Chapter 9
Cleaning Up Cyberspace . . . Helping to Enforce the Law and Get the Web Rated
Who Enforces the Laws in Cyberspace?
In surfing the Web for sexual and other objectionable content, I have learned far more about the dark side of the Web than I would have cared to know. Late one night, while I was clicking on mini-photos of outrageous sexual acts to see what was screened by filtering software and what got through the software, my eighteen-year-old daughter walked into my room. I found myself trying to block my monitor screen to prevent her from seeing the photos (like a child trying to conceal something from a parent, rather than vice versa).
Many of the sites I found contained sexual content already illegal in the United States, and most of those sites were hosted in the U.S. Each of us can bear some of the responsibility for cleaning up these sites by reporting them to law enforcement officials. The number of these sites is growing so quickly that law enforcement officials can't keep up without our help. Often they don't even know where or how to start.
Part of the problem in enforcing these laws is the lack of cybertraining and resources for law enforcement. It's hard enough for them to try to locate criminals in their own jurisdictions, without having to now track website operators and cyberpredators located anywhere in the world.
Remember that if something happens in cyberspace that would constitute a crime in real space, it's still a crime. Unfortunately, there is no law enforcement group specifically charged with enforcing the law on the Internet. Some U.S. law enforcement agencies, however, have been designated as the first line of defense when U.S. laws apply. (Actually, as I've already told you, parents and schools are the first line of defense, and law enforcement is a distant second, but who's quibbling?)
The U.S. federal government has now made protecting our children in cyberspace a priority. According to President Clinton, the number of people assigned from the Justice Department and FBI to protect children from computer-related exploitation, pornography, solicitation and obscenity was recently increased by 50 percent. It's an important start.
In addition, a special task force of the U.S. Customs Service has been set up to handle Internet child pornography complaints. 1-800-BE-ALERT (1-800-232-5378) is a 24-hour hotline that will route your complaint to the right law enforcement agency. Many states are also setting up similar task forces. You should contact your state attorney general to find out whom you should contact locally.
Several not-for-profit organizations are also devoted to child safety and helping parents protect their children in cyberspace. One of the best is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678). Their website is at www.missingkids.org. A few other organizations are particularly noteworthy, and have great websites devoted to this subject, as well. I'll list them at www.familyguidebook.com.
We're really a very powerful group, parents. If we act together, we can make a huge difference.
If you find an objectionable site, let the rating and blocking software companies know about it. Bess, the server-level blocking and filtering software that we review later on, already has a form you can submit to have a site reviewed, either to get it blocked or unblocked. We decided to borrow this idea.
To get this movement started, at www.familyguidebook.com we have set up a form where anyone can notify the major parental control software companies about a site they want to be reviewed or added to their "bad site lists." We will also have a form you can submit if you think a site has been improperly listed in the "bad site list" and should be removed. You fill out the form once, and we submit it to all the companies for you. It's a start.
If you visit a site you enjoy, ask them to make sure it's rated using a PICS-compliant standard (a Webwide rating system standard which allows sites to be rated by rating agencies like movies are rated, based on content.). We have a form you can use for that too, which notifies the webmaster that you want their site rated so you can access it using the PICS standard ratings. It also copies the biggest rating agencies with your request so they can follow up.
It's not a perfect system, but it might get things moving. And within the next year, with the help of interested parents everywhere, I suspect that much of the Web will be rated. Hopefully other child safety program companies will do the same thing, and parents, librarians and teachers can work together to help rate the Internet. If we all pitch in, the whole Web will be rated before you know it. (Even if you oppose filtering, rating the Internet is the best defense we have to attempts to regulate free speech.)