A Closer Look at Internet Predator Laws

Christina Long and Kid-Friendly Web Domains

In the last few months there has been a deluge of proposed new "victim's laws" such as "Dru's Law" (named for Dru Sjodin) and "Jessica's Law" (named for Jessica Lunsford). While these measures are well-intentioned, they are often fatally flawed and have little chance of making any difference in protecting children or adults. An examination of a victim's law proposed and enacted in 2002 is instructive. This is the story of how Christina's Law went from public tragedy to legislative outrage to law to Internet footnote-- all without having been effective at all.

Christina Long was a thirteen-year-old girl from Danbury, Connecticut. Long was an altar girl and a cheerleader at St. Peter School. In late May 2002 Christina disappeared after her aunt dropped her off at a local mall. Police searched her home computer and found that she had exchanged risque e-mails with Saul Dos Reis, a twenty-five-year-old Brazilian man from nearby Greenwich. Dos Reis was arrested, confessed to Christina’s murder, and led police to her body. She had been strangled and dumped in a nearby ravine.

Stories about the dangers lurking on the Internet were rampant in the news media at the time. Politicians, ever eager to champion a vote-getting cause, jumped on the case within days. Two pieces of legislation were proposed. The first, versions of which were sponsored by Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, and Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, directed the federal government to set up and oversee a special domain on the Internet for kids. The domain, “kids.us,” would contain only material appropriate for children under thirteen. Participation would be voluntary, and parents would theoretically be able to limit a child’s access to only that domain area. The bill’s supporters claimed that the new domain would “reduce the chance of accidental exposure to pornography and to other Web sites considered harmful to children.”

The second bill was proposed to expand wiretap authority to target Internet predators. That bill was sponsored by Rep. Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, and provided “federal authorities greater power to wiretap suspected predators.” In both cases, the death of Christina Long was specifically and repeatedly cited as evidence that the new laws were needed. The politicians, however, seem to have jumped the gun. If they had looked a little deeper into the circumstances of Christina Long’s death, they would have found that the measures they proposed in her name have little or no relevance to the circumstances of her death. For example:

• The politicians suggested that Christina Long had been lured away from her home by a stranger she met on the Internet. In fact, Long and Dos Reis had a relationship and the two had met for sex on several occasions. While it is apparently true that they first met online, the two were friends before the killing and it seems that Long could just as likely have been in that situation with a man she’d met at a party, through friends, or in a mall.

• Saul Dos Reis would not have been arrested or stopped from meeting his victim by Representative Johnson’s bill. Dos Reis was not a “suspected sexual predator” and in fact had no criminal record. The law might even have applied to Long herself, who, on her Web site, allegedly mentioned luring other teens into sexual encounters.

• The “kids.us” domain would have material only for kids twelve and younger. Long was thirteen, so the domain wouldn’t have applied to her anyway. Aside from that, there’s little need to establish a special kid-friendly domain on the Web; the Web is full of existing kid-friendly sites that are “free from pornography and dangerous material,” hosted by everyone from Disney to Nickelodeon to Sesame Street to the U.S. government. In fact, the vast majority of Web sites do not contain pornography at all. Ironically, Long’s own Web page would not have been allowed in the domain; it contained many sexual references and what Police Chief Robert Paquette called “some pretty graphic stuff.”

• Christina Long wouldn’t have used the “kids.us” Web domain; she was actively searching adult chat rooms for the purpose of finding men to have sex with. The problem is not that Long wanted kid-friendly material on the Web but couldn’t find it. No matter how many Web sites are designed for children, if a teen is searching for sex instead of Snoopy, he or she will find it.

In pushing for the passage of her bill, Representative Johnson mentioned Christina Long’s death and shouted, “The threat to our children is real!” While there is no doubt that the threat of Internet predators is real, it is also very remote. Despite all the political grandstanding, alarmist activism, and media myths that suggest that teen girls are lured to their deaths by Internet predators on a weekly basis, Long’s case was in fact the first of its kind.

Long was described as “streetwise” and, according to her aunt, was well aware of the dangers of meeting people in chat rooms. Rather than being lured away from her home for sex, she actively sought out sexual partners on the Web, and one of them happened to kill her during sex. It is a tragic story, but Christina Long would hardly seem to be a good example of why kids need more under-thirteen Web sites or wiretapping laws should be expanded.

In December 2002 President George W. Bush signed the Dot-Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act into law, creating an Internet “neighborhood” for children. Almost immediately questions were raised about the law’s effectiveness. Elliot Noss, president of Internet address registrar

Tucows Inc., correctly predicted that the domain has “absolutely zero” chance of being effective. The ".kids.us" is now an ignored and little-used Web footnote, with little content and few sites. According to President Bush and the law's sponsors, "Christina's Law" was a vital and urgent measure needed to protect America. Yet, like so many victim's laws, it came to nothing.

This article was adapted from a chapter in Media Mythmakers.