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Steve's View: "We must recognize that the Internet, while providing a world of opportunity to our children, has also contributed to a worldwide expansion of child pornography - allowing predators to more easily abuse, exploit, and prey on young children."
As Co-Chair of the Congressional Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, Congressman Chabot has sponsored legislation to better protect children from becoming victims of violent crime and exploitation. Chabot has worked with members of Congress to introduce the SAFE Act and the KIDS Act.
The SAFE Act: On February 7, 2007, Congressman Steve Chabot joined with Congressman Nick Lampson (D-TX), and Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to introduce the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act of 2007, or SAFE Act (H.R. 876). The SAFE Act builds on the investigative tools already in place under the leadership of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to require electronic communication services to report real time information regarding online child pornography to the Cyber Tip-line as soon as reasonably possible and to maintain this information as long as needed for an investigation.
The SAFE Act also authorizes U.S. law enforcement to coordinate directly with foreign law enforcement, sharing information that will assist them and us to combat this criminal activity.
The KIDS Act: Congressman Chabot is also a lead co-sponsor of the KIDS Act, Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act, (H.R. 719) a bill to require convicted sex offenders to register and update online identifier information such as email addresses, instant message addresses, or other identification addresses to a sex offender registry. It also allows online social networking sites to access the internet information maintained in the registry and increases penalties on those offenders who do not comply. Furthermore, the KIDS Act will criminalize the actions of those who lie about their age in order to prey upon young kids.
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