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Hate Crime on the Internet Hearing Committee on The S. HRG. 106–803 HATE CRIME ON THE INTERNET HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION ON RAMIFICATIONS OF INTERNET TECHNOLOGY ON TODAY’S CHILDREN, FOCUSING ON THE PREVALENCE OF INTERNET HATE, AND REC- OMMENDATIONS ON HOW TO SHIELD CHILDREN FROM THE NEGA- TIVE IMPACT OF VIOLENT MEDIA SEPTEMBER 14, 1999 Serial No. J–106–48 Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary ( U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 67–653 CC WASHINGTON : 2001 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:22 Apr 24, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5011 Sfmt 5011 SEPT14.TXT SJUD2 PsN: SJUD2 COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah, Chairman STROM THURMOND, South Carolina PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware JON KYL, Arizona HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin MIKE DEWINE, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York BOB SMITH, New Hampshire MANUS COONEY, Chief Counsel and Staff Director BRUCE A. COHEN, Minority Chief Counsel (II) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:22 Apr 24, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 0486 Sfmt 0486 SEPT14.TXT SJUD2 PsN: SJUD2 C O N T E N T S STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS Page Hatch, Hon. Orrin G., U.S. Senator from the State of Utah ................................ 1 Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont ....................... 3 Kennedy, Hon. Edward M., U.S. Senator from the State of Massachusetts ...... 11 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WITNESSES Panel consisting of Michael J. Gennaco, Assistant U.S. Attorney, and Chief, Civil Rights Section, Central District of California, Los Angeles, CA; Abra- ham Cooper, associate dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles, CA; Wade Henderson, executive director, Leadership Conference On Civil Rights, Washington, DC; Howard Berkowitz, national chair, Anti-Defama- tion League, Washington, DC; and Joseph T. Roy, Sr., director, Intelligence Project, Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, AL ................................ 6 ALPHABETICAL LIST AND MATERIALS SUBMITTED Berkowitz, Howard: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 24 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 26 Cooper, Abraham: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 15 Gennaco, Michael J.: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 9 Henderson, Wade: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 16 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 20 Roy, Joseph T., Sr.: Testimony .......................................................................................................... 50 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 53 Editorial, Intelligence Report, No. 94, Spring 1999 ................................ 56 Internet Hate Site List, Intelligence Report, No. 93, Winter 1999 ........ 57 Story on Hate Sites and Related Litigation, Intelligence Report, No. 93, Winter 1999 ..................................................................................... 60 Story on Hate Sites, Intelligence Report, No. 89, Winter 1998 .............. 62 APPENDIX QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Responses of Michael Gennaco to Questions from Senator Leahy ...................... 71 Responses of Howard Berkowitz to Questions from Senator Leahy .................... 71 ADDITIONAL SUBMISSION FOR THE RECORD Prepared statement of Karen Narasaki, on behalf of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium ................................................................... 73 (III) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:22 Apr 24, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 SEPT14.TXT SJUD2 PsN: SJUD2 VerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:22 Apr 24, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 SEPT14.TXT SJUD2 PsN: SJUD2 HATE CRIME ON THE INTERNET TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1999 U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, Washington, DC. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:18 a.m., in room SD–226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Orrin G. Hatch (chairman of the committee) presiding. Also present: Senators Grassley, and Leahy. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ORRIN G. HATCH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF UTAH The CHAIRMAN. I am sorry I am a little bit late. We will start this hearing. Good morning. We are happy to welcome all of you to today’s hearing on Hate Crime on the Internet. We are pleased to have today five impressive witnesses, whom I shall introduce in short order. The Internet is a technology that heralds a breadth of under- standing and education never before imagined. It holds a promise for disseminating knowledge and breaking down barriers to learn- ing and understanding that is unrivaled, and I have accordingly been a staunch advocate and proponent of efforts to keep the Inter- net unregulated and competitive. However, today’s hearing will focus on ramifications of Internet technology that can only be described as troubling. Unfortunately, for many parents, one of the timeless truths of good parenting, to teach children not to speak with strangers, has passed from the realm of the possible into a relic of a bygone day. We live in a time, according to a recent poll, when a full 60 per- cent of parents disagree with the proposition that the Internet is a safe place for kids. And no wonder. In a technology seldom under- stood as well by parents as by their children, the universal infor- mation-sharing neighborhood established by the Internet has come to shelter a league of misfits intent on marketing their brand of hate to America’s future. The knowledge of our children’s lives, without which we cannot hope to fulfill our responsibilities as parents, seems increasingly out of our grasp, and the imagination and introspection that are so essential to a child’s development are threatened by a technology where the power for advancement of knowledge exists alongside the possibility of contamination through hate. The strangers we warned our children not to speak to are, I fear, the very ones using the anonymity promised in cyberspace to prowl (1) VerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:22 Apr 24, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 SEPT14.TXT SJUD2 PsN: SJUD2 2 for children, to whom they could never hope to endear themselves on a street corner. This a serious situation indeed. The facts set out in newspaper accounts and reports by inter- ested parties are simply staggering. One of our witnesses today hails from an organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which individually tracked sites for 254 hate groups in January of this year, up 50 percent from one year ago. Another group rep- resented here, the Anti–Defamation League, estimated the pres- ence of some 500 to 600 hate groups on the Web as of this June. But numbers hardly tell the story; the Web sites themselves do. They are not simply crude Web sites with blatantly racist or anti– Semitic messages. These groups are involved in a concerted effort to recruit college-bound middle- and upper middle-class kids, kids who are educated, energetic and articulate; in other words, pre- cisely the type of kid you would not expect to see marching in a neo-Nazi parade. And those wolves come in sheep’s clothing. To fulfill their recruit- ment objectives, these hate groups can be remarkably sophisti- cated, carefully avoiding obvious and explicit appeals to racism and anti-Semitism. These sites, of course, are matters of great concern to me. To the extent that these groups claim to disavow violence, the facts speak for themselves. The World Church of the Creator appears to have played a piv- otal role in the life of Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, the 21-year-old whose cowardly evil we recall from his July 4 shooting of African Americans, Jewish people, and Asians. In addition, literature from this group was found near synagogues burned this June in Sac- ramento, CA. We must be vigilant and prompt in our efforts to begin eliminat- ing hate on the Internet, but we must also do so with exactitude. From this complicated maze of issues, there is simply no simple an- swer, and with the First Amendment as our country’s first premise, we know that any solutions that we endorse must recognize that the surest way to defeat the message of hate is to hold it under the harsh light of public scrutiny. Throughout the course of this hearing and afterwards, I will be interested to hear from the witnesses their view of the adequacy of the current state of the law, and I will ask the witnesses wheth- er more might be done by Congress, consistent with the First Amendment, to better enable the elimination of certain types of hate on the Internet, such as non-protected speech that clearly ad- vocates an imminent act of violence. But I have some preliminary thoughts on other efforts that Con- gress might explore and
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