quickly and smoothly nationwide. 

 But neither we nor any other Internet service provide, or ISP, is 

perfect. During a massive build-out phase of our Internet protocol, or IP, 

network last year, we had significant difficulties in meeting many law 

enforcement requests due to problems with our network’s customer 

provisioning system. Thankfully, that phase is behind us, and we are 

committed to best practices in this area. 

 Because of the importance of child safety, we want to do more. We 

have decided to extend our retention of IP address assignment 

information to 180 days. We are making the investment necessary to 

implement this change by September 1. We understand that our current 

IP address retention period is shorter than many other large commercial 

broadband ISPs. We established our IP address retention period at a time 

when Federal and State officials raised privacy concerns about retention 

of other data on our systems, so we erred on the side of setting a shorter 

time period. Comcast will voluntarily take this significant step to 

accommodate more valid law enforcement requests in a manner that is 

consistent with the privacy expectations of our subscribers and the law. 

 To be very clear, however, we will only retain IP address assignment 

information, information that we already retain for 180 days and will 

retain no additional information, unless compelled to do so by valid legal 

process. We are committed to striking the delicate balance between 

customer privacy and being able to provide evidence in response to 

investigations of online crimes. 

 Based upon our experience, we believe that the following other 

measures would contribute significantly to improving child safety online 

and hope the subcommittee will recommend them. First, greater public 

and private-sector efforts to educate families about the dangers of online 

pedophiles and the importance of parental involvement and technology 
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to protect children, and I believe Chris Hansen’s presentation earlier in 

the day underscores that fact. Second, greater resources for law 

enforcement teams combined with increased training and forensic 

support in the private sector so that law enforcement can trace hard-tofind perpetrators. Third, is giving the National Center for Missing and 

Exploited Children, or NCMEC, subpoena power so that it can gather 

critical evidence relating to reports that it receives without the delay of 

waiting for a referral to Federal or State law enforcement. Fourth, 

preservation of evidence known by an ISP to be relevant to a NCMEC 

report as a matter of course without waiting for a preservation order so 

that the evidence will be available for law enforcement. Finally, where 

available, is submitting relevant IP address assignment information and 

town and State information in reports to NCMEC to facilitate referrals to 

the proper law enforcement authorities. 

 In closing, Comcast is committed to a safe and secure Internet and to 

working with the Attorney General, this subcommittee, and everyone in 

the ISP industry to craft the right policies that balance the needs of law 

enforcement with customer privacy expectations. Child exploitation is a 

heinous crime. We intend to assume a leadership role in the solution to 

combating it. 

 Thank you, and I look forward to answering your questions. 

 [The prepared statement of Gerard J. Lewis, Jr. follows:] 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF GERALD J. LEWIS, JR., VICE PRESIDENT, DEPUTY GENERAL 

COUNSEL & CHIEF PRIVACY OFFICER, COMCAST CABLE COMMUNICATIONS
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 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. 

 And Mr. Reitinger, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

MR. REITINGER. Chairman Whitfield, Representative DeGette, and 

members of the subcommittee, my name is Philip Reitinger. 

 Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to talk 

about Microsoft’s strong commitment to protecting children. 

 I am Microsoft’s Director for Trustworthy Computing in 

Washington, DC, but before joining Microsoft, I was the Deputy Chief of 

the Computer Crime Intellectual Property Section at the U.S. Department 
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of Justice and the Executive Director of the Department of Defense’s 

Cybercrime Center. For years, I have been concerned with the 

challenges posed in preventing, detecting, deterring, and investigating 

cybercrime. 

 Microsoft is deeply and broadly engaged in efforts to protect 

children on the Internet. My written testimony discusses those efforts in 

detail. 

 As a former law enforcer, I believe that among the most critical are 

our efforts to partner with law enforcement to better enable it to 

prosecute child exploiters and predators. We must ensure that those who 

harm our children are caught, prosecuted, and sent to jail. 

 As a technology leader, Microsoft understands and embraces its 

obligation to partner with law enforcement to protect kids. We began by 

working to expunge child pornography from our systems and identify 

violators to law enforcement. We use filters on images uploaded to 

MSN spaces and groups to identify possible pornography. The images 

that are flagged are reviewed, and if they appear to be child pornography, 

an instant report is sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited 

Children. MSN closes the site and preserves it for a period in 

anticipation of legal process. 

 We also work to respond rapidly to law enforcement investigations. 

Our compliance managers are on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to 

respond to requests from law enforcement regarding criminal violations. 

 Our efforts to support prosecutions, however, do not stop there. In 

2003, Toronto detective, Sergeant Paul Gillespie, wrote to Bill Gates 

asking for his help. In response, Microsoft began developing the Child 

Exploitation Tracking System, or CETS, an innovative tool that enables 

law enforcement to track and share information in child exploitation 

cases. It has been incredibly rewarding to hear from our colleagues in 

Canada that CETS has already played a role in several investigations 

across geographical boundaries, creating links that have helped 

apprehend over 40 online predators,, and most important, led to the 

rescue of children in countries around the world. Microsoft is also 

working closely with several other law enforcement agencies around the 

world to assist with additional deployments. 

 We are deeply involved in training law enforcement. In just one 

example, in April of 2004, Microsoft joined Interpol and the 

International Center for Missing and Exploited Children to launch the 

international center’s global campaign against child pornography under 

which Microsoft has trained nearly 1,500 law enforcement officers from 

91 countries. 

 And as has already been discussed by several of the members of this 

panel, we are pleased to announce that Microsoft has joined with the 
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National Center and a number of companies represented on this panel to 

establish the Technology Coalition. We are convinced that this 

partnership will make a meaningful contribution to protecting our 

children from Internet predators and inappropriate online material. 

 Of course law enforcement prosecutions do not provide a silver 

bullet for child exploitation. To stop child exploitation before it can 

occur, we also work to empower families and communities to protect 

their children through both education and technology. We provide safety 

information on our sites and partner with many groups to educate 

families about how to protect themselves. 

 Again, our efforts are described in detail in my written testimony, 

and I won’t repeat them here. 

 We also continue to invest heavily in building technologies to protect 

kids and give parents the ability to better manage a child’s use of 

technology, including filtering, family safety settings, and safe search 

capabilities. The soon-to-be-released Windows Vista operating system 

will go even farther and allow detailed control over games, time, 

applications, and browsing. And Windows Live family safety settings 

will offer a similar free web-based protection. 

 In conclusion, Microsoft is strongly committed to improving online 

security for children throughout the world and to supporting 

investigation, prosecution, and punishment of child exploiters and 

predators. Microsoft and its partners are in the process of developing 

and implementing best practices for protecting children, and we welcome 

your feedback about how we can do better. 

 Thank you for the opportunity to speak with the committee about this 

important topic. I look forward to answering your questions. 

 [The prepared statement of Philip R. Reitinger follows:] 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF PHILIP R. REITINGER, SENIOR SECURITY STRATEGIST,

MICROSOFT CORPORATION
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 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Reitinger. 

 And Ms. Wong, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 
137

MS. WONG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, 

Representative DeGette and the members of the subcommittee, for 

inviting me to participate in this important discussion about how to keep 

all of our children safe. 

 My name is Nicole Wong, and I am Associate General Counsel for 

Google responsible for our products and services, including the privacy, 

security, and safety of our users. 

 I am also the mother of two young children, and I appreciate the 

subcommittee’s leadership on this important issue of concern to all of 

America’s families. 

 As a company, Google is deeply committed to protecting children on 

the Internet in our actions and in our guiding principles. Child 

pornography is a horrific and vicious crime and has no place in a 

civilized society. Google has a zero-tolerance policy for child 

pornography and those who would promote it. When we become aware 

of child pornography anywhere in our search index or on our site, we 

remove it immediately and report it to the appropriate authorities. We do 

not accept any advertising related to it. We cooperate assiduously with 

law enforcement to help track down online criminals and child predators. 

 We believe that a successful approach to combating child 

exploitation online must encompass three elements: first, strong law 

enforcement efforts to pursue and convict the purveyors of illegal content 

and activity; second, powerful technology solutions and resources for 

families to control their online experiences; and third, strong industry 

practices that support all of these important efforts. 

 At Google, we are approaching a number of initiatives. First, we 

enforce a strict policy prohibiting any advertising related to child 

pornography. We do this through a multi-tiered review process that 

involves both automated checks and manual reviews by trained 

specialists. We work constantly to improve this process to keep up with 

the fast-changing jargon and practices of this unsavory industry. In fact, 

based on the very helpful input of the committee staff, we recently 

tightened our review program to refuse any ads promoting pornography 

with teens, even if the underlying websites lawfully depict adult models. 

 Second, we remove and report child pornography immediately when 

we become aware of it in our search engine or in any of our websites. 

Indeed, we have created multiple channels throughout the company to 

identify illegal material, which includes training teams in our 

engineering, product, and advertising groups to identify and report 

instances of child pornography whenever they find it. 

 We have also created paths for our users to report illegal material to 

us through the Google Help Center, and we are members of international 

industry associations, such as the Internet Watch Foundation in the UK, 
138

from whom we obtain lists of illegal websites and use those to block 

illegal websites. There is a specially trained team in the legal department 

that submits reports of this material to the appropriate authorities, 

including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 

 Third, we provide valuable support to law enforcement at the 

Federal, State, and local levels. We have a trained and dedicated staff for 

responding to all law enforcement requests. They are available 24/7, 365 

days a year. We are extremely proud of this team that works relentlessly 

to respond to every law enforcement and data preservation request, 

including the hundreds of child safety requests we receive each year. 

 Fourth, we work to empower families to be safe online in a number 

of ways. We create tools, like our safe search filter, that allows families 

to control the type of information accessible through our site. We work 

with our industry colleagues, including those at the table today, and also 

in forums, such as the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography, to 

establish best practices and other initiatives to combat child pornography. 

And we support efforts like the Wired Safety Educational Campaign and 

specifically, they work in broad-based education for parents, community 

police officers, and kids themselves to learn about how to stay safe on 

the Internet. 

 The Internet provides an unparalleled opportunity for people to 

connect with information, and Google’s mission is to make this 

information more accessible and useful. At the same time, we keenly 

understand that our business relies on the existence of a healthy and 

trusted Internet. Child pornography and those who purvey it should have 

no place in that ecosystem. 

 We look forward to working with you, the law enforcement 

community, and the broader Internet community to increase our efforts 

to stop child exploitation and preserve the Internet as a trusted and safe 

environment. 

 Thank you. 

 [The prepared statement of Nicole Wong follows:] 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF NICOLE WONG, ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL & CHIEF 

PRIVACY OFFICER, GOOGLE ,INC. 
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 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. 

 And we appreciate the testimony of all of you. 

 And before we begin with questions, we do want to take time. Diana 

DeGette brought this issue up about what is going on in Great Britain 

with the Virtual Global Task Force. And there is a public service 

announcement in Great Britain that makes children more aware of how 
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they can report to law enforcement officials things that are going on on 

the cyber. And I think this would be informative for all of us, because 

really, we don’t have anything quite like it in the United States. So if 

you all are prepared, I would like to show this video. It is about 21⁄2 

minutes, I believe. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Mr. Chairman, if I may, they apparently show this at 

movie theaters in Great Britain, and so I think I would say to all of the 

media representatives here today, this is exactly the kind of thing we 

need to do on your websites, on television outlets, and in movie theaters. 

 And I thank you for doing this. 

 [Video.] 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. The first question I want to ask, it is not 

about AOL, but it is about the Internet service providers. There was 

some testimony, I think Mr. Lewis mentioned the policy on retaining IP 

addresses. And in all of the hearings that we have held on this subject 

from law enforcement, there was a lot of emphasis placed on that. And I 

know that some of the Internet service providers recently met with 

representatives of the Justice Department to talk about this issue. 

 So I would like to just start off by asking AOL and EarthLink and 

Verizon and Comcast. I guess Comcast has already answered, but what 

is the policy on retention of IP addresses at EarthLink, for example? 

 MR. BAKER. Mr. Chairman, our policy is, again, that we keep them 

in a live database for several months and then we archive them in tape 

backup, and our policy is now that we will keep those for 7 years. That 

is not to say they go back 7 years from today, but they are kept. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And so what is the difference in live and in storage 

as far as the time that it would take to find that address? 

 MR. BAKER. Well, if I can just give you an anecdote. Just this last 

November, we got a subpoena from law enforcement for IP addresses, 

some of which were more than several months old, more than 5 months 

old, so these were in tape backup, and we were able to the pull the 

necessary backup from archives, retrieve this information, and respond to 

law enforcement within 2 weeks, and this was notwithstanding 

Thanksgiving being during that period of time. So I would say that, in 

the case of tape backup, it might take a couple of weeks. Generally 

speaking, if it is of more recent vintage, we should be able to respond 

more quickly. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And could you say about how many subpoenas 

you may receive in a month or a yea? 

 MR. BAKER. We get about 1,000 subpoenas a year, so roughly 80 to 

100 a month-- 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. 

 MR. BAKER. --from various law enforcement agencies. 
145

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay, and Mr. Ryan, what is the policy for AOL? 

 MR. RYAN. The current policy, Mr. Chairman, with respect to 

retention of IP addresses is a 90-day period. We receive, at AOL, over 

1,400 subpoenas a month, and that does not include search warrants, 

intercept orders, or other types of legal process on the criminal side. So 

it is over 14,000 subpoenas a year. It is a reflection of the size of our 

subscriber base. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Right. 

 MR. RYAN. Recognizing that the 90-day period varies from, say, at 

EarthLink, we have a 24/7 dedicated staff for law enforcement only to 

make their requests for data, and we handled over 1,800 preservation 

requests last year. So we have a history of utilizing preservation with 

law enforcement, and the feedback that we get, with the current retention 

standards, coupled with our dedicated personnel, it works. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. And what about Verizon? 

 MR. DAILEY. Mr. Chairman, Verizon’s policy for the data that we 

capture, and then we are talking about IP session logs, basically, that 

would link a customer or a user to a particular IP address, which I 

believe is what you are referring to. Our policy is 9 months. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Nine months. 

 And how expensive is it to retain this kind of information? Is it a 

real factor to consider? 

 MR. RYAN. With respect to AOL, there is a cost factor. I think it is 

important to note that there are different kinds of IP addresses. There is 

a type of address we refer to as a proxy address, and that reflects the 

billion of sessions that go on on one particular day at AOL. An IP 

address is assigned to each one of those billion-plus sessions, so the 

retention period is far shorter, reflecting the volume. We did a cost study 

for the Department of Justice. To retain that information for up to 1 year 

would cost over $44 million. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. $44 million? 

 MR. RYAN. Yes, sir. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Wow. And what about, Mr. Reitinger, from 

Microsoft? 

 MR. REITINGER. Thank you, Chairman. 

 Of course, we are not typically a broadband provider-- 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Right. 

 MR. REITINGER. --so we don’t, in that sense, assign IP addresses to 

end users. The period of time we would retain data associated with a 

service could vary from service to service. I would be much more 

comfortable in addressing that in closed session, if the committee wants 

to do that. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. 
146

 MR. REITINGER. But what we try to do is balance law enforcement 

needs, business needs, and the privacy and security needs of our 

customers. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. I am really glad that this panel is here 

today, because as we told you in the beginning, we have had three or four 

sessions of hearings on this issue. And you think about the multitude of 

young people around the world who are certainly on the Internet today, 

being the wonderful tool that it is. Then we have the pedophiles out 

there and people who are trying to exploit them, and you all represent 

companies that provide them with the connection to the world, and you 

have such an important role to play. And actually our staff went on the 

Internet, and they put in “pre-teen” plus “sex” plus “video.” And it was 

kind of interesting the different results that came back. For example, on 

Google, it came back with about one and a half pages, it is up there, and 

some of the language was so explicit, it has been redacted. And if you 

just look at the Google site, I mean, it looks like a hard core pornography 

site. I mean, sex games, and pre-teen sex, and teen porn, and triple-X 

movies with pictures and so forth. But I guess the most disturbing thing 

about on the Google site, Ms. Wong, and I know that you may not be 

involved in the policy, but you even had sponsored links. And what that 

means is you had people there paying Google money to advertise these 

kinds of sites on Google that young people have access to and everyone 

else. And I know the testimony of all of you today focused on your 

concern, and you want to protect children and you want to minimize the 

opportunity for them to be exposed to things like that. And I know that 

Google has a reputation of being a socially-responsible company. And I 

know that they recently hired a man, and I think his last name is Brilliant, 

to manage their foundation that is working with societal problems, 

disease, and climate issues and so forth. But to think that a company like 

this would be taking money from groups like this is sort of disturbing. 

 And I will give you a chance to respond, but before I do, we used the 

same words on the Yahoo! search, and it came up with five or six sites, 

but it was not nearly as sexually explicit. It is like “Dr. Phil on alarming 

sexual behavior among children,” and “pre-teen healthcare,” and “Fox 

News: Teen Sex and Media Hype,” but there were no sponsored links. 

They were not receiving any money. 

 So I would like to just ask, what is responsible for the difference in 

what you receive on the search. And are you still taking money from 

people who are advertising this kind of material on the Internet? 

 MS. WONG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 And we actually greatly appreciated you and the committee staff 

raising this for us. We have no interest in getting advertising for the 

promotion of any illegal content or these types of ads. And in fact, we 
147

think that this particular search was an aberration that was due to the fact 

that what the search was was “pre-teen.” If you were actually to search 

on Google for “preteen sex video” or “child sex video” or “young teen 

sex video,” ads would not show up at all. So what we did was we went 

back through our systems. We have a long list of black lists, and we 

have added the “pre-teen” to it, and no ads currently show. 

 But we do greatly appreciate the committee staff bringing it to our 

attention, and that is our policy: as soon as we become aware of it, we 

will either add it to a black list or remove it from the site. 

 In regard to our ads policy, and again, in conversation with the staff, 

we have actually tightened our policies to prohibit any type of ad that 

refers to teens in any way, including ads that may, in fact, have legal 

pornography on it but actually refer to teens. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. Well, what would account for what shows 

up as the result of the search using the same words with Yahoo! that we 

used with Google? The results were startlingly different, and the 

language used was unbelievably different. 

 MS. WONG. And I can’t really speak so much to how Yahoo!’s 

system works. We are many, many billions of pages. We believe we are 

probably about three times the size of any other search engine. So we 

have many more pages to screen and review. We do, as I was 

mentioning, have a many multi-tiered system for trying to remove these 

as soon as we find them, including getting lists, like from the Internet 

Watch Foundation, and there is also a similar organization in Germany, 

and immediately put those into place to block on our site. And we have 

our own search quality engineers who are trained to look for and remove 

these types of sites. We do the best we can. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. But it is the policy of Google now not to 

accept paid advertisement from groups like this? 

 MS. WONG. That is absolutely true. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. 

 Now Ms. Banker, you are with Yahoo!, aren’t you? 

 MS. BANKER. Yes, I am. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Did you want to make any comment about any of 

this? 

 MS. BANKER. I would just note that Yahoo! strives to have an open 

and inclusive and comprehensive search product. Child pornography has 

no place in it, and for that reason, we use a number of techniques to 

identify and remove child pornography from our search index, including 

technical approaches, such as algorithms, reports from our users. It also 

reports from third-party sources, such as the IWF, to remove that content 

and report it to NCMEC as appropriate. 
148

 MR. WHITFIELD. Yes. So you are quite proactive on this issue, it 

sounds like. 

 MS. BANKER. Yes, we think that is appropriate, given the nature of 

the subject. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. Okay. 

 Now my time has expired. And in fact, I have gone over. And we 

have a vote on the floor. We have three votes. So I think we will take a 

break right now. Hopefully they can get this video fixed. Maybe you all 

could have a drink or a sandwich or something, and then we will come 

back. We will be back, I would say, in about 20 minutes. So we will 

recess for 20 minutes. 

 [Recess.] 

 MR. WHITFIELD. The hearing will come back to order. 

 I apologize for that delay. 

 I understand that we now are in a position to show this Virtual 

Global Task Force public service announcement, so if you would start it 

and run it for us, we would appreciate it. 

 [Video.] 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you very much for getting that prepared for 

us. 

 And at this time, I will recognize Ms. DeGette. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

 I think we could show that, don’t you? Ms. Wong? 

 MS. WONG. I thought that was a very impressive PSA, and I actually 

would be pleased to discuss with your staff ways that we could work 

with it. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And they customize that for every region that they 

show it in in every country, so I think it is effective. 

 I want to thank all of you for coming and for your efforts to make the 

Internet safer. 

 The thing I want to say first, because I think we are getting a little 

confused about exactly what we are talking about here, and I think we 

need to know. There are really a number of interrelated issues. One of 

them is the solicitation of minors over the Internet through chat rooms 

and other mediums for sex and other activities. And I think all of you are 

making some very important voluntary efforts towards parental controls 

and technology plus parents talking to their kids and so on that goes to 

that. 

 The second issue is controlling child pornography over the Internet, 

which is an illegal activity, and which we need to take law enforcement 

methods to stop it. And there are a lot of issues around the first, chat 

rooms and so on, that I think we can explore. But I want to talk for a few 

minutes about that second issue, about how you all can assist law 
149

enforcement in what is admittedly illegal activity that is happening over 

the Internet. 

 Let me start with you, Mr. Dailey, because you have had a broad 

regulatory authority. You would agree that nobody who is putting illegal 

information over the Internet would have any protection under 

contractual agreement with the Internet service providers, correct? 

 MR. DAILEY. I would expect that is very true for any ISP that I can 

think of. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right. And I think nobody here would disagree. All 

of your contracts say that if you are doing something illegal over the 

Internet, we are going to report that to the authorities. So no one has a 

privacy interest in illegal activity over the Internet, right? 

 MR. DAILEY. I would agree with that. If there is any activity like 

that, it would be reported. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right. Now Mr. Lewis, I wanted to, first of all, 

thank you very much for Comcast’s announcement today that it is going 

to retain the customer-identifying data for 180 days. How much do you 

anticipate that it will cost Comcast to retain that data? 

 MR. LEWIS. I don’t have an exact figure. I can certainly get it, but 

when we looked at the issue in light of recent discussions at the Justice 

Department, with this committee and staff members, and among 

ourselves and with other companies here and trade associations, we 

decided the investment was well worth it. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Yes. I would wonder, Mr. Chairman, if I could ask 

unanimous consent to have Mr. Lewis supplement his response within 10 

days to let us know how much that will cost. 

 And Mr. Ryan, you stated unequivocally that your company is 

opposed to having to retain that type of data for a 1-year period, is that 

correct? 

 MR. RYAN. We are not opposing any discussion what are the best 

strategies. We are open. We are engaged in that discussion. In response 

to the question what the costs would be, we had prepared that, because 

the European Union requested that when they went through data 

retention. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And in fact, just so all of you know this, I am about 

to introduce legislation which would require all ISPs to retain customer 

identification data for a 1-year period. But the EU standards are even 

broader than that, correct? And they have adopted those standards, 

correct? 

 MR. RYAN. And each country now has to implement within their 

respective jurisdiction to what extent they are going to adopt that. That 

is correct. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right. 
150

 MR. RYAN. And that was stage one. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right. And I know your business and all of the other 

businesses here operate in international communities, so everybody is 

going to have to retain data for some period of time, correct? 

 MR. RYAN. That is correct. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Now Mr. Baker, your company retains the data for 7 

years, correct? 

 MR. BAKER. That is our current policy. 

 MS. DEGETTE. How long has that been your policy? 

 MR. BAKER. Well, it depends which data we are referring to. 

 MS. DEGETTE. The customer identification data that we were 

talking about. 

 MR. BAKER. Right, customer billing address, initial dates of service, 

things like that-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Yes. 

 MR. BAKER. --which is sort of, if you will-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. How long has that been your policy? 

 MR. BAKER. I will get you the exact date when that went into place, 

but it has been our policy for some time. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Some period of time. And how much does it cost 

you to retain those records? 

 MR. BAKER. I don’t have figures on that. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Again, Mr. Chairman, I would ask that Mr. Baker be 

allowed to supplement. 

 MR. BAKER. I would be happy to provide this to you. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Ms. Banker, what about your company? 

 MS. BANKER. As mentioned in Microsoft’s response on this issue 

earlier, companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft are in a slightly different 

position than some of the other companies-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. That is right. 

 MS. BANKER. --so we would look forward to working with your 

staff to get clarity on how something like a data retention proposal might 

apply to a company that is primarily an online service. 

 MS. DEGETTE. That is right. 

 Mr. Lewis, I wanted to ask you, what caused your company to decide 

to retain the data for 180 days? 

 MR. LEWIS. Well, a variety of things, Congresswoman DeGette. In 

recent discussions, as part of the Department of Justice’s working group, 

kicked off by the Attorney General and the FBI Director at the end of last 

month we became aware of the fact that our retention policy was on the 

shorter side compared to many other larger broadband commercial ISPs. 

We also, as I alluded to in my testimony earlier, had significant technical 
151

problems last year that unfortunately impeded investigations. We are not 

proud of that. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right. 

 MR. LEWIS. And we regret that. Those factors, combined with 

changed circumstances on the Internet, in particular the new 

aggressiveness and brazenness that we have seen demonstrated here 

today of predators, new forums for them to make their contacts and their 

connections, said to us that it was time to look at the policy carefully and 

revise it in light of our customer privacy obligations and commitments 

and in light of our privacy policies. And so that is why we made the 

decision. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And in fact, I will ask you, Mr. Dailey, there is no 

clear industry standard as to how long ISPs retain this type of data, is 

there? 

 MR. DAILEY. That is correct. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And it varies anywhere from 31 days, which I think 

was Comcast’s previous policy, up to 7 years, is that correct? 

 MR. DAILEY. That is what I have heard today. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And I mean, all of you have expressed great grave 

concern for the safety of our children and for the desire to eliminate child 

pornography on the Internet. But the reason why we think it is important 

for ISPs to retain, not the communications, because the communications, 

those can be reported to different authorities, but to retain the identifying 

data so that during the course of law enforcement investigations, 

administrative or judicial subpoenas can be issued so that law 

enforcement officers can track down these perpetrators. Does that make 

sense to you, Mr. Lewis? 

 MR. LEWIS. Yes, it does. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Okay. 

 MR. LEWIS. I mean, our experience has been that we actively 

support law enforcement in these investigations, and have continuously 

since we-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Well, I know that, and I mean, the case that we have 

been talking about before today was the case where they found out about 

the child who was being raped on the Internet, and they went to Colorado 

and Comcast had destroyed the records, and I am sure that just makes all 

of your employees around the country feel sick. And it certainly was not 

intentional on Comcast’s part. 

 MR. LEWIS. Well, that is, of course, right. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Yes. 

 MR. LEWIS. I mean, no one feels that more acutely than I do. I am a 

parent of two small children, myself, and what is depicted in that video, 

as I understand it, is horrifying. The company is not proud of the 
152

technical problems we had last year. And the company has decided, in 

light of recent discussions with DOJ and others, to update and support 

law enforcement investigations with respect to child exploitation. Our 

commitment today is to extend our period to 180 days. Hopefully that 

goes a long way toward eliminating incidents like we had in Colorado 

last year. And that is our commitment. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And I hope you are willing to keep working with me 

and my staff so that we can get a standard to the industry. 

 MR. LEWIS. We are. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Just one last question, Mr. Lewis. 

 MR. LEWIS. Yes. 

 MS. DEGETTE. You said that your company favors giving NCMEC 

subpoena power, correct? 

 MR. LEWIS. Yes. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Now are you aware that NCMEC is not a 

governmental agency? 

 MR. LEWIS. We are, and there is certainly-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Do you know of any precedent where we gave a 

non-governmental agency subpoena power? 

 MR. LEWIS. I certainly don’t off hand, but we could certainly 

investigate that if that is valuable. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Yes, I don’t think that that happened. And 

furthermore, if they did subpoena records, I don’t think they could be 

used in a criminal investigation, so I think it is creative thinking, but I 

don’t think it would work. 

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Yes. 

 And at this time, I would recognize Mr. Stupak. 

 MR. STUPAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 I apologize to the witnesses. I had to run out and speak, and 

unfortunately, at 2 o’clock, I have got to go speak again. 

 But earlier in my questions, I talked about going online here and 

putting in “pre-teen,” “sex,” and “video,” and I have Google, I have 

Yahoo!, and I have MSN searches there. So let me ask a couple of 

questions, if I can, along this. It looks like Google is the most lenient. 

On this, when you take a look at it, the first says up here, not only do you 

have the websites, but you also have the sponsor links, so everyone else 

will have a sponsor link. Do you have that up, sponsor links up? 

 MS. WONG. No, and actually once it came to our attention from your 

committee’s staff, we made sure that it was removed immediately. The 

problem appears to have been, we have a black list for key words that 

includes “preteen sex video” but without the hyphen. As soon as we 
153

added the hyphen to the list, those no longer show. And in fact, we have 

added a number of others, thousands of other key words to that list. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. Ms. Wong, why do you put on here for adults 

only? Is there any way to enforce that? 

 MS. WONG. So what we have is a safe search filter, which a user can 

turn on to ensure that there is only the strictest level or the moderate level 

or no filter on their search. 

 MR. STUPAK. But wouldn’t this cause more curiosity and cause 

more people to go to your site when you put things like “adults only” on 

it? 

 MS. WONG. Well, I think, for some children it could. We definitely 

believe, as Chris Hansen had mentioned earlier today, that this should be 

done with the parents’ involvement, that the children should be having a 

range of issues to protect them, which include putting the computer in 

the living room. 

 MR. STUPAK. So other than taking off the sponsor links, have you 

done anything else to try to block this? Because Yahoo! has probably 

got about the best where they actually don’t use the same type of 

wording, less suggestive wording, and you can’t get in to see the videos 

and all of that. But yours was about the easiest site to access. And I 

guess my curiosity is why do we have different levels here of the ISPs? I 

would think you would all want to be on the same page. 

 MS. WONG. Well, from a search engine perspective, as opposed to 

the IP level, I think we all have different algorithms for identifying and 

including things in your index that accounts, in part, for why you may 

see different results. 

 MR. STUPAK. Right. And since you have different algorithms, if 

you are dealing with sex and pornography on your Net, couldn’t you 

have more scrambling in that aspect and keep the rest of your search 

engine easy to access? 

 MS. WONG. Well, we have the safe phish filter, which makes it more 

difficult to access any sort of adult content. 

 MR. STUPAK. But obviously it is not working, because we were-- 

 MS. WONG. And in addition, we have multiple layers to review. It 

is terrible that these sites are there, and we should-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Well, I think we all agree, but it looks like your 

company is doing the least to try to block it or to stop it. That is, I guess, 

what I am trying to get at. 

 MS. WONG. Yes, and I think, in addition to the levels of review that 

we try to do to take it out, including getting third-party lists and that sort 

of thing and having our trained teams to try and find it, we also have the 

biggest search engine on the Internet. We have many billions of pages. 
154

 MR. STUPAK. So it is easier to find it. It should be easier to find it, 

so I would think you would have more filters and more ways to block it 

than the others if you have the biggest search engine. 

 MS. WONG. We have the biggest search engine. There are many 

more pages to review. And we are doing the best we can to identify as 

many of the illegal sites as we can and remove them as soon as we find 

them. 

 MR. STUPAK. Well, we have had discussions about this consortium 

that has recently been developed and AOL has sort of been leading that 

consortium. And the group invited Google to be part of it. And it says 

here in the article that was printed today you have not yet decided to do 

so. 

 MS. WONG. We absolutely think that that proposal is very 

promising. We were contacted last week to discuss it, and we are 

actively talking with them about it. We think there are a lot of things that 

we would like to work with them on, and we are actually just sort of 

flushing out exactly what the proposed work would be. 

 MR. STUPAK. Well, who is going to make the decision whether or 

not you join this group? I would think if you are the biggest and have the 

most, you would want to be part of the group instead of trying to go 

outside the group so you could learn what others are doing to block some 

of these sites. 

 MS. WONG. In terms of who has the ultimate decision, that is one 

that I will be making along with all of my executives. And in addition-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Do you anticipate making that decision soon? 

 MS. WONG. Yes, we do. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. When? 

 MS. WONG. I know that the discussion happened over the weekend, 

and I am hoping that we have a decision this week. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. Let me ask Ms. Wong. In 1998, Congress 

actually passed a law where Internet providers were to contact the 

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and having search 

engines do some work on that. Were you ever contacted by the Justice 

Department on that law, Section 13-032? 

 MS. WONG. I believe this is the law that has been challenged in the 

court and the Department of Justice is involved in litigation regarding it. 

We did receive a subpoena from them, it was a civil subpoena, seeking 

information from our company. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. When did that occur? 

 MS. WONG. That was last summer, I believe in August. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. Prior to receiving that subpoena, did you have 

any discussions with Justice on that proposed law? 

 MS. WONG. No. 
155

 MR. STUPAK. So the first you knew of it was the subpoena? 

 MS. WONG. We were aware of the law. 

 MR. STUPAK. Right. 

 MS. WONG. But the subpoena was our first involvement in their 

litigation. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. Anyone else care to comment on that? Section 

13-032, Congress passed a law in 1998 directing Justice to take an active 

role in this, other than the subpoena, anyone else have any discussions 

with Justice about the law, whether they felt it was valid or what could 

be done and not done? Any of the others? 

 The reason why I ask, Congress passed the law in 1998. Justice 

came here about a month ago and said, “We think the law is faulty.” 

And so I am trying to see if they ever did any research to see if it really 

was faulty or if this is just their way of suddenly doing something 

because we asked them to come back in 8 years later since they have 

done nothing for 8 years. By your silence, I take it Justice never 

contacted anybody. 

 Okay. Let me ask this question, if I can, Ms. Banker. In your 

testimony, you mentioned how Yahoo! trains law enforcement in child 

exploitation issues. Please explain the different types of training 

programs Yahoo! provides to law enforcement. 

 MS. BANKER. We have a number of programs in place. We focus a 

lot of our efforts in working with the Internet Crimes Against Children 

Task Forces, which, as I am sure you know, do a huge number of 

investigations when Yahoo! and other service providers provide tips to 

NCMEC. It is often the ICACs that follow up on those. We have been 

going around the country to the regional ICAC conferences and 

participate in the national ICAC conference on a yearly basis. We also 

provide sponsorship for these conferences. In addition to that, we reach 

out to other law enforcement agencies working for organizations, such as 

the National Association of Attorneys General. We also have been 

providing specific training for child exploitation prosecutors through the 

American Prosecutors Research Institute. 

 MR. STUPAK. I asked Ms. Wong a number of questions about 

Google there, and I indicated Yahoo!, I felt at least, had one of the better, 

different results, much more protected results. Can you just explain the 

difference between what you do at Yahoo!, how you block these sites? 

 MS. BANKER. We can certainly explain how we approach the issue. 

While Yahoo! strives to have an open and inclusive search product, child 

pornography is contraband, and it has no place in our index. And for that 

reason, we use several techniques to try and eliminate it from the search 

product. We use algorithmic approaches to identify it. We also use user 

reports. And then we use outside agencies, such as the IWF, which 
156

provides a list of sites that we then remove from our search index. Once 

we have removed sites, we then report them to the National Center for 

Missing and Exploited Children. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. Mr. Ryan. 

 MR. RYAN. Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. Mr. Ryan, we had talked, or I had mentioned earlier, 

about Great Britain and how they had, like 18 percent of all of the 

websites on pornography, and now it is down to 0.4 percent. And you 

were in the lead, along with, I think, Yahoo! was the other who worked 

on that. It worked in Great Britain. Can it work in this country? Are 

there barriers to what you did in Great Britain that would prevent us from 

cracking down here in the United States? 

 MR. RYAN. Well, what works in Great Britain and what we 

contribute to it is when the IWF does their research and locates sites that 

contain child pornography, they distribute that to companies, including 

our AOL operation in the UK. And we have agreed, to the extent that we 

have the capability to block access to those sites, we do that. And we do 

that on a daily basis. The complexity is probably the most direct answer 

why efforts in the United States have not been as successful. That is not 

to say when we are put on notice or we learn on our own about potential 

sites, we will, and have, blocked access to those sites. 

 MR. STUPAK. Where is the problem? Is it NCMEC not getting the 

information to you? I know part of it. The ISPs, there are only like 215 

who will voluntarily work with NCMEC while there are about 3,000 or 

more. What is the breakdown here? I guess that is what I am trying to-- 

 MR. RYAN. Well, there is no entity. NCMEC is not proactively 

searching the Internet for sites that contain child pornography. They are 

the recipient of reports. 

 MR. STUPAK. Correct. 

 MR. RYAN. They are not proactive. They rely on law enforcement 

or other entities, such as the IWF, to do the reporting for them. So I 

mean, I think you are leading towards, I think, a good suggestion, an 

entity like the National Center. If they could be given the resources to 

conduct similar research, I think that is a great avenue to pursue. 

 MR. STUPAK. Well, Great Britain, I read somewhere that, I think, 

Microsoft gave them like $4 million or something to help establish this 

center. Is that right, Mr. Reitinger? Oh, that was the Canadians. You 

gave the Canadians $4 million, right? Was that to establish a center to be 

proactive to report these sites to monitor it, to get them shut down like 

they did in Great Britain? Was that the reason for it or-- 

 MR. REITINGER. Ranking Member, I am not sure precisely what you 

are referring to. We have worked with the Canadian law enforcement 
157

officials in several matters. I think you might be referring to our work to 

develop CETS, the Child Exploitation Tracking System. 

 MR. STUPAK. Right. 

 MR. REITINGER. We have committed over $5 million to the 

development and deployment of that system, which is an open standardsbased tool that can be deployed by law enforcement anywhere to 

cooperate and track child pornographers, child exploiters, and work 

together-- 

 MR. STUPAK. But what you are doing in Canada, would that work 

here? 

 MR. REITINGER. Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 I am sorry, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Mr. Pickering. 

 MR. PICKERING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your 

series of hearings on this very important matter. 

 Ms. Wong, help me just to understand what the status is currently 

with Google’s cooperation with providing the DOJ with the information 

that they requested under COPA. 

 MS. WONG. We have fully complied with the request, as narrowed 

by the Federal judge in San Jose. 

 MR. PICKERING. Now, as I understand it, AOL, Yahoo!, and 

Microsoft complied voluntarily and completely from the very beginning, 

but Google did not and took it to court. Is that correct? 

 MS. WONG. That is correct. 

 MR. PICKERING. Now in your earlier statement, you said child 

exploitation and child pornography is horrific and vicious. And what I 

am trying to understand is over time, the policy of Google and the culture 

of Google, is it to view child exploitation and child pornography as 

horrific and vicious, do everything you can to cooperate with DOJ and 

with law enforcement and to not have sites that were pulled up earlier 

when you type in “pre-teen” plus “sex” plus “video.” And I think you 

probably have seen all of those sites that came up and would agree that 

many of them are completely unacceptable. I guess what I am trying to 

understand, has Google, through this process of hearings and through the 

enhanced scrutiny of what is happening on the Internet and the danger to 

children, have you all come to a clear position both legally and culturally 

within your corporation or your policies to be more cooperative and 

more vigilant? 

 MS. WONG. Just to be very clear, we were in long discussions with 

the Department of Justice over that civil subpoena and to also explain our 

process, we comply with criminal subpoenas and all law requests on a 

daily basis. And in fact, we prioritize requests that have to do with child 
158

safety. We are seeking to do a turnaround for them in terms of our 

response within 24 hours, if not within a few hours of getting that 

response. The civil subpoena from the Department of Justice was not 

directly related to child pornography. It was a request for our entire 

search index, billions of URLs in our index and millions of search 

queries that were, as I understand from the consultant to the Government, 

intended to create a model of the Web, generally to test their theory on 

whether software filtering was actually working. 

 MR. PICKERING. But why was that possible for all of the other 

companies at the table but not possible for Google? And does it show a 

cultural difference and a marketing and a business difference between the 

companies? Do you want to be known as the company where teenagers 

can have access to teen pornography and where your clients can go into 

child pornographic sites feeling like they will be protected and their 

information will not be given to the Government? 

 MS. WONG. Certainly not. We, in no case want to be a safe haven 

for child pornographers or anyone engaged in illegal activity. And I 

couldn’t speak to it. My other colleagues did in terms of their response 

to the Government and how much they ultimately produced to the 

Government. In our case, we worked with the Government for several 

months to try and give them information that would be helpful to them 

and ultimately weren’t able to reach an agreement and then to go to the 

judge. 

 MR. PICKERING. Now as I understand it, too, when the committee 

staff brought this to your attention as to what is available on Google’s 

sites, you changed your sponsorship policy, and you corrected your 

protective mechanism to include a hyphen when added so that these 

types of sites would not be pulled up, is that correct? 

 MS. WONG. That is right. We enhanced the blocking list, which had 

several hundred keywords to block on it. We apparently missed the 

hyphen in “pre-teen,” and we have now added that and actually 

thousands of others. 

 MR. PICKERING. And I realize that you all’s search engine is much 

larger than most of the other industry companies, but there is at least an 

appearance that Google is not being as cooperative or as vigilant on these 

issues. And the question is, is there a desire by Google to be free of all? 

And as you know, there are some people that take a position that 

constitutionally, everything goes: child pornography, child exploitation, 

even bestiality; all of those things should be accessible and should be 

constitutionally protected. And I guess what I am trying to understand, 

do you have a corporate culture that leans toward that philosophical 

view? And do you want to have a business plan with that philosophy? 

Or do you, as you testified, view it as horrific and vicious and that you 
159

need to be vigilant in both your corporate policy, your legal policy, and 

to stop having your search engine pull up these types of things and have 

sponsorships on it? It seems like the committee hearings and the 

oversight has created a change in policy. But what we want to know is, 

is this a real change or is this simply for public relations during a time of 

scrutiny? 

 MS. WONG. Congressman, our entire company feels very deeply that 

we want no part of child pornography, or any obscenity that is illegal. 

We also, from our executives on down, are deeply committed to this in 

our actions and principles. In fact, my CEO, Eric Schmidt, was recently 

speaking in Europe and personally committed to the endeavor to remove 

all of this from our search engine and any of our services. 

 MR. PICKERING. Well, let me, one, commend you for changing your 

policies and correcting and protecting. But let me also tell you, we will 

be watching very closely, and we want all of the companies to be good 

actors. We don’t want any bad actors in this industry and for the 

Internet. We will, as a committee, and I think you can see, be very 

vigilant and will not rest until we have the right assurances and policies 

and, if necessary, legislation to more effectively protect our children. 

 So thank you, Ms. Wong. 

 MS. WONG. Thank you. 

 MR. PICKERING. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Pickering. 

 We are going to have another quick round here, and I understand 

there may be another member or two coming. But we are getting close 

to the end here. 

 I would like to ask Mr. Baker, one of the first hearings we had, we 

had a young man named Justin Berry that received a lot of publicity 

around the country. And he was very brave to come in and talk about 

how he became involved in this whole child molestation issue. And he 

ended up meeting people at rendezvous locations and so forth. But he 

mentioned the fact that he really became involved in this, not that there is 

one issue that did it, but he did say that he received a free webcam from 

EarthLink that was given as an incentive to sign up. And I was just 

curious, do you all still give away webcams for encouraging people to 

sign up? Not that there is anything wrong with it, but I was just curious 

if you do. 

 MR. BAKER. No, Mr. Chairman. We have not distributed webcams 

since 2002. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. Okay. 

 And Mr. Ryan, I know one of the measures that you all take, and I 

guess you mentioned this a little bit earlier, to find and shut down illegal 

activity involves hashing of images and monitoring of chat rooms. And 
160

it is my understanding that your company is the only one that has the 

hashing technology? Or is that correct or not? 

 MR. RYAN. I can’t speak with certainty about that. In fact, since the 

Coalition has been formed, a couple of my colleagues, some of them here 

today, have illustrated they do have some tools available that they are 

utilizing that work within their network. And that speaks to the potential 

benefit of the Coalition, to bring all of those resources together, share 

what works and may work in other network environments. So I am 

optimistic that my colleagues are doing something and that collectively 

we can do more. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. So every company at the panel today is represented 

in that task force? 

 MR. RYAN. Not everyone, but certainly the invitation extends to 

everyone, and we will have a dialogue with everyone. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Which companies do belong to that task force? 

 MR. RYAN. EarthLink, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Okay. Okay. Would you just elaborate a little bit 

on hashing, the way that works? 

 MR. RYAN. The way it works in our environment is every time a file 

is uploaded or downloaded, when I say “file,” I mean the attachment to 

an e-mail transmission, we work with the National Center. They have 

identified referred files that they believe, by their expertise, to contain 

child pornography. Each file contains a unique signature. And we 

populate a database at AOL with those signatures associated with files 

that have been identified by NCMEC as containing child pornography. 

Any time a file is attempted to be transmitted through our network, it is 

matched against that populated database. If it contains a signature that 

has been identified with child pornography, we remove that, we package 

it, and we refer that to the National Center for investigation. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Now I am not sure that you all are responsible for 

what goes on in Europe with your companies, but, from your 

understanding, how would you measure the effectiveness that we are 

having with this problem in the United States as compared to, say, the 

European Union? 

 MR. RYAN. Well, I could speak with some authority with that, 

because we work closely with our colleagues in the UK with this project. 

Because it is one common network, the AOL UK operation is actually 

using the AOL network here in the United States, here in Virginia. 

When the IWF makes a request to the AOL UK to block a site, that 

request actually comes to us here in the United States and technicians 

that work under, my direction implement that block. So that block is not 

only effective for access or attempted access by UK subscribers but also 

the entire AOL subscriber base. 
161

 MR. WHITFIELD. Yes. 

 Would anyone else want to address the European Union issue? 

 Okay. All right. Oh, let me have one other question here. 

 Mr. Lewis, in responding to Diana DeGette’s questions, you talked 

about some of the technical problems that prevented Comcast from 

tracing IP addresses for some law enforcement subpoenas or whatever. 

 MR. LEWIS. Yes. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. What efforts did Comcast make to remedy that 

problem? And from your perspective, has that problem been solved? 

 MR. LEWIS. Yes, I am happy to report that the problem has been 

solved, and we believe our systems are working fully in supporting all of 

our legal and law enforcement practices as well as our own internal 

practice. The problems are very technical and complicated, having to do 

with rolling out what is called a provisioning system, the software and 

hardware that issues accounts to customers, lets us add new customers 

quickly, and lets them get service quickly so they could use what they 

purchased from us. It became apparent slowly over time last year, in 

particular to the legal response center team that handles law enforcement 

requests, that we may be having a problem. They went back and did 

independent investigation with the technology teams that have built this 

system and, in the early summer, determined that there were problems. 

We acted quickly to mobilize the technical teams to address the 

problems. We had weekly conference calls with senior vice presidents 

and myself to emphasize the importance of these fixes and to make them 

quickly. And at the same time, the legal response center instituted a 

series of manual processes so that we could support as many legal and 

law enforcement requests as we could while we worked to fix the 

system. That process continued throughout the fall of last year and early 

into this year. The new fixes, if you will, for the software system were 

ready at the beginning of this year. They were tested, tested again, and 

rolled into production this spring. And as I said, the problem is now 

remedied. We took it very seriously. The problems impacted not only 

our support for law enforcement, which of course was a primary concern, 

but our ability to run and manage other aspects of our business. We had 

every incentive in the world to make these fixes quickly and efficiently, 

and we worked as hard as we could to make them. And we believe now 

the problems are behind us. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. 

 I recognize Mr. Stupak. 

 MR. STUPAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 Mr. Reitinger, the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography, 

which you are part of, was supposed to bring together Internet industry 

leaders, leading banks, credit card companies, third-party payment 
162

companies, and Internet service companies, including Microsoft. And 

you are joined with the National Center for Missing and Exploited 

Children in the fight against child pornography. Our information tells us 

that pornography on the Internet is a $21 billion industry where 

downloading music is about a $3 billion industry. It is seven times 

greater. Can you explain what is happening there? And I would really 

be interested to see what are the credit card companies and the thirdparty payment companies doing? Because it seems like as long as I have 

a credit card, I can buy anything on the Internet with any name, with any 

address, with any location. So how would you crack down on this 

Internet sale? 

 MR. REITINGER. Thank you, Ranking Member. 

 The credit card companies, and I don’t want to do too much speaking 

for them, because we are not a credit card company, and they face 

challenges, because it can be hard to determine what a merchant is doing 

or not doing. 

 MR. STUPAK. Sure. 

 MR. REITINGER. Like the Internet companies, they have no interest 

in supporting child pornography. Everyone wants to expunge child 

pornography from their systems. And so this is a joint effort for 

companies, like the financial services companies, some key Internet 

companies, and the National Center to figure out and share best practices 

and mechanisms to expunge the use of those systems, those credit card 

payment systems from supporting the distribution of child pornography. 

 As a former law enforcer, I can tell you this is sort of a tried and true 

technique. One of the classic ways to go after crime is to go after the 

money pieces, the old-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Absolutely. I mean, on this committee, in the 10 

years I have sat on it, 12 years, we have done things like we have had 

cats actually buy Viagra over the Internet. As long as we had a credit 

card, we could buy anything we want. And with this pornography, it 

seems the same way, or to drug masking agents that we have had 

hearings on earlier this year. I agree with you. If we go after the money, 

we could dry up part of this, but we just can’t seem to get anywhere. So 

I was wondering if you were looking at that aspect and if you had any 

suggestions we could make today. Or would you let us know if you 

move along in that direction? Because if you get the money, I think we 

can, not completely, but at least cut down on this. I mean, with seven 

times greater than downloading music, it is pretty disturbing. 

 MR. REITINGER. Thank you, sir. 

 I don’t have any specific suggestions to offer today. I would like to 

go back and check with people in our company that are more specifically 

involved in that. 
163

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 MR. REITINGER. But clearly, in terms of investigation, as you 

suggest, following the money is a great way to go to really bring these 

people to justice. 

 MR. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I think one more thing we should do is 

to get credit card companies and the third-party payment companies--I 

really think we should get them in and see what they are doing on this 

issue, much like we have had the ISPs here. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. We are planning to do that. 

 MR. STUPAK. Good. 

 Whoever wants to answer this, maybe go down the line. I have a 

couple quick questions here, if I can. 

 Do you all support requiring ISPs to keep parent-child pornography 

reports to make to the National Center for Missing and Exploited 

Children for at least a 90-day period, even before a preservation order is 

made? Mr. Ryan? 

 MR. RYAN. Yes, that is the proposal that we are submitting today 

and are prepared to do on a voluntary basis. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 Mr. Baker? 

 MR. BAKER. We would be prepared to do so as well. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 Ms. Banker? 

 MS. BANKER. Yahoo! actually already maintains a significant 

amount of that information, and we would be happy to look at a proposal 

to make sure we conform. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 Mr. Dailey? 

 MR. DAILEY. Verizon would be willing to do that as well. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 Mr. Lewis? 

 MR. LEWIS. Comcast would be willing as well, sir. 

 MR. STUPAK. Mr. Reitinger? 

 MR. REITINGER. We do that, sir. 

 MR. STUPAK. Ms. Wong? 

 MS. WONG. We would be prepared to do it. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. Then would you all support giving NCMEC 

the preservation order authority so that NCMEC can directly request the 

ISPs keep the child pornography image, IP address, and other 

information which would cut down on the time it takes for local law 

enforcement to be able to get the preservation order? 

 Mr. Ryan? 

 MR. RYAN. Yes, AOL supports that. 
164

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 MR. BAKER. Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. Ms. Banker? 

 MS. BANKER. Yes, we support that. 

 MR. STUPAK. Mr. Dailey? 

 MR. DAILEY. Verizon does as well. 

 MR. LEWIS. Comcast as well, sir. 

 MR. REITINGER. Yes, sir. 

 MS. WONG. Yes, we would support it. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. We are going pretty good. How about one 

more? 

 Do you all support following the voluntary submitting guidelines that 

AOL and other ISPs developed with NCMEC to report child 

pornography? DOJ has never issued the rules that the 1998 law is 

talking about, so some of the ISPs took the initiative to develop their own 

rules, and DOJ has refused to allow the ISPs, who have created the 

guidelines, to send it to other ISPs. That is why we only have 215 ISPs 

who have registered with NCMEC. So would you support voluntarily 

submitting the guidelines that AOL and the others have developed for 

this purpose? 

 MR. RYAN. Yes, AOL supports that. 

 MR. STUPAK. Mr. Baker? 

 MR. BAKER. Yes, I believe so. 

 MS. BANKER. Yes, Yahoo! supports that. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 MR. DAILEY. Verizon supports that with one comment or caveat, 

and this is something I reported in my testimony. It is the issue of a 

clarification under 13-032 that when an ISP submits an image along with 

their report to NCMEC that that would be clarified and indicate that it is 

not a distribution of child pornography. So we think that that is a useful 

clarification-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Right. 

 MR. DAILEY. --to the extent any ISP is not reporting images at that 

point, and we think that would be helpful. 

 MR. STUPAK. I know the DOJ has got some problem with that, 

which we are still trying to understand up here. 

 MR. DAILEY. But other than that, we do support it. 

 MR. STUPAK. All right. Okay. 

 Mr. Lewis? 

 MR. LEWIS. Yes; with the clarification that has been mentioned, we 

would support that, sir. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. Mr. Reitinger? 

 MR. REITINGER. Yes, sir; we support that. 
165

 MR. STUPAK. Ms. Wong? 

 MS. WONG. Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. Do you all support including location 

information along with the ISP address to NCMEC? 

 MR. RYAN. Yes. In fact, AOL initiated it. 

 MR. STUPAK. You do, at any rate? 

 Mr. Baker? 

 MR. BAKER. Yes. 

 MS. BANKER. We currently comply with that practice. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 MR. DAILEY. Yes, in general for Verizon Online, we would support 

that notion. It is a question of availability and appropriateness, 

depending on the type of report. Since we are dealing sometimes with 

spam, e-mails, things like that that we send in, I am not sure it always 

applies, but when it applies, we certainly would provide that. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 Mr. Lewis? 

 MR. LEWIS. Yes, if the information is available to us, we would 

support that. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 MR. REITINGER. Yes, sir; if available. 

 MS. WONG. Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. One more question. 

 Do you all support requiring the ISPs to take proactive steps to block 

child pornography from traveling on your network? 

 Mr. Ryan, I know you are already doing this. 

 MR. RYAN. Yes, we are committed to that. 

 MR. STUPAK. Correct. 

 MR. BAKER. Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. Ms. Banker? 

 MS. BANKER. Yes, we currently take proactive measures to locate 

child pornography. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 MR. DAILEY. Verizon has not actually joined the technology group 

that has been pulled together. 

 MR. STUPAK. Right. 

 MR. DAILEY. But we do support the notion of using technology, and 

we will support investigations into that. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 MR. LEWIS. We would do so likewise. 

 MR. REITINGER. Sir, we already filter images uploaded to groups 

and spaces. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 
166

 Ms. Wong? 

 MS. WONG. We are joining the others in looking at those new 

technologies. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. Thank you. I wish all of the questions were 

that easy. 

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. 

 At this time, I will recognize the full committee Chairman, Mr. 

Barton of Texas. 

 CHAIRMAN BARTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 I apologize for not being in here for the hearing in its entirety. I have 

got about five different things I have been working on today, and I just 

wasn’t able to be here. 

 But this is one of the highest priority issues before, not only this 

subcommittee, but this full committee. And if we have a good hearing 

tomorrow, which I am expecting that we will, it is my intention to touch 

base with our leadership on the Minority side, and, based on the hearing 

record, see if we can’t develop very quickly a comprehensive anti-child 

pornography piece of legislation. This is a serious, serious issue, and the 

parents of America, and I think the Congress, is tired of just talking 

about it. I think we are ready to take fairly drastic and definitive action 

in a comprehensive way to really put a damper on child pornography in 

this country. So I am thankful for this panel of witnesses. 

 I really only have one generic question. And Mr. Stupak was asking 

some very good specific questions, but my generic question is if we can 

prove that an Internet site is engaged in child pornography or 

transmitting images that have child pornography in them, why is it not 

possible to immediately terminate that site? That is my generic question. 

I mean, you have to be able to have some agency of the Government, I 

guess, definitively say, “That is child pornography.” But once that is 

established, why can’t we just immediately cut off that site so that 

nobody else can get to it? 

 MR. RYAN. John Ryan from AOL, sir. 

 Certainly once we have noticed that a site is hosting child 

pornography, we can take measures to block access on behalf of our 

members who may seek access to that site. If your question, though, is 

to terminate that site, that action must be directed to the host of that site. 

And many times AOL is rarely the host of that type of site but merely a 

dumb conduit to that site. So blocking access is one measure. 

Terminating that site, in your language, is another measure. 

 CHAIRMAN BARTON. I am not computer-literate, so, in laymen’s 

terms, what I am getting at is the brief in here talks about hotline tips and 

stuff, about 1,500 a week are able to be determined that they are 
167

exhibiting, exposing, transmitting child pornography. What I would like 

to see, and I am willing to put it into law, if it is necessary, that once you 

have established not waiting for a court to go out and convict the people 

that are operating the site, but just immediately, if termination is the 

wrong thing, deny access so that nobody can get to it. I mean, just put in 

the law if a specific site is determined that it does have child 

pornography content, as soon as that is established, boom, nobody gets to 

it. And even if they have these dynamic IP addresses, it would have to 

help if you can’t go back to the site. Yes, sir. 

 MR. REITINGER. Thank you, Chairman. 

 I think I can say for probably everyone on the panel that if on one of 

our properties, for example a space or a group or an individual website 

someone uploads child pornography, the moment we discover that, either 

through an external report or through our own filtering mechanisms, we 

immediately, and I can certainly speak for us, take that site down. 

 CHAIRMAN BARTON. You do that today? 

 MR. REITINGER. Yes. And we report the matter to NCMEC, the 

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 

 CHAIRMAN BARTON. Well, that is my only question, if nobody else 

wishes to answer. I just am very concerned about this, and I would 

assume that all of our witnesses support whatever steps are necessary to 

lessen this scourge. And there is not any civilized society in the world 

where child pornography is legal. And it is certainly not legal in the 

United States, so whatever we need to do in the Internet age to really go 

after it, I am totally for. 

 I would be happy to yield to Mr. Stupak. 

 MR. STUPAK. Yes, Mr. Chairman, if you would. 

 The last question that you asked, do you take down the site 

immediately, Mr. Reitinger, you said you do, AOL does. Do the rest of 

you? Because it is my understanding that not all of you do that. 

 Mr. Baker? 

 MR. BAKER. No, if it is a site we host, we would take it down 

immediately. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 Ms. Banker? 

 MS. BANKER. Any time we detect child pornography, we do remove 

that content from our site immediately. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 MR. DAILEY. If it is on a Verizon server, we will remove it. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 MR. LEWIS. And the same for us. If it is within our control, we will 

remove it and report it to NCMEC. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 
168

 Ms. Wong? 

 MS. WONG. Yes, as soon as we are aware of it. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. 

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 CHAIRMAN BARTON. And I want to thank Mr. Stearns for letting me 

go out of order. 

 And I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 At this time, I will recognize Mr. Stearns. 

 MR. STEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 Let me ask each of you. How many of you have chat rooms? I am 

going to be a little elementary here. Just raise your hand if you have a 

chat room. 

 Okay. So you are putting your hand this way. Why are you not 

giving a yes or no for a chat room? Just if you don’t mind, move the mic 

a little closer to you. 

 MR. REITINGER. I am not fully up to speed on this, sir, but we used 

to have chat rooms, and I think we still do, but only as part of a 

subscription service. 

 MR. STEARNS. So if a person subscribes to a Microsoft system 

service, they would have a chat room? 

 MR. REITINGER. There are specific services you could subscribe to 

where a chat room would be available. Yes. 

 MR. STEARNS. Would be available. Okay. 

 Within these chat rooms, I guess to the three of you then, can you 

outline what safeguards you have in these chat rooms? It is pretty 

elementary. 

 Go ahead, Mr. Ryan. Why don’t you start? 

 MR. RYAN. Yes, sir. First of all, with the Kids Online service, 

which is for minors only, those are completely monitored. Every chat 

room that is made available and the parents enable their minor to access 

those chat rooms, then they are monitored in real time by AOL staff who 

are empowered. In fact, the written testimony has pointed out, we 

receive training from experts at the National Center to look out for 

warning signs for potential, what was referred to earlier as, “grooming” 

of these minors in an effort to either send them a contact-- 

 MR. STEARNS. So let us say we have, what, five people, ten people? 

How many people do you have? 

 MR. RYAN. Oh, no. There are hundreds. 

 MR. STEARNS. Hundreds of people who are monitoring this chat 

room. And let us say they find a grooming, then what happens? 

 MR. RYAN. It is reported immediately to the National Center for 

their review and investigation. 
169

 MR. STEARNS. And then the National Review Center, have they 

been cooperative with you? Have they responded? 

 MR. RYAN. Yes, this is the partnership that we entered into as a best 

business practice, and in fact, it has been responsible for over 153 arrests 

since the program was initiated approximately 21⁄2 years ago. 

 MR. STEARNS. Okay. 

 Next, I think it is Ms. Banker. Would you say Yahoo! then-- 

 MS. BANKER. Yes, Yahoo! does offer chat rooms to our users. 

 MR. STEARNS. And do you have safeguards? 

 MS. BANKER. We do have safeguards in place. First of all, our chat 

service is restricted to users are registered with us as being 18 or older. 

We also have built-in safety content as part of our chat service and 

include a report abuse link as part of every chat window. So whenever a 

user is in using the chat room, if they see something inappropriate, they 

can immediately click that link. We have built special tools to enable 

user reporting that is particularly useful for our customer care service 

when they are reviewing reports and allow any reports that would 

indicate activity involving solicitation of a minor or illegal content that 

we can escalate those reports immediately and report them to the 

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. We have also been 

engaged in a dialogue with the National Center and the Internet Crimes 

Against Children Task Forces about how we might further improve our 

chat product. 

 MR. STEARNS. Anything that you might want to add? 

 MR. REITINGER. Yes, sir, and I apologize because, again, I am not 

fully aware of all of the details of the chat, but our chat services are, to 

the best of my knowledge, only available as a part of subscription 

service. So there will be financial information associated with that, 

which makes things more traceable. We also provide general education 

to users about Internet safety and safe use of services and also have 

abuse reporting mechanisms available in case there is abuse. 

 MR. STEARNS. I chair a subcommittee. We dealt with videogames, 

and the question came up, the folks who were making the software and 

the ratings system were saying that a person has to be over 17 to 

purchase this game. Well, we showed that you go on the Wal-Mart site, 

and they say, “Are you over 17?” And the person could just check off 

“yes.” So Ms. Banker, how can you corroborate that they are any age 

group or not? Like you said that you make sure it is only a certain age 

group. I mean, how do you confirm that? 

 MS. BANKER. At the point of registration, Yahoo! asks users to 

provide their date of birth so that we have an age available in our system. 

Our terms of service require that they provide true and accurate 

information. And I agree with you that it is a very difficult problem 
170

around verifying that age. We certainly looked into whether there are 

systems available that we could implement that would allow us to 

continue to offer the robust array of free services that we currently have. 

And we have not been able to identify a technology that is really 

available that would allow us to do that at this point. 

 MR. STEARNS. Yes. 

 Now when you are trying to monitor these chat sites and you feel 

that you have all of these people, do you believe that we, as Federal 

legislators, could have additional authority to allow you to be more 

proactive searching and eradicating, for example, if you find something 

and you want to retain it on your hard disk or you want to keep a file of 

this, you might be a little bit nervous to keeping all of this in your library 

here, because you might be accused of what you are trying to eradicate. 

So I guess the question is do you think anything legislatively needs to be 

done to allow safeguards to protect you in your eradication process and 

your proactive activities? 

 This could be anybody, if they want. It is an open-ended question if 

anybody feels that there is some legislative fix that would be helpful for 

you. If not, I mean, just say no. 

 MR. DAILEY. In the context of NCMEC reporting, as I mentioned 

earlier, we have indicated in our testimony, this is Tom Dailey speaking 

from Verizon, that we would like to see some protection built into 13-

032 so that as we are reporting images to NCMEC along with our reports 

in the CyberTipline that we would not find ourselves also being accused 

of disseminating pornography when we are trying to report it. 

 MR. STEARNS. Well, that is why I asked the question. 

 MR. DAILEY. Thank you. 

 MR. STEARNS. Okay. So maybe Mr. Dailey, my last question is 

directed to Verizon. You might want to just establish for the record. The 

staff has indicated to me that Verizon was unable to make reports using 

the CyberTipline in January through March of this year. I guess the 

question is why, or you might just want to elaborate on that. 

 MR. DAILEY. Yes, thank you very much for the opportunity to do so. 

 There was a period of time at the beginning of this year for roughly 3 

months where we were having a combination of things, really. We were 

having a transition from one organization to another, of security 

personnel. Essentially, the people actually have to do the work, 

transitioning from one employee who left to another. And then there was 

a reorganization. And unfortunately, that left us, frankly, not able to 

report, anything that had come into our inbox, into our security box. So 

it was really an administrative problem on our part that was corrected. 

And once we got ourselves reestablished with our security organization, 

there was a brief period of time where we had some technical issues in 
171

terms of hooking into the CyberTipline that caused some delay, but it 

was really an organizational problem on our end. And once we were 

able to get that individual back in place, reviewing the abuse logs, he did 

go back and try and find those that had built up over time and report 

them. In all of the cases, though, that we have reported since then, 

approximately 116 at last count, none of them were images. They were 

all falling into the general category that I referred to earlier as what I 

would call child pornography spam. These are e-mails that people sent 

to us saying that they had received them. We sort of broadened our 

scope of what we thought was reportable, and we forwarded them on. So 

these are not cases where people were reporting active solicitations or 

predation or even images. 

 MR. STEARNS. Did you make reports to the NCMEC through 

another channel? 

 MR. DAILEY. At this time, no. 

 MR. STEARNS. Okay. Okay. 

 Mr. Chairman, that is all of the questions that I have. Thanks. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Stearns. 

 At this time, I will recognize Mr. Walden if he has any additional 

questions. 

 MR. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 Mr. Lewis, is it currently possible to have 100-percent response rate, 

that is in response to every law enforcement request Comcast could 

identify a subscriber? 

 MR. LEWIS. That would certainly be the goal. That is what we strive 

for. The reality is that the systems that support our over 9 million 

customers and growing every day are extraordinarily complex and are 

dispersed throughout the country where we serve our customers. It is 

always our goal. We are not satisfied with less than 100 percent. The 

reality of working with large, complicated hardware and software 

systems is there is always a small failure rate. We are working to 

minimize that as much as possible. 

 MR. WALDEN. Sure. 

 Is Comcast trying to develop a system or a program that would allow 

them to fix those instances where they cannot identify a subscriber? 

 MR. LEWIS. Well, as I mentioned earlier, we corrected the problems 

that we had last year and into early this year. Those problems are now 

fixed, and as far as we are aware, there are no remaining issues. We are 

actively monitoring the network. The Legal Response Center team that 

handles these requests periodically tests the system with sample data and 

throws hundreds of thousands of queries at it and analyzes the results by 

hand to make sure that the data coming back is accurate and verifiable. 

Our primary goal in supporting legal and law enforcement requests is not 
172

only to provide a prompt response, it is to provide an accurate response, 

because no one’s interests are served, law enforcement’s, the 

companies’, or certainly customers’, with inaccurate responses. So we 

are actively monitoring the system. We believe it works well. We are 

currently testing it, and in conjunction with the rollout for the 180 days 

that we announced earlier, we will be doing further testing to verify the 

integrity and accuracy of that system. 

 MR. WALDEN. I want to follow up on that 180-days issue. In your 

testimony, you said that you support the concept of data preservation 

with regard to informations relative to NCMEC for those sorts of 

referrals. Does Comcast do that already? 

 MR. LEWIS. We do, to the extent that we run into reportable events 

over NCMEC. The nature of our business is somewhat different from 

some of the other companies here today. We don’t provide extensive 

features for customers to meet or congregate, such as chat rooms, nor do 

we provide widely used features for customers to upload or make content 

available publicly. We primarily provide a premium, high-speed Internet 

connection with e-mail accounts that people use how ever they see fit. 

Where we run into reportable NCMEC events in the overwhelming 

majority of cases is actually through our interaction with customers 

typically in their homes. A standard scenario would be a Comcast 

service technician would go to a home to install cable modem service or 

to repair a problem and as the first panel and Mr. Hansen’s video 

demonstrate, many of the people involved in this activity are quite 

brazen. A technician will go to the customer’s computer, turn it on, and 

see what appear to be child exploitation or pornography images on the 

computer. They may observe magazines or other photographs on a 

coffee table. And in cases, the customer may approach the technician 

and ask him or her if they are interested in seeing more pictures like this. 

It is horrifying and amazing. And understandably, our technicians want 

to get out of there as quickly as possible. And our policy and procedure 

is for them to report these incidents immediately to their supervisors who 

are, in turn, instructed to report them to the legal department. I will field 

many of the requests personally. We will interview the technician, and 

we will make a determination whether it is reportable to NCMEC or not. 

We made several reports ever since we have operated our service since 

early 2002, and I can assure you that we err on the side of reporting if 

there is any doubt. 

 MR. WALDEN. Thank you. 

 Mr. Reitinger, why did the number of reports that you sent to the 

CyberTipline increase in the past year? Was this due to a filtering device 

that Microsoft uses? 
173

 MR. REITINGER. Sir, I think the stats for the last year actually went 

down slightly. 

 MR. WALDEN. Really? 

 MR. REITINGER. But my information was between the year before 

and last year they went down slightly. And I don’t know the causality 

for that. 

 MR. WALDEN. Okay. But do you use some sort of filtering device 

now that-- 

 MR. REITINGER. We do use a filtering device. We use a proprietary 

algorithm that scans images when they are uploaded to spaces or groups. 

And if they are flagged as pornography, then they are reviewed. And if it 

constitutes reportable child pornography, we make a report to NCMEC. 

 MR. WALDEN. But did the filtering itself increase reports to 

NCMEC? Did that help? 

 MR. REITINGER. I would have to get back to you on that. I am not 

personally aware of the correlation, but I know there has been some 

discussion about that. 

 MR. WALDEN. Okay. You would think it would. But I mean, I 

would appreciate knowing that. 

 And this is a question to all of the companies. Is there anything 

legislatively that you believe you would require in order to do more to 

eradicate child pornography from your networks? I know in earlier 

testimony, I don’t remember if it was Mr. Ryan or Mr. Baker who made 

the comment about a concern of transmitting data to law enforcement, 

could you potentially be prosecuted because you are transmitting child 

pornography, in effect, as part of giving the law enforcement a tip. Aside 

from something like that, what needs to be done legislatively? What 

would you recommend? 

 MR. RYAN. Well, that is not a concern of AOL. We believe-- 

 MR. WALDEN. Right. 

 MR. RYAN. --the current reporting statute authorizes us, in fact 

mandates us, to forward that to the National Center if, in fact, that is part 

of the report that we receive. 

 MR. WALDEN. Right. 

 MR. RYAN. I would just echo some of the comments that were made 

earlier with respect to when we are more proactive, when we were not 

operating under statutory guidelines but we do want to do more proactive 

searching and filtering, that we enjoy the protections of immunity during 

the processing of that information if it does contain potential images that 

are illicit, that we are covered and protected in these. 

 MR. WALDEN. So you believe you are covered? 

 MR. RYAN. Under the existing statute. 

 MR. WALDEN. All right. 
174

 Mr. Baker? Was it you who raised that issue? 

 MR. BAKER. I think it was Mr. Dailey who raised the point, and I 

will let him speak for himself. 

 MR. WALDEN. Okay. 

 MR. BAKER. But to the extent that there is legislation, let me put it 

this way, if it is not already clear that the investigation of a child 

pornography complaint is not possession and that the transmittal of such 

a complaint to NCMEC is not transmission, then it should be made clear. 

 MR. WALDEN. Okay. But beyond that though, go ahead. 

 MR. BAKER. And if I may just go a step further, regarding the 

technology alliance that several of us have announced, it is another 

additional benefit of that in that we will not actually be transmitting 

images but rather just the digital signatures that are assigned to certain 

images. So that does add another layer of protection as well. 

 MR. WALDEN. All right. 

 Ms. Banker? 

 MS. BANKER. I would just add to those comments that one of the 

key things that we really think could be done legislatively is to give the 

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children the ability to issue 

preservation requests when they receive tips from the CyberTipline so 

that they can immediately contact ISPs who may have information 

related to those tips and have them preserve data. 

 MR. WALDEN. And I want to hear from the others in the 2 minutes I 

have, but I also want to throw one other thing up because we heard this 

in prior testimony at a prior hearing, and that was from kids who said one 

of the most damaging things they have is the notion that as a child, in 

some cases, their sexual images were put up on the Internet. Is there ever 

a way to scan and retrieve and destroy those? Or are they out there for 

life? And I just throw that out, because that was a real troubling feature, 

I think, for everybody. Something that may have been done to them as 

an infant could be on the Internet forever. Is there a way to 

technologically scan and destroy? 

 MS. BANKER. I don’t know if there is a way technologically today to 

do that, but a number of us are going to be working together as part of a 

Technology Coalition, and we will be looking at a number of different 

issues. And I think that is certainly a very important and valid issue to 

add to the agenda. 

 MR. WALDEN. It would seem to me if you could search for different 

things, you might be able to search for a known image, identify it, and 

then somehow destroy it. I don’t know. I don’t know how you all make 

ones and twos do what you do. 

 Anyway, Mr. Dailey? 
175

 MR. DAILEY. Actually, Mr. Baker is correct. It was I that raised the 

point about assuring that reports to NCMEC would not be considered 

distribution of child pornography, and the problem is that there does 

appear to be some ambiguity, at least in our opinion, in terms of the 

distribution laws under Section 22-52(a). So our thinking was a 

clarification in the NCMEC statute 13-032 would be relatively simple to 

make and would help eliminate any ambiguity. 

 MR. WALDEN. Right. 

 MR. DAILEY. And beyond that, I would second Ms. Banker’s 

comments about adding preservation authority to NCMEC. 

 MR. WALDEN. All right. 

 MR. LEWIS. From the Comcast perspective, sir, to the extent there 

are any technical discrepancies or ambiguities in the reporting statute, 

clearly we support closing those. Another legislative option I would ask 

the committee to consider would be increased funding and support for 

law enforcement. In the close relationships we have with many law 

enforcement agencies, they often are forced to choose and make difficult 

decisions about cases to pursue or not based on their available resources. 

We have provided and would be willing to provide additional forensic 

and other training and support to help them do their job better to work 

with us, and I think resources for law enforcement as well as training and 

expertise from the private sector would help significantly. 

 MR. WALDEN. Okay. With regard to this NCMEC issue and the 

right to subpoena and all, have you discussed that with NCMEC? What 

is their response, if you have? And I am way over my time. 

 MR. RYAN. Yes, I can address it. I actually serve as the chairman of 

the Law Enforcement Committee as a board member at the National 

Center. 

 MR. WALDEN. Right. 

 MR. RYAN. And there was a proposal submitted to the full board 

that was approved 2 weeks ago endorsing the notion of getting legislative 

authority for preservation requests for the National Center. 

 MR. WALDEN. All right. All right. 

 Mr. Reitinger, Ms. Wong, if you want to-- 

 MR. REITINGER. I will just briefly echo Mr. Lewis’ comments. As a 

former, again, law enforcer, it is my view that no child predator or 

exploitation or pornography case should go unprosecuted for want of 

resources. 

 MR. WALDEN. Good for you. 

 MR. REITINGER. It is just too critical an area. And the training and 

forensic difficulties and pure agent time can be disabling for Federal law 

enforcement. 

 MR. WALDEN. All right. 
176

 Ms. Wong? 

 MR. REITINGER. That is it. 

 MS. WONG. We would echo the calls for preservation ability for 

NCMEC, because that seems to handle a lot of the issues that law 

enforcement is having. In addition, we have been working with 

WiredSafety to develop materials that train local community police 

officers to go into schools and train the children and putting together 

materials and software for them. And I think legislation that would fund 

that type of education across the board for parents, police officers, and 

kids would do a great deal, as Chris Hansen’s testimony earlier spoke of. 

 MR. WALDEN. All right. Thank you very much. 

 MR. DAILEY. May I add one more point to that? This is just a 

personal service announcement, but I think the notion of getting into the 

curriculum in our schools, our elementary schools, education on 

cybersecurity is every bit as important as many of the other things that 

are there. As the parent of two kids, as I mentioned at the outset, both of 

whom have gone through the Fairfax County schools, neither one of 

them got any cyber education up through the fifth or sixth grade. I think 

there are some changes maybe afoot in Fairfax County, but I think that is 

something that ought to be mandatory for all kids. 

 MR. WALDEN. Perhaps it should be mandatory for all parents of all 

kids, too. 

 MR. DAILEY. I would agree with that, too. 

 MR. WALDEN. Thank you. 

 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Walden. And I want to thank all 

of you for being with us today. I am sure it has been an enjoyable day 

for you. You have been here a few hours, and-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, before they all leave we have talked a 

lot, but we never got to peer-to-peer, a little bit of this material, and when 

we talk about images, we have to find a way to block the peer-to-peer 

from person to person, and whether it is Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T, we 

have to be able to take that. So when you are meeting on your 21st

Coalition, or whatever they call it there, I hope they take that aspect into 

it. That is a whole other part of this hearing. We could go on for an hour 

just on the peer-to-peer stuff. And Mr. Walden talked about the pictures. 

Those are some of the things we are concerned about. How do you stop 

the peer-to-peer? So I would be interested in some suggestions like that. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Absolutely. 

 And as you heard, Mr. Barton talked about some legislation, so I am 

sure that you will be hearing more from Mr. Barton and his staff and the 

committee staff about that. 
177

 And without objection, we will move all of these documents into the 

record, include them formally into the record. And certainly, we will 

keep the record open for 30 days. And then tomorrow, we will continue 

this hearing. 

 But you all are dismissed at this time. And thank you, again, for 

your cooperation and expertise. 

 Thank you. 

 [Whereupon, at 2:57 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 
178

MAKING THE INTERNET SAFE FOR 

KIDS: THE ROLE OF ISP’S AND SOCIAL 

NETWORKING SITES 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28, 2006 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

 The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:05 p.m., in Room 

2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ed Whitfield 

(Chairman) presiding. 

 Members present: Representatives Whitfield, Walden, Burgess, 

Blackburn, Barton (ex officio), Stupak, DeGette, Inslee, and Dingell (ex 

officio). 

 Staff present: Mark Paoletta, Chief Counsel for Oversight and 

Investigations; Alan Slobodin, Deputy Chief Counsel for Oversight and 

Investigation; Karen Christian, Counsel; Kelly Andrews, Counsel; John 

Halliwell, Policy Coordinator, Mike Abraham, Legislative Clerk; Ryan 

Ambrose, Legislative Clerk; David Nelson, Minority Investigator.

 MR. WHITFIELD. I would like to call this hearing to order and I 

certainly want to welcome everyone today. Today we hold the second 

day of hearings on making the Internet safe for children, the role of 

Internet service providers and social networking sites. 

 Yesterday we heard from the Internet service provider community 

about what they are doing to eradiate child pornography from their 

networks and to facilitate law enforcement’s ability to investigate and 

prosecute those predators and purveyors of child pornography. I was 

pleased to learn about the new initiative of AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, 

Earthlink, and United Online announced yesterday which brings the 

technological expertise of these companies together for the sole purpose 

of coming up with proactive solutions to purge their networks of child 

pornography. 

 Today we will hear testimony about the social networking sites for 

children and teens. Unlike the Internet, social networking sites have 

grown in popularity among children and teenagers. As an example, in its 

testimony today, Fox Interactive Media, the parent company of 

MySpace.com, notes that it has approximately 250,000 new registered 
179

users per day and there are currently 85 million members. We will also 

hear testimony from two other networking sites, and due to the fact that 

the social networking sites like MySpace, Xanga, and Facebook are free 

to register and there is no way to verify the age of the users, and adults 

certainly can access those sites and it is very difficult, at least it is my 

understanding, to determine what the age really is, that is an issue that 

we certainly want to focus on. 

 I look forward to hearing from each of the three sites today about 

their products and how they encourage safe social networking among 

their young users. I hope MySpace, Xanga, and Facebook, working with 

State and Federal law enforcement agencies, State attorney generals, 

Congress, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and 

others can develop a gold standard to create a safe environment for 

children. We also look forward to the testimony today of representatives 

from the Federal Trade Commission and the FCC. 

 Finally, I want to thank Detective Dannahey from the Rocking Hill, 

Connecticut, Police Department for agreeing to testify on such short 

notice about his fascinating work on a social networking site and to 

educate the subcommittee members about how these sites could be used 

by child predators to endanger our children. I certainly want to also 

thank the attorney general from Connecticut for testifying at the hearing 

about his thoughts on enhancing safety for children on social networking 

sites. 

 [The prepared statement of Hon. Ed Whitfield follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. ED WHITFIELD, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

TODAY WE HOLD THE SECOND DAY OF HEARINGS ON “MAKING THE 

INTERNET SAFE FOR KIDS: THE ROLE OF ISP’S AND SOCIAL NETWORKING 

SITES.” YESTERDAY WE HEARD FROM THE INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER 

COMMUNITY ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO ERADICATE CHILD 

PORNOGRAPHY FROM THEIR NETWORKS AND FACILITATE LAW 

ENFORCEMENTS ABILITY TO INVESTIGATE AND PROSECUTE THESE 

OFFENSES. I WAS PLEASED TO LEARN ABOUT THE NEW INITIATIVE AOL, 

YAHOO, MICROSOFT, EARTHLINK AND UNITED ONLINE ANNOUNCED 

YESTERDAY WHICH BRINGS THE TECHNOLOGICAL EXPERTISE OF THESE 

COMPANIES TOGETHER FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF COMING UP WITH 

PROACTIVE SOLUTIONS TO PURGE THEIR NETWORKS OF CHILD 

PORNOGRAPHY. 

 TODAY, WE WILL HEAR TESTIMONY ABOUT SOCIAL NETWORKING 

SITES FOR CHILDREN AND TEENS. UNLIKE THE INTERNET—SOCIAL 

NETWORKING SITES HAVE GROWN IN POPULARITY AMONG CHILDREN 

AND TEENAGERS. AS AN EXAMPLE, IN IT’S TESTIMONY TODAY, FOX 

INTERACTIVE MEDIA, THE PARENT COMPANY OF MYSPACE.COM NOTES 

THAT IT HAS APPROXIMATELY 250,000 NEW REGISTERED USERS PER DAY 

AND THERE ARE CURRENTLY 85 MILLION MEMBERS. 
180

 DUE TO THE FACT THAT SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES LIKE MYSPACE, 

XANGA AND FACEBOOK ARE FREE TO REGISTER, AND THERE IS NO WAY 

TO VERIFY THE AGE OF THE USER CHILDREN AND ADULTS CAN LIE ABOUT 

THEIR AGE. I LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FROM EACH OF THE THREE 

SITES ABOUT THEIR PRODUCTS AND HOW THEY ENCOURAGE SAFE SOCIAL 

NETWORKING AMONG THEIR YOUNGER USERS. I HOPE IS THAT MY SPACE, 

XANGA, AND FACEBOOK WORK WITH STATE AND FEDERAL LAW 

ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES, STATE ATTORNEY GENERALS, CONGRESS, THE 

NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN AND OTHERS 

CAN DEVELOP “GOLD STANDARDS” TO CREATE A SAFE ENVIRONMENT 

FOR CHILDREN. WE ARE ALSO LOOKING FORWARD TO THE TESTIMONY 

OF THE FTC AND THE FCC. 

 FINALLY, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK DETECTIVE DANNAHEY FROM THE 

ROCKING HILL CONNECTICUT POLICE DEPARTMENT FOR AGREEING TO 

TESTIFY ON SUCH SHORT NOTICE ABOUT HIS FASCINATING WORK ON A 

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE AND TO EDUCATE THE SUBCOMMITTEE 

MEMBERS ABOUT HOW THESE SITES COULD BE USED BY CHILD 

PREDATORS TO ENDANGER OUR CHILDREN. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO 

THANK THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FROM CONNECTICUT FOR TESTIFYING 

AT THE HEARING ABOUT HIS THOUGHTS ON ENHANCING SAFETY FOR 

CHILDREN ON SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. At this time, I would like to recognize the Ranking 

Member, Mr. Stupak of Michigan, for his opening statement. 

 MR. STUPAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for continuing these 

hearings that are so vital to the safety of our children. 

 Yesterday, Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC showed us how pervasive 

the grooming of children by online predators is. He expressed concern 

about how pedophiles use social network sites including MySpace, 

Facebook, and Xanga. These websites have grown exponentially in a 

matter of months. Xanga has 29 million subscribers. MySpace is a little 

over 18 months old and already has 85 million subscribers, up from 30 

million when Newscorp bought it last summer. These sites are also 

extraordinarily popular with children and adolescents. Twenty-two 

million of MySpace’s members are underage. Clearly the social 

networking sites have developed a massive following. 

 However popular that they are, these sites cannot survive if they act 

as a fertile hunting ground for predators seeking children to exploit, use 

them, or worse. Whatever social need they fulfill, these websites cannot 

be allowed to serve as an unfretted avenue for pedophiles to stroll and 

troll, so how do we clean up these sites? The root of the problem is the 

inability or unwillingness of these networks to limit communications to 

age-appropriate groups. Chris Hansen told us yesterday that the 

predators they encountered were all over the age of 18. While I am sure 

that these social networking sites do provide opportunities for teens to 

prey sexually on other teens, it is adult pedophiles that we are concerned 

about. MySpace and its competitors do ask children their ages. Federal 
181

law requires that they establish that their clientele is at least 13 years of 

age but too often these social networking sites use an honor system to 

determine the ages of children on their sites. Only recently after a flurry 

of bad publicity that is affecting their bottom line and their public image 

did these social networking sites appear willing to invest in cleaning up 

their networks. While these recent efforts are appreciated regardless of 

their motivation, much more must be done. 

 Each of these social networking sites must take aggressive and 

immediate measures to keep young kids off their systems, enact 

meaningful safeguards for teens, and seek out and block child predators 

from their systems. MySpace will describe various interim steps that 

they have taken to try and protect 14- and 15-year-olds while the 

company searches for the holy grail of the effective age-determining 

software. They will also try to discredit the “no one under 18” policy 

that for instance Yahoo! imposes on the use of its chat rooms by saying 

kids will just lie about their age. This argument misses the point. The 

point is that the pedophiles don’t shop the 18 and over crowd, they aim 

for the 22 million or so MySpace underage users. I believe MySpace 

wants nothing to do with pedophiles and is willing to spend the money to 

limit their access to MySpace. However, it is clear that the steps that 

MySpace and its competitors have taken thus far are woefully 

insufficient. 

 Every week another news article appears about another child harmed 

by a predator that found his victim on MySpace. When our staffs were 

given a tour of the FBI’s Innocent Images Control Center for Internet 

Child Abuse Crimes, an agent went online posing as a 13-year-old girl 

that liked soccer. No other information was provided. This fictitious 13-

year-old drew six responses from men seeking inappropriate 

conversation within the 15 minutes that the staff observed the exercise. 

Chris Hansen told us yesterday that we may be wrong about the statistic 

that one in five children have been approached sexually online. He said 

a Dateline NBC commissioned study suggested the number was closer to 

one in three. Sites that encourage teens to reveal their personalities, likes 

and dislikes, and express their thoughts online will by their very nature 

attract predators. 

 With my law enforcement background, I understand the danger that 

these sites pose to our children if the status quo continues. Saying that 

nothing can be done to keep our children safe is no longer an option. 

One could argue that Congress should simply wait for the sites to 

implode because of the bad publicity or let the free market force these 

sites to act more responsibly, but the free market has failed to date and 

made online child pornography a multibillion dollar industry. Every day 

we wait for the companies to change, millions of children are left 
182

vulnerable. I would suggest to the committee and to our witnesses that 

our patience is wearing thin. If we do not start seeing real change with 

real results, Congress will need to act swiftly to address this issue. 

 With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you very much. Mr. Walden, did you want 

to make an opening statement? 

 MR. WALDEN. No. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. At this time I recognize the gentleman from 

Michigan, our Ranking Member, Mr. Dingell, for an opening statement. 

 MR. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, thank you for your courtesy. I wish 

to add my congratulations for an excellent series of hearings regarding 

the scourge of child pornography over the Internet. This is a dirty 

business as the hearings show. It is in need of substantial legislative 

correction. You, Representative Stupak, and the other members of the 

subcommittee have done a fine job of identifying many methods used by 

the pedophiles and predators who abuse our children for perverted fun 

and profit. You have also identified many of the weaknesses in our 

system that allow these unfortunate abuses to flourish. 

 Industry counterparts in the United Kingdom have volunteered to do 

their part. I am curious, why haven’t ours and why can’t they? In the 

United Kingdom, Internet service providers, ISPs, must take down every 

site identified as a child pornography site by national and international 

law enforcement within 48 hours of notification. Further, these Internet 

firms must block all users of their platforms from accessing identified 

child porn sites worldwide. Moreover, I note that if these companies also 

find an effective way to block identified images from being transferred 

over their networks, they could make a considerable dent in the for-profit 

business of supplying pictures and videos of children raped, defiled, and 

tortured. The Internet industry must also find more effective ways of 

cooperating with law enforcement and perhaps they should show a bit of 

desire to do so. Why can’t data that links IP addresses to physical 

locations be stored longer and accessed on a much more timely basis in 

response to subpoenas from Federal, State, and local investigators? Why 

shouldn’t all information relating to identified child porn sites be 

properly forwarded to law enforcement and stored for use in future 

prosecutions? There also needs to be continuing oversight of the Federal 

agencies that under current law are responsible for dealing with this 

problem. The Attorney General makes quite a point of the priorities this 

Administration places on catching and prosecuting these predators but 

does his department’s child exploitation section share his sense of 

urgency? Where are the regulations necessary to ensure consistent and 

effective ISP reporting of offending images? Why are ISPs not required 

to register, resulting in less than 20 percent of these firms reporting any 
183

child porn information to the National Center for Missing and Exploited 

Children? And there are serious questions whether the Federal Trade 

Commission and the Federal Communications Commission have the 

authority and the resources necessary to provide much oversight. 

Federal, State, and local enforcement agencies have done an excellent 

job given the fact that they have limited resources available. We must 

provide more funding, particularly for the interagency Internet Crimes 

Against Children Task Forces that are fighting an uphill battle against 

those who abuse our children. More funds need to be appropriated for 

forensic computer capability so that the prosecutions can proceed on a 

timely basis. We must act aggressively to address this epidemic of evil 

which threatens our children. Today’s hearing, which will shed further 

light on these new social networking websites that have captivated so 

many of our children and provided such a fertile hunting ground for 

predators, is an important step. 

 I look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, and all of my 

colleagues to fight this scourge, and I will do everything I can to work 

with you and my colleagues to make this an effective undertaking. 

 I yield back the balance of my time. 

 [The prepared statement of Hon. John D. Dingell follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOHN D. DINGELL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS 

FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

Mr. Chairman, let me add my congratulations for an excellent series of hearings 

regarding the scourge of child pornography over the Internet. You, Rep. Stupak, and the 

other members of the Subcommittee have done a commendable job identifying the many 

methods used by the pedophiles and predators who abuse our children for perverted fun 

and profit. You have also identified many of the weaknesses in our system that allows 

this abuse to flourish. 

Industry counterparts in the United Kingdom have volunteered to do their part – 

why can’t ours? In the United Kingdom, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must take 

down every site identified as child pornography by national and international law 

enforcement within 48 hours of notification. Further, these Internet firms must block all 

users of their platforms from accessing identified child porn sites worldwide. 

Moreover, I note that if these technology companies also find an effective way to 

block identified images from being transferred over their networks, they could make a 

considerable dent in the for-profit business of supplying pictures and videos of raped, 

defiled, and tortured children. 

The Internet industry must also find more effective ways of cooperating with law 

enforcement. Why can’t data that links IP addresses to physical locations be stored longer 

and accessed on a much more timely basis in response to the subpoenas from Federal, 

State, and local investigators? Why shouldn’t all information relating to identified child 

porn sites be promptly forwarded to law enforcement and stored for use in future 

prosecutions? 

There also needs to be continuing oversight of the Federal agencies that under 

current law are responsible for dealing with this problem. The Attorney General makes 

quite a point of the priority this Administration places on catching and prosecuting these 
184

predators. But does his Department’s child exploitation section share his urgency? Where 

are the regulations necessary to ensure consistent and effective ISP reporting of offending 

images? Why are ISPs not even required to register, resulting in less than 20 percent of 

these firms reporting any child porn information to the National Center for Missing and 

Exploited Children? And there are serious questions whether the Federal Trade 

Commission and the Federal Communications Commission have the authority and 

resources necessary to provide much oversight. 

Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies have done an excellent job, given 

the limited resources available. We must provide more funding, particularly for the 

interagency Internet Crimes Against Children taskforces that are fighting the uphill battle 

against those who abuse children. More funds need to be appropriated for forensic 

computer capability so that prosecutions can proceed on a timely basis. 

We must act aggressively to address this epidemic of evil that threatens our children. 

Today’s hearing, which will shed further light on these new social networking Web sites 

that have captivated so many of our children and provided such a fertile hunting ground 

for predators, is an important step. I look forward to working with all my colleagues to 

fight this scourge. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Dingell. We appreciate your 

opening statement. Dr. Burgess, do you have an opening statement this 

afternoon? 

 MR. BURGESS. No. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. At this time, I will recognize Ms. DeGette of 

Colorado. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for another 

important hearing on how we can protect our children from the 

increasing use of the Internet by pedophiles and rapists. 

 Yesterday we talked mostly about the access provided by Internet 

service providers to those who commercialize these images and today of 

course we are going to continue the examination that began yesterday 

with Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC. Today we are going to talk about 

social networking groups, a relatively new Internet phenomenon where 

millions of kids and teens post personal information on the web to share 

with peers and to meet new friends. This may be a new phenomenon but 

it is a familiar one to me because I have two daughters, ages 12 and 16, 

who have used some of these websites and fortunately, as far as I know, 

have not been solicited for improper purposes, but the problem is, of 

course, predators are now flocking to these sites and using them for 

improper purposes. I am particularly pleased, Mr. Chairman, that you 

asked Detective Frank Dannahey of the Middletown, Connecticut, police 

force to testify today because like so many dedicated law enforcement 

officers, Detective Dannahey is in the trenches investigating the ways 

predators prey upon our children trying to track down as much of the 

problem as possible and so he can help us understand just how easy it is 

for pedophiles to infiltrate these websites where large groups of kids are 
185

having dialogs and find out more about them than any private eye could 

have before the advent of companies like MySpace. 

 MySpace has received so much of this attention because it is the 

largest of these social networking sites. Estimates are that nearly 85 

million users have established personal pages on their network over just 

the last 18 months and apparently there are 22 million minors who have 

pages on the site but Mr. Chairman, there is another number that should 

trouble us greatly. According to a news report, MySpace has only 54 

million unique users. That leaves 31 million pages for duplicate 

postings, and I wonder how many of these 31 million users claim to be 

multiple ages. 

 One thing we do know and one thing I am interested hearing about in 

the testimony is that MySpace has no mechanism in place to identify the 

people who request postings on their network, much less to verify their 

ages. Yesterday we were told that Yahoo! limits its chat rooms to 

persons over the age of 18, and Microsoft requires payment for its forum, 

thus limiting its use to people who possess a credit card, which would in 

most cases be a demographic that skews older, but it is certainly not 

foolproof. I suspect that Yahoo!, MSN, and other sites who try to limit 

access only to adults are far less attractive hunting grounds for predators 

seeking sex with a child, but one thing I am interested in hearing from 

everybody from the detective on down is, how we can protect around 

minors and others who just get around these restrictions that people try to 

put in place. I myself saw my 12-year-old daughter do it by just--not on 

MySpace but on a different age-restricted website where she just typed in 

a different birthday and was able to pretend she was somebody older. 

We need to keep in mind, and I think actually Congressman Burgess 

mentioned this yesterday, Masha Allen, who was the 13-year-old who 

begged us to help her take down the images that were posted on the web 

by the man who adopted her and raped her from ages five to ten. Well, 

certainly that was not someone she met in the chat room. She stands as a 

plea for all of these teenagers and younger who are being abused over the 

Internet, and all of us need to work together--Congress, parents, police 

agencies, and the companies themselves, to stop the pedophiles from 

using what should be a tool to keep an open and honest way of 

communication and finding legitimate ways to have new friends for 

nefarious purposes. 

 So Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing the witnesses today and 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Ms. DeGette, and at this time I 

recognize the full committee Chairman Mr. Barton, who has been 

particularly supportive of our efforts in these series of hearings and 

recognize him for his opening statement. 
186

 CHAIRMAN BARTON. Thank you, Chairman Whitfield, for the fifth 

day of hearings on this continuing problem that we are trying to address. 

 Today we are going to hear from some of our law enforcement 

individuals and from some of the social workers and some of the 

websites that are designed especially for children and teenagers. 

 Yesterday we heard from the Internet service providers. They 

testified before this subcommittee and announced their plans to 

implement new initiatives or policies to make their networks safer for 

children. For example, one provider said that it would lengthen the time 

that it keeps its data. Another would no longer accept advertising from 

websites who claim to include sexual images of teenagers. The group of 

the providers including some of the largest in the country, AOL, Yahoo!, 

MSN, and Earthlink, announced the coalition to create the Center for 

Child Protection Technologies at the National Center for Missing and 

Exploited Children. This center is going to be dedicated to developing 

new technologies and law enforcement strategies to detect and prevent 

the transmission of child pornography over the Internet. 

 Today we are going to hear from social networking sites about what 

they are doing to keep their sites safe for children. These sites are 

something completely different than any experience most of us in this 

room have ever had when we were children. Facebook and MySpace are 

like high school yearbooks except that the world looks at them, and some 

of the people looking unfortunately are predators hunting for prey. 

Almost every day there is a new report describing an adult who was able 

to communicate with a child or teenager through a social networking site. 

Sometimes these contacts end in tragedy, a child being assaulted by an 

adult after meeting online. I want to know what the social networks are 

doing to ensure that predators are not able to exploit their websites to 

meet children. 

 I understand that some of the social networking sites who will testify 

before us today have recently strengthened their safeguards for children 

on their sites. I appreciate that these sites are devoting additional 

resources and attention to the issue. However, it is important that they 

continue to be vigilant so that they remain one step ahead of the 

predators who seek to use their sites to abuse children. 

 This isn’t an academic exercise for me. I have a stepdaughter who is 

a junior in high school. She has a profile on one of these sites. Her 

mother has been very vigilant with her about communicating what she 

can and cannot put on her profile and who she can and cannot share it 

with in terms of giving certain specific information to. So I am very 

concerned not just as a legislator, but as a stepparent about the issue that 

is before us today. 
187

 There is no greater priority than the fight against child pornography 

and the sexual exploitation of children over the Internet. As I announced 

yesterday, at the conclusion of these hearings it is my intention to work 

with Mr. Dingell and others on the Minority side to craft a 

comprehensive anti-child pornography piece of legislation that will if 

necessary give additional tools to help win this fight. Again, as I said 

yesterday, I think the Congress is tired of talking about it and I think the 

parents of America are tired of talking about it. I think it is time for us to 

take responsible, reasoned action to protect our children against these 

despicable child predators that are on the loose right now in our land. 

 And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

 [The prepared statement of Hon. Joe Barton follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE BARTON, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ENERGY 

AND COMMERCE

Thank you, Chairman Whitfield, for convening this second day of hearings on the 

role of Internet Service Providers and social networking sites with regard to the sexual 

exploitation of children over the Internet. 

 Yesterday, some of the Internet Service Providers who testified before this 

subcommittee announced their plans to implement new initiatives or policies to make 

their networks safer for children. For example, one provider announced its intentions to 

increase its data retention period. Another provider confirmed that it will no longer 

accept advertising from websites who claim to include sexual images of teenagers. In 

addition, a group of providers, including AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, and Earthlink, announced 

that they will join together to create the Center for Child Protection Technologies at the 

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. This center will be dedicated to 

developing new technologies and law enforcement strategies to detect and prevent the 

transmission of child pornography over the Internet. 

 Today, we will hear from social networking sites about what they are doing to keep 

their sites safe for children. Almost every day, there is a new report describing how an 

adult predator was able to contact and communicate with a child through a social 

networking site. Sometimes, these contacts end in tragedy, with the child being assaulted 

by an adult he or she met online. 

I want to know what the social networks are doing to ensure that predators are not 

able to exploit their websites to meet children. I understand that some of the social 

networking sites who will testify before us today have recently strengthened their 

safeguards for children on their sites. I appreciate that these sites are devoting additional 

resources and attention to this issue. However, it is important that they continue to be 

vigilant so that they remain one step ahead of the predators who seek to use their sites to 

abuse children. 

There is no greater priority than the fight against child pornography and the sexual 

exploitation of children over the Internet. As I announced yesterday, I intend to pursue 

comprehensive anti-child pornography legislation in order to help win this fight. For this 

reason, I look forward to hearing your thoughts and proposals on what can be done by 

law enforcement, by the industry, and by Congress to make the Internet safer for our 

children. 

 I look forward to hearing from the witnesses and yield back the balance of my time. 
188

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Barton. 

 At this time I recognize Mrs. Blackburn of Tennessee. 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. Mr. Chairman, I have no statement. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. I think we have concluded all the 

opening statements so at this time I would like to call the witness on the 

first panel, Detective Frank Dannahey of the Rocky Hill Police 

Department from Rocky Hill, Connecticut, and Detective Dannahey, we 

appreciate your being with us today to share with us your experiences on 

this very important topic. As you know, in Oversight and Investigations, 

we like to take testimony under oath. I am assuming you have no 

difficulty doing that. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. No, not at all. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And I am also assuming you do not have the need 

for legal counsel today. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. No, I don’t. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. If you would raise your right hand. 

 [Witness sworn.] 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, very much, and you are under oath 

now and you are recognized for 5 minutes to give your opening 

statement, which we look forward to. 

STATEMENT OF FRANK DANNAHEY, DETECTIVE, ROCKY 

HILL POLICE DEPARTMENT 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 Good afternoon, Chairman Whitfield, Ranking Member Stupak, and 

members of the subcommittee. I am Detective Frank Dannahey of the 

Rocky Hill, Connecticut, Police Department. I have been a member of 

law enforcement for the past 25 years. For the last 15 years I have been 

assigned to the youth division of the Rocky Hill, Connecticut, Police 

Department. 

 Over the last 7 years I have been involved in investigations and 

education concerning Internet crimes against children. I have served in 

an online undercover capacity to detect Internet predators. My current 

efforts involve safety programs directed towards parents, students, school 

officials, and law enforcement. In the past 7 years I have seen 

technology change in a direction that both benefits and assists online 

predators in carrying out their criminal activities. With the majority of 

America’s teens online, the pool of potential victims is vast. 

 In February 2006, an incident occurred in Middletown, Connecticut, 

that attracted national attention. Seventeen females from the ages of 12 

to 16 were victims of sexual assault by older males that they met on 

MySpace.com. All of these crimes occurred within a very short period 
189

of time. I was asked by the Middletown Police Department to assist 

them with parent programs on Internet safety. As these programs for 

Middletown were being developed, we were contacted by Dateline NBC. 

Dateline was interested in profiling these crimes as well as reporting on 

the educational programs for parents. 

 While preparing for the educational programs, I became involved in 

an online test of teen vulnerability. In a departure from the normal type 

of online undercover scenario, I took on the role of a teen male named 

Matt. Matt was a 19-year-old new kid in town who was looking for 

online friends from Middletown, Connecticut. I was particularly 

surprised and shocked to see that a majority of young teens who were 14 

and 15 years old allowed Matt onto their private page. The information 

on a private page is not viewable by anyone else unless that person 

allows someone on as a friend. Some teens questioned Matt about who 

he was before allowing him on their MySpace page as a friend. Many 

teens allowed him on as a friend with no questions asked. Once Matt 

was allowed on the teenagers’ MySpace pages, it became immediately 

obvious that personal information was readily available and easily 

volunteered. I was able to find out such information as where a teen 

lived, worked, their full names, and date of birth, where they went to 

school as well as home and cellular phone numbers. Photos posted on 

teen sites were usually photos of themselves that could assist in locating 

them. Some of the photos are highly inappropriate if not provocative. It 

was not uncommon to see photos of teens involved in underage drinking, 

drug use, and risky behavior. 

 As Matt became friends with teens online, he had access to messages 

known as bulletins. These bulletins can only be viewed if you have 

friend status. Through these bulletins, I was able to gain much personal 

information about my online friends. Teenagers readily discuss their 

social activities and provide phone numbers to contact them. One time I 

saw a real-time message from a teen telling the exact location that she 

and her friends were about to walk to. If I had devious intent, I could 

easily stalk or intercept her and her friends. Many of the teens use 

bulletins to post surveys that reveal very personal information about 

them. Surveys that can be viewed by the general public are also a 

common sight on a teen’s web page. In one case I found a 377-question 

survey on the site of one of my online friends, who was a 15-year-old 

female. This survey included the teen’s personal information as well as 

her likes and her dislikes. These surveys assist predators in establishing 

a dialog with the teen as they attempt to infiltrate that teen’s online 

world. 

 One of the most concerning incidents of the Matt online experiment 

occurred when one of my online friends suggested that we meet in 
190

person. The in-person meet is the most dangerous scenario online. 

Teenagers meeting an online stranger sometimes become the victim of 

sexual assault or worse. The 16-year-old female that made the 

suggestion to meet in person communicated with Matt on a daily basis. 

This teen later said she allowed Matt to become one of her online friends 

because she saw that other teens she knew were also friends of Matt. I 

found that teens are very trusting of people they meet online and very 

willing to share their personal thoughts and information with virtual 

strangers. 

 As the Matt experiment was drawing to a close, three mothers of 

Matt’s online friends agreed to share their child’s online interactions with 

Matt with the Dateline NBC viewing audience. The three teen females, 

who were 15 and 16 years old, were unaware that they were part of the 

online experiment when they were interviewed by Dateline 

correspondent Rob Stafford. Stafford asked the girls if they provided 

personal information on their MySpace site and they told him that they 

did not post personal information. He also asked them if they would talk 

to a stranger online. The girls said that they would not. At one point in 

the interview I was brought into the room and introduced to the girls as 

Matt, their online friend. The surprised girls were then told about all the 

personal information that Matt was able to find out about them. The 

three girls could have easily been Middletown, Connecticut’s victims 

eight, nine, and ten. They later acknowledged that they were relieved to 

know that I was a police detective rather than an adult looking to harm 

them. In this case, the girls were lucky. 

 In a 2-month period in the spring of 2006, some 17 Connecticut teen 

females were victims of sexual assault by people they met online. Some 

of these girls were young middle school students. Other locations 

throughout the country have had similar cases. 

 Another result of the Matt experiment was the way in which the 

teens’ parents were totally unaware of what their teens were doing 

online. As I travel around doing parent programs on Internet safety, I see 

that many parents are not as technologically savvy as their children. 

Because of this, teens are often allowed to police themselves online. The 

Matt experiment as reported by Dateline NBC clearly shows that teens 

are very vulnerable online. It also demonstrated that parents are often 

blindsided by their teens when it comes to knowing exactly what they are 

doing online. 

 As technology changes, we will be faced with further challenges 

when it comes to teens’ online safety. I see the next challenge being a 

web-enabled cellular phone. While parents struggle to monitor their 

child’s Internet use at home, the cellular phone will provide Web access 

where monitoring will be difficult. The cellular phone now has 
191

capabilities such as text messaging, instant messaging, email, and Web 

page access. Teens will now be able to leave their home and bring an 

extension of the home PC with them through their cell phone. Web cams 

will also become more common, leading to potential abuse as people will 

now be able to see each other while they are online. The ability of teens 

to have international friends online will pose an additional challenge to 

both parents and law enforcement. 

 There is no quick fix to the problem of online safety as it impacts our 

children. It will take vigilance by government officials, schools, law 

enforcement, Internet service providers, including social networking 

sites, as well as parents and teens themselves. I believe that industry 

standards as well as educational programs and public service 

announcements will go a long way as a first step. 

 Thank you. 

 [The prepared statement of Frank Dannahey follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF FRANK DANNAHEY, DETECTIVE, ROCKY HILL, CONNECTICUT 

POLICE DEPARTMENT

Law Enforcement Experience: 

• 25 years law enforcement experience 

• 15 years serving as a Detective in the Youth Division 

• Served in an undercover capacity to detect online child predators 

• Seven years experience in Child Computer Crimes in both investigations and 

education 

Dateline NBC Online “Matt” Experiment: 

• Participated in an experiment which tested Middletown, Connecticut teens for 

vulnerability with a 19 year old online stranger 

• Seven Middletown, Connecticut teens from the ages of 12 to16 were victims of 

sexual assaults by older males met on MySpace.com 

• “Matt,” the role I played online, was easily able to make over 100 online 

“friends” in two week period 

• Majority of 14 and 15 year olds with “private” pages allowed “Matt” on their 

 page as a “friend” 

• Personal information such as real names, where they live, home phone 

numbers, and actual dates of birth are readily given by teens online 

• Use of “surveys” online reveal much personal information about a teen 

• 19 year old “Matt” received a message suggesting an in-person meet 

• Many parents not aware of what their child is doing online 

• Many parents not technologically savvy about computers or the Internet 

Future Challenges: 

• Web enabled cellular phones will present new challenges in monitoring by 

parents 

• Web cams will become more popular and lead to potential abuse by teens 

• As social networking sites go international the potential to meet out of country 

 friends will present new challenges 
192

Solutions: 

• There is no quick fix for teen online safety 

• Cooperation from multiple entities as well as parents and teens is necessary 

• Industry-wide safety standards are necessary 

• Educational programs are critical 

Good afternoon Mr. Chairman Whitfield, Ranking Member Stupak, and members of 

the Committee, I am Detective Frank Dannahey of the Rocky Hill, Connecticut Police 

Department. I have been a member of law enforcement for the past 25 years; for the last 

15 years, I have been assigned to the Youth Division of the Rocky Hill Connecticut 

Police Department. Over the last seven years, I have been involved in investigations and 

education concerning Internet Crimes Against Children. I have served in an online 

undercover capacity to detect Internet predators. My current efforts involve Internet 

safety programs directed toward parents, students, school officials, and law enforcement. 

In the past seven years, I have seen technology change in a direction that both benefits 

and assists online predators in carrying out their criminal activity. With the majority of 

America’s teens online, the pool of potential online victims is vast. 

In February 2006, an incident occurred in Middletown, Connecticut that attracted 

national attention. Seven teen females from the ages of twelve to 16 years were victims 

of sexual assault by older males they met on MySpace.com. All of these crimes occurred 

within a very short period of time. I was asked by the Middletown Police Department to 

assist them with parent education programs on Internet safety. As these programs for 

Middletown were being developed, we were contacted by Dateline NBC. Dateline was 

interested in profiling these crimes as well as reporting on the educational programs for 

parents. While preparing for the educational programs, I became involved in an online 

test of teen vulnerability. In a departure from the normal type of online undercover 

scenario, I took on the role of a teen male named “Matt.” “Matt” was a 19 year old “new 

kid in town” who was looking for online friends from Middletown, Connecticut. In just 

two weeks, “Matt” had over 100 online “friends” on MySpace.com. I was particularly 

surprised and shocked to see that a majority of young teens, who were 14 and 15 years 

old, allowed “Matt” on to their “private page.” The information on a “private page” is 

not viewable by anyone unless that person allows someone on as a “friend.” Some teens 

questioned “Matt” about who he was before allowing him on their MySpace page as a 

“friend.” Many teens allowed him on as a “friend” with no questions asked. 

Once “Matt” was allowed on the teenagers’ MySpace pages, it became immediately 

obvious that personal information was readily available and easily volunteered. I was 

able to find out information such as where a teen lived, worked, their full name and date 

of birth, where they went to school, as well as home and cellular phone numbers. Photos 

posted on teens’ sites were usually photos of themselves that could assist in locating 

them. Some of the photos posted are highly inappropriate if not provocative. It was not 

uncommon to see photos of teens involved in underage drinking, drug use, and risky 

behavior. As “Matt” became friends with teens online, he had access to messages known 

as “bulletins.” These “bulletins” can only be viewed if you have “friend” status. 

Through these “bulletins,” I was able to gain much personal information about my online 

friends. Teenagers readily discuss their social activities and provide phone numbers to 

contact them. 

In one case, I saw a real time message from a teen telling the exact location that she 

and her friends were about to walk to. If I had a devious intent, I could easily stalk or 

intercept her and her friends. Many of the teens use the “bulletins” to post surveys that 

reveal very personal information about them. Surveys that can be viewed by the general 

public are also a common sight on a teen’s web page. In one case, I found a 377 

question survey on the site of one of my online “friends,” who was a 15 year old female. 
193

This survey included the teen’s personal information as well as her likes and dislikes. 

These surveys assist predators in establishing a dialogue with a teen as they attempt to 

infiltrate that teen’s online world. 

One of the most concerning incidents of the “Matt” online experiment occurred 

when one of my online “friends” suggested that we meet in person. The in-person meet 

is the most dangerous scenario online. Teenagers meeting an online stranger sometimes 

become the victim of a sexual assault, or worse. The 16 year old female that made the 

suggestion to meet in person communicated with “Matt” on a daily basis. This teen later 

said that she allowed “Matt’ to be one of her online “friends” because she saw that other 

teens she knew were also “friends” of “Matt.” I found that teens are very trusting of 

people they meet online and are very willing to share their personal thoughts and 

information with virtual strangers. 

As the “Matt” experiment was drawing to a close, three mothers of “Matt’s” online 

“friends” agreed to share their child’s online interactions with “Matt” with the Dateline 

NBC viewing audience. The three teen females, who were 15 and 16 years old, were 

unaware that they were part of the online experiment when they were interviewed by 

Dateline correspondent Rob Stafford. Stafford asked the girls if they provided personal 

information on their MySpace site and they told him that they did not post personal 

information. He also asked them if they would talk to a stranger online. The girls said 

that they would not. At one point in the interview, I was brought into the room and 

introduced to the girls as “Matt,” their online “friend.” The surprised girls were then told 

about all the personal information that “Matt” was able to find out about them. The three 

girls could have easily been Middletown, Connecticut’s victims 8,9, and 10. They later 

acknowledged that they were relieved to know that I was a police detective rather than an 

adult looking to harm them. In this case the girls were lucky. In a two month period in 

the Spring of 2006, some 17 Connecticut teen females were victims of sexual assaults by 

people they met online. Some of these girls were young middle school students. Other 

locations throughout the country have had similar cases. 

Another result of the “Matt” experiment was the way in which the teen’s parents 

were totally unaware of what their teens were doing online. As I travel around doing 

parent programs on Internet safety, I see that many parents are not as technologically 

savvy as their children. Because of this, teens are often allowed to police themselves 

online. 

The “Matt” experiment, as reported by Dateline NBC, clearly showed that teens are 

very vulnerable online. It also demonstrated that parents are often blindsided by their 

teens when it comes to knowing exactly what they are doing online. 

As technology changes, we will be faced with further challenges when it comes to 

teens’ safety online. I see the next challenge being the web-enabled cellular phone. 

While parents struggle to monitor their child’s Internet use in the home, the cellular 

phone will provide web access where monitoring will be difficult. The cellular phone 

now has capabilities such as text messaging, instant messaging, e-mail, and web page 

access. Teens will now be able to leave their home and bring an extension of the home 

PC with them through their cell phone. Web cams will also become more common, 

leading to potential abuse as people will now be able to see each other while online. The 

ability of teens to have international “friends” online will pose an additional challenge to 

both parents and law enforcement. 

There is no quick fix to the problem of online safety as it impacts our children. It 

will take vigilance by Government Officials, Schools, Law Enforcement, Internet service 

providers including social networking sites, as well as parents and teens themselves. I 

believe that industry safety standards as well as educational programs and public service 

announcements will go a long way as a first step. Thank you. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Detective Dannahey, thank you for your testimony. 
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 From your personal experience as a detective in working on this 

issue of child molestation and child pornography, you have been giving 

these classes now for some time teaching Internet safety to parents and 

children or just parents? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. No, both parents, students, school staff, law 

enforcement. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And how many classes have you taught would you 

say, first of all? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I think over the 7 years, probably hundreds. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And did you say that most young people today that 

are using the Internet really have an understanding of the dangers that 

they may face? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. No, they don’t. I think it is very obvious that 

when you talk to teens, they will certainly acknowledge they have seen 

on the news some of these high-profile incidents. They will 

acknowledge that there are people out there that will harm teens online, 

but when you start getting personal with them and talking about their 

own personal Internet use, I think very often they have that “it is not 

going to happen to me” attitude and I think that part of the problem here 

is the not realizing that just what you have spoken about today can 

actually happen to them. It is something that always happens to 

somebody else. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And have you found that most parents are not 

particularly technologically advanced as relates to the Internet? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. No, and I think that really contributes to the 

problem. I mean, when you look at all these different items of 

technology out there, look at a cell phone. I mean, most adults are lucky 

they know how to answer the cell phone, maybe make a phone call. A 

teen probably within 24 hours is going to know everything about that cell 

phone. They are going to read manuals, they are going to ask their 

friends whereas adults clearly may never know the capabilities of 

technology they have. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. So we generally have a situation where the young 

people are so much more advanced than the parents and so it is very 

difficult for the parents to even understand or comprehend what is going 

on. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Exactly, and I think, when I speak to parents in 

these seminars I do, I often tell them, you don’t have to be a networking 

person to have enough knowledge to monitor your own PC at home to 

see if your children are doing things that are dangerous. It is just a 

matter of maybe doing a little research, going to presentations such as the 

ones that I give and other law enforcement agencies give and just having 

some basics, and really, I often tell them that the best way to understand 
195

the computer system is to ask the teens to give you a tour of what they do 

online. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And the young people that I have talked to are all 

very excited about MySpace and they are excited about Facebook and 

they are excited about this social networking, but it is kind of perplexing 

as Matt, your fictitious character, you were able easily to enter into a 

dialogue with a lot of young people, correct? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Yes, very easily. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And I was a little bit puzzled by how these young 

ladies, for example, gave you a lot of personal information, but from 

their perspective, they did not view it as personal? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Exactly. I think that the word that you use is very 

apropos. They don’t necessarily perceive certain information as personal 

information. I often tell them, when you look at a particular web page, it 

is like pieces of a puzzle. When you go from different areas of the page, 

you extract information and somebody, again an online predator, 

certainly is very good at that and they will take little pieces of 

information, put them together and actually have a lot of information 

about the teen. But, when you talk about personal information, they 

don’t see personal information in the same context as we see personal 

information. I think to them a personal information would be if you gave 

your street address and sent them a map to get to your house. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And that is what they gave you. They gave you 

cell numbers, home numbers, where they worked, their address. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Right. Everything they gave me without a lot of 

skills or knowledge would enable me to basically, as I said to them, go 

up and ring their doorbell. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And many of these young ladies would have their 

picture on MySpace, and a lot of information about them. I had not 

heard of MySpace until about 3 months ago, to show you how backward 

I am, but I do know now a lot about it and I have been on the site, and I 

agree with you that a lot of the pictures are pretty provocative, so if you 

had a predator out there obtaining that kind of information, it would be 

relatively easy for them to meet some person. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Absolutely. I think those teens, not to discredit all 

teens, there are some that don’t give a lot of personal information out, 

but I think when you look at most teens’ pages, the kind of information 

that you can extract off the page would give you a very good idea, 

exactly geographically where they live, and it wouldn’t take very much 

research to find out where most kids live and go to the community. You 

have a photo there, show the photo to another teen or whatever. I am 

sure they would readily tell you the name of the person and where you 

could find them if you had the right story. 
196

 MR. WHITFIELD. Now, you mentioned something about real time. 

Explain that a little bit what you are talking about. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. With the bulletins, if you are at home and you are 

receiving one of these bulletins, these bulletins are sent in real time so if 

for example, the girls saying that they are going to walk to a very distinct 

restaurant in their community which would easily be located, it is in real 

time. So if I saw they were walking there and again from their 

information knew geographically where they were from, it would be 

nothing to get into a car and actually intercept them to where they are 

going. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Absolutely. Now, have you contacted different 

social networking sites on their law enforcement links? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Yes. In a couple weeks I am going out to speak at 

a national school resource officers’ conference, and I wanted to have a 

basis to give my colleagues some information as to who they can contact 

for law enforcement assistance. I emailed three of them. I have not 

heard back from them. The fourth, MySpace.com, has actually published 

a law enforcement guide which I do have a copy of that I am going to 

share with the folks from the National School Resource Officers 

Association. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. But did these links respond? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Not as of yet. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Not as of yet? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. No. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Now, when you talk to children--and when I have 

talked to children, they generally tell you--in fact, I had a group of 4H 

students in my office today and we were talking about the Internet and 

MySpace and Facebook, and they said well, we don’t talk to strangers. I 

would ask you, what is a stranger to children online? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Well, again, I think to us and them, it is two 

different definitions. I think when--for example, at the time we picked 

these three particular girls and, the Dateline correspondent, Rob Stafford, 

said, “Did you talk to strangers online?” Across the board they said no, 

and I think in their own mind they believe that. I mean, to them this was 

a guy that they met online. This is a guy--in one girl’s case, I talked to 

her every day, so to her that wasn’t a stranger. So I think that is what we 

have to get across to them actually--what is the definition of a stranger. 

All these people they have on their friends’ pages when you start 

pointing particular people out, some they know from school and from 

their communities, others they will say, well, this is my friend from 

California or this is my friend from Pennsylvania; how do you know that; 

they told me that. 
197

 MR. WHITFIELD. The only thing they know is what you tell them 

and they never know nothing about you. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Absolutely, but it is very true that an adult and a 

teen have much different definitions of what a stranger is. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. At this time my time is about expired here. I will 

recognize Mr. Stupak from Michigan. 

 MR. STUPAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 The last part the friend where a friend from California or whatever, 

they may know nothing about them, has law enforcement tried to 

develop any kind of a checklist that young people should look at before 

they would do the friend status? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Well, I think in my educational programs, I mean, 

we go over all these aspects of the Internet and that is exactly one thing 

that, myself and others who do what I do try to hammer home to them is 

exactly what the definition of a friend is. My view is that I feel that a 

parent or the teen themselves should able to pinpoint each one of those 

friends and personally know who they are. I always tell the teens that if 

you just have one person on that page where you can’t say you 

personally know them, then your safety has been compromised. 

 MR. STUPAK. But at the same time, you say you don’t personally 

know them. Would that not encourage personal encounters? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Well, I am talking about the people they know 

from school. I mean, my view of being safe online for teens is for them 

to speak to other teens from their school, from their community. When 

you start going outside of that, obviously now you are getting into these 

relationships where these friends are just online friends and not someone 

who you know anything about. 

 MR. STUPAK. And I have had this discussion with young people and 

they say well, then you defeat the whole purpose of the Internet because 

the Internet is supposed to allow you to go anywhere, so I can’t have my 

friend in California if I live in Connecticut, then what good is it, and so it 

is sort of a tough one to deal with. In Connecticut in your area, does 

Connecticut require any cyber security classes being taught in school? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. No, I don’t think there is any requirement for it. I 

think with all these high-profile incidents that have been in the news, I 

mean, they are certainly scurrying to do that right now. I know that in 

Connecticut I had far more requests to do programs than I could 

physically do. 

 MR. STUPAK. And that was a suggestion that came up yesterday. 

Would you endorse that kind of a-- 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Absolutely. I mean, again, you know, 

organizations already in the school system like, for example, the DARE 

program which I am involved in, the school resource officers who are in 
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many of our schools around the country, it would just be a natural thing 

for them to add a curriculum, to those already intact programs. In my 

DARE programs, we several years ago decided to put an Internet 

component in and they certainly encourage you to do that. Same with 

the School Resource Officers’ Association. 

 MR. STUPAK. As a school resource officer then, were you given 

training in this field? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. The school resource officers are the in-school 

police officers, and as part of their duties other than security, they are 

also required to teach a curriculum to the students whether they-- 

 MR. STUPAK. In cyber security? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. There is no requirement right now, but it is 

certainly a suggestion, and from all the talk groups I am in, I see that a 

lot of them are doing that right now. There are curriculums that they 

have on their website for Internet safety and I think that is a big concern 

of that organization is to get that topic into the school system. 

 MR. STUPAK. One other thing. I am a little bit off subject here but 

last night on the floor we were trying to just maintain funding for law 

enforcement. We had a $900 million cut in this budget. The Clinton 

COPS program was one that really developed the school resource-- 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. And after the Columbine incident, we had a lot of 

them but now we see funding has fallen off, and these hearings highlight 

the needs for things like school resource officers. Are you familiar at all 

with MySpace and the safety features they put out on or about June 21? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Yes, I am familiar with some of the new changes. 

 MR. STUPAK. Like heightened security for settings for 14-, 15-yearolds, full privacy settings for all members and age-appropriate ad 

placements. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. Good first step. Do you believe they will make it any 

more difficult for you to repeat your exercise of Matt there, your 19-

year-old? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Well, I think that will certainly discourage, 

especially with these younger teens. I mean, I was very concerned about 

the fact of how many of the youngest of teens online of 14- and 15-yearolds, which actually a two-third percentage allowed this Matt stranger 

onto their private page. I think the steps they put in place would 

certainly discourage the ease of doing that. I am not saying it would be 

impossible for me to get onto a private page of a teen but it would 

certainly discourage that. 
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 MR. STUPAK. In your estimation, what invites a teen to be Matt’s 

friend? Your sympathetic story about being a young person and not 

knowing anybody or-- 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Basically the story was that he was an older teen, a 

little bit of a troubled kid coming from another State and coming into a 

community where he knew no one and was looking for some friends and 

thought that the online way to go would be a great way to meet friends in 

that new community. 

 MR. STUPAK. Well, MySpace was maybe a good first step on some 

ideas they have to enhance safety. In your opinion, what other things 

would you like to see industry do to enhance safety on these social 

Internet places? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I think what would really help if the social 

networking sites themselves had some industry-wide standard. The 

problem always is, especially when you are dealing with teens, if one of 

the sites is doing a great job of enhancing their security, I think 

oftentimes that might discourage their teens who are their customers 

from being on that site so they may gravitate to a site who has very lax 

standards. So being that they are all for-profit companies and need 

members to exist or whatever, I think if all sites had some very similar 

safety standards, that it would kind of be an even playing field. I would 

like to also see some of these third-party sites where they are allowed 

especially with these, like I told you this outrageous 377-question survey, 

they are bringing these types of things in from other sites other than 

MySpace and planting those on the page. I think the surveys just reveal 

far too much personal information that should not be given out by 

anybody. 

 MR. STUPAK. So that survey, I take it you took it as being a--to 

determine whether or not you would be a friend where you would elicit 

information from the person? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Yes. In fact, that 377-question survey which is 

not based from MySpace but can be imported to their page, the second 

question is, what is your full name, and then the third question is, what is 

your date of birth, and in checking out all these teens for prospective 

candidates that might be willing to be televised, I picked a dozen of my 

120 friends and when I went to their high school, I found out that all the 

information was true. If they said their name was such-and-such, it was 

that. If they said their date of birth was this month, day, and year that 

was true. Everything about their information actually checked out. 

 MR. STUPAK. It seems like that--you said two-thirds of them that let 

us be friends were 14- to 15-year-olds. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Yes. 
200

 MR. STUPAK. It almost seems like sort of a gullibility or else maybe 

haven’t been around long enough or life experience to put up red flags. 

It has been suggested that maybe 14- to 15-year-olds have a separate site 

like MySpace but only for 14- and 15-year-olds and have that protected. 

Would that serve better than just heightened security? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I think if they are willing to accept that. As you 

said or somebody stated you get in this situation where they are altering 

dates of birth. Just on Monday I had a parent call me, not too Internet 

savvy. She had an indication that her daughter might have a Web page, 

and when I brought the page up and spoke to her over the phone, the 

daughter had a photo that was not hers. The daughter stated a date of 

birth that was not hers. When I looked at the friends, I clearly 

recognized them as middle school students. All the students on her page 

happened to be 13 years old, so of course, the mom was immediately 

going to have the girl take the page down but, that is part of the problem, 

them misstating their date of birth. Would they go to the 14- and 15-

year-old-only site? I am not sure that they might do that. 

 MR. STUPAK. There has got to be a way that you can enforce this 

somehow. I mean, with all the technology we have now, there has got to 

be some way to verify it, I would think. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Well, I know that there is software out there that 

looks for key indicators when you misstate your age but somewhere else 

on the page you actually state your real age and they are detecting that, 

so I know I have read that. You know, MySpace has taken down pages 

when they do find that scenario. 

 MR. STUPAK. In your testimony, you mentioned some of the 

challenges we’ll have in the future, and one of them was the cellular 

phones. Do you want to explain that a little bit more? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Well, the problem with the cellular phones is, 

there is not--I mean, especially with the high-end sophisticated ones, 

which the teens tend to have, there is not a lot of things that you can’t do 

with that Web line that, it kind of mimics the home computer. Now, of 

course, you have often heard that probably one piece of information you 

are going to give to a parent doing an educational program or a public 

service announcement would be, keep that computer in a public place. 

Well, now, having a cell phone that can very much duplicate what a PC 

does, how do you instill it upon the teens to do all those safety rules that 

they would normally do at home when they are going out the door 

clipping the cell phone on their belt and saying see you later, Mom, and 

now have unrestricted use of this without being monitored. I think that is 

going to be a real challenge. 
201

 MR. STUPAK. My last question. What advice did you give to teens 

regarding these social networking sites? If you are teaching a class, what 

is your best nugget as to what you tell teens on this whole thing? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. The first thing I tell them is, I am not opposed to 

these sites. I think teens are going to use the Internet. It is just that you 

have to maintain your personal safety. No one is going to do that for 

you. Your friends need to actually be your friends. The moment you 

have somebody on your page, a buddy list, a friend list, that you can tell 

me you don’t know personally who they are, you have immediately 

compromised your safety. So I think it can be done. I know a lot of 

parents work in cooperation with their teens, a little bit of a checkup 

without being overly nosy to make sure they are safe. I really think it 

can be done but, just as the industry has to take steps, I think the teens 

and the parents also have to be part of this or it is not going to work. 

 MR. STUPAK. Thank you. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. You are welcome. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Mr. Walden. Oh, Mrs. Blackburn. Okay. 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

 Detective Dannahey, you know, this is such a complicated issue and 

I really do appreciate your taking the time to be here with us and talk 

with us about it. Being a parent and having been a room mother and 

Sunday school teacher and those things, you look for ways to be certain 

that you help children learn to socialize, and you try to communicate the 

message that home is a safe place and items contained in the home are a 

safe place, and then in the classroom with the advent of computers 

coming into the classroom, we tried to teach our children that this was a 

great way to explore and a great way to experience the world at your 

fingertips, and it is so interesting to see the evolution of the social 

networking sites. I remember a couple of years back when I was asking 

about someone, and my son, who is now 25, said well, just go look them 

up on Facebook. I had never heard of such. And I was absolutely 

appalled that that much information could be available to the world about 

young people. 

 And I have got a question for you, but what you just said is so very 

true. It is teaching children how to maintain their personal safety but at 

the same time having them realize what the dangers are, what the 

vulnerabilities are. And why do you think that teens today, especially 

these younger teens, have absolutely no fear or recognition of the danger 

that is there when they place things on the Internet? Why is there just no 

awareness of the danger? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I think that goes back to my comment on having 

worked with teens for 15 years, they definitely have that “not me” 

feeling. The best example I can give is if you think about a community 
202

having a tragic drinking-and-driving accident where a student is killed 

because of alcohol. You will clearly see that for a short time the 

underage drinking parties will stop, teens’ awareness of drinking and 

driving will be heightened, but I have to say that probably after a couple 

months, after a few months that all goes away and, the parties continue, 

the drinking and driving continues. So I think it is very difficult, 

especially among that age group, to relate things to them personally. I 

think they will acknowledge bad things happen but they will often say 

bad things don’t happen to me, bad things can’t happen to me. 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. Do you receive a similar type of response from 

the parents when you are holding the sessions with them? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. As far as their own teens’ vulnerability? 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. Yes. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I think it is a much different picture. I think 

parents are scared to death out there, especially the ones that aren’t that 

Internet savvy, don’t understand anything about being online, or don’t 

understand anything about the computer. They are just sponges for 

knowledge. You know, it is unfortunate that when you do these 

programs that very often the kind of parent that is going to show up for 

an Internet safety program is the parent that doesn’t need to be there. 

Those kids whose parents should be there aren’t there. I mean, I often 

say that even though you might have 25, 30 people in the room, 

sometimes the domino effect will pass that information onto somebody 

else but, even with those high-profile incidents I went out to different 

locations that had the problem, had the big news headlines, and you 

would think the auditoriums would be full and they weren’t. 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. I have talked to so many parents in my 

community who have just been captured with the sense of unbelief when 

they realize what is available or what their children are putting on the 

Internet and are really quite concerned about, and we have had some 

great discussions, and I hope that does lead to some awareness. 

 I wanted to go back. You mentioned the DARE program. I am a big 

fan of DARE programs. I think they work. They yield results and they 

are time well spent. And you mentioned that you had inserted an Internet 

component and that you had a checklist. Can you kind of click through 

that checklist or could you submit that to us just for the record? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Yes, I could certainly submit my curriculum. I 

think when you start at an early age, you might have some results. 

Obviously, when I go out, especially right now, you are talking to juniors 

and seniors in high school about Internet safety. You have to have a 

different slant because, again, they, at that age feel that they are 

invulnerable, that nothing is going to happen to them. I think once you 

start especially in the 5th and 6th grade, at least we have a chance to instill 
203

that. I mean, you see the tobacco use by children, you see those statistics 

going down. I would like to say that maybe programs like the DARE 

program should take credit for that and I think we can do the same thing 

with Internet safety that we have done with tobacco education and start 

in the early grades, like in 5th grade, 6th grade, or maybe even 4th grade 

talking about the computer. The fact that it is that great tool but it also 

comes with some dangers assigned to it also. 

 MRS. BLACKBURN. Thank you so much. I will look forward to that 

list, and thank you for your work and your dedication. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. You are welcome. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mrs. Blackburn. I recognize Ms. 

DeGette. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 Detective, I am wondering, you talked in your opening statement 

about having parents have their children show them what they do on the 

computer but I am wondering if you can say more specifically what 

exactly you tell parents that they can do to protect their children from 

these predators on these chat rooms and other sites? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. One of the first things I tell them is, you have to 

get some kind of education. There are several safety sites out there. I 

give them a list of maybe half a dozen of the best of the best to go to, to 

kind of get an education of, in simple terms, what does this term mean, 

how do you do this, how do you do that. I wrote up a very basic, as I call 

it, parent computer forensics 101, showing them step by step how they 

can monitor their hard drive, and a big portion of that is, I tell them that 

they have to communicate with their kids. It is kind of a sneaky way but, 

if you do sit down and say to your teen, hey, show me what you do 

online, show me a little bit about the computer, you get a great indication 

of how computer savvy they are. Some kids aren’t that computer savvy 

and maybe have a little bit of a comfort zone. Other kids will zoom 

around there with that mouse and keyboard and you know you might 

have to do a little bit more monitoring. But I think the communication 

part is huge. 

 MS. DEGETTE. One thing I was just sitting here thinking, you could-

-if your kid is in these chat rooms, you could ask him to show you their 

buddy list and you could say who are these people. Would that be 

effective? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Absolutely. The three girls that we picked to 

appear on that Dateline show, all of them have MySpace pages today, all 

of them are on private, all of them have their moms as their friends. 

Now, the moms--obviously there was a lot of work to do after that show 

aired to get their sites safe again--but every single one of those friends, 

the moms went, person by person, who is this, how do you know them. 
204

The moms periodically will go in and check, not to the point again of 

being overly nosy, reading every little message, every little thing, but I 

think a setup like that can work if a parent and teen does it in the right 

way and I think that is the only solution is to have this collaborative 

agreement between both parents and teens to yes, you can have a social 

networking site, I have to have some partnership with you. Again, not 

overly looking at everything they do but just enough to see those in-yourface-type violations which they might have to-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Parents just need to realize that the same precautions 

they tell their children in every aspect of life, and you are right, you have 

to talk to them about drinking and driving and smoking every few 

months. You have to do it with computer safety as well. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Exactly, and a lot of times I relate that to them as 

the 16-year-old approaching driving a car. I can’t imagine any parent out 

in the audience would just give your 16-year-old a set of car keys and say 

go for it. There is a lot of preparation for that, and this has to be under 

the same terms. 

 MS. DEGETTE. One thing that we saw yesterday and maybe some 

people in the audience were here yesterday, a public service 

announcement. Mr. Chairman, I don’t know if you are planning to play 

that again today. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Well, after the second panel, we are going to do 

that. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Well, there was a public service announcement that 

was developed by the England--it was in the U.K. to warn young teens 

about what could happen if they are being preyed on and what to do. 

Have you seen that? Do you know what I am talking about? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I believe if it is the same one that ran just a short 

time ago before this hearing. I did see that. 

 MS. DEGETTE. It is the young girl and it goes backwards. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Yes. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Yes, it is a very, very powerful and effective 

commercial but I bring that up because, number one, I think that we need 

to have sort of not just parents talking to teens and people going in the 

schools but I think that we need to have a national public service 

program that the media outlets and if Congress can help in some way and 

ISPs and the other computer providers should do. Would that make 

sense to you? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. It would make a lot of sense. I think that is a great 

first step. I think that teens are very willing to make some changes once 

they see what you are talking about. I mean, after doing a student 

program, I mean, I get feedback from teachers saying wow, there was a 
205

lot of buzz in our classroom after that. Teens are going to go home and 

change their page. 

 MS. DEGETTE. But, you know, teens don’t want to--I mean, Mr. 

Inslee and I were just taking. Teens don’t have the life experience that 

we have, and that is true in every way, but they don’t want to put 

themselves at risk and so they are going to try and do-- 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Exactly. 

 MS. DEGETTE. But the reason I bring up that particular PR 

campaign in Great Britain is because what they do is, they have systems 

which are used by all of the ISPs and it is in Great Britain and in 

Australia where they have a little logo, like when you are in a chat room, 

you have the--it is called the VGT, the Virtual Global Taskforce logo, 

which here you could do with--and it is a link to this global taskforce, so 

if you are in a chat room and you are having a chat and you are a 13- or 

14-year-old girl or boy and you are starting to feel uncomfortable like 

maybe somebody is making some advances that are inappropriate, you 

can click right on that icon. You can go right into that law enforcement 

website. They capture the page and then they can go and investigate it. 

Are you aware of that kind of enforcement technique? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. No, actually I just heard about that today. That 

was the first time that I heard that. Other than the National Center’s tip 

line, I am not aware of any other similar thing going on. 

 MS. DEGETTE. I mean, National Center has a tip line too but in 

Australia and Great Britain, all of the Internet service providers do this 

on these chat rooms and it is a fairly--it is staffed 24 hours a day so if 

some teen is on the Internet at 3:00 in the morning in a chat room and she 

gets solicited or something and it makes it uncomfortable, all they have 

to do is hit that button and it goes straight--do you think that it would be 

helpful for the ISPs to develop some kind of a system like that in 

conjunction with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children here? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I think so. My only question would be, would the 

ICAC taskforces and, you know, National Center be, staffed enough to 

handle--I mean, being the number of people we have in America, teens in 

American online, I don’t know if they would be overwhelmed with 

complaints. I think given the proper staffing, I think that could be a very 

really valuable tool. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And that might be a place that Congress could help 

out. I mean, one thing we do in these hearings which is very effective is, 

we raise the level of public consciousness, but frankly, every single thing 

we have been talking about here today is not something that we are going 

to legislate, but one place Congress might be able to help is in 

conjunction with ICAC and these other agencies to develop a system that 

perhaps we could use some public funding to help. 
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 MR. DANNAHEY. Right, and I think with those agencies in place 

those would be the two logical agencies where you would do that kind of 

thing. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right. Just one last question. Mr. Stupak asked you 

if you could do a separate chat room that would be targeted at younger 

teens, 14- and 15-year-olds. Given the fact that people can fairly easily 

circumvent the age registration requirements, would you be worried if 

we went to that type of website that predators might just be able to focus 

even more laser-like on younger teens? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. That is also the danger. I am sure parents would 

welcome that but again, I think what we have to realize is that teens 

aren’t necessarily going to put the proper information in. If this is not 

looked at as a cool site--I mean MySpace is looked at as a very cool site. 

It is a status symbol at school to have a MySpace site. So if you broke 

away and had this 14- and 15-year-old site and that was not a cool site to 

have at the time, you might run into-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right. I was the one that said that and I actually saw 

my 12-year-old go in her older sister showed her how to put a birth date 

that made her seem older than she was so she could get into some 

website and now neither one of my girls has a MySpace site but-- 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I think they can though-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Heaven knows, they might have something else. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I will give you my cooperative agreement if you 

like. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Yeah, okay. Thanks. I yield back. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Dr. Burgess. 

 MR. BURGESS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to thank the 

witness for being here with us today. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. You are welcome. 

 MR. BURGESS. In so many ways, I am glad to see you because we 

have been through this problem at so many different levels from victims 

to Internet service providers, and even had the Department of Justice in 

the room at one point, but what has really been lacking in all this is, is 

anyone who is interested in enforcement. We have had plenty of people 

who wanted to come in and talk about the problem and how bad it is and 

we all recoil in horror at how bad it is but this was really, but you are 

really the first witness that I can recall having come in to offer us some 

concrete suggestions, so I appreciate what it is that you do. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Thank you. 

 MR. BURGESS. I do feel compelled to ask a question. I didn’t get a 

chance to ask questions of the individual from Dateline yesterday. They 

seem to be awfully successful in recruiting individuals to come and 

misbehave at their sites. Do you think that is because they have the 
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production staff and they know what they are doing from just putting on 

the production, if you will, and so they are very professional, very clever 

at that, or do you think just someone who wanted to do this and identify 

those individuals would be just as successful because the pressure from 

the predator community is so intense? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I think that is exactly right. Back when I did this 

fairly actively several years ago, the number of people we were going to 

investigate was only limited by the hours of the day, and I think you 

catch these guys and you pose the question, didn’t you think it might be a 

police sting, and very often they will say yes but I also thought it might 

be a teen. 

 MR. BURGESS. Again, that is just an incredible concept. I know we 

have one individual, not in my district but close by in Jacksborough, 

Texas, who is a county sheriff and that is all he does, and it seems like 

with that small of a department would have a limited budget and yet they 

are putting someone on this continuously. It clearly deserves more 

attention than it has been getting from the enforcement community and I 

am particularly talking about at the level of the Department of Justice. 

Do you think that self-labeling and self-policing, children rating and 

reporting their own and other kids’ websites for inappropriate content, do 

you think that is an effective way to go about policing these sites? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I think it would be a tool, but if that was the only 

tool, I would be nervous about that because that is not an age group that 

likes to tell on each other, and unless it was a real serious type of incident 

or something that really scared them, I don’t think they would be so 

willing to be telling adults that somebody did something online. 

 MR. BURGESS. The concept that the gentlelady from Colorado was 

talking about with the child being able to go on and clicking on an icon 

after receiving what they perceive as pressure from someone, kind of 

analogous to a click it or ticket, I guess, is that--because of jurisdictional 

issues in this country, how effective in fact would that be, or would in 

fact you need the involvement of the Department of Justice to adequately 

prosecute that across State lines, across jurisdictional lines? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Well, I think as far as our country goes with these 

Internet taskforces, they are in all 50 States or cover all 50 States, that 

wouldn’t be a problem. The problem lies then when you get what is that 

person is from the international community. Who is going to cooperate 

with U.S. law enforcement in something like that? They may put that 

name in a database. Would they do anything? It depends on what 

country that that person was from. 

 MR. BURGESS. So the unintended consequence may be to drive a 

good deal of this activity offshore but still have it go on? 
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 MR. DANNAHEY. Unfortunately, that is another aspect of the social 

networking sites. When you have people on in the international 

community, I think we are going to start seeing some more incidents that 

we saw maybe several weeks ago of the stellar student, 16-year-old, 

going to the Middle East to meet a 25-year-old man. I think we are 

going to see more of that. 

 MR. BURGESS. From just the perspective of a parent, what advice 

would you give from what you have seen and what you have worked 

with, what is the best way for a parent to circumvent this? Never buy the 

computer in the first place? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Well, if you tell them they can’t have a site or if 

you tell them they can’t be on the Internet, my worry about that and in 

talking to teens telling me exactly that would be that they will go 

underground. I think you have to have this somewhat cooperative 

agreement with your teens where you might not be 100 percent happy 

that they have their sites, but if the teen would allow you to at least 

maybe help set the site up for them, make sure it is safe, occasionally 

monitor the site, again not being overly nosy, I think that could work. 

But I have seen far too often where a parent will just come home from a 

seminar given by one of my colleagues that says throw the computer out 

the window and they will have the teen right in front of them take down 

all their social networking sites or Internet in general and that the teen 

will reemerge with new sites, new email addresses that the parent doesn’t 

know anything about. So I think that cooperative agreement has to be 

there. Plus the fact that parents really have to get on the ball and just 

understand this technology. As I mentioned about these cell phones, I 

think they are going to be a huge problem because they are going to have 

all these bells and whistles and capabilities. A parent is going to allow 

the teen to buy these and they are going to have absolutely no idea what 

the capabilities are. 

 MR. BURGESS. During some earlier testimony, the question came up 

to one of the young men who was actually a victim, and the question was 

posed, is there any reason for a 15-year-old to have computer hardware 

that allows a video camera. Do you have any feeling about any type of 

age-appropriateness or restriction that should be placed on any type of 

hardware or peripheral that is attached to the computer? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I think you are probably talking about Justin 

Berry, whose case I am very familiar with, a tragic case. I think as of 

right now, I would caution parents to not allow those devices where you 

can actually see the other person on the other end unless you have a 

really good reason to. I know some of the teens told me they have 

families in international countries and things like that but really, from 

what I have seen of these webcam sites, it is just clearly an indication for 
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abuse. When you do a web search on teen webcam sites, you will be 

horrified by what is going on. Just like Justin Berry, there are probably 

hundreds if not thousands of other teens out there seeing how you can 

actually make money on these sites and doing unspeakable things with 

these webcams. So I don’t really see the need for most teens to have that 

and I think they are a big potential for abuse. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Will the gentleman yield? 

 MR. BURGESS. I just want to follow through on one thing. We 

require a package of cigarettes to have labeling on it. Should we require 

similar labeling on video reproduction computer peripherals? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I don’t know if that would do any good because 

you have got parents who don’t read the manuals to the computer and the 

cell phone so I don’t know. I think really our best bet is these education 

programs, public service announcements to get the word out there to 

parents of really what is going on out there. I don’t know if that would 

do any good. But I think like Justin Berry’s story, parents in the 

seminars that I do were just appalled by that. I bring that case up as well 

as some similar ones, and they can’t fathom the 13-year-old being able to 

do something like that. 

 MR. BURGESS. I wasn’t aware myself what came with the manuals. 

I will be happy to yield. 

 MS. DEGETTE. I was just going to say that the increasing use of 

these cell phones is going to make it even worse because even if you take 

the web cam out of your house, when these teens have the cell phones 

that will make movies and transmit them simultaneously, then you are 

going to have that same problem. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Absolutely, and there have been some horrific 

cases with those phone cams or whatever where the teens are generating 

their own pornography out there, emailing them to boyfriends, 

girlfriends, and then of course, those relationships don’t last forever and 

you see plenty of sites out there, ex-girlfriend sites, ex-boyfriend sites, 

and they are putting these photos online and are forever going to 

victimize the teens. 

 MR. BURGESS. Reclaiming my time. I guess my understanding is, 

Apple Computer has a built-in imaging device now which I guess is a 

good idea. The gentlelady from Colorado also brought up--and I 

apologize if I was out of the room when you answered. What about the 

ability to take down a site or a picture once it has been inappropriately 

placed on the Internet? Is there any way to erase those images? 

 MR. DANNAHEY. No, there is not. I mean, unfortunately, there is no 

magic way of reaching out to the Internet. Early in the school year last 

year I had a 13-year-old girl take some just horrendous photos of herself 

that would absolutely be classified as child porn, mails them to a 
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boyfriend, and the boyfriend unfortunately shared his password and 

somebody got in and stole the pictures and established a website with 

these photos on it. She was horrified when she actually received a link to 

her own pictures and her first question, how do I take these pictures 

down. Well, we got the pictures off the website but how many people 

downloaded those photos? I don’t know. I mean, she could be 25 years 

old and someone might walk up to her with one of her images and say 

this looks a lot like you. So that is a danger for teens. You cannot recall 

a photo once it is out there, and the pedophiles trade that and if it is 

homegrown-type photos, I mean, that is treated like gold. Anybody who 

has her pictures could probably trade those for all kinds of photos 

because they are of an actual real live 13-year-old girl. 

 MR. BURGESS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield back. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Detective, as you conclude here, I would like you 

to just take a couple of minutes to relate to us the story about the young 

girl who actually went to the Middle East to meet someone. I don’t 

remember those facts and I was wondering if you would convey them to 

us. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. I am not sure exactly what State she was from, 

maybe out the Chicago way. She was a 16-year-old girl, by all accounts 

a good student, somebody who her parents would trust. She did 

communicate online with a person. I believe he is from the West Bank, a 

25-year-old male, and somehow, as teens often do, she was able to 

convince her parents that she needed a passport, concocting a story that 

she was going to Canada with friends, got herself a passport, somehow 

got airline tickets, was flying to meet this guy, and once law enforcement 

apparently got into the computer and found out what was going on here, 

they intercepted her in Jordan and fortunately talked her into going 

home. Because I don’t know, at 16 in a foreign country like that, I don’t 

know if you put it to her and she said no, I don’t know if you could 

actually stop this girl. And the 25-year-old male was seen in the media 

saying that he intends on marrying this girl and he intends on keeping 

this relationship going. And obviously for law enforcement and parents, 

it is just a scary situation where you may have our teens go to a country 

who has no ability or necessity to follow U.S. laws and may not 

cooperate with us. So you may have a teen in another country and 

literally we can’t get them back. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Are there any other questions for Detective 

Dannahey? 

 MR. BURGESS. Mr. Chairman, if I could, I just wanted to point out 

down in Dallas near my district, the Dallas County Child Advocacy 

Center is putting on a program next month called A Walk in Their Shoes, 

talking about these sorts of issues, and one of the sponsors is the 
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MySpace folks. So there are some good things that are happening out 

there and I certainly don’t want to leave the people watching this with 

the impression that nothing good is happening. It is going to take a lot of 

that kind of work, however, as you have so eloquently outlined, to get the 

information out there and get it into the hands of parents who need it. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you very much for taking time to be with us 

today. We appreciate your testimony and wish you the very best as you 

continue your great job in this regard. 

 MR. DANNAHEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the 

invitation today. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. At this time, I would like to call the second panel, 

and on the second panel, we have Mr. Chris Kelly, who is Vice President 

of Corporate Development and Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook.com, 

Palo Alto, California. We have Mr. Michael Angus, who is the 

Executive VP and General Counsel, Fox Interactive Media, 

MySpace.com, Beverly Hills, California, and we have Mr. John Hiler, 

who is Chief Executive Officer of Xanga.com, New York, New York. 

 I don’t even have to go through my spiel anymore. Everybody 

always knows. So if you all would raise your right hand. 

 [Witnesses sworn.] 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you very much. You are now under oath, 

and Mr. Kelly, we will recognize you first for your opening statement. 

Do any of you want to be represented by legal counsel in your testimony 

today? Okay. Mr. Kelly, you are recognized for 5 minutes for your 

opening statement. 

STATEMENTS OF CHRIS KELLY, VICE PRESIDENT, 

CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT AND CHIEF PRIVACY 

OFFICER, FACEBOOK.COM, INC.; MICHAEL ANGUS, 

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, 

FOX INTERACTIVE MEDIA, MYSPACE.COM; AND JOHN 

HILER, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, XANGA.COM, INC. 

MR. KELLY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and we 

appreciate the presence of Ranking Member Stupak and the rest of the 

committee for this very important hearing on how to more effectively 

protect kids online through social networking sites. 

 My name is Chris Kelly. I am the Chief Privacy Officer of 

Facebook, a social utility that allows people to share information easily 

within their real-world community, and that is a very important emphasis 

point that will run throughout my testimony here today. 

 I joined Facebook last September as the first chief privacy officer in 

the social networking industry to continue the work that our founder, 
212

Mark Zuckerburg, had put together in segmenting networks and 

protecting different communities online. I am creating the role at an 

Internet for the fourth time. In my previous service as chief privacy 

officer and a technology attorney, I have represented many clients in the 

technology and media industries on privacy, security, safety, and 

intellectual property issues. I was also part of the founding team and 

served as a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet 

Society, a think tank focused on public policy issues of the digital age. 

 I am very happy to be here today to talk about social networking 

sites generally but particularly about Facebook. By now a lot of you 

have heard a lot of bad things about what goes on, so I want to talk first 

about what good is going on and why these sites are so attractive to teens 

and older teens, and we started as a college site and it has expanded into 

high school, and then what is special about Facebook and especially our 

approach to safety. 

 Facebook is about community. It is about providing an online way 

for people to communicate with their friends and to meet new ones who 

are part of their real-world community. It is about providing individuals 

with avenues for self-expression and creativity and it is about providing 

community members with easy ways to learn and share new ideas. This 

is why it is so fun and popular with teens and college students, and now 

also we validate based on work communities. 

 I will run through in great detail the four levels of protection that we 

use to validate members onto our network, validate them into particular 

communities, protect the viewing of profiles. You have heard a lot about 

information being available on the open Internet. Facebook doesn’t 

work that way. Membership on Facebook and the information on 

Facebook is available to individuals in validated communities by default 

and then later on by confirmed friends. So although founded only about 

27 months ago by Mark Zuckerburg, our CEO and founder, in his dorm 

room at Harvard, modeled after the paper Facebook that everybody gets 

when they started college and as many Members of Congress get when 

they start in Congress. 

 We now have 8 million registered users. We are the seventh-most 

used website in America, according to comScore Networks, and we are 

America’s most used photo site. There has been some suggestion that 

one of the reasons that you haven’t heard about a lot of safety issues 

around Facebook has been because it is not as popular, but the comScore 

numbers tell a different story and I think it is because of the work that we 

have done from the beginning to segment networks and to work very 

hard at providing technological protections for our users that we haven’t 

seen the type of safety incidents on Facebook that we have seen on many 

other sites. 
213

 So Facebook at its inception understood that communities must feel 

safe in order to thrive. There is a radical difference between sites that 

allow information to be posted to the open Internet and those which 

segment it within different communities. So our founders placed user 

privacy, security, and safety at the center of our mission and our 

architecture. So let me tell you how we implement these safety 

principles. 

 We implement our safety principles with four levels of user 

protection. Initially when you try to get on a network, we require 

validation where we can for high schools as well as colleges. We require 

a dot.edu email address or a dot.org email address for a number of high 

schools. I personally was a little bit surprised at the number of high 

schools that actually issue email addresses to their students. Where that 

is the case, a high school student cannot get on the Facebook site unless 

they have an institution-issued email address from that high school. 

 Then there is a second level of protection. Once you get on the 

network, you are segmented into a particular community, so for instance, 

if you were to join a particular high school community, by default you 

only have access to profile information to individuals within that 

community. So if you are searching for friends, this has two effects. 

One is, it limits the amount of information that one can reach, and two, it 

means that there’s a built-in neighborhood watch program. We have a 

report this user, report this link, report this photo on every page in 

Facebook and our 20-person customer service staff can easily process 

complaints about somebody who is not in the network. They can launch 

an investigation and they often remove members who improperly get into 

a service. So we also empower our members to make choices in what 

they display on their site and to whom they display it. 

 We have very detailed privacy settings and choices and we also use 

technological monitoring tools to look at possible indications of 

antisocial behavior on the site. If somebody were to circumvent the two 

levels of protection that we have already set up and get through to a third 

and start to try to befriend too many people, try to reach out and get 

rejected friend requests, that is one of the things that we measure. It 

highlights a user account and allows us to investigate that. If the user is 

improperly on the service, they are shut out completely, and this has a 

real sanction because of the validated address in most cases because you 

can’t just go and create another site with another email address. It is 

very difficult to get in. 

 So finally, we have this safety net with the humans and with our 20-

person customer service staff that responds to the complaints as they 

come through that addresses possible violations on the site and looks at 

that, and then ultimately myself, our general counsel and two other 
214

attorneys we have on staff interact with law enforcement if it ever gets to 

that, which it rarely does. 

 So as a result of these very important privacy, security, and safety 

features, we have very rarely encountered the same unfortunate problems 

that you have seen from most other social networking sites. We 

recognize, which is why we built the system this way, that there are bad 

actors out there, that they want to get into sites that have kids on them. 

Just like in the real world, you have to protect your communities in an 

effective fashion. So we vigorously sought to build these safety features 

into our product. We have also engaged in support of the educational 

and law enforcement efforts of the Federal Trade Commission, the 

National Association of Attorneys General, local law enforcement, nongovernmental agencies like the National Center for Missing and 

Exploited Children and WiredSafety.org, and parents everywhere. We 

think that there are multiple levels of defense that all need to be deployed 

to protect kids online. We support the efforts of everyone in the social 

networking industry to take safety seriously and to upgrade our practices 

to make the world safer and more secure for the members of all these 

sites. So we think that competition to provide safety on these sites is a 

good thing for the industry and for the kids of America. 

 So for these reasons, Facebook, we commend this committee for 

holding these hearings. We are very excited to engage with you in this 

practice. We welcome the opportunity to continue to serve as a resource 

for you and would like to leave myself open for questions. 

 [The prepared statement of Chris Kelly follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHRIS KELLY, VICE PRESIDENT, CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT AND 

CHIEF PRIVACY OFFICER, FACEBOOK.COM, INC. 

Thank you Chairman Whitfield and members of the Subcommittee for this 

opportunity to be with you and explain how Facebook uses technology and policy to 

protect people on our network. 

My name is Chris Kelly, and I serve as Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook, a social 

utility that allows people to share information with their real world communities. I am 

very happy to be here today to explain how the two core ideas of social interaction and 

privacy guide everything that we do, and help protect people on our network. As we say 

in our basic statement of principles on the site, people want to share information with 

their friends and those around them, but they don’t necessarily want to share personal 

information with the entire world. 

I joined Facebook last September as the first Chief Privacy Officer in the social 

networking space, and am creating the role at an Internet company for the fourth time. In 

my previous service as a Chief Privacy Officer and technology attorney I have 

represented many clients in the technology and media industries on privacy, security, 

safety, and intellectual property issues. I was also part of the founding team and served 

as a Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a leading 

think tank focused on public policy issues of the digital age. 
215

In February of 2004, our CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg launched the first 

version of Facebook from his college dorm room. Now, Facebook is the seventh busiest 

site overall and runs the busiest photo site in the United States, according to independent 

service ComScore Networks. We have more than 8 million registered members for 

whom Facebook has become a core part of how they interact within their communities. 

Starting with our college communities, we have since expanded to offer school-focused 

interactions for high-school students, and more recently have followed our graduating 

students into the work world. 

Privacy, security, and safety have been at the forefront of our concerns since the 

founding of the site. There is one overarching way that Facebook differs from nearly all 

other social networking sites – profile information is not generally available to the 

outside world. It is only available to Facebook members inside their individual, validated 

networks or through confirmed friends. We want to give people extensive power over 

their ability to share information, and the ability to limit who has access to it. 

Of course, no protection mechanism is perfect. But the mere fact that Facebook 

does not make information available by default to anyone with access to the Internet, 

combined with the other prudent measures we have taken to focus information sharing on 

real-world communities, has made a radical difference in the privacy, security, and safety 

of the Facebook experience. 

Following this major differentiator from most sites, we have set up four levels of 

protection for our members that I would like to outline for you today. 

First, we require validation in order to get on the site in the first place. For college 

students, and those high schools where it is possible, membership in the school 

community is proven through a valid email associated with that college or school. Where 

high schools do not offer students email addresses, we have instituted an invitation-based 

system that is designed to limit even initial access to that school network. 

Second, we segment information access within networks based on real-world 

communities. Being a member of Facebook does not give you access to the profiles of 

all people on Facebook. You are only allowed to access the profiles of other members at 

your college, high school, work, or (with explicit user choice) geographic network, and 

have power to add confirmed friends in other networks. This has two positive effects. 

First, users are gaining more information about those around them in the real world, 

which has pro-social effects on campuses around the country. Second, there is a built-in 

neighborhood watch program, especially with respect to high schools, where abuse of the 

system can be easily identified and addressed. 

Third, we put power in our users’ hands to make choices about how they reveal 

information. I have mentioned already the ability to confirm friends from other 

networks, and the “My Privacy” tab on every navigation bar throughout the site allows 

users to make detailed choices about who can see particular pieces of information about 

them, including their contact information and photos. 

Finally, we have a safety net of protection through both technological tools we 

deploy to detect misuse of the site and human capital dedicated to potential problems -- 

our 20 person and growing customer service staff, headed by a seasoned veteran and 

backed up by myself and two other attorneys. Most of our customer service 

representatives are recent graduates of outstanding colleges, and dedicated Facebook 

users, so they know the system inside and out. On those rare occasions where someone 

has attempted to misuse our network, we engage rapidly with the relevant authorities. 

Because the system is built for accountability with its email validation requirement and 

segmentation of communities, misuse is both deterred and generally detected quickly. 

We quickly launch an internal investigation and step in where we receive reports of the 

misuse of Facebook in any way. 

Overall, the fact that information posted on Facebook is not generally available has 

made Facebook a different experience for our users, and one they clearly enjoy as 
216

reflected in their frequent visits. Our intuition about the importance of tying access to 

information based on the networks where people already exist in real life has been shown 

to have huge effect in both deterring and exposing misuse. By focusing on real-world 

networks as the touchstone for access, we provide both a built-in reflection of people’s 

expectations about who will know information about them, and restrictions that make 

access difficult for those who might have harmful intentions. 

Facebook is proud to have led the way in giving people control over sharing 

information online. Thank you again for the opportunity to comment before the 

committee, and I look forward to your questions. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you very much, and Mr. Angus, you are 

recognized for a 5-minute opening statement. 

MR. ANGUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Stupak, 

members of the subcommittee. My name is Michael Angus. I am the 

General Counsel of Fox Interactive Media, parent company of MySpace. 

 I want to thank you for inviting us today to address concerns about 

Internet safety and to discuss how we can collectively protect younger 

users on the Internet. 

 Safety and security have been a priority for MySpace prior to the 

acquisition by Fox and continue to remain a top priority at the highest 

levels of our company. We take seriously our responsibility to provide a 

safe and well-lit space for our community, not only because it is the right 

thing to do but because it also makes good business sense. It is what our 

community and our advertisers demand. 

 Our members want a safe space within which they can freely connect 

with one another, express themselves, share viewpoints, and explore 

culture. MySpace is a community much like the offline world. The best 

defense against those who would do us harm is to better understand the 

potential dangers and protect yourself as much as possible. If everyone 

applies real-world safety lessons online, whether on MySpace or 

elsewhere, the Internet really becomes a much safer place for all. When 

a crime does occur online, we need to ensure that we arm law 

enforcement with the appropriate knowledge, resources, and laws to 

identify, prosecute and bring these criminals to justice. 

 We first approach online safety by employing technologies that help 

protect teens from potential harm and inappropriate content and provide 

all members with tools they need to protect themselves. This is by no 

means an exhaustive list but here are some examples. 

 Profiles of users who are 14 and 15 are automatically set to private. 

We also now require that all users over the age of 18 must either know 

the email address or the first and last name of a member who is 14 or 15 

to invite that member to become their friend. We have also recently 

implemented the privacy setting that is the default for 14- and 15-yearolds for all of our users. That allows our users to control the access and 

scope of their community. 
217

 MySpace reviews over 3 million images uploaded daily for content 

that violates our terms of use and we immediately remove any images 

that violate these terms. We also provide a link with each hosted image 

to allow users to report inappropriate content. 

 We recently developed and implemented proprietary technology to 

screen images on MySpace to assist us in quickly eradicating images that 

do not meet our standards. We also now provide a direct link to the 

cyber tip line to allow users to report incidents of child exploitation 

directly to the National Center. In addition, each page of our site 

contains a link to allow users to report inappropriate content and any 

other abuses that may occur on the site. 

 We are instituting new technologies that prevent users under the age 

of 18 from seeing advertising that is inappropriate for their age group. 

We have identified certain discussion groups that may contain material 

that is inappropriate for those under 18. Users under the age of 18 or 

who are not logged in cannot see or join these groups. 

 In addition to providing safety features and tools, education of users, 

parents and educators is a significant component of our efforts to foster a 

safer Internet. We believe that one of the best things that we can do for 

users is to teach them to protect themselves online just as they would in 

the real world and we are seeking help from parents, teachers, and others 

to help communicate this message. We include a link to clear commonsense safety tips on every page within our website. These tips are a must 

read as part of the registration process for every user under 18. We 

include a separate set of safety tips for parents and we emphasize that the 

most important thing that parents can do is to engage in a dialogue with 

their teens about Internet usage and we provide links to sites that help 

them do this. We also provide parents with step-by-step instructions on 

how to remove their teen’s profile and include links to free software that 

enables them to limit access to the Internet including blocking MySpace 

entirely. 

 Finally, we view Internet safety as a collective priority and universal 

responsibility for all of us involved in the Internet--businesses, 

government, law enforcement, and users. We are constantly reaching out 

to those with expertise in the areas of child protection and Internet safety. 

Just last week as part of our effort to better educate ourselves on online 

safety, we participated in the National Center’s dialogue on social 

networking to continue to explore ways to make the Internet safer for 

younger users through technology and education. In addition, we have a 

history of cooperation with law enforcement throughout the country and 

are frequently praised for our assistance. We have created a dedicated 

hotline staffed 24/7, and as the detective indicated, we have a law 

enforcement guide that has been widely disseminated to educate law 
218

enforcement about MySpace and to instruct them how to process 

subpoena and information requests. 

 To continue to strengthen our existing partnerships and build new 

ones, we recently hired Hamu Niggam, our Chief Security Officer. Mr. 

Niggam has 16 years of safety and security experience including his 

work as a former Federal prosecutor specializing in crimes against 

children. He spent the last two days with 48 of the 50 Attorneys General 

at the annual NAG conference and focused on technology to make the 

Internet safer. We invited them to meet with us and our technical experts 

in the next 2 weeks to explore ways to implement viable age certification 

and we are currently coordinating schedules for that meeting. 

 In collaboration with the National Center and the Ad Council, we 

have engaged in the largest ever public service announcement campaign 

on Internet safety. These PSAs are featured repeatedly across all Fox 

properties, and I would like to show you a few of those PSAs right now. 

 [Video] 

 Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for your time 

and I look forward to answering any of your questions. 

 [The prepared statement of Michael Angus follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MICHAEL ANGUS, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL 

COUNSEL, FOX INTERACTIVE MEDIA, MYSPACE.COM
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MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, very much, and that was quite 

effective. I appreciate your sharing that with us. 

 Mr. Hiler, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 
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MR. HILER. Chairman Whitfield, Ranking Member Stupak and 

members of the subcommittee, my name is John Hiler and I am the CEO 

and cofounder of Xanga.com. I ask that a copy of my full statement 

appear in the record. 

 Thank you for inviting me to testify at today’s hearing. I would like 

to take a couple of minutes to talk about Xanga. First and foremost, 

Xanga is a place to write. Xanga was founded in 1999 as a way for 

authors to publish their ideas on the Internet. Xanga’s predominant use 

today continues to be publishing in the form of Web logs. Web logs, or 

blogging, are a form of online publishing characterized by relatively 

frequent posts arranged in reverse chronological order. 

 In April of this year, Xanga added limited social networking features 

to its site but, as used by our members, our site remains primarily a place 

to write. As I like to put it, the vibe on Xanga is much more like a cafe 

than a nightclub. To preserve its literary focus, Xanga has been careful 

not to enable certain features that are typical of more socially or datingoriented websites. Xanga does not allow users to search for each other 

by specific demographic characteristics. For example, you cannot search 

Xanga profiles for a 24-year-old woman from Kentucky who may be 

single. Xanga also decidedly does not provide features such as instant 

messaging, chat, private message between members, or real-time gold 

tones. We feel strongly that these features need strong safety filters in 

place before we would feel comfortable launching them, especially since 

these form of communications occur privately rather than in public. 

 Our members use the site in many ways including as a creative 

outlet, as a way to explore personal identity and spirituality and as a 

source of support for difficult issues. For example, Xanga has over 

8,500 groups focused on poetry, almost 40,000 groups dedicated to 

Christianity and over 2,000 groups that are dedicated to parenting issues 

including support for first-time parents, stay-at-home parents, and single 

parents. 

 As an industry leader, Xanga is committed to being at the forefront 

of Web log communities when it comes to looking out for the safety of 

all of our users. There is no single silver bullet but we are committed to 

trying any solution that is feasible. What makes Xanga unique is its 

comprehensive approach that empowers members, parents, and Xanga 

itself all to take charge of online safety. 

 I would like to highlight two technologies that Xanga has developed 

to empower its members to help police its site. They are a rating system 

and a flagging system. While both systems are still new and being 

refined, these technologies have received strong initial reviews from both 

our members and from industry experts. 
248

 Our first safety initiative is a rating system. To address the issue of 

clean content, we have created a rating system, a picture of which you 

can see attached to the back of our written testimony. As you can see, it 

is a five-part rating system modeled after the system used to rate motion 

pictures. This rating system launched on May 26 of this year and we use 

the ratings to limit access to age-inappropriate content including 

requiring a credit card before members can view sites rated as containing 

adult material. 

 Our second important safety program is a flagging system that 

Xanga has developed to allow users to easily report sites that violate 

Xanga’s terms of use. This system launched on May 1 of this year has 

been extremely effective in rapidly identifying inappropriate content. 

Now if a Xanga member sees a page with inappropriate content, he or 

she can view a list of potential flags with just a single click. Then with 

just one more click, that site or page can be instantly reported to our 

flagging database. Flagged sites are reviewed by Xanga’s trained 

analysts and shut down as appropriate. Depending on the nature of the 

flag, these sites may also be reported to the proper authorities such as the 

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, also known as 

NCMEC. 

 Mr. Chairman, as you pointed out yesterday, it is very important that 

we get sites with child porn off of the site as quickly as possible. With 

our flagging system, we have been able to identify, delete, and report 

these sites to NCMEC in as quickly as a few hours. 

 Xanga has also embraced best practices in data retention and 

preservation, an issue that I know is important to the committee. Xanga 

records IP addresses for every user upon registration, retains that 

information indefinitely for law enforcement. Our practice is to comply 

with all subpoenas within one to two business days if not significantly 

faster. Xanga is also working with the National Center’s cyber tip line to 

identify other points at which to capture IP addresses including during 

photo uploads and during member sign-ins. As soon as our 

recommendations are finalized, we will implement them and begin 

retaining and preserving this additional IP information as well. 

 We have also recently launched several other privacy features which 

empower users to control and monitor access to their own sites, not only 

increasing their own privacy, but also making their site safer as well. 

 In addition, I want to reiterate what features Xanga does not support: 

instant message, chat, private messaging, private bulletins, and profile 

search. We are also working with experts so our site reflects industry 

best practices including WiredSafety, the National Center and 

Blogsafety.com, and finally, Xanga routinely works with law 

enforcement to help with investigations. 
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 We at Xanga are fully committed to ensuring the safest possible 

environment for our members. There is no single silver bullet out there 

to guarantee the safety of our members but we are committed to a 

comprehensive approach involving technology, empowering our users 

and cooperating with law enforcement and industry experts. 

 Thank you, and I look forward to answering any questions. 

 [The prepared statement of John Hiler follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN HILER, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, XANGA.COM, INC. 
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 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you very much, Mr. Hiler, and Mr. Angus, I 

want to thank you again for bringing that public service announcement 

that you all are utilizing, and at this time, on my time, I do want to show 

the public service announcement that is being used in Great Britain that 

was prepared by the Virtual Global Taskforce. This public service 

announcement is being shown in movie theaters around Great Britain. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. The sound works very well. We will try one more 

minute. If it doesn’t work, we will move on. 

 [Video]. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. I would ask each one of you that report abuse, do 

you have a technique like that on your space, Mr. Kelly? 
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 MR. KELLY. Yes. I mean, you will have a report, this photo report 

this message report. I mean, there are reporting tools built in throughout 

the site. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And easily available? 

 MR. KELLY. Easily available. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Mr. Angus? 

 MR. ANGUS. Likewise on each page within MySpace, there is a link 

to report abuses of content. There are also links on each photo that is 

hosted by MySpace to report photos themselves, and then if a photo is 

reported, you are then permitted as a user to respond and forward that 

information onto the National Center’s cyber tip line. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Cyber tip line. Okay. 

 MR. HILER. Yes. At Xanga we absolutely have a link on every 

single page that links to our flagging technology I mentioned before. We 

have identified around 10 separate, we call them crimes, that users can 

report. One of these is for child porn and we built some additional 

technology that enables us to identify which pages are being flagged 

most frequently for child porn and we prioritize our resources on those 

reports so we can send them right to the National Center. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. So the flagging occurs first and then to the cyber 

tip line? 

 MR. HILER. There is a middle layer where our trained analysts take a 

look at the images. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. In the testimony today and throughout these 

hearings, we have heard a lot about young people who are not truthful 

about their age, and I would like to ask all of you if you have any 

flagging or filtering device to match up what a person in their profile 

says their age is and information that might reveal what their actual age 

is? 

 MR. KELLY. So again, we take a somewhat different approach 

because of our segmented networks so users have to verify where we can 

with dot edu or dot org email addresses into high school communities, 

and if not with an invitation method from validated users into that high 

school community. So there is a proxy for age. They are also required 

to put their birth date, and in proper compliance, we assure that that is a 

birth date calculation. We don’t ask are you over 13 or something like 

that. We don’t allow anyone to register for a high school class that 

wouldn’t make them 13. So we have a variety of proxy methods for age 

but, obviously are interested in finding more certain verification. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Right. Mr. Angus? 

 MR. ANGUS. MySpace only permits users 14 years and older to join 

the site, and it is a similar process where the user is required to enter in a 

birth date and then the calculation is made. If they enter in a birth date 
265

that results in that individual being too young, a session cookie is placed 

on the computer and they are not permitted to back button and then just 

fix the date. In addition, we do have a proprietary search algorithm that 

constantly scans the site looking for phrases that users use to identify 

themselves as being underage. Again, this is a site where users are there 

to talk about themselves and portray themselves to their community of 

friends and so frequently we see them using either in code or in actual 

language saying I am really 13 and then we have a team of security 

experts go through each reported instance and to determine whether it is 

an individual saying my daughter is 13, my dog is 13 or I am 13, and 

every user that we identify as being under the age of 14 is deleted from 

the site and banned. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. So you have an ongoing screening process that is 

looking at different-- 

 MR. ANGUS. That is correct, and we constantly update the search 

phrases as the users change their terminology. One of the popular ones 

right now is cake date instead of birth date. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And they are automatically banned from the site-- 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. --if they are determined to be-- 

 MR. ANGUS. That is correct. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Have you had any legal ramifications with trying 

to do that or doing that? 

 MR. ANGUS. No, we have not. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Mr. Hiler? 

 MR. HILER. In addition to the standard ways that we all screen 

underage users from joining our site, we have two separate failsafes. The 

first is a parental deletion request form. We have created a policy and 

procedure through which parents can send us a signed consent form 

asking that we delete the account. We generate an archive and we send it 

to them. So that is one. The second is that as part of our theme of 

empowering the user, we have created a flag that says “proof of underage 

user” and that way users can flag sites that they believe have people who 

are underage. We can take a look at the sites that have been flagged by 

the community and evaluate them, and what we find often is that it is 

older brothers and sisters who are on the site who want to police their 

younger brothers and sisters from joining us and so it has been nice to 

see that pattern of self-policing emerge. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. So if a parent contacts any of you and demands 

that you take down a child’s profile, will all of you do that? 

 MR. KELLY. So we-- 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Your situation is a little different. 
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 MR. KELLY. Our situation is a little bit different. We have actually a 

problem that we have identified legally under the Electronic 

Communications Privacy Act about giving a parent access to an account. 

So we certainly encourage parents to talk with their student user and if 

they can get their password and sign into their account, well, obviously 

we have an easy deactivation process. So we try to work with the 

parents in those instances. But there is no underage exception for ECPA 

and so we have been concerned about legal liability from that standpoint 

if we give parents access to the account. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. But to get on your site, I have to have a university 

address-- 

 MR. KELLY. Well, if you have a validated high school user either 

through--if the high school issues its own address--that is our preferred 

method. That is our favorite way to assure that the user is in fact 

associated with that school. Otherwise we use an invitation method 

which we started by having confirmed college users invite people at their 

old high schools and then have this validation method over time. So 

there are high school students on the site where we will get requests from 

parents to take it down and we try to facilitate that analysis without 

exposing ourselves to legal liability under ECPA. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And Mr. Angus, what about MySpace? 

 MR. ANGUS. We do honor parents’ requests to take down profiles of 

users under the age of 14. The issue that we have is that in some cases 

this is a form of cyber bullying and we will find that some teens may 

purport to be parents of that user and attempt to have that user’s account 

deleted, so we do work with the parents to verify that they are actually 

the parent of that individual. In addition to just removing underage 

profiles, if a parent of a 14-, 15-, 16- or 17-year-old wants their child’s 

profile deleted, we will also do that upon verification. Of course, we 

always encourage the parents to communicate directly with their kids, 

because as the detective indicated, once the teens are banned, frequently 

they will just go underground and that makes them more reticent to 

discuss issues that can arise. 

 If I could just address your previous comment about automatically 

searching, we also have a number of users who value the community and 

also get reports from our user base about underage profiles. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. My time is expired but one thing that I would like 

for you to do, Mr. Angus, is that we have a copy of a letter from the 

Attorney General of Ohio dated March 24, 2006, to Mr. Chris DeWolf, 

who I guess was the CEO of MySpace.com. I am not sure when Fox 

purchased that but I don’t know if you are even familiar with this letter 

but in his letter he suggests certain ways to address some of these issues, 
267

and I would like to give you a copy of it and maybe you can just respond 

to the committee in writing. 

 MR. ANGUS. Certainly. I would be happy to do that. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And at this time I would like to recognize Mr. 

Stupak. 

 MR. STUPAK. Thank you. The Chairman was asking about reporting 

of abuses. Let us go down the line and answer these questions. Mr. 

Kelly, if I am going to report abuse, who would I report it to if I am on 

your network? 

 MR. KELLY. So on our site, it would go to our customer service 

staff. 

 MR. STUPAK. And then what happens to it? 

 MR. KELLY. So it is reviewed by--we have a customer service staff 

of 20 who are all recent graduates and very experienced in Facebook. I 

like to say we have the most overeducated customer service staff in 

America. They are all recent graduates of great universities and they 

assess whether or not there is a complaint about the violation in terms of 

service or an underage user or whatever may come, they assess it 

quickly. If it is a valid complaint, they process it in accordance, usually 

within 24 hours. 

 MR. STUPAK. If it is a valid complaint, process it how? 

 MR. KELLY. So if it is an underage user, we boot the user. If it is an 

inappropriate photo, a violation of the terms of service, we remove the 

photo and the user gets a warning the first time. They get a second 

sterner warning and a suspension the second time, and the third time 

their account is permanently barred. Unlike most other sites-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Are you reporting them to NCMEC? 

 MR. KELLY. So if it is a child porn case, of course we report it to 

NCMEC and we are registered with NCMEC as a reporting agency. 

 MR. STUPAK. Has that ever happened? 

 MR. KELLY. We have not ever had an instance. 

 MR. STUPAK. Out of 29 million, or what do you have? How many? 

 MR. KELLY. Actually at this point we have about 350 million photos 

on our site, and because they are all students, they are posting their own 

pictures. 

 MR. STUPAK. And none of them are ever-- 

 MR. KELLY. What? 

 MR. STUPAK. None of them were ever pornographic? 

 MR. KELLY. So some of them are inappropriate but they are not 

pornographic. 

 MR. STUPAK. Who makes that determination? 

 MR. KELLY. We make that determination. 
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 MR. STUPAK. I know these are experts in computing, not necessarily 

in pornography. 

 MR. KELLY. Well, they are actually able to make the determination 

if there is any exploitation shown anywhere in the site and we talked 

with NCMEC extensively about this, they don’t want a lot of false 

reports. 

 MR. STUPAK. I am not-- 

 MR. KELLY. They are concerned about the assessment. The way 

that we segment our communities and the way that people share photos, 

we are not a haven in any way for people who would share child 

pornography. It is very difficult for predators to get on our site-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Let me go on down the line now. I have only a couple 

minutes here. I don’t want to use up all my time. Mr. Angus, how about 

you? Where do you guys report your uses to and where does it go and-- 

 MR. ANGUS. Again, the link on every page, there is a drop-down 

menu that allows a user to categorize, and for our security time it 

prioritizes the abuse reports that we get. Those reports go to our safety 

and security team which is led by our chief security officer. 

 MR. STUPAK. How many people do you have on that team? 

 MR. ANGUS. I don’t know the answer to that question. I can get 

back to this committee. 

 MR. STUPAK. Have you reported any to NCMEC, the National 

Center for Missing-- 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes. Any image that involves potential child 

exploitation is immediately forwarded to the National Center. 

 MR. STUPAK. Have you? 

 MR. ANGUS. To be honest, as Facebook, our site is not really a 

haven for children. 

 MR. STUPAK. I am not asking that. 

 MR. ANGUS. But I can tell you, of the 60 million images that are 

uploaded to our site every month, we average approximately a dozen 

reports to the National Center. 

 MR. STUPAK. Twelve out of 60 million? 

 MR. ANGUS. Twelve out of 60 million, correct. 

 MR. STUPAK. And Mr. Hiler? 

 MR. HILER. Yes. Reports come in to our site in several ways. We 

talked about flags, we talked about ratings and of course, we get emails 

as well. To answer your specific question around NCMEC, we prioritize 

the most urgent flags. Those are child porn and death threats, threat of 

physical harm, to respond to. And well, we have a different story to tell. 

Ever since we launched our flagging system where our members can 

help police the site, we have gotten a lot of reports. We have gotten 

over-- 
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 MR. STUPAK. What happens to the reports? 

 MR. HILER. We have over 200 reported incidents. They are all 

examples of a new trend-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Yeah, but where do they go? 

 MR. HILER. Of course-- 

 MR. STUPAK. I don’t want long explanations. I have only got 10 

minutes. 

 MR. HILER. They are shut down and they are reported to the 

National Center. We are a participant in-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Have you sent them to the National Center then? 

 MR. HILER. Yes. I was there just last week. 

 MR. STUPAK. I could be wrong on this but let me ask this question. 

Mr. Angus, did you indicate that credit companies will not allow you to 

use their database to verify ages of people? Was that part of your 

testimony? 

 MR. ANGUS. That was not part of my testimony. It is my 

understanding though, Congressman, that they do not permit us to use 

their facilities to verify age, that they require charges. 

 MR. STUPAK. Require charges. Mr. Hiler, didn’t you say you used 

credit card companies to verify ages? 

 MR. HILER. We have used it to verify the ages of members over 18 

to get access to the highest levels. We have been talking with our 

merchant account and they have expressed concerns about using it for 

age verification, so we are looking into alternate forms of ID verification. 

 MR. STUPAK. Either one of you, what could you do to verify ages? 

What would you do? When you testified that you don’t have anyone 

under 13, how do you know that? 

 MR. KELLY. So it is because they are validated into the high school 

community. We have a neighborhood watch in those high school 

communities to report who doesn’t belong, who is not actually in high 

school. 

 MR. STUPAK. Sure. 

 MR. KELLY. So that is-- 

 MR. STUPAK. And you think that is 100 percent foolproof? 

 MR. KELLY. No, I don’t think it is 100 percent foolproof. It is one 

of the reasons why we have the initial invitation system. 

 MR. STUPAK. Right. 

 MR. KELLY. And we have-- 

 MR. STUPAK. High school, college and-- 

 MR. KELLY. And then we have the segmentation of the community. 

That leads to better community reporting. It is not a perfect system but 

we feel it is better than not having any-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Mr. Angus? 
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 MR. ANGUS. At this point my understanding of any age verification 

technology is really a form of identity verification. It is extremely 

complex in the online world, as you can imagine, and it is something that 

we are working with the attorneys general on trying to find a solution for. 

This is especially complicated in the global setting of the Internet. 

 MR. STUPAK. Well, how about this idea of taking the 14- and 15-

year-olds and segregating them all, putting them in their own separate 

site? I think that has been suggested to you guys, and you sort of resist 

that idea, right? 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. Why? 

 MR. ANGUS. I think that as the detective indicated, once the younger 

users, those teens think that they are being segregated off, it is our belief 

that this encourages them to lie about their age, and without a viable 

means to verify that, they will lie about their age and that a lot of safety 

features that we employ specifically for those younger users will no 

longer be available to them. In addition, it drives them further 

underground, meaning that they are less comfortable reporting abuse and 

talking to trusted adults. 

 MR. STUPAK. But I wrote down here, you are the one who indicated-

-you stated, “No one less than 14 on MySpace,” so I was wondering, 

how do you verify that? How can you make that statement? 

 MR. ANGUS. We don’t permit anyone under 14 to be on the site. 

 MR. STUPAK. But you don’t know there aren’t people less than 14. 

 MR. ANGUS. Everyone that we know of who is under 14, we 

eliminate from the site. Yes. 

 MR. STUPAK. Let me ask you this, Mr. Angus. Some of the State 

attorneys general have requested that MySpace delete anyone who 

violates the terms of your contract or terms of service--excuse me--and 

permanently ban a user from MySpace for continuing posting prohibited 

links with pornography and other inappropriate material. But it seems 

like you don’t automatically ban a user who has violated the terms of 

your service agreement, those have known to pose sexually explicit 

materials, according to the attorneys general. Why don’t you guys do 

that? 

 MR. ANGUS. Actually we do do that. We do ban users. It depends 

on the level of severity. 

 MR. STUPAK. Do you have zero tolerance on that? 

 MR. ANGUS. Zero tolerance would mean that if a user were to post 

an image that violates the terms of our use-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Paragraph five, isn’t it? Is paragraph five terms of 

service? 

 MR. ANGUS. I don’t have them in front of me but-- 
271

 MR. STUPAK. But anyways, you don’t have zero tolerance. Why 

not? 

 MR. ANGUS. Again, there are users who may post an image who are 

otherwise very good users, very good members of the community, and 

one oversight again as my colleague mentioned, we will send them a 

warning, we will delete that, and the next time they will be deleted from 

the site. Their profile will be taken down. Users who are posting a lot of 

pornography who are clearly and knowingly violating our terms of 

service-- 

 MR. STUPAK. You have-- 

 MR. ANGUS. --we will delete and we will ban from the site. 

 MR. STUPAK. But you report that you have 60 million images a 

month? 

 MR. ANGUS. Sixty million images a month that we-- 

 MR. STUPAK. You don’t scan those 60 million every month, do you? 

 MR. ANGUS. We do. Every image we review that is uploaded to our 

site. That is three million a day. 

 MR. STUPAK. And 12 reports. 

 MR. ANGUS. Say again. 

 MR. STUPAK. And 12 reports a month? 

 MR. ANGUS. Twelve reports to the National Center’s cyber tip line. 

We remove approximately 1,000 images of the three million for 

inappropriate content. 

 MR. STUPAK. You remove 1,000? 

 MR. ANGUS. Correct. 

 MR. STUPAK. The other suggestion the attorneys general had was 

that MySpace increase the minimum user age from 14 to 16 and prohibit 

adult users from accessing the profiles of minors. Why do you resist that 

increase from 14 to 16? 

 MR. ANGUS. The resistance, Congressman, for increasing the age 

from 14 to 16 again goes to that issue of balancing. Whether you make 

the site too restrictive and you encourage them to lie about their age, 

driving them further underground and denying them the safety features 

that we implement for 14- and 15-year-olds. 

 MR. STUPAK. But still at the same time, the detective also said twothirds of all the hits he had were 14- and 15-year-olds, the most gullible, 

if you will. 

 MR. ANGUS. Well, the second part of the question that you asked, 

Congressman, was the accessibility to those 14- and 15-year-olds of the 

older users and we have implemented a feature that now requires that 

anyone 18 or over know the exact email address or first and last name of 

the user to identify that user and invite them to be a friend. 

 MR. STUPAK. When did that start? 
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 MR. ANGUS. That was announced I believe last week as part of our 

recent safety announcements. 

 MR. STUPAK. Okay. Because I was looking at some cases here, 

about four, five, six of them, that certainly were not--am I over time? 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes, that is a relatively new feature. 

 MR. STUPAK. Thanks. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Stupak. At this time I recognize 

Dr. Burgess. 

 MR. BURGESS. Mr. Kelly, you talked about some of the technologies 

that are employed by Facebook and you referred to segmenting and you 

alluded to other technical devices that you have for online protection. 

Can you fill us in on some of those others? 

 MR. KELLY. Sure. I mean, I want to highlight the fact that what we 

are trying to do is leverage social norms in the technology as well with 

the authentication, with the segmentation of the networks. The other 

factors--we don’t like to talk a lot about the particular factors that we use 

to determine inappropriate usage because it may in fact lead people to try 

to get around them, but one of the ones that I talked about was number of 

rejected friend requests is the easiest thing. If somebody were to get on 

the network and try to become friends and thus get access to profiles of 

especially a bunch of high school students, that is something that we 

have a tool that runs every 4 hours and will flag that and it gets emailed 

to an engineer and we review that constantly every 4 hours, and we can 

research any inappropriate activity like that. It gets sent to our customer 

service team if that security engineer believes that it indicates a true 

complete misuse of the site. 

 MR. BURGESS. And these are individuals that have had some 

specific training in identifying aberrant behavior? They have had some 

law enforcement training? What-- 

 MR. KELLY. They haven’t had law enforcement training but they are 

highly technical engineers who have helped design the site. 

 MR. BURGESS. And I don’t quarrel with the fact that you are all very 

bright and you have set up wonderful entrepreneurial businesses which 

epitomizes the American way, but you have seen, if you have followed 

any of these hearings, the enormity, the magnitude of the problems that 

we are up against and the devastating effect it is having on the next 

generation of Americans and it is certainly incumbent upon us while we 

celebrate your successes. We do want to ensure that the proper 

safeguards are in place for children who might access these sites, so is 

there any industry standard that says your safety engineers, if that is the 

correct terminology for that position. Are there any performance 

guidelines that they have to meet? Is there any special training that they 
273

have to take--I really ought to ask the same question of whoever is sitting 

at the table. 

 MR. KELLY. We have written technology specifications for these 

tools and we are constantly upgrading them. We at Facebook have done 

this, and they are designed with my input-- 

 MR. BURGESS. Let me just-- 

 MR. KELLY. --the input of-- 

 MR. BURGESS. I don’t mean to interrupt you because I know what 

you have to say is important but have you monitored these hearings as 

we have been going through them the past several weeks? 

 MR. KELLY. Yes. 

 MR. BURGESS. You just can’t help but be impressed by the enormity 

of the problem and how clever the criminal mind is. You know how 

clever the adolescent mind is at defeating whatever safeguards you are 

going to put up there but how clever the criminal mind is. We have seen 

a little bit of it in these public service announcements, but they hardly do 

justice to how clever these individuals are, and at one point in Justin 

Berry’s testimony, the comment was made, “We laugh at people who try 

to stop us, we are so much smarter than they are.” So my question to you 

again is, what training and what safeguards, what industry standards are 

there? If there are not any, do you think we should develop some? 

 MR. KELLY. There are not currently industry standards focused on 

these sites, in large part because-- 

 MR. BURGESS. On safety officers. 

 MR. KELLY. Around safety officers, but in large part because-- 

 MR. BURGESS. What about at MySpace? 

 MR. ANGUS. We train all of our employees who are responsible for 

safety and security on our practices. We have also reached out to the 

other social networking sites to try and establish best practices and we 

are engaged in that dialogue. 

 MR. BURGESS. And do they have training from law enforcement? 

Do they have training from people who specifically prosecute these types 

of crimes so they know what to look for? 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes, Congressman, we do speak regularly with law 

enforcement. Our chief security officer is a former U.S. prosecutor and 

was formerly with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office and is 

familiar with the needs of law enforcement in their prosecutions. We 

work with them regularly. 

 MR. BURGESS. You made the statement to Mr. Stupak that no one 

under 14 is allowed on MySpace. 

 MR. ANGUS. That is correct. 

 MR. BURGESS. Have you ever known anyone to mislead someone 

about their age? 
274

 MR. ANGUS. Certainly. 

 MR. BURGESS. And so what are you doing now to prevent that from 

happening? 

 MR. ANGUS. When we find out that someone is misrepresenting 

their age, they are-- 

 MR. BURGESS. These are kids. They are so clever. How are you 

going to find out? 

 MR. ANGUS. They are clever. It is our part of the education process. 

We believe that educating parents and the students-- 

 MR. BURGESS. How long is that process going to take? 

 MR. ANGUS. We have a parents’ guide that will be released prior to 

the end of--before the beginning of the school year. 

 MR. BURGESS. I referenced it earlier, I applaud and welcome the 

public service activities that you have going on but I have just got to tell 

you, I think that all of us are way behind the curve on this and playing 

catch-up in a disease, and I will use that term, that is exploding 

exponentially, it is not a good feeling for me sitting on this side of that 

table about where we are in the trajectory of trying to get a handle on this 

problem. 

 MR. ANGUS. I share your-- 

 MR. BURGESS. Let me just ask you one other thing. Now, no one 

under 14--we heard--our initial witness in this whole series of hearings 

was someone who started when they were 14. As far as I can tell, his life 

has been seriously derailed by activities on MySpace. I realize your 

corporation did not own it at the time but do you think 14, is that an 

adequate safeguard to place on MySpace? 

 MR. ANGUS. We believe that it is. Again, we believe that the 14-

year-olds are going to join and we employ security measures specifically 

for the 14- and 15-year-olds that we believe better protect them and-- 

 MR. BURGESS. Now, these-- 

 MR. ANGUS. --empower them. 

 MR. BURGESS. --would not have been in place when Mr. Berry 

began his career on MySpace, or--I beg your pardon. I am-- 

 MR. ANGUS. But if I may, you asked about our coordination with 

law enforcement. I testified at California State hearings, and one of the 

things that I heard from a lieutenant who was operations commander for 

ICAC Task Force in northern California was very troubling to me, that 

the laws in many States are not consistent and do not permit law 

enforcement to go after some of these online predators. The act of a 

predator engaging in an online sexual discussion may in and of itself not 

be enough to warrant prosecution, and it is this kind of activity that 

should be criminalized. 
275

 MR. BURGESS. How much time do you give yourself to evaluate the 

information that you are given by new subscribers? If someone goes 

online and says I want to have a spot on MySpace, I am 14 years old, 

here is my information, is it immediate hookup that they have or do you 

delay that by a little while so you can check the information? 

 MR. ANGUS. It is immediate. If they enter in the information, if the 

information is correct, they have an account and they begin setting up 

that account. 

 MR. BURGESS. What would be the problem with perhaps delaying 

that by some period of time to allow the information to be verified? 

 MR. ANGUS. If they--I am at a loss-- 

 MR. BURGESS. If someone comes to MySpace and says I am 14 

years old, I want a site, provides you whatever information is required to 

set up a set for a 14-year-old, what would be the problem in delaying the 

immediate setup of that site and allowing your cyber detectives time to 

verify that that information is in fact correct, that this 14-year-old is not 

in fact a 28-year-old? 

 MR. ANGUS. Congressman, right now-- 

 MR. BURGESS. Or that this 14-year-old is not in fact a 10-year-old? 

 MR. ANGUS. Congressman, right now we don’t have any means to 

verify the information that is provided to us. 

 MR. BURGESS. How-- 

 MR. ANGUS. If they provide a correct-- 

 MR. BURGESS. If I could, how many people are going to sign up to 

MySpace today? 

 MR. ANGUS. Probably roughly 250,000. 

 MR. BURGESS. And how many of those will be 14 years of age? 

 MR. ANGUS. I don’t know the answer to that question, 

Congressman. I do know that roughly 20 percent are under the age of 

18. 

 MR. BURGESS. And that is a figure that could be verified if someone 

were to look at your records-- 

 MR. ANGUS. That-- 

 MR. BURGESS. --so that there wouldn’t be someone who says they 

are 16 who is in fact 60? 

 MR. ANGUS. These are numbers actually that are reported to us by 

comScore Mediametric, so it is a third party who provides the ages of 

those users. 

 MR. BURGESS. Well, let me ask you a question, and I apologize for 

linking your site with the witness we had at the very beginnings of these 

hearings, but as that individual testified to us, and I am not a big person 

on liability. In fact, I am probably on the other side of that equation but I 

couldn’t help but think that some site somewhere might have enormous 
276

liability because of what has happened to this young individual. Do you 

all concern yourselves with the fact that if someone gets injured using 

your product in a way that maybe it wasn’t intended but basically 

conforms to the rules and they get injured, do you incur any type of 

liability from that? 

 MR. ANGUS. Congressman, I wouldn’t want to comment on any 

pending litigation-- 

 MR. BURGESS. I wouldn’t expect that you would. 

 MR. ANGUS. We are deeply concerned that if anyone-- 

 MR. BURGESS. I would really like for all three of you if you don’t 

mind, because I am going to run out of time here in just a moment, if 

there is some way with your various legal departments if you would just 

explore that, how do you in fact see yourselves as protected from--we 

saw the PSA run in reverse up there. If that situation happens and that 

child is critically injured or killed, how do you protect yourselves from 

liability if you have been the conduit to bring the predator and victim 

together? Is there liability there? I honestly don’t know. I am not a 

lawyer. I don’t know legal theory. It would seem to me if we have got 

those warnings on the package of cigarettes that there may be some 

clever lawyer somewhere in this country who would try to draw a 

straight line between those two dots. Mr. Chairman, you have been very 

indulgent. 

 MR. KELLY. First of all, the harm to the child is obviously our first 

concern, not liability, but in the design of the site, we figure if there are 

best practices in place that proper usage, that the best standards should in 

fact govern the possible interaction between kids and adult predators, 

which is why we separate the sites. I want to add one thing on the 

standards question that you have asked, and I spent the day yesterday 

with the National Association of Attorneys General and I would add for 

the committee’s consideration that the National Association of Attorneys 

General has asked Facebook to submit its security standards for 

consideration as a best practice as they go forward in their deliberations 

about how they are going to set these standards. 

 MR. BURGESS. And I would agree with the gentleman that the safety 

of the child is the first concern but what we have seen over the past 

several weeks is the enormity of the pressure put on the rest of society by 

the predator community and the Internet has boosted that, has 

turbocharged that to a degree that I don’t think I am alone on this 

committee, I was absolutely unaware as to the dangers that were out 

there with these types of sites. Again, I welcome the entrepreneurship 

that you bring to the American culture, the things that you are able to 

provide society but do understand that we on this side do feel an 
277

obligation to put the proper boundaries around this so that our next 

generation of Americans is protected. 

 MR. KELLY. And we deeply share those concerns and that is why we 

built them into the technology. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Ms. DeGette, you are recognized for 10 minutes. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me say, I actually 

agree with the detective and I agree with what you gentlemen are saying 

in terms of you don’t want to put so many restrictions on these sites that 

you drive kids to other places where they may not have scrupulous 

oversight and I really agree with that and that is one reason I agree with 

this thing about having 14- and 15-year-olds in a segregated site or not 

letting them be on sites like MySpace. I also worry that predators could 

then know exactly where to go and zero in to kids if you have sites just 

for those, but having said that, I think that everybody in this room would 

agree, we need to work harder as a community, that you and similar 

companies need to work harder and smarter to try to thwart these 

predators and we need to figure out if there is a--well, for Congress. Just 

quickly, would you agree with that, Mr. Kelly? 

 MR. KELLY. I am sorry. Could you repeat-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Would you agree with the fact we all need to work 

harder-- 

 MR. KELLY. Oh, absolutely, at all levels. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And Mr.--is it Hiler or Hiller? 

 MR. HILER. Yes, Hiler. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Would you agree with that too? 

 MR. HILER. Yes. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Would all of you agree with what the detective was 

saying about parents need to take a role to look at their child’s contacts 

on the Internet and to take an active role? 

 MR. KELLY. Absolutely. 

 MR. ANGUS. Parental involvement is one of the best things that we 

can do to enhance safety. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Mr. Hiler? 

 MR. HILER. Absolutely. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Now, Mr. Angus, I want to ask you, and I just want 

to be really frank here because as I said earlier, you were here when I 

was talking earlier, there is really no way to verify if a 12-year-old is 

registering a birth date that says they are 16, is there? 

 MR. ANGUS. That is right. 

 MS. DEGETTE. As you said, you can go and if they try to back up 

and redo the-- 

 MR. ANGUS. You can-- 
278

 MS. DEGETTE. But the 12-year-olds--I am telling you right now 

because I have watched it personally with my eyes, I watched an 11-

year-old sign up--that would be my daughter--for a MySpace site, and 

you know that is happening, right? 

 MR. ANGUS. They can do it. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And it is happening, and you don’t have a way to 

stop that really, do you? 

 MR. ANGUS. We are doing everything that we can including 

updating those search algorithms and again, it is our belief-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Actually, there is more you could do because Mr. 

Kelly is doing some of it although his site is so restricted anyway 

because of the way they sign users up but you can do algorithms that will 

go beyond just the date of birth that they register to start to weed out 

some of the underage users. 

 MR. ANGUS. Oh, yes. Our-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. And are you working on that? 

 MR. ANGUS. The algorithms that I spoke of actually scan not just the 

user information that the users input when they register but all of the text 

that they put on their site. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And is that vigorously done? 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes, it-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. And how many people are screened out every week 

because they are underage using those algorithms? 

 MR. ANGUS. I don’t know the weekly number. I know that over 

200,000 have been removed from the site and I-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Since when? 

 MR. ANGUS. I don’t know the answer to that. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent Mr. 

Angus be allowed to supplement his testimony. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Without objection. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Thank you. 

 MR. ANGUS. Thank you. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Now, I would ask you, Mr. Angus--all three of you 

testified that your customer service personnel take complaints of child 

pornography and other inappropriate actions but I would ask you, Mr. 

Angus, would you object if we could figure out which regulatory agency 

could take those complaints and if they were adequately funded either by 

a government-industry consortium or some other way--I really--I am 

very intrigued with what the U.K. and Australia do where they have the 

little link right on their website where the report can go to an experienced 

law enforcement agency. Would you agree and participate in helping us 

find a way to do that kind of reporting? 

 MR. ANGUS. We would welcome that, yes. 
279

 MS. DEGETTE. And Mr. Kelly, would you? 

 MR. KELLY. Yes, we would welcome that. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And what about you, Mr. Hiler? 

 MR. HILER. The same. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Now, I just think that way you don’t have to have 

recent college graduates who are really there for consumer protection to 

be making law enforcement decisions, right? 

 MR. HILER. Um-hum. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Okay. Mr. Hiler, I want to ask you a couple of 

questions because you testified that your company has recently decided 

to keep all IP addresses for users that are on your site, correct? 

 MR. HILER. Just to clarify, we have since the beginning of the site to 

my knowledge always retained the IP address upon registration. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And are you keeping any other IP information? 

 MR. HILER. We are now working with the National Center to 

establish what other IPs might be useful for them in the cyber tip line 

reporting and law enforcement in general. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Okay. And you are going to store the data 

indefinitely? 

 MR. HILER. All IP registration data that we store, we will retain and 

preserve indefinitely. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And why do you do this? 

 MR. HILER. We are deeply committed to helping law enforcement. 

One of the things that the National Center has pointed out is that if we 

give them the IP address of a member who has uploaded child porn and 

the IP address is above a certain amount of months, it may not be useful 

to them for some of the reasons that were cited in yesterday’s hearing 

and so if we can get a fresh IP, that is absolutely critical to law 

enforcement. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And when are you talking about that fresh IP, what 

you mean is when they upload a photograph? 

 MR. HILER. Yes. So now for every-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. That is what you are keeping as well? 

 MR. HILER. In just a few days every photo uploaded is going to have 

an IP address associated with it. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And you will save that data as well as the initial 

user-- 

 MR. HILER. Absolutely. We will save that indefinitely. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Okay. And do you know how much it is going to 

cost you do to that? 

 MR. HILER. I don’t know. We store vast amounts of photos. That 

costs a lot of money. Sticking on an IP address, I can’t imagine that is 

going to be a huge portion of the cost. 
280

 MS. DEGETTE. Mr. Kelly, you are nodding your head. Do you-- 

 MR. KELLY. We tag--every photo on Facebook is connected to a 

user account at this point so there is a direct connection there, and I 

would be surprised if adding an IP address to those pieces of 

information. We have it currently in our logs. It probably wouldn’t 

make it-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. How long do you retain that IP-- 

 MR. KELLY. Indefinitely. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Indefinitely. And Mr. Hiler, you get subpoenas for 

this information from law enforcement agencies, correct? 

 MR. HILER. We do get subpoenas. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And how often do you get those subpoenas? 

 MR. HILER. Not as often as--we have a strong safety record. A 

couple a month perhaps. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And you compile them within one to two days. Is 

that correct? 

 MR. HILER. If not faster. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Okay. Do you ever get subpoenas, Mr. Kelly? 

 MR. KELLY. Yes. We get about two to three a week. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Two to three a week, and how quickly do you 

comply? 

 MR. KELLY. We comply as quickly as we can, usually within 24 to 

48 hours. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Do either one of you gentlemen think that it would 

be overly burdensome--from what you know about your business 

keeping this IP address information, not even the photographs but just 

the addresses, do you think it would be overly burdensome for Congress 

to make a rule that says that ISPs would have to keep that information for 

1 year? 

 MR. KELLY. The only concern I would put out there is the idea that 

the technology would get ahead of the law but as a best practice, I don’t 

have a problem with that. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Mr. Hiler. 

 MR. HILER. Thank you. Yes. In our case, we own our own 

technology platform so for us to add a point at which we capture IP is a 

fairly trivial matter. For ISPs, from what I understand, this sort of IP 

collection is not baked into the technology so-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. But they keep that information now. 

 MR. HILER. I don’t-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. They told me they keep it now. 

 MR. HILER. They keep the IP-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. The only question is, how long do they keep it for. 

They keep the IP addresses though. 
281

 MR. HILER. Of the photos that are uploaded? 

 MS. DEGETTE. They don’t--they--yes, they do. 

 MR. HILER. Okay. My understanding was that the ISPs retain and 

preserve the IPs of all visitors, and so for them, that is much more 

onerous and burdensome preservation request. 

 MS. DEGETTE. But they already do that. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. I didn’t understand that they kept the photos. 

 MS. DEGETTE. No, but when people turn on their computers or 

upload information and if there is a new IP address generated, then they 

keep that as well. Mr. Angus, I didn’t mean to leave you out. 

 MR. ANGUS. Thank you. 

 MS. DEGETTE. How long does your company retain this 

information? 

 MR. ANGUS. As a media-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. The address. 

 MR. ANGUS. As a media company, Fox is very supportive of data 

retention. It helps us to police piracy. We retain IP addresses associated 

with registrations indefinitely and we retain IP addresses associated with 

all other communications on our site for at least 90 days. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Okay. 

 MR. ANGUS. And we work with law enforcement, and if law 

enforcement sends us a preservation request in connection with an 

investigation, we will preserve that information indefinitely pending-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Right, and you know, the thing is, the preservation 

requests are different from subpoenas for IP addresses because the 

preservation requests are when they see the activity going on. Later on 

they might need to find out where a perpetrator is and subpoena that 

address. 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes. 

 MS. DEGETTE. And do you have any idea how much it would cost 

your company to preserve those IP addresses for 12 months instead of 90 

days? 

 MR. ANGUS. I don’t, but again, the IP logs are such a small amount 

of data that I can’t imagine that it would be cost prohibitive but-- 

 MS. DEGETTE. Yes, I can’t either. 

 MR. ANGUS. --it is something that we are certainly willing to 

explore. 

 MS. DEGETTE. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. At this time I recognize the Vice 

Chairman of the committee, Mr. Walden. 

 MR. WALDEN. Thank you very, much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Angus, I 

want to go through on MySpace.com, kind of how this works, and 
282

following up on what some of my colleagues have already asked. First 

of all, it is up to the person registering to tell you how old they are, right? 

 MR. ANGUS. That is correct. 

 MR. WALDEN. Which is the equivalent of going to the liquor store 

without ever having to show ID and say I am 21 when you are 18, not 

that anybody has ever done that, least of all Dr. Burgess. 

 MR. BURGESS. I certainly haven’t. 

 MR. WALDEN. But it is in effect a self-reporting mechanism, right? 

 MR. ANGUS. That is correct. 

 MR. WALDEN. And you don’t have, and I assume your colleagues 

don’t have any real ability to determine to say to that registrant, show me 

your ID, show me your age. 

 MR. ANGUS. That is really the issue we are faced with is that age 

verification really amounts to identity verification and there is no viable 

means for us to do that today. 

 MR. WALDEN. Now, you could do that if you required some sort of 

credit card, a nominal 50-cent charge or something because most credit 

card companies don’t issue credit cards to those under 18. 

 MR. ANGUS. It would amount--it would allow--well, I think first of 

all, some of them do issue credit cards these days to very young users 

surprisingly and-- 

 MR. WALDEN. But that is going to be a small-- 

 MR. ANGUS. In addition, I think it is also very easy for users to get 

access to a credit card, especially if we are talking about a nominal fee, 

and I fear that again we are-- 

 MR. WALDEN. Well, but let us go back to--we are trying to find 

ways to give you the ability to ID somebody based on age. I mean, as a 

parent of a teenager, you can download songs off iTunes but it kind of 

needs the wallet needs a credit card, and that is true on other purchases, 

which involves the parents, at least in our household, and so I am just 

trying to figure out how you got there. There is nothing that stops a 

young person from using a pseudonym. “I am Mike Burgess and I was 

born in 1988 and I am 18,” right. Now, do you link that name and that 

age to the--do they have to list an email address? 

 MR. ANGUS. They do provide an email address with registration. 

 MR. WALDEN. And that is a requirement? 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes. 

 MR. WALDEN. It is a requirement. So you link that email address to 

that name and to that date of birth? 

 MR. ANGUS. That is correct. 

 MR. WALDEN. What if they come back later using the same email 

address but show up as a different name and a different date of birth? Do 

you track that? 
283

 MR. ANGUS. My understanding of our site functionality is that you 

can only register once with an email address. 

 MR. WALDEN. They can go to Yahoo! and create a new email or go 

to another ISP. 

 MR. ANGUS. Exactly. That was where I was going, Congressman, is 

that there are-- 

 MR. WALDEN. Just create a new name. 

 MR. ANGUS. That is certainly very easy these days to create 

numerous free Internet email accounts. 

 MR. WALDEN. You testified that your algorithms and other work, as 

laudable as it is, has identified 200,000 people you believe and removed 

them from your system. 

 MR. ANGUS. Correct. 

 MR. WALDEN. We don’t know the timeline under which that has 

occurred? 

 MR. ANGUS. That is right. 

 MR. WALDEN. But somewhere that has happened, 200,000. You 

also, if I heard you correctly earlier in testimony, said there are 250,000 

people registering today on average on MySpace. 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes. 

 MR. WALDEN. So you are actually targeting--your algorithms have 

identified very few people to kick off the system for being underage, 

right? 

 MR. ANGUS. Again, Congressman, I believe that that 200,000 figure 

is probably quite old at this point so again, I would appreciate the 

opportunity to supplement my testimony with more relevant and fresh 

data. 

 MR. WALDEN. Okay. That would be real helpful, especially in the 

context of today’s hearing to know if your algorithms work. That would 

seem to me to be a pretty basic number we should get, so that would be 

most helpful. In terms of--well, I have talked obviously to some kids, 

some friends of my own son and, they just sort of laugh at the notion that 

any of them--that they somehow would get caught for saying they are a 

certain age when they are not. Do you find that as you--I mean, do all of 

you find that among teenagers? I mean, do any of them take this 

seriously, and should they? Fundamentally, is there any reason they 

should take this seriously? 

 MR. KELLY. We have the different authentication token, the 

invitation that you get to get authenticated into a high school network 

and in the neighborhood watch associated with that so our expectation of 

our users is that they will be interacting with students who are in the real 

world around them and so they do in fact take it seriously. I would 

encourage all of the members to talk to their young staff who are recent 
284

college graduates about the difference that Facebook has made on 

college campuses, and now it is beginning to have the same difference on 

high school campuses. 

 MR. WALDEN. Right. Actually, I have heard about your service and 

in the context of younger people and they tell me the same thing, that it is 

a whole different deal, and I am not criticizing what you all do. I think 

we are all struggling with how do we protect our kids from the kind of 

violent encounters that are occurring every day in America in 

neighborhoods like ours with people that we could pass in the hall today. 

How do we do that together? And that is why we are probing so hard 

here, I think, is that what you are telling me is, Mr. Angus, you can’t tell 

a 14-year-old from a 40-year-old. 

 MR. ANGUS. Well, Congressman, one of the things that you 

mentioned is that we do require an email address to register for the site. 

One of the things that we have been discussing internally is whether it 

would be possible to create a national registry of email addresses for 

convicted sex offenders and whether that is something that could be 

maintained as a database against which we could check registrants and 

screen them out from the service entirely. 

 MR. WALDEN. And while I don’t want to take away from 

brainstorming techniques, nothing stops them from going to a free 

service and just getting a different email account. 

 MR. ANGUS. Well, if we criminalize that, then there are 

ramifications. 

 MR. WALDEN. Yes, I mean, but perverted acts somewhere are also 

criminal and if they are going to chase down kids and do horrible things 

to them, they are probably not going to hesitate going to Hotmail and 

getting a new email address, with all due respect. I appreciate what you 

are trying to get to. I think we are all saying, how do you do that? 

Maybe a registry gets you there, but I don’t know. It is just--that is a 

good question. That is why you have staff. Do any of you check against 

any kind of sex offender registry today to see if they have spaces? 

 MR. ANGUS. We don’t. The numerous registries aren’t readily 

available to us. It is not something that we-- 

 MR. WALDEN. Isn’t that available through law enforcement? In 

some States they are public, I am told. Could we suggest that maybe you 

incorporate that in as you plan in the future? 

 MR. ANGUS. I don’t believe they include email addresses but I could 

be wrong. I mean, to the extent that they do and they are required to 

register those, I-- 

 MR. WALDEN. What if they include name and address? Don’t you 

require that? 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes, we do, not address but name. 
285

 MR. WALDEN. So the extent at least they are dumb enough to use 

their real name-- 

 MR. ANGUS. Certainly. If someone were to use-- 

 MR. KELLY. That is the problem, Congressman, is that the 

likelihood that they will use their real name on an open service is very 

low. 

 MR. WALDEN. So that gets back to my point about if they are going 

to do illegal acts with a minor, they are going to get a different email 

address to. But at least you might catch--I mean, after what we saw 

yesterday from Chris Hansen on how this one fellow shows up twice to 

the same scam, I believe some of these guys are stupid enough to use 

their real name probably and their email address, and if you weed out 

one-- 

 MR. ANGUS. Yes. 

 MR. WALDEN. I mean-- 

 MR. ANGUS. If we could create a national registry, I think that 

would make it even better for us. 

 MR. WALDEN. Well, that is something we will take into 

consideration, but certainly I would think as you incorporate in other data 

and connect up with law enforcement, it would be an easy question to 

ask each law enforcement agency with whom you work, do you have a 

list, can you give us names, we will run them through our check. I mean, 

if you are checking for amount of skin in an image and that sort of thing 

and however your logarithms work, you think you ought to check, John 

Doe, who happens to be a sex offender, against it and weed them out. It 

is just real troubling what we have seen and learned and all that, and we 

are going to put pressure on organizations like yours because bottom 

line, you are in it to make money or Fox wouldn’t have bought you, or I 

guess you are now Newscorp’s or--I mean, these are money-making 

enterprises or you wouldn’t be here, and as a result, there is an obligation 

to try and make them safe and we have an obligation to work with you to 

achieve that common goal and not to end up chasing people off into 

completely irresponsible sites. We recognize the boundaries. So I 

appreciate you being here today and the work you are trying to do to get 

there. We’ve just got a ways to go. 

 MR. ANGUS. Thank you, Congressman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you. Dr. Burgess, I understand you have 

another question. 

 MR. BURGESS. Just if I might, Mr. Chairman. To all three on the 

panel, do you have a concept of the number of cases you have referred to 

law enforcement from kids clicking on an icon on your site and reporting 

aberrant behavior? 
286

 MR. ANGUS. I would want to reserve the right to supplement the 

record. 

 MR. BURGESS. And if we-- 

 MR. ANGUS. From my memory, it would be probably about 100. 

 MR. BURGESS. And how many prosecutions from those referrals? 

 MR. ANGUS. Actually it depends on if you count cases in which we 

have participated or cases in which we have directly referred. There 

have been--I actually don’t know the number of prosecutions that have 

resulted. 

 MR. BURGESS. If you wouldn’t mind asking your department, Mr. 

Angus. 

 MR. HILER. I likewise would like the opportunity to supplement. 

 MR. BURGESS. And just so that we have some context within which 

to put it, you sign up 250,000 new members a day and have how many 

active members on your site? 

 MR. ANGUS. Over 85 million. 

 MR. BURGESS. And Mr. Kelly, you referenced eight million but I 

suspect the number is larger now? 

 MR. KELLY. We have eight million, just over eight million 

registered users and growing quite rapidly every day. 

 MR. BURGESS. Yes, and if I do my math right, that is one customer 

service representative for every 475,000 people? 

 MR. KELLY. Um-hum. It is like a Congressman representing-- 

 MR. BURGESS. Yeah. Got you. Mr. Hiler, how about yourself? Do 

you know the number of cases you have referred to law enforcement? 

 MR. HILER. I don’t. I can tell you that we have reported several 

hundred cases to the National Center and the cyber tip line, and we have 

27 million members on our site roughly, and I can get back to you on the 

number of cases we have referred to law enforcement but also that we 

have processed. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. You all can provide that for the record. 

 MR. BURGESS. With nearly 100 million registrants between the three 

of you, has there been one case prosecuted that any of you are aware of? 

 MR. ANGUS. We know of a couple of cases that have been 

prosecuted. 

 MR. BURGESS. And you will provide us that information as well? 

 MR. ANGUS. We participated in a number of prosecutions and I am 

not sure whether they have resulted from proactive referrals or contact 

from law enforcement. 

 MR. BURGESS. Very good. And just one last question, Mr. Kelly. 

Do you feel like you have been adequately responsive to school if there 

are sites that the kids might use for bullying? One of the issues, 

particularly as you get into the high school level but I guess it could 
287

happen in college as well, the peer pressure groups and the bullying 

activities, do you adequately police for that as well? 

 MR. KELLY. We are very concerned about that and where it is a 

violation of our terms of service and of our community standards to 

launch a hate site against an individual or against a group and we take 

those down as quickly as we find them. 

 MR. BURGESS. And how would you rate your responsiveness to 

schools in general? 

 MR. KELLY. I would rate our responsiveness as very good. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

 MR. BURGESS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. We have to move on. Thank you all very much for 

your testimony, and our staff will be back with you on the information 

that we requested. At this time I would like to call the third panel: the 

Honorable Pamela Jones Harbour, who is Commissioner of the Federal 

Trade Commission, Mr. Diego Ruiz, who is the Deputy Chief, Office of 

Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, Federal Communications 

Commission, and the Honorable Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General 

of the State of Connecticut. Thank you all very much for being with us 

this afternoon and for your patience. As you know, this is the Oversight 

and Investigations Subcommittee. We do take testimony under oath. Do 

any of you have difficulty in testifying under oath? Okay. Do any of 

you desire to be represented by legal counsel? Okay. Raise your right 

hand. 

 [Witnesses sworn.] 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you very much. You are under oath now, 

and Commissioner Harbour, we recognize you for your 5-minute 

opening statement. 

STATEMENTS OF THE HONORABLE PAMELA JONES 

HARBOUR, COMMISSIONER, FEDERAL TRADE 

COMMISSION; DIEGO RUIZ, DEPUTY CHIEF, OFFICE OF 

STRATEGIC PLANNING AND POLICY ANALYSIS, 

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION; AND THE 

HONORABLE RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, ATTORNEY 

GENERAL, STATE OF CONNECTICUT 

MS. HARBOUR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Stupak, and members of the subcommittee. 

 I thank you for holding this hearing today on a very important topic, 

making the Internet safe for children. I also appreciate the opportunity to 

discuss the Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to help parents and 
288

children understand and manage the risks of social networking sites on 

the Internet. 

 The Internet has revolutionized the way that people communicate 

with each other. Email, chat rooms, and instant messaging are just a few 

of those ways. Today’s social networking sites are the next generation in 

communications technology. Children have enthusiastically and 

passionately embraced this technology. MySpace, as we have heard, and 

Facebook reportedly rank among the top ten websites among young 

people ages 12 to 17. Social networking sites provide these young 

people with a forum to express themselves creatively, exchange ideas or 

make new friends across the country and around the world. Like other 

activities on the Internet, however, social networking sites pose risks to 

children. In particular, sexual predators may use the information that 

children provide on these sites to identify, contact, and exploit them. 

These significant risks and opportunities require a whole new entry in the 

book of parenting. 

 The Federal Trade Commission is extremely committed to helping 

create a safer online experience for children through consumer education 

and targeted law enforcement. In May the FTC released two userfriendly consumer education brochures. The first is directed to parents. 

It describes in non-technical terms what social networking sites are, how 

they can pose risks to children and how parents can monitor what their 

children are doing in cyberspace. For example, the publication 

encourages parents to keep their computers in a common area in the 

home and to encourage the use of privacy settings that restrict who can 

access their children’s sites. 

 The second FTC publication is directed to teens and tweens. Tweens 

are children between the ages of eight and 12. The brochure counsels 

children to think about how a social networking site works before they 

decide to join it. For example, some sites limit access to a defined or 

closed community of users. The publication also warns children never to 

post information that can be used to locate them or steal their identities 

such as their full name, their address, or phone number and above all, 

children must know that engaging in risky behavior online can have 

serious, even deadly consequences offline. 

 The FTC’s consumer information on social networking sites is also 

featured prominently on OnGuardOnline.gov. This is an innovative, 

multimedia website designed to educate consumers about basic computer 

security practices. OnGuardOnline offers information and guidance on 

social networking sites, wireless security, identity theft, and more. It 

also includes a video for parents on teaching kids online safety. 

OnGuardOnline has been enormously successful, attracting between 

6,000 and 7,000 unique visitor hits each day in the past 2 months alone. 
289

I am pleased that Comcast.net, Verizon DSL, TRUSTe, many Members 

of Congress, and at least seven of the social networking sites that are 

most popular with teens have already provided links to the FTC 

materials. We encourage businesses everywhere to use these materials to 

raise awareness among their customers. 

 In addition to providing critical consumer education materials, the 

FTC enforces the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. 

Congress enacted COPPA to prohibit unfair or deceptive practices in the 

collection, use, or disclosure of personally identifiable information from 

and about children on the Internet. The law gives parents the power to 

control whether information is collected online from their children under 

13 and how this information may be used. Website operators must take 

several affirmative steps before collecting, using, or disclosing personal 

information from a child. Operators must provide their privacy policies 

to parents. They must obtain verifiable consent from a parent or a 

guardian before collecting the personal information from a child, and 

they must maintain reasonable procedures to protect that information. 

The FTC staff is currently investigating several social networking sites to 

determine whether these sites are in compliance with COPPA. 

 And in conclusion, consumer, government, advertisers, and 

technology companies all have a shared interest and responsibility in 

creating a secure online environment. The Federal Trade Commission is 

committed to the important work of safeguarding children’s information 

online and educating consumers about the risks involved in social 

networking. We look forward to working with members of this 

subcommittee to provide greater security and privacy for American 

consumers. Thank you. 

 [The prepared statement of the Hon. Pamela Jones Harbor follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. PAMELA JONES HARBOUR, COMMISSIONER, FEDERAL 

TRADE COMMISSION

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Stupak, and members of the Subcommittee, I am 

Pamela Jones Harbour, a Commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” or 

“Commission”).1

 I appreciate this opportunity to discuss the Commission’s efforts to 

help ensure that parents and children understand the risks of social networking websites 

and the steps they can take to reduce these risks before participating on such sites. 

 

1

 This written statement reflects the views of the Federal Trade Commission. My oral 

statements and responses to any questions you may have represent my own views, and do not 

necessarily reflect the views of the Commission or any other individual Commissioner. 
290

I. Introduction 

Technology constantly changes the ways that consumers can communicate with 

each other. The telephone was the primary technology consumers used to converse for 

most of the last century. During the 1980's and the 1990's, personal computers and the 

Internet vastly expanded the options available for consumers to communicate with each 

other – email, chat rooms, online bulletin boards, and instant messaging, to name a few. 

Social networking websites2

 are the next generation in communications technology, 

providing a platform for multi-faceted communication between participating users. 

Children, especially teens and tweens,3

 have embraced this online technology. 

According to a 2005 report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 87% of 

children between the ages of 12 and 17 are online, and approximately 11 million of them 

access the Internet every day.4

 Teen use of social networking websites in particular has 

exploded recently. MySpace and Facebook reportedly rank among the top ten websites 

among children age 12 to 17, based on the average minutes they spent online.5

At the same time that social networking websites offer online communication, 

camaraderie, and community among teens and tweens, they, like other activities on the 

Internet, also can pose risks. Because the information that children post on their online 

journals, web logs or “blogs” can be accessed by other Internet users, social networking 

websites raise heightened privacy and security concerns. In particular, sexual predators 

may use the information that children provide on social networking sites to identify, 

contact, and exploit them,6

 unless these sites are constructed to reduce access to this 

information, or users themselves take steps to limit unwanted access. 

The Federal Trade Commission is committed to helping create a safer online 

experience for children. I will discuss in more detail the agency’s efforts to help protect 

children through consumer education and targeted law enforcement. In addition, I will 

discuss the need for social networking websites – individually, collectively, and, most 

importantly, expeditiously – to develop and implement safety features to protect children 

who visit their sites and empower parents to protect their children when they do so. 

II. Consumer Education

In response to the rapid increase in use of social networking sites by teens and 

tweens, one element of the FTC’s “safe networking” program has been to develop userfriendly consumer education materials, both for parents and for children. Last month, the 

agency posted on our website two consumer publications providing practical guidance to 

parents, teens, and tweens about using social networking websites safely. 

A. Advice for Parents 

It is, of course, critically important for parents to know what their children are doing 

in cyberspace. Accordingly, one of the FTC’s publications is directed specifically to 

 

2

 Social networking sites host weblogs, or “blogs.” A blog is a website where regular entries are 

made (such as in a journal or diary). Blogs often function as an online author’s personal journal that 

also may contain hypertext, images, and links to video or audio files or other Web pages. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog. 3

 For purposes of this testimony, teens are children age 13 to 17, while tweens are children age 8 

to 12. 

4 See Pew Internet & American Life Project Report, Teens and Technology: Youth Are Leading 

the Transition to a Fully Wired and Mobile Nation (July 27, 2005), available at 

http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Tech_July2005web.pdf. 5 See comScore Media Metrix survey, The Score: Teens Highly Engaged Online (Mar. 16, 

2006), available at http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/8691.asp. 6 See, e.g., Michigan Teen Home Safe & Sound: Authorities Say 16-Year-Old Flew To Mideast 

For 'MySpace' Rendezvous (June 12, 2006), available at 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/09/tech/main1697653.shtml; Tehani Schneider & Adam 

Teliercio, Free Expression Blooms in Risk-laden MySpace, Morristown Daily Record, May 14, 

2006. 
291

parents, and describes in non-technical terms what social networking websites are, how 

they can pose risks to children, and how parents can monitor their children’s activities on 

such sites.7 The publication encourages parents to keep their home computers in an open 

area, such as the kitchen or family room, so that they can see where their children go 

when they go online.8

 Parents should use the Internet with their children, and visit 

popular sites, including social networking sites if their children are using them. Parents 

should review the information their children post on blog sites,9 and encourage the use of 

privacy settings to restrict who can access and post on their children’s sites. 

B. Advice for Children

Another FTC publication is directed to teens and tweens, and gives them important 

safety tips if they are using social networking sites.10 The brochure counsels them to 

think about how a particular social networking website works before they decide to join. 

For example, some sites allow only access by a defined community of users. Others 

allow anyone and everyone to view their postings. If teens and tweens decide to join a 

particular social networking website, they should consider using the site’s particular 

privacy settings to limit access to their postings. 

Moreover, the publication warns teens and tweens to be cautious about the 

information they post. They should post neither information that can be used to locate 

them in the offline world (for example, they should not post their full name, address, 

phone number), nor information that could be used to facilitate identity theft. The agency 

also warns them that school admissions officers and potential employers may be able to 

look at their photos and postings. Finally, it warns that once information is posted online, 

it may be impossible to take it back. Even if the teen or tween deletes the information 

from his or her own site, older versions may still exist on other people’s computers. 

Above all, children must know that engaging in risky behavior online (such as “flirting” 

with someone they do not know offline) can have serious, even deadly, consequences, 

and they should be wary about meeting in person someone whom they know only from 

the online world. 

C. OnGuardOnline

The FTC’s consumer information on social networking websites also is featured 

prominently on OnGuardOnline.gov, an innovative multimedia website designed to 

educate consumers about basic computer security practices. OnGuardOnline has become 

the hallmark of the Commission’s larger cybersecurity campaign. OnGuardOnline is 

built around seven timeless tips about online safety.11 In addition, the site hosts specific 

 

7 See FTC Facts for Consumers: Social Networking Sites: A Parents’ Guide (May 2006), 

available at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/tech/tec13.pdf. 8

 A March 2005 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 31% of 8 to 18 year olds 

have a computer in their bedroom, and 20% have Internet access in their rooms. See Generation M: 

Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds (Mar. 9, 2005), available at 

http://www.kff.org/entmedia/7251.cfm. 

9

 According to a recent study, sixty-one percent (61%) of teens reveal their contact information 

on their blogs by disclosing their email address (44%), instant messenger name (44%), or a link to a 

personal home page (30%). Fifty-nine percent (59%) reveal their location in terms of a city or state. 

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of teen bloggers provide their birth date, and twenty percent (20%) 

disclose their full name. See David Huffaker, Teen Blogs Exposed: The Private Lives of Teens Made 

Public (2006), available at 

http://www.soc.northwestern.edu/gradstudents/huffaker/papers/Huffaker-2006-AAAS-Teen_Blogs.p

df. 

10 See FTC Facts for Consumers: Social Networking Sites: Safety Tips for Teens and Tweens 

(May 2006), available at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/tech/tec14.pdf. 11 See http://www.OnGuardOnline.gov. The seven tips are described in detail in the FTC 

publication, Stop Think Click: Seven Practices for Safer Computing, available at 

http://onguardonline.gov/stopthinkclick.html. The seven practices for safer computing are: (1) 

Protect your personal information; (2) Know who you’re dealing with; (3) Use anti-virus and anti-
292

information modules on topics such as social networking, wireless security, identity theft, 

phishing, spyware, and spam. OnGuardOnline features up-to-date articles from the 

Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (USCERT), such as a newly added piece on the troubling practice of “Cyberbullying,” that is, 

using technology to harass, or bully, someone else. There also is a video for parents on 

“Teaching Kids Online Safety.” 

In the past two months, OnGuardOnLine has had between six and seven thousand 

unique visitors each day. In early June 2006, the FTC’s social networking tips for 

parents and tips for teens and tweens were, respectively, the second and third most 

popular pages on OnGuardOnline, after the site’s home page. Comcast.net recently 

promoted the social networking module as a “featured link,” driving significant traffic to 

the website, and Verizon DSL’s customer default homepage and TRUSTe link directly to 

the social networking module, as well. 

OnGuardOnline was developed through a partnership with cybersecurity experts, 

consumer advocates, online marketers, and other federal agencies. It is a great example 

of public-private cooperation. The agency deliberately branded OnGuardOnline 

independently of the Federal Trade Commission to encourage other organizations to 

make the information their own and to disseminate it in ways that reach the most 

consumers. 

Many of the social networking websites themselves have linked directly to the social 

networking module on OnGuardOnline. Thus far, eleven of the social networking 

websites most popular with teens either have already posted links to FTC materials or 

have informed our staff that they will do so in the near future,12 and these links have 

directly contributed to the increased traffic at OnGuardOnline. 

III. Law Enforcement

Congress enacted the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act – or COPPA – to 

prohibit unfair or deceptive acts or practices in connection with the collection, use, or 

disclosure of personally identifiable information from and about children on the 

Internet.13 The statute gives parents the power to determine whether and what 

information is collected online from their children under age 13, and how such 

information may be used. COPPA, and its implementing rules, apply to operators of 

websites directed to children under the age of 13.14 They also apply to operators of 

general audience websites who have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal 

information from children under the age of 13, which includes some social networking 

websites.15

 spyware software, as well as a firewall, and update them regularly; (4) Be sure to set up your 

operating system and Web browser software properly, and update them regularly; (5) Protect your 

passwords; (6) Back up important files; and (7) Learn who to contact if something goes wrong 

online. 

12 The sites that have posted links to OnGuardOnline include: Alloy 

(http://www.sconex.com/content/safety.php); Buzznet (http://www.buzznet.com); Facebook 

(http://www.facebook.com/help.php?tab=abuse); Friendsorenemies 

(http://www.friendsorenemies.com/about.php); MyYearbook (http://www.myyearbook.com); 

TagWorld (http://tagworld.com/-/Main.aspx).; and Yahoo! 360_ (http://security.yahoo.com). The 

sites that have informed FTC staff that they will post the materials are: HI5; Microsoft Spaces; 

MySpace; and Tagged. 

13 See Statement of Basis and Purpose, 16 C.F.R. Part 312. 14 See Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 6501-6508, and the Commission’s 

COPPA Rule, 16 C.F.R. Part 312. 

15 The Commission has brought two cases in which website operators were alleged to have had 

actual knowledge that they were collecting personal information from children under 13 on their 

general audience websites. See United States v. UMG Recordings, Inc., Civ. No. CV-04-1050 JFW 

(Ex) (C.D. Cal. Feb. 17, 2004) (civil penalty of $400,000); United States v. Bonzi Software, Inc., 
293

COPPA and its implementing Rule mandate that website operators take several 

affirmative steps before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from a child 

under age 13. They must post on their websites a copy of their privacy policy. Operators 

also must provide parents with a notice describing their privacy policies. They must 

obtain verifiable consent from a parent or guardian before collecting personal information 

from children. And once operators have collected this information, they must establish 

and maintain reasonable procedures to protect its confidentiality, security, and integrity.16

The FTC staff currently is investigating several social networking websites to 

determine whether they are in compliance with COPPA and its implementing Rule. 

IV. Looking Ahead: Self-Regulation and Industry Best Practices 

Consumers, government, technology companies, and advertisers all have a shared 

interest and responsibility in creating a secure online environment. Social networking 

website operators are no exception. 

The social networking industry has a clear incentive to create a safe online 

community. They owe this to their users, and sites that do not make online safety a 

priority may find it hard to compete with those that do. Some social networking websites 

already allow users to restrict access to the information they post, such as by creating 

sites with more closed, defined communities or enhancing specific privacy features on 

their sites. 

Last week, two summits addressed issues posed by social networking sites, one 

hosted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the other hosted by 

WiredSafety.org. These summits focused, in part, on industry best practices. These 

meetings are positive steps to encouraging a meaningful industry response to the risks 

that social networking sites pose for children. The Commission hopes that the 

momentum from these summits continues to build so that industry best practices are 

developed and implemented as quickly as possible. 

V. Conclusion

The Commission has been at the forefront of efforts to safeguard children’s 

information online and to educate consumers about the risks involved in social 

networking. The agency is committed to continuing this important work. The FTC also 

is committed to working with this Subcommittee to provide greater security and privacy 

for American consumers. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Commissioner Harbour, and at this 

time, Mr. Ruiz, you are recognized for a 5-minute opening statement. 

MR. RUIZ. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Whitfield, 

Ranking Member Stupak, and other distinguished members of the 

subcommittee. 

 On behalf of the Federal Communications Commission, I would like 

to thank you for the opportunity to speak regarding the role of ISPs and 

social networking sites in the context of much needed efforts to protect 

the Nation’s children from online exploitation and abuse. The 

 Civ. No. CV-04-1048 RJK (Ex) (C.D. Cal. Feb. 17, 2004) (civil penalty of $75,000). Neither of 

these cases involved social networking sites. 

16 The COPPA Rule also empowers parents to protect their children under 13 even after 

consenting to a website operator’s collecting information from them. If and when parents ask, site 

operators must provide them with the means to review the personal information that has been 

collected from their children. A site also must give parents the opportunity to prevent further 

collection or use of that information, as well as the chance to delete the information.
294

Commission shares the concern of Congress that children be protected 

from exploitation and abuse on the Internet. Given the importance of 

this issue and its implications for the safety and well-being of American 

families, the Commission is committed to working with Congress to do 

everything we can under the authority we are given. 

 As this subcommittee and Congress consider draft legislation to 

address the sexual exploitation of children over the Internet, we welcome 

your guidance on the Commission’s role going forward. Should 

Congress choose to take action in this area, the Commission stands ready 

to implement any new mandates aggressively. 

 The Commission historically has had an important role in protecting 

children’s interests and has implemented several programs intended to 

help protect children from exposure to inappropriate content over 

communications networks regulated by the Commission. For example, 

current Federal law restricts the broadcast of obscene, indecent, and 

profane programming. The Commission has implemented this law by 

adopting regulations which prohibit the broadcast of indecent material 

between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., which are those hours of the 

day when children are most likely to be watching or tuning in. 

 In addition, the Commission has promulgated regulations prohibiting 

the broadcast of obscene material at any time, and Section 1464 of Title 

18 prohibits the transmission of obscene content through any type of 

radio communications. The Federal Communications Commission has 

imposed substantial penalties where violations have been established. 

Indeed, Congress just recently amended the Communications Act to 

increase tenfold the forfeiture penalty for carrying indecent, obscene, or 

profane material. We believe that this should reduce the likelihood that 

some broadcasters might consider the forfeiture penalty for indecent 

programming an acceptable cost of doing business and will thus improve 

the effectiveness of our enforcement efforts in this area. 

 The Commission has also taken a variety of actions designed to help 

protect children from inappropriate content. Specifically, the 

Commission provides mechanisms to allow parents to restrict children’s 

access to television programming by requiring that TV sets be equipped 

with V-chip technology. As you may know, V-chips allow the display of 

television program ratings which are derived from a voluntary system 

developed by the industry. 

 The Commission also provides a means to allow parents to block 

children’s access to inappropriate content available over the telephone. 

Under the Commission’s rules, local exchange carriers that are involved 

in transmitting and billing interstate pay per call and other information 

services, often referred to as 900 numbers, must offer an option to block 

access to such services. 
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 And lastly, pursuant to Section 640 of the Communications Act, the 

Commission has adopted rules that require a cable operator upon 

subscriber request to fully scramble or block the audio and video 

portions of programming services not subscribed to by a household. 

 Unlike other entities, ISPs are subjected to limited regulations under 

the Communications Act. Nevertheless, in specific instances where the 

Commission does have authority, we have implemented programs 

governing the transmission of certain content by ISPs. For example, in 

2005 in response to the request of Federal law enforcement agencies, the 

Commission ensured that the requirements of the Communications 

Assistant for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, extend to broadband 

Internet access services and voice over Internet protocol services, or 

VOIP services. 

 We have also implemented a program designed to help protect 

children who use the Internet in schools and libraries from accessing 

inappropriate content. In 1996 the Commission established the schools 

and libraries universal service support mechanism, commonly known as 

the e-rate program. In the year 2000 Congress adopted the Children’s 

Internet Protection Act which provides that schools and libraries that 

have computers with Internet access must certify that they have in place 

certain Internet safety policies and technology protection measures in 

order to be eligible to receive support under the E-Rate program. The 

Commission established a corresponding regulation whereby in order to 

receive E-Rate funding, school and library authorities must certify that 

they are enforcing a policy of Internet safety that includes measures to 

block or filter Internet access to visual depictions that are, one, obscene, 

two, child pornography, or three, harmful to minors. 

 As Congress considers legislation in this area, it is important to keep 

in mind how any new legislative provisions might interact with the 

Communications Act’s existing framework, in particular, which Section 

503(B) of the Communications Act authorizes the Commission to 

impose forfeitures for violations of the Act as well as the Commission’s 

rules and orders. Those who do not hold a license, permit, certificate, or 

other Commission authorization, as many ISPs do not, currently may not 

be fined by the Commission in the first instance. Rather, the 

Commission is first required to issue such entities a citation and then 

may only impose a forfeiture in the event that they again engage in the 

cited conduct. 

 In conclusion, I wish to reiterate the Commission’s interest in taking 

action as appropriately directed by Congress in this important area. As I 

noted at the outset, the Commission stands ready to implement any new 

mandates aggressively. 
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 Thank you again for the opportunity to testify before you today, and 

I would be pleased to respond to any questions you may have. 

 [The prepared statement of Diego Ruiz follows:] 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF DIEGO RUIZ, DEPUTY CHIEF, OFFICE OF STRATEGIC PLANNING 

AND POLICY ANALYSIS, FEDERAL COMMUNICATION COMMISSION
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 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Ruiz. 
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 And Attorney General Blumenthal, we are glad to have you here. 

You are recognized for 5 minutes. 

MR. BLUMENTHAL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 

having me today. 

 Thank you most importantly for focusing this committee’s interests 

on this topic of paramount importance not only here in Washington but 

as every one of you knows in your own homes, in your States and your 

communities, and I am here not speaking on behalf of the attorneys 

general but I think what I have to say pretty much reflects the way we 

feel and there is a group of 20-plus--it is now 21, perhaps more attorneys 

general that have been in touch in continuing discussions with MySpace 

and some of the other social networking sites directly face to face, 

through correspondence, which we would be happy to provide you, and 

also in other contexts such as the recent conference that the National 

Center for Missing and Exploited Children; they had a very excellent 

conference here in Washington, and I would like my testimony if it may 

be to be part of the record here and just perhaps speak and summarize 

from my impressions of this day, and I know the committee has been 

through other days of testimony. 

 I think the committee can sort of feel that there is a disconnect here. 

There is a disconnect between what you just heard from this table, the 

witnesses who have implied that everything is under control, everything 

is fine, everything is in place, and that which you heard from my 

colleague, and he is a colleague because I have worked with Detective 

Dannahey in Connecticut on some of these cases about the horrible, the 

horrific cases of sexual assault. 

 We are not talking about offensive images, about pornography. We 

can differ on what is pornography and what is sexually explicit and what 

is offensive but we are talking about sexual assaults on 12- and 13-yearolds, and I can provide the committee with more documentation on these 

contacts and how they led to these sexual assaults. So that is the first 

disconnect. 

 The second is what you just heard about the Internet sex offender 

registry. There is ongoing an effort to establish a national Internet 

registry of sex offenders. Connecticut has recently become a part of it. 

In my view, all the States eventually will be. It is the result of this 

Congress’s initiative, the Jacob Wetterly Act, which in essence caused all 

of the States eventually to form these Internet registries, and I might just 

add as a footnote here, that I defended the Internet registry before the 

United States Supreme Court. I argued the case and we won it, nine to 

zero, over challenges based on privacy, due process. The courts 

understand, they get it, that this information is vital to be disseminated 

and it is vital for the social networking sites to use it. 
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 Let me make a third point, and this one really relates to the 

recommendations and the very strong feelings among the attorneys 

general group that more can be and must be done. Raising the age level, 

age verification central. Put aside all the complexities, and there are a lot 

of complexities to having 85 million people--it is probably up to 90 

million now--able to talk to each other in real time and yet these social 

networking sites are telling you we just can’t tell how old they are. But 

the most telling fact is, they are doing nothing, nothing in MySpace to 

verify age at all. 

 Let me make a couple of suggestions. If you raise the age level, 

verification of age becomes easier because you have driver’s licenses, 

you have credit cards, so they go hand in hand. Second, there are sites 

that require parental consent right now. There are companies in the 

United Kingdom that require parental consent that then is checked 

through driver’s licenses, other information, email addresses. This 

system may not be foolproof at this point but it can be at least instituted 

to provide some verification. I have made a number of other 

recommendations here. I would be happy to talk about them at greater 

length. 

 I want to emphasize two points in conclusion. First, parents always 

should be, always will be the first line of defense. I say that as the parent 

of four teenagers, and knowing how challenging these issues can be, and 

we have all been there. The committee members have very eloquently 

discussed their own experiences. But parents have a responsibility. 

MySpace can help them, must help them to do better. We want 

MySpace and the other social networking sites to do a better job 

voluntarily. We would much prefer to avoid government intrusion, 

regulation, intervention, and that is one reason why we haven’t set a 

deadline, we haven’t sued anyone. We want it to be voluntary. 

 But let me go back to what I regard as kind of the elephant in the 

room, which is Mr. Walden’s point. These sites have huge financial 

stakes. They are adding 250,000 people every day. That is bigger than 

any city in the State of Connecticut. They are adding the State of 

Connecticut every week, and their revenues are from advertising and 

their revenues are huge. MySpace alone has 15 percent of all the ads on 

the Internet. It was bought by Fox, the news corporation, less than a year 

ago, for $580 million. It is estimated to be worth multiples of that 

amount now, $3 to $6 billion, maybe more. So the deep pockets are 

there and more can be done. 

 Thank you. 

 [The prepared statement of Hon. Richard Blumenthal follows:] 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, ATTORNEY GENERAL, STATE 

OF CONNECTICUT
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 MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Attorney General Blumenthal, and you 

are exactly right. There is a lot of money involved, and I read that article 

also about the purchase price that was paid for MySpace.com, and I do 

agree with you and I think all of us do know that this Internet registry of 

sex offenders would provide tremendous help to law enforcement and all 

of us. Could you explain to us what the status of that is right now? You 

were involved in a lawsuit over that. 

 MR. BLUMENTHAL. The law was challenged, the Internet registry 

was challenged, but it was upheld by the United States Supreme Court 

some years ago and many States, like Connecticut, have Internet 

registries that set forth relevant details about the criminal offense, name, 

address. One fact that could be added and it has been suggested here is 

email address. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Right, right. 

 MR. BLUMENTHAL. And that very possibly is a fact that should be 

considered, and there are some downsides. There will be some 

arguments against it but it would at least permit in an email age some 

greater perspective and information out there. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Who were the plaintiffs in that case that challenged 

the legality? 

 MR. BLUMENTHAL. The Connecticut Civil Liberties Union. It was a 

John Doe but he was represented by the Connecticut Civil Liberties 

Union. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And you argued the case before the Supreme 

Court? 

 MR. BLUMENTHAL. Yes. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Mr. Ruiz, Detective Dannahey talked to us about 

teenagers’ access to cellular phones and how that is really going to make 

it more difficult to monitor as they can move pornographic sites, transmit 

pornographic photos, and so forth. Have there been any discussions 
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within the FCC about that issue and the reporting of those transmissions 

at all? 

 MR. RUIZ. Congressman, are you talking specifically about cellular 

phones? 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Requiring cellular phone companies to report the 

transmission of the images. 

 MR. RUIZ. I know that there have been efforts undertaken by the 

cellular phone industry to create parental block mechanisms and 

safeguards built into the devices and the functionalities that they offer. 

In terms of--and we have encouraged that effort. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Requiring it to be reported to NCMEC? 

 MR. RUIZ. Not to my knowledge, sir, but I would have to take that 

back and get back to you on that. 

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 MR. WHITFIELD. If you would just reply to us and supplement the 

record on that point, I would appreciate that very much. Commissioner 

Harbour, you talked about the OnGuardOnline, and I would ask you, 
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how is that different from the advisories that you issue on the FTC’s 

website? 

 MS. HARBOUR. Well, OnGuardOnline actually is on the website, but 

it is a multimedia website that deals with social networking; it deals with 

spyware adware; it deals with identity theft; it deals with spam. So for 

instance, regarding today’s hearing on social networking, we have a site 

that talks about social networking specifically and in fact we have two 

pamphlets which I referenced in my testimony that target parents and one 

that targets teens, giving them advice about-- 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And how do you market those or how do you get 

them out to the parents and the teenagers? 

 MS. HARBOUR. Seven of these social networking sites have links 

and we have commitments from 17 to link to our OnGuardOnline 

materials dealing with social networking. We also make our information 

available to law enforcement. I think that one of our crucial roles is 

getting the word out to our consumers, to our stakeholders, to parents, to 

Congress. Even when you break for the summer and you go back to 

your districts, it would be a wonderful thing to let your constituents 

know to educate them about some of the real perils on these social 

networking sites and perhaps encourage them to go to our site to look at 

our pamphlets. They were written specifically for parents in mind and 

also for teens and tweens. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And what measures are in place to determine the 

effectiveness of what you are doing with OnGuardOnline? 

 MS. HARBOUR. Well, we know that we have had six to seven 

thousand hits each day in the past 2 months and we think that that 

increase in traffic has to do with our site being linked to some of the 

social networking sites and we will be vigilant in trying to get all of them 

to link to our materials. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And let me ask you, the FTC, when you are talking 

about COPPA compliant, how do you determine if a social networking 

site is COPPA compliant? 

 MS. HARBOUR. Okay. What I referenced was COPPA, the 

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and it applies to sites directed 

at children under 13 or sites directed to general audience sites that have 

knowledge that they are collecting information from children under 13. 

So for instance, MySpace.com, for instance, if there were a child that 

they had knowledge was under the age of 13, that would implicate 

COPPA. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Right. 

 MS. HARBOUR. And as they have indicated, they will screen out-- 

 MR. WHITFIELD. And do you require these sites to register with the 

FTC? 
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 MS. HARBOUR. These sites are not required to register. Basically 

COPPA requires the sites who collect information from children under 

the age of 13 to get verifiable parental consent to collect information 

from them. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. We are getting ready to have a series of votes on 

the floor so I am going to recognize Mr. Stupak to give him an 

opportunity to ask some questions. 

 MR. STUPAK. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and I know we have seven 

votes coming up and I appreciate you all being here and helping us out. 

Should the sites be registered? Should these social networking sites be 

registered with the FTC? 

 MS. HARBOUR. When you say registered, Congressman, can you tell 

me what you mean by that? 

 MR. STUPAK. Well, give you notice where they are operating, the 

size of their use and things like this. I am trying to give you more 

information because quite frankly, until you mentioned your pamphlets, 

we had no idea on it, and if we don’t know, we would probably be the 

ones who would read the pamphlets. The kids aren’t reading these 

pamphlets. If it is not on the computer, it is not accessible, they are not 

going to read it. Even this so-called--this is MySpace terms and use 

agreement, it is eight pages long. I bet you there is not a kid in this 

country who probably read it. It is not cool enough. We don’t read it. 

None of us read it even when we are supposed to read them, right? So 

why do you think a kid is going to read it? So that is what I am looking 

for, registries or something we could do through a registry that would 

help you. 

 MS. HARBOUR. What I think we really need to do is, we need to get 

the word out. We need to educate parents. We need to educate children 

about reducing the risks when they are online, and we are open to getting 

that word out. We have all of our material online. 

 MR. STUPAK. Well, along those lines then, Mr. Blumenthal, in your 

attorney generals’ group, are you looking to target any of these sites? 

You mentioned the money they make off the advertising, of having to 

dedicate a certain amount or anything like that for advertising. I mean, I 

look at the Great Britain model and they had 18 percent of all the 

pornographic sites, if you will, down to four-tenths of one percent 

through that effective ad we saw earlier today. I don’t see that happening 

in this country. Now, we saw some today which looked pretty effective, 

but in all honesty, I have never seen them, but I don’t watch Fox either, 

so, I mean, I watch it at times but I have never seen it, and I should have 

asked the question when it was there. Have you guys come up with any 

kind of suggestions like that? 
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 MR. BLUMENTHAL. We don’t have suggestions for mandating 

spending of amounts of money on advertising. We are not in a sense in 

the business of telling these companies how to run their business. We 

are in the business of enforcing the law. And I must say, I am very 

gratified to hear that the FTC is investigating these sites for potential 

deceptive--and we are talking about basic deceptive and misleading 

practices under COPPA and that is a very important piece of news for me 

and I am delighted to learn it. But what we would like to do is see these 

sites use some of their revenues to educate. We think that would be a 

natural for them. It would be in their own interests. But at the same 

time, take these steps such as raising the age level, doing better age 

verification that they clearly have the resources to do. 

 MR. STUPAK. Have you seen any suggestions of making it 

mandatory in schools, cyber security as a class that would be taught? 

 MR. BLUMENTHAL. I know you asked that question, I believe you 

asked it earlier. 

 MR. STUPAK. Correct. 

 MR. BLUMENTHAL. And I think that would be an excellent 

suggestion. I realize there is always resistance-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Sure. 

 MR. BLUMENTHAL. --to any, whether it’s the State or the Congress, 

telling local school boards what to do but certainly by way of strong 

suggestion, it would be something to try to achieve. I think the one 

advantage of registration, to come back to your question, is that it would 

give the Congress or the Federal government more leverage over the 

sites, and must as we now do and I sort of am reminded of the discussion 

I had earlier this morning on hedge funds and obviously we are going 

through the whole issue of registration there, it provides a means of 

policing and assuring self-policing, which is what all of us would like to 

see. 

 MR. STUPAK. You indicated that you had some reports there that we 

might be interested in, and Mr. Chairman, I would move we make them 

part of the record. We don’t have to go into them but I just think to 

complete the record and some of the work you have done and I think it 

would be important to have it in there. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Without objection. 

 MR. STUPAK. You know, one of the problems we have seen in these 

sites, these ISP sites, I think testimony has been about 1,300 of them but 

only like 215 have voluntarily registered with NCMEC, right, and so that 

is why the FTC or FCC could be of help in trying to get these things 

registered so we know who they are, where they are, what they are and 

how to get to them. Mr. Attorney General, you sat through these 

hearings today, and just let me ask you this question. Is there anything 
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that was said that you would like to clarify or elaborate on? I know you 

have been through all these panels today. Is there anything else you 

wanted to say, because we are running out of time here and I know your 

time is precious also. 

 MR. BLUMENTHAL. Well, I appreciate that offer. What I would like 

to do with the Chairman’s permission is perhaps supplement the 

testimony that I provided with some of the material that I have 

referenced and other points that perhaps some of my colleagues would 

like to add as well because I must say, this has been a very collegial 

effort on the part of the attorneys general obviously across the country, 

Republican, Democrat, and we would welcome the opportunity to 

continue to work with the committee. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. Absolutely, and we welcome the information. 

 MR. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, one more before I yield back. Mr. 

Ruiz, in your testimony you mentioned the FCC was recently upheld in 

extending CALEA’s requirements to broadband Internet access services. 

You indicate that many ISPs do not currently hold a license, permit, 

certificate, or other Commission authorization, even though other 

providers such as telephone companies and cable operators are required 

to file registration forms at the FCC. Does the FCC currently have any 

legal authority to require ISPs to register? 

 MR. RUIZ. The legal authority under which we require some ISPs to 

register, and specifically that is facilities-based broadband ISPs, it is 

Section 706 of the 1996 Communications Act, and that language was 

basically encouraging the rollout of broadband services to Americans so 

it is language first of all that is specific to facilities-based broadband ISP 

so it wouldn’t cover-- 

 MR. STUPAK. It wouldn’t cover them? 

 MR. RUIZ. --dialup and it wouldn’t cover any that are not facilitiesbased, and it really went to the issue of the rollout of the service as 

opposed to the specific issue of how that service is used, what content is 

transmitted over it, what kind of images-- 

 MR. STUPAK. Does the FCC have the authority--we talked a lot 

about national standards or trying to move towards some national 

standards. The last panel mentioned it. Do you have any authority to 

convene all the ISPs to make them--but to reach an agreement on a 

common format for reporting to the NCMEC, to the National Center? 

 MR. RUIZ. Let me try to answer that, Congressman. To the extent 

we may have authority, it would be ancillary authority pursuant to our 

authority under Title 1 of the-- 

 MR. STUPAK. But you could use your bully pulpit, couldn’t you, and 

bring them together or maybe with the FTC too and--I am trying to find a 

way to move this--I think what we saw last panel, MySpace and all them, 
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they are trying to do the right things but I think these hearings we have 

been having have been pushing them but I want to keep the pressure on 

so we come up with some national standards, and I think they are all 

intending to and I think their heart is in the right place but once in a 

while we all need a shove. I am trying to get you guys to shove them. 

 MR. RUIZ. I understand, Congressman. 

 MR. STUPAK. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. We have about 

5 minutes left. I want to thank the witnesses. We read their testimony 

and it has been some interesting hearing, to say the least. 

 MR. WHITFIELD. We have had an interesting series of hearings and 

of course, we recognize there are many issues out there but one of the 

keys is what you pointed to, Attorney General Blumenthal. That is being 

able to really document and verify the ages of people who have access to 

these sites, and the suggestions about driver’s licenses and parental 

consent were great suggestions and that is what is being done in Great 

Britain but we do thank all of you for your efforts in this area. We look 

forward to your continued leadership in this committee. I know the 

Chairman, Joe Barton, made the comment that he intends to come 

forward with some legislation to try to address this very complex issue. 

So we may be calling upon all of you for additional help, and without 

objection, I am going to move into the record the entire document binder, 

all the opening statements and certainly the material that you brought, 

Mr. Blumenthal, and thank you all again for being with us, and this 

hearing is adjourned, dismissed, over. 

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 [Whereupon, at 5:21 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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