Amber Alert Bill - Including Virtual Child Porn Ban - Signed By Bush

The broad "Amber Alert" child protection bill, which includes a crackdown on child porn including digitally-created images that don't use actual children, was signed into law by President Bush April 30.

Called the "Protect Act of 2003," the new law expands penalties for child abductions and sex crimes, and creates a national system to use television, roadside electronic billboards and emergency broadcast systems to spread information about kidnap suspects and victims under 18, according to CNN.

Earlier this month, a compromise package of child protection legislation was hammered out between the House and the Senate and passed in both chambers. The new package still included the virtual child porn amendment and a concurrent amendment to prosecute and punish fake-to-porn spam or Websites - spam messages or Web domains that use innocuous-looking or sounding names or messages to bring people to adult Websites without their prior knowledge or wish.

"There is no substantial evidence that any of the child pornography images being trafficked today were made other than by the abuse of real children," said a conference report that advanced the compromise package, which said last year's Supreme Court shutdown of the Child Pornography Prevention Act [Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition] as too broad to pass First Amendment muster has since had an "adverse effect" on government efforts to stop child porn. "Nevertheless, technical advances since [1982] have led many criminal defendants to suggest that the images of child pornography they possess are not those of real children," the conference report continued, "insisting that the government prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the images are not computer generated."

Free Speech Coalition could not be reached for comment as this story went to press.

"Amber Alert" is named for a nine-year-old Texas girl, Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996. Forty-one states had similar child alert laws in effect when the compromise federal law went to Bush's desk. CNN reported the girl's mother, Donna Norris, was at the signing ceremony, as were two California teenagers rescued in the state's first use of its Amber Alert system. So was Ed Smart, the father of kidnapped teenager Elizabeth Smart, who called for a national Amber Alert after his daughter's abduction, CNN said.