Senators OK 1 billion U.S. dollars to fight child porn online

A committee of the U.S. Senate unanimously approved a bill that would encourage federal, state and local police to use and create software designed to nab exchangers child pornography on peer-to - peer file sharing networks.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send a modified version of the fight against child exploitation law, sponsored primarily by Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.), in the list of politicians for a vote.


In total, the bill allocated more than $ 1 billion over the next eight years for a wide range of efforts to fight against Internet crimes against children. It calls for hiring 250 new federal agents to the FBI, Immigration and Custom Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Postal Service dedicated to child exploitation cases, for the reinforcement of personnel, equipment and educational programmes aimed at countering against cybercrime against children and for the creation of new forensic laboratories if the Attorney General believes it is necessary to cope with a "delay" the exploitation of children online.

"We must give law enforcement funds and tools necessary to pull the plug on Internet predators," Biden said in a statement.

An amendment adopted Thursday also adds new sections to the original bill that would rewrite child pornography existing laws. A section is to clarify that live webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, that the authors of the bill argue is an "open question". Another amendment is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, digital prohibiting the modification of an innocent image of a child so that the explicit sexual activity is rather represented.

It is difficult to determine if changes are needed. The Department of Justice in the past, for example, has netted guilty pleas in cases of live webcam recordings involving minors engaged in sexual acts.

The passage of the bill follows a hearing last month during which Biden and other senators have suggested that considerable promise in software designed to detect sources of pornography involving children - especially a tool called "Operation Fairplay. The so-called" global infrastructure "was developed two years ago by Special Agent Flint waters in the Wyoming Attorney General's Office, where the system is still housed, and is currently used by the exploitation of children online investigators at the national level.

The bill approved Thursday allocates $ 2 million for the Attorney General to rely on this software by creating a "national Internet crimes against children Data System, which would make information on pending cases - including the high priority - accessible to investigators and nationally coordinate the development of new software tools designed to detect suspected child predators in real time.

Through the system Fairplay, investigators connect to the peer-to-peer file sharing networks like any other person and search for files containing certain keywords that are likely to report child pornography is involved. Then they download files - often videos, sometimes as long as 20 to 30 minutes, with names like "kiddy illegal.mpg minors" and much more obscene - their own machines. Fairplay The software allows the investigator to obtain the IP address of the sender of the file and, in some instances, to display its geographical location in map form.

Once armed with an IP address and the date and time of downloading, investigators can subpoena the Internet service provider for more information such as name and address of the subscriber who was assigned to this time. It is unclear whether wiretaps are also conducted to follow during the exchange of files.

Through this process, investigators have identified more than 600000 computers allegedly trafficking in child pornography and traced the USA. But Biden and others have expressed their dismay that they are equipped with only the necessary resources to investigate about 2 per cent of these potential cases.