Fight against child porn stepped up

BBC reports on increased efforts of the Attorney General Gonzales to push for measures that would allow law enforcement to combat what the AG has called epidemic" of child pornography.

Gonzales has proposed changes in the law under the Child Pornography and Obscenity Prevention Amendments of 2006 (COPA’s earlier version was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court) where ISPs would be required to report child pornography and bolster penalties for those parties who fail to do so. In addition, Gonzales also wants to find ways to require ISPs to retain records (logs) of user’s activities for longer period of time so that law enforcement can have a longer trail when tracking an alleged offender.

The European Union’s Directive on Data Retention mandates ISPs in Europe to preserve call and Internet records for a period of 6 to 24 months (as specified by each EU country’s government). It seems that AG Gonzales seeks to impose similar obligations to US ISPs which, under current law, are not required to maintain any records of ordinary activity (unless of course they are served with a timely subpoena.) Attorney General’s statement on these new proposed requirements included,

The investigation and prosecution of child predators depends critically on the availability of evidence that is often in the hands of internet service providers.
…
Unfortunately, the failure of some internet service providers to keep records has hampered our ability to conduct investigations in this area.

The debate in the US as to ISP data retention requirements has already started, and Gonzales’ statements will definitely help fuel the conversation. At stake are vital interests to subscriber privacy and law enforcement’s ability to prevent and catch among some of the most heinous crimes.

This is partly an act in sexual harassment which leads to cyber stalking is definitely unethical as it is a form of invading a person’s privacy. A cyber stalker relies upon the mystery afforded by the Internet to allow them to stalk their victim without being detected. Cyber stalking messages different from common spam which is cyber stalker targets a specific victim with often threatening messages, while the spammer targets a large number of recipients with simply annoying messages.