U.S. House of Representatives: Committee on Energy and Commerce, RepublicansPrepared Witness Testimony: Tucker, Kathleen

Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
May 13, 2002
1:00 PM
Kalamazoo Valley Community College Oshtemo, Michigan

Thank you, Chairman Upton, for inviting me to testify before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet at the hearing entitled Chatting On-Line: A Dangerous Proposition for Children. As you requested, my testimony will focus on the dangers of Internet chat rooms to children and ways to educate parents and children about how to avoid such dangers.

Predatory acts against our children are among the most heinous of crimes perpetrated within our society. Historically, communities as a collective take deliberate and specific actions to protect their children in an effort to prevent these heinous acts. These protective actions include: education - teaching children to be wary of strangers, to recognize and avoid dangerous situations, to cry for help when they feel threatened; parental supervision - participation by parents in children's activities and the monitoring of the child's friends; preventative tactics - adult supervision at events when children are away from home; physical barriers - locking the doors at home, barring uninvited persons from access to schools and special events, keeping objectionable (pornographic) material in physical locations out of the reach of children; and, law enforcement intervention - prevention programs for students and the determent, apprehension, detention, and incarceration of persons known to prey upon our children.

With the technological advancements in web tools that allow even the youngest of children access to the Internet, a universal, paradigm shift has occurred in the methods and means available to child predators in pursuit of their prey; and, as such, a universal, paradigm shift must occur in the preventative tactics that we employ in our efforts to protect our children against these predators.

The content of my testimony today will address the ramifications of this universal shift, the dangers faced by our children as they explore the wonders of the Internet and as they interact in online Chat Rooms, the role of education and the need to empower our children in order to minimize the number of predatory acts predicated against them, and the criticality of a well-balanced approach that attacks the child-predation problem from a multiplicity of angles: education (children, parents, & the community), law enforcement, legal, and technical.

Let me begin by addressing specific examples of how dramatically the protective actions that have been employed historically have been impacted by this technologically-enabled, Internet-driven, paradigm shift.

1) Education. Parents teach children to be wary of strangers on the street, in public places, and at the front door; but now, the strangers that these children meet - are not on the street - they are in cyberspace. And, to the detriment of the parents, many of their children are more "Net" savvy than either parent. This inequality of knowledge hinders parents in their abilities to address cyber safety issues and to properly instruct their children about the dangers of meeting strangers online.

Historically, when parents taught their children to recognize and avoid dangerous situations, those situations were based on tangible, physical elements within their community. Now, danger lies in an amorphous cyber-world cloaked in the allusion of anonymity.

2) Parental Supervision. Many of our children's activities have dramatically shifted from participatory activities (easily supervised by a parent and often enjoyable to watch) to solitary activities - engaged through the computer keyboard or joystick - that do not lend themselves to easy supervision nor enjoyment by a non-participant (such as a parent). Children may spend hours playing solitary games online, or they may play in tandem with their cyber friends, or they may even play with total strangers they connect with online in an Internet gaming community.

The Internet - and more specifically the advent of the Chat Room - has broadened a child's ability to meet other people and acquire "friends." Historically, children made friends at school, through family acquaintances, and from participating in community organizations. A child is no longer confined to the local community from which to socialize and gain friends; literally, cyberspace eliminates all geographical barriers and frees a child to roam the world in search of that one, special "friend." Predators are also free to roam.

The degree of difficulty for parents to monitor -or to simply meet- their child's friends has increased tremendously.

3) Preventative Tactics. A commonly employed tactic for protecting our children is to provide an adult chaperone as our children explore outside of their community. Now, children explore the wonders of the world by transporting themselves through cyberspace. They can travel to the brightest, most intellectual domains of the universe and, conversely, they may travel to the darkest, most detestable realms of the human imagination; and, they travel this world alone, without the care and protection of a chaperone.

4) Physical Barriers. Historically, parents routinely lock their doors at home each night to keep intruders out; schools monitor persons who enter the campus; and objectionable (pornographic) material is distributed from adult-only sections in local businesses. Presently, parents continue to lock their doors, but, their children inadvertently invite the pedophile into their bedrooms through a chat room conversation or via email. Gone are the days when predators have to search for unlocked doors or open windows. Gone to are the days with the child predator had to troll the schools or neighborhood playground to find a child that is isolated, or lonely, or bored; all the predator has to do now is to troll the Internet. There are innumerable, vulnerable children who are isolated, and lonely, and bored who constantly search the Internet for other children with whom they can make friends and chat. As these children search the web for friends so too the predator searches the web for prey. The predator will find the child, the child will find a "friend," and the outcome will be devastating.

The effectiveness of currently employed physical barriers has been severely compromised. Predators lure and seduce their victims from within the privacy of the victim's own home. Pornography intru des into a person's private email and appears on the screen when a child inadvertently selects a pornographic website while conducting research for a homework assignment. Predators, pornographers, pedophiles, operate in a world that is no longer constrained by physical limitations or geographical barriers; they stalk their prey through cyberspace and routinely visit their prey as invited, virtual guests into the home of their next victim.

5) Law Enforcement Intervention. As Internet use continues to grow, so will the number of cyber criminals. These criminals are sexual predators, pornographers, hackers, and thieves. They target and then victimize innocent people - especially our youth and our elderly - via this electronic highway. Crimes vary from theft of credit card information or personal identities to solicitation of sexual acts, stalking, hacking, and trafficking in child pornography. Many of the crimes are new (computer hacking for example) while other crimes, such as child predation, have haunted law enforcement officers for centuries. Regardless of the nature of the crime, the criminal's method of attack - via the Internet - is relatively new; the Internet has changed the rules of the game. Given that the methods and means employed by predators in their victimization of our children have changed, so must the tools and techniques employed by law enforcement in the pursuit and apprehension of these predators. Law enforcement must be allowed to leverage the same technological advances that the criminal element uses. Without these advanced tools - law enforcement is handicapped. And, given that the methods and means employed by predators have changed, new community prevention programs that are taught by law enforcement must be developed to inform and advise our citizenry of new protective measures.

The ramifications of this universal, paradigm shift are staggering. If taken as a whole they can be overwhelming, perhaps paralyzing; but - if ignored - the ramifications will be devastating to our youth. To approach any entity of this magnitude and to effect change it is advisable to search for a common element, theme, or component against which a focused solution may be enjoined.

One common and persistent theme, that has tentacles into every aspect of the aforementioned points, is the chat room.

Today, I will focus on the dangers that unsuspecting children and youth may face while engaged within a chat room and the subsequent dangers they may face as a result of their activities in a chat room. This focus, this perspective, is for the purpose of this testimony only and is not intended to discount any of the benefits that may be gained through dialog among participants within a chat room nor is it intended to discount the benefits that can be gained through the healthy exchange of ideas and information. Chat rooms are not inherently good or evil; they are electronically-enabled methods of communication that, unfortunately, can be used by one participant to gain information about another participant for purposes of exploitation or entrapment.

As defined in The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company, a chat room is: "A site on a computer network where online conversations are held in real time by a number of users."

How does this seemingly innocuous entity, a chat room, play a major, insidious role in the entrapment and exploitation of our youth?

Let's explore the answer to this question by overlaying the influence of the chat room on our new cyber paradigm. A chat room is a smorgasbord; it is: a town centre - a meeting place for debate; a coffee shop - a place for chat and banter; a celebrity hangout - where people can chat with their favorite musician or star; a club - where like-minded persons discuss common interests; a playground - where kids hang out with their friends; and, an unprecedented opportunity - where persons from anywhere in the world can gravitate to meet new "friends," exchange ideas, and communicate.

Children participate in chat rooms every day so that they exchange ideas and information, they can hang out with their "friends" and they can actively search for new friends. Last week, as I taught an Internet Safety class to a group of 6^th graders, I posed the question: "Do any of you have a cyber friend that you met online that you never knew before?" Several of the students raised their hands. I asked one young girl to tell the class about her "friend." She said that she was bored and lonely so she went online into several chat rooms specifically looking to find a friend. She said that she found one and they quickly discovered that they had a lot in common. I asked her what they chat about. She replied: "Everything." She said they talk about family, sisters, brothers, parents, pets, school, where they live. Literally, the hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end. I asked her how she could trust a stranger with so much information. She said that she doesn't feel like this is a stranger, this is her friend, and she "knows" that her friend is a child -not an adult- because her friend "knows too much about things my age - and there's no way that my friend is an adult pretending to be a kid - it's just not possible."

This child is a cyber-savvy pedophile's dream-come-true.

The paradigm and the chat room:

1) Education. Parents teach their children to be wary of strangers; but, children don't view their online "friends" in the same way as they view a stranger on the street. They haven't made the tangible association between their physical world and the cyber world. In their own mind they envision what they believe their friend "looks" like, and no child is going to envision their cyber friend as old or threatening.

2) Education. Children are taught to recognize and avoid dangerous situations. They recognize places within their physical community as potentially dangerous but have not learned to recognize the potential for danger within the chat room.

3) Parental Supervision & Preventative Tactics. Children rarely "travel" with their parents or a chaperone to many of the chat rooms where they hang out. Without education to raise their awareness and to empower them to recognize the danger of being alone in a room full of strangers, these children are at risk for exploitation. In July 2000, The Journal of the American Medical Association, in cooperation with a survey that was conducted by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, published a "Call to Action Report" in which it reported that girls, older teens, troubled youth, frequent Internet users, chat room participants and those who communicate with strangers online are at the greatest risk. The study also confirmed that children often don't understand the risks associated with talking to strangers online (David Finkelhor, Director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center).

4) Physical Barriers. Chat rooms eliminate the physical and geographical barriers that used to provide a modicum of protection to our children from the predatory elements of our society. Pedophiles now roam the world, without limitations, in pursuit of their next victim. A case in point is the recent seduction of a 13 year-old girl in Katy, Texas who was lured from her home by a 34 year-old pedophile - who she met in a chat room - to his apartment in Tacoma, Washington. This sexual predator allegedly exchanged pornography with his victim over the Internet, arranged transportation to take her from Katy, TX to Tacoma, WA, and raped her over a five day period of time.

5) Law Enforcement Intervention. Chat rooms pose special challenges for law enforcement as well. These hunting grounds for child predators are now the patrol beats for specialized officers in pursuit of these criminals. Technology has wrought dramatic change for both the offender and the officer.

Up to this point in my testimony, I have provided insight into the incredible, paradigm shift that has occurred in our society and how this new paradigm directly affects the safety of our children. To exemplify the critical points, I mapped the ramifications of this paradigm shift to a common element in cyberspace: the chat room. The remainder of my testimony will focus on potential solutions that we as a society may embrace in an effort to combat the clear and present dangers that our children face as they explore the farthest reaches of cyberspace, as they interact, virtually, with persons throughout the world, and as they evolve as "Net" citizens.

As Judith F. Krug, Director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, stated in her testimony before the COPA Commission on August 3, 2000: "The children of today will be Net citizens for the rest of their lives. They need to be taught the skills to cope in the virtual world just as they are taught skills to cope in the physical world. Children should be educated in appropriate increments and appropriate settings on how to avoid inappropriate Internet content, to report illegal or unsafe behavior and to engage in safe interaction online. Children who are not taught these skills are not only in danger as children in a virtual world, they also will grow into young adults, college students and an American workforce who are not capable of avoiding online fraud, Internet addictions and online stalking."

Our children now live in two diverse worlds: their physical world and the world of cyberspace. As such, they essentially live in two cultures that often conflict. To date, many of the lessons learned in the physical world don't seem relevant in cyberspace as these children reach out to strangers as friends. This paradigm shift demands new, innovative educational programs for our children, their parents, and the community. It is essential that children, as they travel their world of cyberspace alone, be provided with the knowledge they need: to independently recognize and avoid dangerous situations online; to actively engage learned, proactive techniques to more safely interact with strangers online; to critically appraise situations in which they find themselves; and, to react appropriately when they find themselves in uncomfortable, compromising, or threatening situations.

According to a press release on May 2, 2002 published by the NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences Computer Science and Telecommunications Board and the INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE, Board on Children, Youth, and Families regarding the findings of the Committee to Study Tools and Strategies for Protecting Kids from Pornography and Their Applicability to Other Inappropriate Internet Content (chaired by Richard Thornburgh):

An essential element of protecting children from inappropriate material on the Internet -- and one largely ignored in the present debate -- is the promotion of social and educational strategies that teach children to make wise choices about using the Internet and to take control of their online experiences: where they go, what they see, to whom they talk, and what they do.

Children also need to acquire skills that will allow them to evaluate independently the information and images they are viewing. By improving children's "information and media literacy," they are better able to critically assess material, recognize underlying messages, and locate the information they seek.

Children should be educated in Internet safety much as they are taught about their physical safety, the report says. This might include teaching them how sexual predators and hate-group recruiters typically approach young people online, how to recognize jargon that signals inappropriate material, and whether to provide personal information. To guide adults, public service announcements and media campaigns could help educate them about the nature and extent of dangers on the Internet and the need for safety measures.

Education is a critical and essential component in combating the threat of child predation via the Internet; but, it is only one element of the solution. To stem the online predation of our children, it is essential that a multiplicity of elements be collectively engaged as part of an overarching solution: education (children, parents, & the community), law enforcement, legal, and technical.

According to the National Academies' National Research Council report noted previously (this report is available in its entirety online at www.nap.edu/books/0309082749/html): No single approach -- technical, legal, economic, or educational -- will be sufficient to protect children from online pornography. I believe this statement can be extended to include all aspects of predatory acts perpetrated against children online. The report goes on to describe the need for social and educational strategies, technology-based tools, and legal and regulatory approaches that can be mixed and adapted to fit different communities' circumstances.

There are many technology-based tools that are currently employed in an effort to protect children from exposure to offensive or pornographic material online. These tools include filtering and the blocking of websites that may potentially contain offensive materials. A heated debate surrounds the use of filtering and the constitutionality of these and other similar tools. With respect to my testimony and the use of technology to provide increased safety, I will recognize that filtering is one of a set of tools available and I will focus my testimony on a different technology-based tool that may potentially prove to be a powerful enabler to the managers of chat rooms for attaining "best effort" policies and procedures for protecting children who frequent their chat rooms: digital certificates.

Currently, both businesses and governmental agencies have begun to embrace digital certificate technology as an electronic means for identifying participants in transactions that occur online. They leverage this technology as a method for verifying and authenticating a person's electronic identity. The simplest way to view a digital certificate is as an electronic ID card. However, digital certificate technology is far from simple; but, given that the intent of this testimony is to identify and express how technology can be used, rather than to define the intricacies of the technology, I will refer to digital certificate technology in the simplest terms possible for the reader to understand. For anyone interested in garnering a more in-depth view of digital certificates and digital signatures you may want to visit the American Bar Association, Section of Science and Technology, Information Security Committee website to review the document Digital Signature Guidelines Tutorial (www.abanet.org/scitech/ec/isc/dsg-tutorial.html).

Digital certificates are issued by a certification authority. A certification authority can issue various levels of digital certificates that are dependent upon the amount of authentication that is required to ensure that the person who is applying for the digital certificate is in fact the person that he or she claims to be. In other words, to obtain a digital certificate a person must present proof of identity and the "level" of the certificate obtained depends upon the amount of proof required.

Example: Acme Certification Authority

Level 1 certificate - any photo ID required

Level 2 certificate - government issued photo ID required

Level 3 certificate - government issued photo ID required plus passport or birth certificate

Level 4 certificate - all requirements of Level 3 plus a background check

Level 5 certificate - DNA

How could digital certificate technology increase the safety of children who frequent a particular chat room?

A public- or private-sector chat room provider could engage digital certificate technology as a means for permitting or denying access to any given chat room. Conceivably, a chat room provider could institute a policy that only children under the age of 13 are allowed to participate in a particular chat room. The intent of this policy is to provide a safer online environment by making their "best effort" at excluding adults and potential pedophiles from the chat room. To enforce the "under the age of 13" policy, the chat provider would require all participants to login using a Level 3 digital certificate. Through the use of the digital certificate and the chat provider's policy of restricting access, the children participating in this chat room have a lessened degree of risk than those children that participate in unrestricted chat rooms.

This technology exists. We currently use it to execute online financial transactions. Businesses use this technology to protect their monetary assets; perhaps, we should explore how it can be used to protect our most precious asset: our children.

Protecting our children is at the very heart of this hearing. Thank you, Chairman Upton, for inviting me to testify before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. In my testimony, today, I addressed the paradigm shift that has occurred within our society due the advancements in web technologies and the advent of chat rooms; exposed the dangers our children face online and the difficulties faced by parents in protecting our children; touched upon one technological approach for increasing the abilities of chat room providers to create safer chat room environments; and, most importantly addressed the importance of education in protecting our children from falling victim to online predators.

In conclusion, there is no one solution for protecting our children. However, the value of empowering our children - through education - with the knowledge and critical-thinking skills that they need to be able to independently assess the every-day situations they will encounter while online cannot be overstressed. Children must be able to effectively protect themselves from cyber predators, to recognize potentially harmful or inappropriate actions, to actively disengage from negative behaviors or compromising situations, and to seek help when threatened. These lessons are learned. Education and empowerment are key.

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