Comcast reportedly thwarted child-rape investigation

M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 6, 2006 at midnight

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Comcast, the nation's largest broadband provider, allegedly discarded computer records that could have led authorities to someone in Colorado who was distributing a movie of a 2-year-old child being raped, an investigator testified in Congress on Thursday.

Flint Waters, a lead special agent for the Wyoming task force on Internet Crimes Against Children, told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that agents were thwarted as they tried to trace a movie that was sent via the Internet to an investigator in Florida in August 2005. The movie depicted the rape of the child.

"A check of previous ICAC investigative efforts led law enforcement to a computer in Colorado where it had been made available for distribution in April 2005, several months prior to any other known location on the Internet," Waters said in his prepared remarks.

"Just as ICAC investigators thought they were getting close to the potential origin of the movie, all hope was destroyed. The Internet service provider used to trade this movie did not maintain any records related to the use of the account," he said. "Efforts to find this child fell short, and there was nothing law enforcement could do about it."

Waters added, "I ask you to imagine the situation where a law enforcement officer can see the rape of a child taking place live on a Web camera and having an Internet service provider respond that they don't keep records to help us rescue that child."

The investigator identified the Internet provider as Comcast, Colorado's largest cable television provider that also provides broadband services to more than 8.5 million customers.

Comcast said it couldn't comment on this instance because Waters' testimony didn't include information like a specific date that the company needs to track down what information request he was referring to.

"Comcast is horrified by any act of violence inflicted upon a child and takes this issue very seriously," the company said in a statement. "Comcast promptly processes and responds to valid legal and law enforcement requests according to law and as described in our applicable privacy policy."

The case outraged Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, who serves on the committee.

"It just made you sick to think these children who are being raped and abused are being lost because of these delays," she said after the hearing.

DeGette said that the committee plans to call Comcast officials and other Internet service providers to testify, and that she and others are considering legislation that would force them to maintain records and provide them to investigators quickly.

Asked about privacy concerns, DeGette said, "Someone who's raping a child has no right to privacy. And somebody who possesses materials that show that kind of crime also has no right to privacy."

This week's congressional hearings have cast a spotlight on what's estimated to be a $20 billion per year industry, with an estimated 4.4 million illegal images floating around the Internet and in the possession of about 1.4 million people.

"We were all aware that Internet kiddie porn was going on," DeGette said. "We had no idea how it was just exploding and how the offenses are just getting more and more serious."

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