The President signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act on July 27, 2006. The act serves four basic purposes. First, it reformulates the federal standards for sex offender registration in state, territorial and tribal sexual offender registries, and does so in a manner designed to make the system more uniform, more inclusive, more informative, and more readily available to the public online. Second, it introduces a fairly extensive and diverse set of amendments to federal criminal law and procedure, featuring, among other things, a federal procedure for the civil commitment of convicted sex offenders upon their release from prison, a random search authority over sex offenders on probation or supervised release, and a number of new mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment for various new and existing federal sex offenses. Third, it creates, amends, or revives several grant programs designed to reinforce private, state, local, tribal and territorial prevention; law enforcement; and treatment efforts in the case of crimes committed against children. Finally, it calls for a variety of administrative or regulatory initiatives in the interest of child safety, such as the creation of the National Child Abuse Registry. The act arrived on the President's desk as H.R. 4472 having been approved by the House on March 8, 2006 and by the Senate on July 20, 2006. Each Chamber had previously passed many of the same provisions in separate bills of their own. In the case of the House, the predecessor was H.R. 3132 which the House endorsed on September 15, 2005; in the case of the Senate, it was S. 1086 , which the Senate approved on May 4, 2006. One of the center pieces of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is the revision of the nation-wide sex offender registration system. The earlier statute, the Jacob Wetterling Act, encouraged states to establish and maintain a registration system. Each of them has done so. The state systems had many common features, but were hardly uniform. The Walsh Act preserves the basis structure of the earlier law, expands upon it, and makes more specific matters that were previously left to individual state choice. It contemplates a publicly available, contemporaneously accurate, online system. Conscious of the legal and technical adjustments required, the Walsh Act anticipates that states and other jurisdictions may require three years or more to fully implement its modifications. As a consequence, for purposes of compliance by the states and other jurisdictions, the prior law remains in effect until the later of three years after enactment or one year after the necessary software for the new uniform, online system has become available. For registrants, however, the new requirements became effective upon enactment. Two state sex offender statutes have survived constitutional scrutiny before the Supreme Court, Connecticut Department of Public Safety v. Doe and Smith v. Doe . In Smith , the Court rejected an ex post facto challenge because the statute was intended to create a regulatory scheme that was civil and nonpunitive and because it was not "so punitive either in purpose or effect as to negate the state's intention to deem it civil." In Connecticut Department of Public Safety , it rejected the argument that due process required a pre-registration hearing as to the current dangerousness of the offender because the statute predicated registration upon prior conviction, not upon current dangerousness. Other courts have rejected similar and other constitutional challenges, although individual aspects of a particular statute or its implementation have been found constitutionally defective on occasion. The class of offenders required to register has been expanded under the act. The group includes anyone found in the United States and previously convicted of a federal, state, local, tribal, military, or foreign qualifying offense, although strictly speaking violations of the laws of the District of Columbia or U.S. territories are not specifically mentioned as qualifying offenses. Offenders must register in each state or territory in which they live, work, or attend school. There are five classes of qualifying offenses: crimes identified as one of the "specific offenses against a minor;" crimes in which some sexual act or sexual conduct is an element; designated federal sex offenses; specified military offenses; and attempts or conspiracy to commit any offense in the other four classes of qualifying offenses. This class consists of essentially the same members as made up the class of qualifying offenses under the Jacob Wetterling Act when these offenses are or were committed in violation of state, local, tribal, foreign, or military law, or presumably in violation of D.C. or territorial law: kidnaping of a minor, except by a parent or guardian; false imprisonment of a minor, except by a parent or guardian; solicitation of a minor to engage in sexual conduct; use of a minor in a sexual performance; solicitation to practice prostitution; video voyeurism (as described in 18 U.S.C. 1801); possession, production, or distribution of child pornography; criminal sexual conduct toward a minor, or the use of the Internet to facilitate or attempt such conduct; any conduct that by its nature is a sexual offense against a minor. 42 U.S.C. 16911 (5)(ii), (7), (6). Virtually all the states require registration for convictions of the state's criminal law version of these generic crimes. Their treatment of federal, foreign, military and out of state convictions has been a bit more individualistic. The act simply states that the class of qualify offenses also includes any "criminal offense that has an element involving a sexual act or sexual contact with another." It does not define either the term "sexual act" or "sexual contact." Elsewhere in the United States Code they are consistently defined as follows. [T]he term "sexual act" meansâ (A) contact between the penis and the vulva or the penis and the anus, and for purposes of this subparagraph contact involving the penis occurs upon penetration, however, slight; (B) contact between the mouth and the penis, the mouth and the vulva, or the mouth and the anus; (C) the penetration, however slight, of the anal or genital opening of another by a hand or finger or by any object, with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, or arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person; or (D) the intentional touching, not through the clothing, of the genitalia of another person who has not attained the age of 16 years with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, or arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person; [T]he term "sexual contact" means the intentional touching, either directly or through the clothing, of the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, or arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person. The class appears to have been intended as a residual group of sexual offenses that fall outside the coverage of the other classes of qualifying offenses. It applies to violations of state, local, tribal, foreign, military, and presumably D.C. and territorial law. The class of federal offenses that trigger registration requirements includes violations of: 18 U.S.C. 1591 (sex trafficking of children or by force or fraud) 18 U.S.C. 2241 (aggravated sexual abuse) 18 U.S.C. 2242 (sexual abuse) 18 U.S.C. 2243 (sexual abuse of ward or child) 18 U.S.C. 2244 (abusive sexual contact) 18 U.S.C. 2245 (sexual abuse resulting in death) 18 U.S.C. 2251 (sexual exploitation of children) 18 U.S.C. 2251A (selling or buying children) 18 U.S.C. 2252 (transporting, distributing or selling child sexually exploitive material) 18 U.S.C. 2252A (transporting or distributing child pornography) 18 U.S.C. 2252B (misleading Internet domain names) 18 U.S.C. 2252C (misleading Internet website source codes) 18 U.S.C. 2260 (making child sexually exploitative material overseas for export to the U.S.) 18 U.S.C. 2421 (transportation of illicit sexual purposes) 18 U.S.C. 2422 (coercing or enticing travel for illicit sexual purposes) 18 U.S.C. 2423 (travel involving illicit sexual activity with a child) 18 U.S.C. 2424 (filing false statement concerning an alien for illicit sexual purposes) 18 U.S.C. 2425 (interstate transmission of information about a child relating to illicit sexual activity), 42 U.S.C. 16911(5)(A)(iii). Qualifying military offenses are those designed by the Secretary of Defense pursuant to P.L. 105-119 , Â§115(a)(8)(C)(i), 111 Stat. 2466 (1998). Department of Defense Instruction 1325.7, Enclosure 27 lists following as qualifying offenses: UCMJ art. 120 (rape and carnal knowledge) UCMJ art. 125 (forcible sodomy and sodomy of a minor) UCMJ art. 133 (conduct unbecoming an officer involving any sexually violent offense or a criminal offense of a sexual nature against a minor or kidnaping a minor or prostitution involving a minor) UCMJ art.