The Internet and Child Safety

What thread links an Illinois preacher, a Virginia pediatrician, a Dutch justice minister, a New Jersey kindergarten teacher and a California Border Patrol officer? All have been charged with receiving or distributing child pornography over the Internet in recent months. The teacher (who has pleaded guilty to pornography charges), the preacher and the border patrolman were also charged with soliciting minors over the Internet. These are examples of the growing number of cases in which the Net has allegedly been used to commit or facilitate crimes involving children.

Here, for instance, Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks reported recently that the Police Department has already filed twice as many Net-related child crime cases this year as it did in 1997.

Penalties are sufficiently stiff and laws are generally adequate. State and federal fines and prison terms are hefty. The problem is that local law enforcement, like the LAPD, is often technically outmatched, with their aged computers, slow modems and a lack of access to sophisticated software programs that can pull supposedly deleted images out of a computer. That gap figures to grow wider now that any pedophile with a few bucks can buy new software programs that promise to erase files--in these cases, child pornography files--so completely they can never be recovered.

More ways should be found for police agencies to get better computer hardware and software, through purchase or receiving donations, to help suppress these nasty crimes.

In the meantime, experts have suggestions for parents: Put the family computer in a high-traffic area, like the living room, where its use can be easily observed; warn youngsters against revealing personal information on the Internet; warn them to drop out of chat room talk that turns to body parts or underwear; insist on knowing your child’s cyber friends, and limit hours online.

Vice President Al Gore said Friday that the federal government will seek to implement safeguards against the collection of personal information from children who use the Net. That’s a smart move. Some Web sites that attract children encourage them to post their names and addresses. Preventing these postings would help limit the opportunities of those who troll for young victims, a hidden horror of the cyberworld.