Congress sending child porno bills to president

The House on Friday passed by 418-0 a measure clarifying that images obtained over the Internet were subject to federal interstate commerce laws. The bill was in response to a federal court ruling that prosecutors must show that images kept on a computer had crossed state lines.

"This legislation closes the jurisdictional loophole that allowed a guilty man to escape punishment," said Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., the bill's sponsor.

The same legislation contained another bill sponsored by Rep. Christopher Carney, D-Pa., that would allow prosecutors to include money laundering as a tool in child pornography cases. That would fix another loophole that has allowed Internet users to evade child pornography laws by not downloading or saving the images.

The House was also scheduled to take up legislation, passed by the Senate on Thursday, that would require more electronic service providers to report online child pornography and make failure to report known child pornography a federal crime.

Currently, Internet service providers are required to report child pornography to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The legislation, sponsored by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Joe Biden, D-Del., would expand those companies with reporting obligations to include search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, domain name registrars and wireless phone carriers.

These companies would not be required to monitor Web sites, but the legislation would triple fines for knowing failure to report child pornography. The companies would also receive limited protection from prosecution for transmitting images of apparent child pornography to the National Center to ensure they do not underreport child pornography for fear of prosecution.

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The Boyda-Carney bill is H.R. 4120. The Schumer-Biden bill is S. 1738.

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