Senate Bill Would Require Online Safety Education by Schools
The Senate Commerce Committee revealed the latest bill aimed at protecting children online -- a measure requiring Internet education in schools receiving E-rate funds. The measure’s emphasis on education departs from other proposals that would label Web sites as explicit or require ISPs to maintain records for certain amounts of time.
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The Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act (S- 1965), introduced by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D- Hawaii, would require schools receiving E-rate funds to educate students about “online behavior,” social networking, chat rooms and cyberbullying. It would also create an interagency Online Safety and Technology working group to promote technologies and programs to help parents protect their children from inappropriate content.
The bill would grant the FTC $5 million each for FY 2008 to 2009 to carry out a public awareness campaign and “provide education strategies” on online safety for kids. The agency would develop Internet safety best practices and set up a “national outreach and education campaign.” The FTC would be required to submit a report yearly to the Senate Commerce Committee on its Internet safety awareness building activities.
ISPs would have to pay fines up to $150,000 for not reporting child pornography the first time and up to $300,000 after that. In reports to law enforcement, ISPs would have to provide user IDs, e-mail addresses, physical addresses and IP addresses of suspects.
The Stevens bill is “a significant improvement” over some other approaches to online child safety, Center for Democracy & Technology President Leslie Harris told us. “Congress is stepping forward here and making Internet safety education the centerpiece of a bill that has bi- partisan support… that’s a really good thing,” she said. But she said CDT -- like other free-expression advocates - - is concerned about a provision in the bill authorizing the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to provide ISPs with images and other information reported to its Cyber Tip Line to “stop the further transmission” of child pornography. The problem is that “NCMEC continues to have more government-like powers,” she said. “They have access and are collecting and holding onto lots of information,” and the bill’s last section “authorizes them to say what’s child pornography and send it to ISPs to block,” said Harris. “You can’t ‘FOIA’ NCMEC and demand transparency in their internal procedures.” It’s not clear “how much information and law enforcement powers are being granted to NCMEC, and if we're going to do that, we've got to figure out what the safeguards are,” she said.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D- Mich., said Friday he plans September hearings on Internet sex crimes. At a news conference with House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., Nick Lampson, D-Texas, and Christopher Carney, D-Pa., Conyers said the hearings will focus on “sexual predators infiltrating” social networking sites and chat rooms and the transmission of child pornography over the Internet. “We cannot allow the Internet to be a playground where our children are one mouse click away from sexual predators,” he said. The online child safety bills that have been introduced are “a top Democratic priority,” he said.