sexual exploitation of children over the internet - Meldpunt ...

within the privacy of their home and were forced to go to brick and mortar businesses,further heightening the chances of law enforcement agents intercepting the images.Law enforcement’s success in curbing child pornography during the 1980s wassignificantly bolstered by several Supreme Court decisions and by subsequentcongressional legislation. In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court held in New York v. Ferber 1that possession of child pornography is not entitled to First Amendment protection andmay be criminalized. In Ferber, the Court recognized that the use of children as subjectsof pornographic material has long term harmful effects on the physiological, emotionaland mental health of the child. The Ferber decision triggered the passing of additionalstate and federal criminal statutes which criminalized possession, manufacturing, anddistribution of child pornography. Eight years later, the Supreme Court held in Osbornev. Ohio 2 that mere possession or viewing of child pornography may be criminalized.Although considerable progress was made in preventing the distribution of childpornography images through the mails, by the 1980s and early 1990s, many pedophileswere already experimenting with the precursors to the World Wide Web, 3 “newsgroups”and Internet Relay Channels (“IRC”), in order to communicate and facilitate buying,selling and trading of images. At that time, U.S. law enforcement agents were not yetfocused on these methods of communication and distribution of child pornographicmaterials. The growing reliance on the Internet, as well as the development of digitalcameras, resulted in a significant increase in the amount of child pornography imagesand in the number of participants in this criminal enterprise. There are three mainreasons for this: (1) the Internet provides an anonymous and quick method of transportingimages, particularly since broadband was introduced; (2) the Internet provides ananonymous forum for pedophiles to communicate and connect with one another; and (3)digital photographs preclude the need for going to a photography shop to have thephotographs developed, hence making the transmission of the images more private.Although it is impossible to know the exact number of child pornography images onthe Internet, to date, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s(“NCMEC”) Child Victim Identification Program (“CVIP”) has reviewed more than sixmillion individual images related to apparent child pornography. NCMEC, as well asvarious U.S. law enforcement agencies, house a database of known apparent images ofchild pornography. The CVIP database is comprised, in part, of images submitted byUnited States law enforcement agencies. The purpose of this database is two-fold. First,the database can be used to determine if a child-victim has already been identified.Second, the database is used by U.S. law enforcement agents and prosecutors as amechanism to establish whether the image is of a “real” child, as opposed to a virtualimage. 4 Currently, NCMEC has been able to identify and, with the assistance of law1 458 U.S. 757 (1982).2 495 U.S. 913 (1990).3 Hereinafter, a reference to the “Internet” means the World Wide Web.4 In Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), the U.S. Supreme Court held that only childpornography involving actual children may be considered “child pornography” for purposes of criminalprosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 2252 et seq. Id. at 254. Therefore, prosecutors in the U.S., unlike the rest of9