FREE ESSAY ON CHILD PORNOGRAPHY ON THE INTERNET

CHILD PORNOGRAPHY ON THE INTERNET

James Noble
ISC 300
Child Pornography on the Internet
In this new age of Information, the Internet has made all types of 
information readily available. Some of this information can be very useful, 
some can be malicious. Child pornography, also known as Paedophilia is 
one of these problems. Any one person can find child pornography on the 
internet with just a few clicks of the mouse using any search engine. 
Despite webmaster's and law enforcement officials' efforts to control child 
pornography and shut down illegal sites, new sites are posted using 
several ways to mask their identity. 
The Internet provides a new world for curious children. It offers 
entertainment, opportunities for education, information and communication. 
The Internet is a tool that opens a window of opportunities. As Internet 
use grows, so do the risks of children being exposed to inappropriate 
material, in particular, criminal activity by paedophiles and child 
pornographers. 
Many children first come in contact with the Internet at a very young 
age. Some children become victims of child pornography through close 
relatives who may have abused them. Some children become involved 
with chat services or newsgroup threads. It is usually through these sites 
that they meet child pornographers. Children may be asked to send 
explicit pictures of themselves taken either by a digital camera or scanned 
from a polaroid. The pornographer will then post the pictures on their web 
site, sometimes hiding them through encryption, steganography or 
password protecting them using a javascript or applet. 
Certain efforts have been made to control child pornography 
through legislation. In 1977 the Sexual Exploitation of Children Act was 
put into Legislation. (U.S. Code : Title 18, Section 2251-2253) The law 
prohibits the use of a minor in the making of pornography, the transport of 
a child across state lines, the taking of a pornographic picture of a minor, 
and the production and circulation of materials advertising child 
pornography. It also prohibits the transfer, sale, purchase, and receipt of 
minors when the purpose of such transfer, sale, purchase, or receipt is to 
use the child or youth in the production of child pornography. The 
transportation, importation, shipment, and receipt of child pornography by 
any interstate means, including by mail or computer, is also prohibited. 
The Child Protection Act of 1984 (U.S. Code : Title 18, Section 2251-2255) 
defines anyone younger than the age of 18 as a child. Therefore, a 
sexually explicit photograph of anyone 17 years of age or younger is child 
pornography. On November 7, 1986, the U.S. Congress enacted the Child 
Sexual Abuse and Pornography Act (U.S. Code : Title 18, Section 
2251-2256) that banned the production and use of advertisements for child 
pornography and included a provision for civil remedies of personal injuries 
suffered by a minor who is a victim. It also raised the minimum sentences 
for repeat offenders from imprisonment of not less than two years to 
imprisonment of not less than five years. On November 18, 1988, the U.S. 
Congress enacted the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act 
(U.S. Code : Title 18, Section 2251-2256) that made it unlawful to use a 
computer to transmit advertisements or visual depictions of child 
pornography and it prohibited the buying, selling, or otherwise obtaining 
temporary custody or control of children for the purpose of producing child 
pornography. On November 29, 1990, the U.S. Congress enacted US 
Code : Title 18, Section 2252 making it a federal crime to possess three or 
more depictions of child pornography that were mailed or shipped in 
interstate or foreign commerce or that were produced using materials that 
were mailed or shipped by any means, including by computer. With the 
passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it is a federal crime for 
anyone using the mail, interstate or foreign commerce, to persuade, 
induce, or entice any individual younger than the age of 18 to engage in 
any sexual act for which the person may be criminally prosecuted. The 
Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 amends the definition of child 
pornography to include that which actually depicts the sexual conduct of 
real minor children and that which appears to be a depiction of a minor 
engaging in sexual conduct. Computer, photographic, and photocopy 
technology is amazingly competent at creating and altering images that 
have been morphed to look like children even though those 
photographed may have actually been adults. People who alter 
pornographic images to look like children can now be prosecuted under 
the law. Abstracts for these laws can be found at 
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/. 
The current legislation in place at the federal and state level clearly 
defines child pornography, and the standard sentencing for offenders. It 
also clearly defines a minor and what activity involving a minor is illegal. 
What the legislation does not do is set the standards for retreival of 
evidence from an electronic device, namely computers. Also, the current 
legislation does not set standards for decrypting child pornography that is 
protected. One example is the use of Steganography.
Steganography uses a bitstream algorithm to hide information in the 
form of raw binary code within other files suitable to hold information. The 
most commonly used form of Steganography uses the least significant bit 
of a bitmap image to store virtually any type of information. Every three 
bytes in a bitmap file represents a pixel. Each of these bytes represents a 
level of red, blue or green. Since there are eight bits in a byte, there can 
be up to 256 different combinations of 1's and 0's in a single byte. In the 
case of a bitmap, each unique combination of 1's and 0's represents a 
level of red, blue or green. When the colors are combined, there is the 
possibility of 256^3 or 4,294,967,296 different colors. In order to hide 
information within a bitmap file, the file in which you want to hide must be 
copied bit for bit into the last bit of each byte in the bitmap file. This will 
change each pixel of the bitmap file at the most by 
1 / 2,097,152, depending on whether the bit being copied is the same as 
the bit it is replacing. Since the human eye can only physically distinguish 
between an average of 250 different colors, a difference of 1 / 2,097,152 is 
indistinguishable. Since only one bit of the target bitmap is being used to 
store information, the source file can at most be 1/8 of the size of the 
target file. In the case of a bitmap, a high resolution picture can easily hold 
a lower resolution picture that may contain child pornography.
Legally, if a bitmap image is found to contain a hidden image using 
steganography, there is no legal procedure for extracting that evidence for 
a court case. The prosecution would have to somehow explain how 
steganography works to a jury, and to the judge, and would have to prove 
in some way that the information found did in fact come from that bitmap 
file. Currently, evidence found in this manner is inadmissible in court 
because there is no legislation dealing with this type of evidence. Also, 
there is no standard approved software that will decode these files. There 
are several software programs readily available on the internet which will 
encode or decode information using the least significant bit algorithm. One 
example is called Hide and Seek. Anyone can obtain this software free of 
charge, making it easy for child pornographers to hide their work. 
Another problem is illicit material that is stored on a remote 
computer. If the perpetrator of child pornography does not own the 
computer that the material is stored on, it would be difficult for law 
enforcement officials to obtain a warrant to search a third party's computer. 
Also, there is currently no legislation that defines what space an a machine 
belongs to a specific do