[Infowarrior] - Senator to propose surveillance of illegal images

[Richard Forno]

Senator to propose surveillance of illegal images

By Declan McCullagh
http://news.com.com/Senator+to+propose+surveillance+of+illegal+images/2100-1
028_3-6156976.html

Story last modified Wed Feb 07 06:24:37 PST 2007

A forthcoming bill in the U.S. Senate lays the groundwork for a national
database of illegal images that Internet service providers would use to
automatically flag and report suspicious content to police.

The proposal, which Sen. John McCain is planning to introduce on Wednesday,
also would require ISPs and perhaps some Web sites to alert the government
of any illegal images of real or "cartoon" minors. Failure to do would be
punished by criminal penalties including fines of up to $300,000.

The Arizona Republican claims that his proposal, a draft of which was
obtained by CNET News.com, will aid in investigations of child
pornographers. It will "enhance the current system for Internet service
providers to report online child pornography on their systems, making the
failure to report child pornography a federal crime," a statement from his
office said.

To announce his proposal, McCain has scheduled an afternoon press conference
on Capitol Hill with Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat; John Walsh,
host of America's Most Wanted; and Lauren Nelson, who holds the title of
Miss America 2007.

Civil libertarians worry that the proposed legislation goes too far and
could impose unreasonable burdens on anyone subject to the new regulations.
And Internet companies worry about the compliance costs and argue that an
existing law that requires reporting of illicit images is sufficient.

The Securing Adolescents from Exploitation-Online Act (PDF) states ISPs that
obtain "actual knowledge" of illegal images must make an exhaustive report
including the date, time, offending content, any personal information about
the user, and his Internet Protocol address. That report is sent to local or
federal police by way of the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children. The center received $32.6 million in tax dollars in 2005,
according to its financial disclosure documents.
SAFE Act FAQ

Who must comply? "Any service which provides to users thereof the ability to
send or receive wire or electronic communications." (18 USC 2510)

Who must be alerted? Federal and state police through the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children.

What images must be reported? Illegal images of minors, which includes
clothed teens in "lascivious" poses, according to the Justice Department.
Obscene "cartoons" and "drawings" also qualify. (18 USC 1466A)

What information must be included? Basically everything the reporting person
knows about the image and who posted it.

Penalties for not reporting? Criminal penalties including fines of up to
$300,000.

Afterward, the center is authorized to compile that information into a form
that can be sent back to ISPs and used to assemble a database of "unique
identification numbers generated from the data contained in the image file."
That could be a unique ID created by a hash function, which yields something
akin to a digital fingerprint of a file.

Details on how the system would work are missing from McCain's legislation
and are left to the center and ISPs. But one method would include ISPs
automatically scanning e-mail and instant messaging attachments and flagging
any matches.

The so-called SAFE Act is revised from an earlier version (PDF) that McCain
introduced in December.

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