Law enforcement, legislators grapple with child sexual exploitation on the Net.

At recent law enforcement seminars, computer-savvy FBI agents have used a high-tech version of show-and-tell to prove a point--the virtual world of cyberspace can be a dangerous place for children to play.

The demonstration usually takes only a few minutes. Cloaked in the online identity of a teenage girl, an FBI agent logs on to a computer with Internet access and enters a chat room with a sexually suggestive title like "Older Guys/Younger Girls" or "Barely Legal."

Almost instantly, the "girl" begins receiving messages from other chat room participants asking for more information about her or to exchange photographs. In one recent demonstration, a man began sending nude images of himself to an agent who was posing as a 12-year-old girl only minutes after the agent logged on.

"It's kind of like fishing in a pond full of hungry fish. There's no shortage of these people," said Pete Gulotta, an FBI agent in Baltimore.

With a computer and access to the Net, almost anyone can work, shop, or chat--send and receive instant messages--with others online. All this can be done in relative anonymity from the comfort of one's home or office. These features--anonymity and ease of access--are also feeding a voracious and growing beast in the wires.

"There are alarmingly increasing numbers of individuals engaging in [sexual exploitation of children] on the Internet," said Brad Astrowsky, a former prosecutor who is now senior attorney with the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse (NCPCA) in Alexandria, Virginia.

Preferential sex offenders--what law enforcement officers call people who are sexually attracted to children--use computers to trade, store, and create child pornography; get validation from each other; and fulfill sexual fantasies with children they meet online.

"The Internet has been a godsend to these people," said James McLaughlin, a detective in Keene, New Hampshire. That city's police department just completed a three-year undercover sting operation financed by the federal government that netted more than 200 arrests.

With new computer technology--CD-ROMs, DVDs, and digital cameras--offenders can easily create and store images in computer files. McLaughlin said officers in his department found more than 40,000 pornographic images of children on one suspect's computer drive. Images can also be encrypted to deter detection before they are posted on electronic bulletin boards or sent directly to e-mail addresses or chat room participants.

The Internet has also made it easier for sexual predators to find child victims. These offenders can assume any identity and roam through chat rooms trolling for children with little risk of being caught.

Emotionally vulnerable, or "troubled," children are especially at risk of being victimized, experts say. Sexual predators are skilled at courting these children, building their trust, and, ultimately, breaking down their inhibitions.

Law enforcement experts say it is impossible to tell whether more people are trafficking in child porn (traders) or seeking children out for sex (travelers) because the Net makes it easy to do so or whether online technology has simply lifted the layers of secrecy that once shrouded their activities.

"I think it's a combination of the two," Astrowsky said. "There's a certain number of people who would engage in this conduct regardless of whether the Internet existed. The people who order videos or magazines from out of the United States or who are producing them on their own. That's one population.

"The other population, which is increasing in my estimation, is people who had the inclination or tendency toward viewing children engaged in sexual acts but who didn't have access to a market. They could have led their lives without fulfilling their fantasies. The Internet has provided a medium to do this."

Every state has enacted laws addressing child pornography, although mere possession does not violate state law in several jurisdictions. Under federal law, it is a crime to possess just one pornographic image of a child--or what appears to be a child--or to travel across state lines with the intent of having sex with a minor.

Since the mid-1990s, law enforcement has stepped up efforts to track down and prosecute online child sex offenders. Many local police departments now assign officers to federally funded units, like McLaughlin's. And agents with the U.S. Customs and Postal Inspection Services coordinate activities with the FBI's Innocent Images Initiative, an undercover operation launched in 1995 to catch traders and travelers in the act.

At the end of the program's first year, Innocent Images agents had opened just over 100 cases. Since then, the caseload has sky-rocketed. In fiscal year 1999, the FBI investigated nearly 1,500 reports of online child sexual exploitation. The operation also boasts a phenomenally high conviction rate--about 99 percent of cases prosecuted, according to Gulotta, a veteran of the program.

Some private groups, like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, also work closely with law enforcement agencies. With federal funds, the center has established a CyberTipline for online reporting of child sex crimes.

Those who have been caught and prosecuted for trading or traveling usually fit a profile that is nothing like the popular image of the child sex offender: a lecherous old man in a dirty trench coat, lurking around school yards and playgrounds.

"Wipe it out," Gulotta said of that image. "Most offenders are white males between 25 and 45, from the middle class or higher, with higher than average intelligence. We had a pediatrician in Northern Virginia. We've had attorneys, law enforcement officers, and an elementary school principal in Maryland."

Innocent Images agents spend most of their workdays--and nights--online, often posing as young girls or traders of child porn. Sting operations like these have netted some pretty big fish. Federal agents have been successful in bringing down hundreds of people involved in international child pornography rings.

Not everyone thinks this cybersleuthing is a good idea. Privacy advocates and defense attorneys have criticized agents for being overzealous.

"Some of these people are engaged in sexual fantasy, and the FBI preys on that," said Beth Mina Farber, Maryland's chief assistant public defender. "They encourage them to commit the crime. A lot of these people are not nearly as awful as they seem to be."

Gulotta disagrees. "I've been with the FBI for 30 years, and I personally don't find anyone more despicable than these people who are preying on children," he said. "We're not out there as Big Brother interfering with people's privacy."

Farber, who has defended suspects caught in sting operations, agrees that most cases do not rise to the level of entrapment "because that requires a lack of predisposition and a lack of government inducement, and most of these people don't lack predisposition." But, she said, agents are trained to take conversations beyond where a typical teenager would go. "A real 13- or 14-year-old would cut things off at some point," she said.

Regulatory redux 

Federal and state lawmakers have passed several laws designed to shield children from the Internet's seamier side. These laws have met with mixed success in the courts.

Three years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down two key sections of the Communications Decency Act as unconstitutional. A 7-2 majority ruled that these provisions, which criminalized online transmission of "obscene" or "patently offensive" material, violated First Amendment free speech protections. (ACLU v. Reno, 117 S. Ct. 2329 (1997).)

Writing for a majority that found the law's language unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, Justice John Paul Stevens said it amounted to "burning the house to roast the pig."

The Child Pornography Protection Act (CPPA), passed by Congress in 1996, amended the definition of child pornography to include "visual depictions" of minors engaging in sexual conduct. The new law was intended to address the problem created by new computer technology that can be used to create "virtual" children, to "morph" images of adults to make them look like children, or to "cut and paste" images of children into existing photos or videos.

A segment of that law was also recently struck down on First Amendment grounds by the Ninth Circuit. "The First Amendment prohibits Congress from enacting a statute that makes criminal the generation of images of fictitious children engaged in imaginary but explicit sexual conduct," the majority of the three-judge panel held. (Free Speech Coalition v. Reno, No. 97-16536, 1999 WL 1206649 (9th Cir. Nov. 17, 1999).)

H. Lewis Sirkin, a Cincinnati lawyer who represented the plaintiff, a consortium of adult-entertainment businesses and artists, in that case said the law would have a chilling effect on legitimate adult fare like the movie Lolita, which is based on a book about a man who has a sexual relationship with his 12-year-old stepdaughter.

Sirkin also noted that it would be impossible for someone accused of violating the law to mount a defense. The standard defense to a child pornography charge is to claim that the image is not of a child. "But it is impossible to prove that a virtual image is over 18," Sirkin said.

The statute may eventually face U.S. Supreme Court review. The Ninth Circuit decision conflicts with First and Eleventh Circuit opinions that have upheld the Child Pornography Protection Act as constitutional. (United States v. Hilton, 267 F.3d 61 (1st Cir. 1999); United States v. Acheson, 195 F.3d 645 (11th Cir. 1999).) Sirkin said the Justice Department is likely to file a petition for reconsideration.

Another federal law at the center of a free speech debate is the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). Like the Communications Decency Act, COPA is designed to restrict minors' access to prurient materials by regulating Internet content. The law prohibits transmission of commercial material on the World Wide Web that is considered "harmful to minors." Violators can be fined up to $50,000 and imprisoned for six months.

The constitutionality of COPA was brought before the Third Circuit late last year after a U.S. district court judge granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Justice Department from enforcing the law. In oral arguments before the appellate panel, the government argued the law should survive a challenge on free speech grounds because, unlike the Communications Decency Act, it affects only material made for profit that appears on the Web, a large but limited segment of the online world. (ACLU v. Reno (Reno II), No. 99-1324 (3d Cir. oral argument Nov. 4, 1999).)

But Elliot Mincberg, vice president and legal director of the civil rights advocacy group People for the American Way Foundation, said COPA's "harmful to minors" standard is likely to doom it. "Every court that has looked at this issue has said that it will not work," Mincberg said.

His organization filed an amicus brief in the Third Circuit case and recently joined several e-businesses in a lawsuit challenging a similar Virginia law. State laws like Virginia's have been struck down by federal courts in Michigan and New York on First Amendment and Commerce Clause grounds, Mincberg said. (Cyberspace, Communications, Inc. v. Engler, 55 F. Supp. 2d 737 (E.D. Mich. 1999); American Libraries Association v. Pataki, 979 F. Supp. 160 (S.D.N.Y 1997).) And the Tenth Circuit recently ruled that a New Mexico law designed to protect children from online pornography could not withstand a First Amendment challenge. (ACLU v. Johnson, 194 F.3d 1149 (10th Cir. 1999).)

Aside from the constitutional issues, Mincberg said, the purpose of Internet censorship laws--to protect children--cannot be achieved by legislation because much of the material that might be deemed harmful comes from beyond our borders. "This kind of law is totally ineffective," he said.

At least one Third Circuit judge would seem to agree. "I'm not at all sure that, in light of the Web, one can structure legislation which can control the very thing that ought to be controlled," said Senior Circuit Court Judge Leonard Garth during oral arguments in Reno II. "I'm not sure that events have not overtaken the legislative process and [the Net] may not be controllable." (Shannon P. Duffy, Judges Question Government's Role in Protecting Children on Internet, LEGAL INTELLIGENCER, Nov. 5, 1999, at Al.)

And more than one law enforcement officer has expressed doubt that sting operations, even those with success rates as high as those of Innocent Images, can have a large or lasting impact. "I'm absolutely convinced that going online and using undercover operations is not going to be the solution to this," said FBI agent Gulotta. "We simply don't have the resources."

Instead, education is key, Gulotta said. Telling parents and children about online dangers and encouraging parents to pay attention to what their children do on computers will significantly reduce the risk that a child who wanders onto the Net's cyberplayground will be victimized, he said.

Former prosecutor Astrowsky agreed, noting that "the children most at risk are those whose parents use the computer as a babysitter."

"Sometimes," Gulotta said, "there's little more you can do than have a better relationship with your child."