U.S. Senators Take On Child Pornography With $1 Billion Warchest

Child pornography is one reality that’s part of the dark side of the Internet. If you’re going to ask me, people who take advantage of kids, especially for the purpose of pornography, deserves some form of lethal injection. But I’m not the law.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the Combating Child Exploitation Act of 2007 to encourage federal, state, and local police to use and create special software designed to nab child pornography swappers on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. The bill now rests in the hands of the Senate-at-large for voting.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), would allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years for efforts aimed at combating Internet crimes against children.

The bill would specifically:

• Require the Attorney General to appoint a Special Counsel for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction within the Office of Deputy Attorney General to coordinate Department of Justice policies and strategies for the prevention and investigation of child exploitation cases.
• Establish within the Office of Justice Programs an Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC Task Force), consisting of state and local task forces (one task force for each state) to address online enticement of children, child exploitation, and child obscenity and pornography cases.
• Require the Attorney General to establish a National Internet Crimes Against Children Data Network Center to assist the ICAC Task Force program and federal, state, local, and tribal agencies investigating and prosecuting child exploitation.
• Authorize the Attorney General to award grants to state and local ICAC task forces to combat Internet crimes against children.
• Require the Attorney General to establish additional computer forensic capacity to address backlogs, including for child exploitation investigations.
• Amend the federal criminal code to authorize wiretapping in state child exploitation investigations.
• Authorize funding for additional agents and personnel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Postal Service.

My only concern is that how can a $1 billion warchest go against the reported $3 billion child pornography industry.