Internet in the Home: Protecting Your Kids Transcripts August 27, 1997 10 a.m. - 11 a.m. GUESTS: ELIZABETH MCNAMARA, FIRST AMENDMENT ATTORNEY BRUCE TAYLOR, INTERNET SAFETY ADVOCATE The following are excerpts from the viewer call-in portion of the program. Laws Governing the Internet Communications Decency Act Is It Illegal To Access A Site About Drugs? Harassment Online Is The Use Of "Cookies" Legal? Tips For Safe Surfing MS. GRASSO: Welcome back for the second hour of Legal Cafe. I'm June Grasso. If you're just joining us, we focus on the law and your home today and every Wednesday, and in this hour, we'll turn our attention to the Internet, a new phenomenon that literally burst into millions of homes in the 1990s. And, like any new technology, there are legal issues involved, not the least of which is the potential to expose pornography to young children. I'm joined by Elizabeth McNamara to discuss these and other issues. Elizabeth is an attorney who specializes in First Amendment and entertainment issues like defamation, privacy, and copyright. It's a pleasure to have you here, Elizabeth. MS. MCNAMARA: Thank you. LAWS GOVERNING THE INTERNET MS. GRASSO: First of all, are there laws governing the Internet in place right now? MS. MCNAMARA: Absolutely. I mean, most criminal statutes that are in effect for all other actions are equally applicable to the Internet, so that if something is truly obscene, it can be prosecuted and it can be stopped on the Internet just as elsewhere. And similarly, I think often parents are rightfully concerned about harassment or child pedophiles or propositioning children on the Internet, and there are laws that prohibit that. There are criminal statutes, and those are equally applicable to the Internet. But there are laws in effect that I think can regulate. MS. GRASSO: Now, what about -- I think what a lot of parents are concerned about is pornography on the Internet. We just heard Dina -- a lot of raunchy things out there, and you just don't want your children to have access to that. MS. MCNAMARA: And I think that what -- that was sought to be legislated by Congress last year, with the Communications Decency Act, which this spring the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional, and I think the lesson we have to draw from that decision is that, really, that needs to be regulated from the home. There are many ways to do it, there are many options for parents, I think, to be in control and to have some -- and to exercise control over it, but I'm not sure that the proper answer is to have Congress exercising that control. MS. GRASSO: Is there any restriction on the creation of a website? It seems like everybody and his brother has a website out there now. Is there -- and suppose someone who wants to lure children away from their homes or lure them into bad practices just starts a website. Is there anything stopping a person from doing that? MS. MCNAMARA: Well, if, in fact, it can be shown that that's their intent and that's what they're doing, is luring children and harassing children or soliciting minors in some way, then, yes, it can be stopped criminally, just as it could be if they were doing it on the street. MS. GRASSO: Right, but it's -- policing the Internet is quite a different problem from police officers, you know, going into a house somewhere where people are doing, you know, illicit things or where child pornography is going on and, you know, knocking down the door and going in there than trying to find on the Internet what's going on. There is no police mechanism in place, is there? No kind of overriding authority watching what's going on the Internet? MS. MCNAMARA: No, we don't have Big Brother -- (laughter) -- and I'm not sure, at least from my perspective, we want to implement Big Brother. I think like anything else, you know, there's a lot of dangers theoretically that children can confront, and I think that, you know, good parents should set rules and make their children street smart, and just as they're street smart and they know not to get in cars with strangers and they know not to accept candy from strangers, they should learn, I think, the rules of what they can and cannot do or should not do on the Internet. COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT MS. GRASSO: Welcome back to Legal Cafe. I'm June Grasso. We're on air talking about being online. What are your rights and responsibilities when plugging into the Internet, especially when children are in the home? Some parents are outraged that kids can access the same web sites as adults, especially the ones containing indecent material or even pornography. Congress responded to these concerns by enacting the Communications Decency Act in 1996. Here's what that law was all about. First, the law banned the online distribution of indecent material, not just pornography, to anyone younger than the age of 18. The law also imposed a maximum penalty of two years in prison, with a $250,000 fine for violating a law. But in June 25, 1997, the United States Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act because it violates the First Amendment, so there is currently no law restricting kids' access to the World Wide Web, but there are other ways to block out pornography on the Internet, and Bruce Taylor is on the phone to discuss them. Bruce is the president and chief counsel for the National Law Center for Children and Families, a public education and legal resource center which specializes in federal obscenity and child exploitation cases. Bruce, you have an important point of view, which we definitely don't want to block out. Good morning, and thanks for being here. MR. TAYLOR: Hi, thanks. It's an important subject, and I think it's getting more important now that the Supreme Court took away whatever protections Congress was trying to give kids. MS. GRASSO: Bruce, what do you think about that, about the fact that a child -- you know, you go to the movies, and there are all kinds of restrictions on what kind of movies a kid can see, they can't get into certain movies without their parents being there, and yet on the Internet, you can log on and get on anywhere? MR. TAYLOR: And that's what Congress was attempting in the CDA, was to extend the same kind of laws we have under state law and federal law that protect kids, that say if adults want to buy, you know, Hustler magazine, they've got to ask for it and they can't put it next to the comics, and you can't let kids into theaters or adult bookstores, and so those kind of restrictions have said -- because the CDA didn't ban indecency from the Internet. The ACLU said that. The Supreme Court, I think, got fooled, in a sense, by what they thought the technology was, but the CDA said no one shall knowingly send or make available indecent material to minors, and the court said, "Well, there's no way to keep it from kids without keeping it from adults, and the technology doesn't allow us to block it." And I don't agree with that. I think they made a mistake. I think Congress is going to try to fix it some other way and the court will accept it, but the whole point of the matter is adults may have a right to non-obscene pornography, but that doesn't mean we have a right to put it where kids are, and kids who want to use the Internet are exposed to a lot of both soft-core and hard-core pornography and a lot of it's illegal, but law enforcement can't stop it, so something has to be done, and it's not just that we're going to leave it to parents, because they can't protect their kids. MS. GRASSO: What can be done? How would you possibly -- I think one of the Court's concerns was how would you go about restricting this in a legal way and how would you ever police this area? MR. TAYLOR: Well, policing it is always going to be the problem, like we have laws right now against the distribution in cyberspace or, you know, on computer networks of obscenity and child pornography, and yet there's a lot of it out there. If you go to any of the triple X dot com places, they're full of free teasers where kid or adult can go and before they take your credit card, they'll let you see 50 or 20 hard-core pictures of everything from group sex to bestiality and torture and urination, and kids can see that, and Congress said, "They should be taking a credit card first," and they should be prosecuted for violating obscenity laws, but there aren't enough cops in the world to get everybody, and the pornography industry knows that. The pedophiles are distributing child pornography, and they do it anonymously in some of the use-net news groups, they send it into chat rooms where kids are, you know, on a teen chat, and the pedophiles are going to go into those teen chats, and there's not a good way for parents to know that the kids aren't doing that or if they're doing it at school or at the local library. There's no way to police that, and that's why Congress wanted to put restrictions on what kind of material was out there, and I think it could be done where maybe people who give minors access to an Internet system that has the use-net on there are required to put on one of these filters, like an X stop or something, that blocks out access to the hard-core sites, and the law could, like the state laws do, prohibit adults from knowingly sending pornography to children, and whenever a parent finds out that somebody sent your kid an unsolicited e-mail that's an ad for pornography, they ought to call their local district attorney and police department and have, if that person is within the jurisdiction or could be prosecuted, that's an offense under most state laws, and if it's obscene, it's an offense for the FBI and the Department of Justice to prosecute. So we have laws, but it's going to be hard to enforce them, so we're going to rely upon technical means like filters and we're going to have to force the libraries to put those filters on when they give kids access, that kind of thing. IS IT ILLEGAL TO ACCESS A SITE ABOUT DRUGS? MS. GRASSO: All right. I want both of you to stand by. Let's see what concerns our viewers have. Chris from Ohio. Welcome to Legal Cafe, Chris. Q Yes, I'm a marijuana activist, and I live in a state that does not have a medical defense law, and I'm concerned about accessing information sites that have marijuana information on them and the legalities of that. MS. GRASSO: You mean whether if you access them you could somehow be prosecuted? Q Prosecuted or investigated or just monitored. MS. GRASSO: Okay. Let me ask Elizabeth that. Are there people -- I mean, do you have to worry about what you're accessing on the Internet? Does Chris have to worry about what he's accessing, that the police will use that as a way to try to get to him, to know, you know, who to look for? MS. MCNAMARA: Well, I most certainly hope not. I mean, I think that would be kind of a scary situation if, in fact, people could be investigated based upon what they're accessing on the Internet. I mean, the fact of the matter, as far as the marijuana goes, there's absolutely nothing illegal about accessing information concerning marijuana and its use, and the only thing that is illegal is the use of marijuana or buying or selling marijuana, and I think, you know, accessing information concerning marijuana on the Internet is not and should not be illegal. MS. GRASSO: Now, suppose -- but, do you think -- I mean, in your wildest imagination, Elizabeth, is it possible that some law enforcement agency might be looking at people who access certain kinds of information in order to know, you know, where to focus their investigations? MS. MCNAMARA: Well, I think that would be illegal. I'm not sure that without a subpoena they would have the ability to just freely surfing the 'Net, if, you know, technology allowed them to, I don't -- I think that I would argue that you would require a subpoena to get in to access to find out what someone is or is not accessing on the Internet. MS. GRASSO: All right. Okay. HARASSMENT ONLINE And let's go to our callers and see what you're thinking about the Internet when you log on. Tara from Wisconsin. Good morning, Tara. Q Good morning. MS. GRASSO: Hi. Do you have children that you're worried about on the Internet? Q Well, actually, I have two children and I'm thinking about getting, you know, the Internet right now, but I have a babysitter, and I go over there and, you know, go on with her sometimes. MS. GRASSO: Right. Q So we were on one day, and a man instant mailed her, okay? We didn't know how old he was or anything, and we asked the age and the sex and all that, and he said that he had some pictures or whatever, and we said we're not interested. And he said that, "Well," he says, "you'd better watch out," he goes, "because when you sign off, you know, my pictures will appear on your screen." MS. GRASSO: Oh! Q And we didn't believe him or whatever, and then all of a sudden he goes, "I know where you live." He had traced her, where she lived, what her mother's name was, and her address and her phone number, and we panicked. We contacted AOL then. MS. GRASSO: Right. Q But as soon as we signed off, these pictures started showing up on the screen. He was naked, him and his wife. It was absolutely disgusting. MS. GRASSO: Wow! Q And AOL did nothing to him, and then he -- and then he said, "If you download so many pictures," he goes, "it will destroy your computer," and he says, "and I can make that happen." MS. GRASSO: Really? Q He said, "I can make that happen," and so I was like absolutely scared, and I don't -- MS. GRASSO: It sounds frightening. Tara, so you weren't able to do anything about it? Q No. AOL -- MS. GRASSO: You just -- now, let me go to Bruce, because, to tell you the truth, I am not that familiar with the Internet. I haven't really surfed the 'Net much myself. Bruce, is it easy for someone to get access to your address and know where you live, or was this guy just telling them something that wasn't true? MR. TAYLOR: No, unfortunately both the pedophiles who stalk kids and trade child porn and the pornography syndicates who sell it and a lot of the people on the 'Net are a lot better at it than those of us users or parents who are just trying to use it to get to Disney's page or to the Louvre Museum, so it's a serious disadvantage we have over their technological ability to get stuff to us, and they can do it pretty easy, and that lady's experience is a fairly common one nowadays. We get calls about it every day, and two things she should do. One, call the local police. That guy committed a felony both under federal law and under her state law, and her local police could try to get a warrant for wherever this guy lives and have him extradited to stand trial for stalking her child if the facts fit the statute in Wisconsin and that kind of activity is a crime, and the other thing the lady ought to do is not just tell AOL, but to install those parental controls or buy herself an X stop program so that that e-mail gets intercepted by the program and the parents have to open it first and they can delete it before it ruins their computer. MS. GRASSO: All right. Well, let me -- Elizabeth, that's a very frightening thing that Tara went through, and she really did nothing wrong there and she was there to monitor it, but what's your opinion about what can be done? MS. MCNAMARA: Well, I agree with Bruce. I mean, I think that his suggestions are correct. I think it should be reported to the local police. I think it should be -- she was correct to report it to AOL. I think AOL has the ability to go after someone like that and to, if the person is operating through AOL, to deprive them from further use on the system if they're engaging in such activity, but the police probably -- there are laws in effect that can prevent such activity, or stop it, at any rate. I agree with Bruce. It's difficult to prevent these things. MS. GRASSO: All right. Tara, thanks so much for telling us that story and for helping to educate us. IS THE USE OF "COOKIES" LEGAL? Let's go back to the phones, where Mike from Massachusetts is standing by. Hi, Mike. Q Hi, June. MS. GRASSO: What side of the issue are you on, or do you have just a question for us? Q Well, I guess, you know, I agree with, you know, the idea that better software needs to be developed in order to protect children in the home surfing on the Web -- but my question's more or less a safety concern of mine. MS. GRASSO: Okay. Q I surf the Web pretty regularly, and I've read articles about what they call "cookies." They're trails of information about yourself that are left out on the 'Net with every website that you visit -- and companies collect this and use that for direct marketing and telephone marketing -- MS. GRASSO: I've heard something about this. Q -- and I was wondering what the legal issue -- if that's legal. I don't know if companies can do that, if you call them, whether they can, you know, take your telephone number and use that information. I don't know. MS. GRASSO: It's a huge problem, and, Mike, I mean, there are all kinds of ways that companies -- we did a show a few days ago, and I learned that just every time you use your credit card, companies can be drawing up information about what kind of marketing they can direct to you, so there's so much information about you out there that you're probably not aware of because it's the computer age. Now, Elizabeth, is there anything to stop companies from seeing what Web pages you've accessed so that they can figure out, you know, what kind of catalogues they want to send you or brochures in the mail? MS. MCNAMARA: Well, I think that every state has consumer privacy protection legislation, and I think what people need to do is to see how that legislation can apply to the Internet. It seems to me practically it should, and I think that there are some -- I'm not an expert on it, by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think that there are some limits on how companies can tap into your private information, your use of credit cards, your use, I would hope, of the website. I mean, I think that that information should be somewhat limited and not freely available to everyone. MS. GRASSO: Bruce, are you aware of what Mike is talking about? MR. TAYLOR: Yes, it's one of my pet peeves, and everybody gets them all the time, from -- if you're a subscriber to AOL or CompuServe or Microsoft Network or somebody and you'll get a cookie, and a notice will come up on your screen that says, "You've received a cookie from the Microsoft Network" or from AOL, and it's not really from them, it's from some advertiser, and if you accept that cookie, that cookie will track all your traffic on the Web and transmit the information of where you go and what pictures you look at and how long you listen to this message or this song, so they can find out what kind of issues, sports, music you're interested in so they can send you ads. So accepting cookies just gives a marketer information about your traffic on the Web so that they can market to you and sell the information to other marketers, and I think they ought to at least have, like your guest said, some truth in advertising. They ought to say, "This is a cookie received from, you know, Mass Marketing Data Inc., or from, you know, some record company, and if you accept it, we will track your traffic or we will be able to figure out where you go -- and I think that is a big problem and nobody's being told about it, but, you know, it's kind of a disturbing thing, even if it's not illegal, it's just one of those kinds of unfair trade practices that shows the disadvantage that we have technologically to the people who run this commercial 'Net business. MS. GRASSO: Bruce, I want -- can you give me a yes or no answer to this question? If you see one of these things that says you've gotten a cookie, or whatever it is, just say no? MR. TAYLOR: All you've got to do is say no and it doesn't go in, and you can also erase them from your hard drive by going into your computer and do a find, ask it for the cookies. It'll find the cookies and delete them. MS. GRASSO: Okay. Mike, you know, I just worry about cookies for diet reasons. I didn't know you had to worry about them on the Internet as well. If you're receiving material on the Internet that offends you to the point where you're considering legal action, remember that these are the legal grounds for an invasion of privacy lawsuit. TIPS FOR SAFE SURFING MS. GRASSO: We're almost out of time. Let's summarize a few of the highlights from our discussion of Internet law, and we'll call this our House Blend for Safe Surfing. First, keep the computer in a public area of your home. The longer you stay away, the more chance your children will have to find their way to some pretty offensive websites. You should also learn how your computer works so you can communicate on the same level as your children and the people they meet on the Web. Finally, some financial advice. Keep a watchful eye on your computer and phone bills to make sure there aren't any late-night Internet sessions that can really add up. And we just have a few moments left. Bruce Taylor, your closing comments, briefly. MR. TAYLOR: What we're going to do is keep trying to get Congress to make a better law, the states to make better laws, and for the industry to come up with better filters and the ISPs use those filters instead of just make them available or sell them. MS. GRASSO: All right. Bruce Taylor, thanks so much for being here and for your contributions to our discussion. We appreciate it. MR. TAYLOR: Okay. MS. GRASSO: Elizabeth, your final thoughts. You were telling me that there is also a way to monitor what your children have been doing. MS. MCNAMARA: Yes, most computer programs, most of your systems, allow you to go back in and see what sites your child had visited, and so it's another way -- I think, you know, there's common sense to all of this, and I think that should be the watchword, and you should talk to your kids, find out what they're doing, and you can do what I just suggested -- you can go in and see where they've been and then talk to them about what they're going -- what they're seeing there and why they're doing it. MS. GRASSO: In light of the Supreme Court's decision, do you see a future ahead where the Internet is going to remain wide open, or do you think that, you know, as Bruce has suggested, there will be more restrictions on it? MS. MCNAMARA: I don't anticipate that there will be more government restrictions. I'm of the view that the Supreme Court decision as well as other decisions that have come down recently have limited, I think the ability of the government to really regulate the speech on the Internet. I think that more and more there needs to be active involvement of families, schools, organizations getting these filters, getting -- and working with your children. MS. GRASSO: Do you think the online services should do more also? MS. MCNAMARA: Well, I think they are. I mean, I think many of the online services provide access to these filters already and information and have their own in place, so I think they already are doing a lot and I think as there's more and more impetus from families and other groups, they probably will do more. MS. GRASSO: And as we were speaking off camera, the key is to watch your children on the Internet as well as you watch them when they leave the house and you tell them what to do there. MS. MCNAMARA: Absolutely. I think you need to make your children street smart, and on the superhighway, they need to be smart, as well. MS. GRASSO: (Laughs.) Before they cross the street, you always warn them, and now before they cross the superhighway, you have to warn them, as well. MS. MCNAMARA: Exactly. MS. GRASSO: Thanks so much, Elizabeth McNamara, for being here. It's been a pleasure. MS. MCNAMARA: Thank you. MS. GRASSO: It's closing time at Legal Cafe, but we're open every weekday morning at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time, looking at a different area of the law.