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Ask Parry! is a service where Parry Aftab, noted online safety and privacy expert, and Executive Director of WiredSafety.org can answer your questions about online safety, privacy and security, and help you with problems you encounter online. Anything from help finding a safe chat room for your teens, to knowing what to do if the item you bought at auction doesn't arrive as promised.
I hear there are no laws in cyberspace. Is that true?
No. Generally everything that is illegal offline is illegal online. In the United States It's illegal, online and offline, to:
- entice or coerce a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct o import or transport obscenity
- knowingly receive child pornography o advertise child pornography
- depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct (even virtually)
- depict someone engaged in sexually explicit conduct who appears to be a child
- advertise or promote sexually explicit conduct by giving the impression that minors are engaged in sexually explicit conduct
The federal laws also protect children against luring or attempts to lure them into an offline meeting for the purposes of performing illegal sexual acts, or coercing them to provide sexually explicit photos of themselves.
This is one of the biggest problems with sexual predators online. While online sexual predators may ultimately want to meet your child face-to-face, in the meantime they often coerce a child into taking and sending to them sexually explicit photos of themselves, and even more often send children sexually explicit photos of themselves. (When cyberpredators coerce or seduce a child into taking sexually provocative pictures of themselves, they violate the law.)
Sexual abuse has always been a very serious crime, but in the past the penalties for child sexual abuse were not as high as they should have been. Thankfully, penalties for conduct involving sexual abuse of children and child pornography have increased over recent years. . In addition, while we don't have cyberpolice just for the Internet, we have units of major law-enforcement agencies who do police cyberspace, and any law enforcement agency who has jurisdiction over the online crime can handle it. The problem isn't the laws, it's getting enough trained law enforcement officials and enough technology and funding to enforce them. We have a special site and group just for law enforcement, called CyberLawEnforcement.org.