| WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Representative Diana DeGette (D-CO) will offer an amendment that will require internet service providers to retain information about subscribers for at least one year. This amendment will be offered as the full House Energy and Commerce Committee marks up the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006.
The Congresswoman DeGette plans to deliver the following statement when offering the amendment:
"As many of you may know, the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, led by my friend Chairman Whitfield, is in the midst of a series of hearings on child pornography. This has been an eye-opening experience to say the least. One of the many suggestions that we heard from a number of witnesses was how helpful it would be if Internet Service Providers retained certain records for a year in order to help catch those involved in online child sex abuse.
"In one of the hearings, a Department of Justice investigator gave a tragic example of how the retention of an Internet address by a cable company could have lead directly to the perpetrator of a horrific crime against a child. Unfortunately, the data had already been deleted by the time law enforcement officials had zeroed in on this video that was being transmitted and the child was never found.
"This amendment will make Internet service providers retain information about subscribers for at least one year. The goal is to help law enforcement identify perpetrators when evidence is discovered connecting an account to the production and/or distribution of child pornography. Law enforcement agencies are desperate for more technological assistance in their work to eradicate the trade of online child sexual abuse.
"The idea is not to preserve content, just identifying information in order to track down people who are implicated in the online sexual abuse of children.
"The problem of online child exploitation is growing at a rate that I for one, was completely unaware of until we began these hearings a couple of weeks ago. I think I can speak for the other Members of the subcommittee when I say that the stories we heard and statistics we learned absolutely stunned us.
"We need to take action and do it soon and I have drawn up this amendment to shine the spotlight on this appalling problem. Every one of us here today should care about this.
"America is the #1 global consumer of child pornography, the #2 producer. This is a plague we had nearly wiped out in the seventies, and sadly the Internet, an entity that we practically worship for all the great things it has brought to us, is being used to commit a crime against humanity.
"This is a pall on our great country and we cannot stand idly by while this is happening to our children.
"We are at the very end of our mark-up and I won't take much more time on this, but let me just take a minute to share some statistics that underscore the urgency of this issue.
"80% of those caught with child pornography have pictures and/or videos of children under the age of 12
"Of this 80%:
40% had images of children under 6 years old; and
20% had images of children under 3 years old
"The Department of Justice has 46 Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Forces across the country working to combat this issue.
"In 2003, these task forces received approximately 4,000 reports of Internet crimes against children
"In 2004 that number rose to just over 24,000.
"Last year that number was nearly 200,000.
"If that doesn’t send a chill up your spine, I don’t know what would. This is a stark wake up call that the children who are caught in this pernicious web are getting younger and younger and that this problem is growing at a faster rate than any of us could have imagined.
"There are many representatives of the telecommunications community, cable companies, phone companies, ISPs etc, here right now and I want to say to all of you that we need to tackle this problem together. I look forward to working with all of you on this. We are all morally obligated to do everything we can to eradicate this growing problem that has victimized the population that we purport to love and care about the most: our children.
"Dealing with this issue will not be easy. Issues of privacy and the openness of the Internet are ones we all care about. But the same things we love about the Internet and cutting edge technology are the same things that have allowed a despicable trade to thrive. We all need to work together to figure out the best way handle this.
"I am going to withdraw this amendment today, and hope to get a commitment from my friends Chairmen Barton and Whitfield, who have already shown leadership on this issue and I know were as appalled and horrified as I was to learn more about this, to work together on this issue in the very near future."
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