CSAM & Predators - Dialogue on Social Networking Web Sites

June 22, 2006

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Dialogue on Social Networking Web Sites Washington D.C.

Statement of Dr. Frank Kardasz, Project Director Arizona Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force

BACKGROUND

Thank you for inviting me today. I have spent the last six of my 27 years in law enforcement doing some of the most important police work possible. It is the work of protecting children and teens from Internet sexual predators and traffickers of child pornography.

This type of police work is still in its relative infancy. Some cops are still computer novices. Some of us think that a social networking site is the local Fraternal Order of Police Lodge. So we cops are working to catch up. Getting our law enforcement arms around the growing problem of Internet crime is a momentous task. By way of analogy, some days I feel like we are trying to restrain King Kong with a tiny rubber band. But thanks to the DOJ Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, we continue to improve.

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

With regards to social networking sites, they provide users with a lawful service. They provide an attractive method of communication. Owners of the sites sometimes profit from advertisers who know that the popularity of the sites provide important venues for attracting people to their products. There is nothing inherently evil about either of those motives. The challenge comes from trying to filter out the criminals who use the services with evil intent.

THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ENVIRONMENT

Law enforcement cannot do as much in this area as it would like to. Law enforcement resources are often absorbed by those crimes for which there is a public outcry. Overall, there is less of a public outcry for the enforcement of Internet crimes against children than there is for many other crimes. In recent years Federal resources are drawn to terrorism, drug enforcement and border control, all of which have great national importance. Local resources are drawn to homicides, gangs, drugs, burglaries, and other offenses of great local importance. Consequently, we who fight Internet crime are often understaffed. That’s also partly because children are often marginalized by society. They have no voice. Very young children, those whose tortured images we see when we investigate child pornography incidents, cannot call 911. They cannot call the news media, they cannot write to an elected official. They cannot vote.

Sometimes the crimes are so devastatingly surreal that we cannot wrap our logical minds around the possibility that anyone would do such things to a child. Some of the most hardened and cynical cops I know cannot work Internet crimes against children because they cannot endure the attendant emotional hardship that comes with witnessing the inhumane suffering of innocent children.

So I am pleased to see all of you here today and see that we are working on these tough issues.

CASE STUDIES

Now I would like to show two case studies from the Arizona Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force involving social networking sites.

The first case involves a man who called himself “Danny” on his web page. We learned about Danny because an alert parent was monitoring her childs Internet use and personally knew of Danny because he lived in the same neighborhood as the woman. She also knew that he is a registered sex offender. We learned that Danny (not his real name) was also registered sex offender in Arizona. There is no mention of his sex offender status on his web page and he advertises himself as a lover of poetry who is looking for a girlfriend. Although his original web page is no longer available, Danny is not subject to any computer restrictions and is free to continue advertising himself if he so chooses.

The second case involves a man who advertised himself on his web page as “International man of adventure.” A parent in Louisiana installed monitoring software on her daughters computer and found that the minor was communicating with a man from Arizona. The incident was reported to the Louisiana ICAC Task Force, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Arizona ICAC Task Force. Detectives from my Arizona Task Force learned the mans true identity and discovered that he was wanted on a felony sexual assault warrant in Arizona. He is now in custody awaiting trial for the sex assault charge.

OFFENDERS

Unlike spectacular and riveting crimes and events involving crashes, explosions, shootings and widespread newsworthy bloodletting, the evil crimes against children are committed in dark and private places by offenders who sometimes psychologically groom and control their victims into silence. In cases involving predators who use social networking sites, the psychological grooming and control process begins with the offenders carefully constructed web page. They may pose as friendly adults, or as other children of the same age, or they may just browse and search and stalk the millions of web pages until they find just the right target and gather just enough information to permit them to locate and capture a victim.

Once we learn of the offense, law enforcement investigators must scramble to issue subpoenas and hope that the Internet service provider retained the data so we can find the offender.

VICTIMS

I’m convinced that that the quiet crimes committed when an adult sexual predator meets a curious unsupervised teenager to engage in sex acts are often unreported. Often the minor returns home without his or her parents ever finding out. We learned of one such case in Arizona when an undercover officer from my task force was posing as a child and subsequently arrested a predator. We learned that the offender had met and victimized two girls to whom he had also given sexually transmitted diseases. In their shame, the girls had never notified anyone of the crimes. The distraught parents only learned of the offenses when my detectives informed them of the suspect’s confessions.

SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM

Some will say, it’s not that big a problem; the crime statistics are not large. And that will seem to be true because these crimes are underreported. Defenders of free speech and privacy will demand numbers and statistics to justify change. How many incidents? How many sexual assaults? How many children? How many deaths? But ask yourselves; what is an acceptable number of children lost to Internet sexual predators and child pornography traffickers? For me, the answer is none.

I hope we will find some common ground that allows continued social networking while controlling the criminals who abuse the privilege.

I trust that we will not mentally disassociate ourselves from the victims for the sake of financial gain or a misguided sense of freedom of expression or protection of privacy. I know that the proprietors of social networking sites are responsible individuals who share our respect for the rights of children to grow up happy and innocent.

My Massachusetts ICAC Task Force colleague, Sgt. Steve DelNegro, will talk some more in a few minutes about the other kinds of cases we are seeing and provide some recommendations for your consideration.

I will be happy to take questions later. Thank you