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Speaking at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia, he described graphically the nature of the material he had seen - including forced acts of incest and involving children as young as babies - but said it was important not to save the nation's blushes if it meant people didn't realise the true scale and nature of the problem.

He touted some terrifying statistics: some 20 per cent of children online are solicited and that

Gonzales said he is building a framework for new legislation designed to combat the problem, which would bring on board ISPs to help monitor the situation, reporting any instances of child pornography on their networks.

Such legislation will bring privacy issues to the fore just as it did when the Justice Department recently tried to force ISPs to hand over search and index data, stirring Google to refuse and go to court over its duty to protect its users.

No doubt, Gonzales' gloves off approach is designed to promote the Justice Departments need to access such data.

Other ISPs complied with the requests, but the point made by a number of rights bodies was that whatever the noble intention of the requests for such data, civilians run a risk when they use the Internet for anything personal or private, as that data is not as well-protected in law when it's residing on the caches of ISPs as it would be sitting on their hard drives.