Yelena Mizulina, head of the State Duma's Family, Women and Children Committee and a driving force behind Russia's controversial anti-gay propaganda law, has proposed the creation of a child porn database.
Mizulina lamented the fact that such a database has not yet been created in Russia, saying it would enable law enforcement officials to identify child pornography more quickly, a statement on the A Just Russia party's website said.
The proposal was made Monday at the committee's forum on Internet security, and was one of several pieces of draft legislation currently under review in the hopes of making the Internet a safer place for Russian children.
The first and most pressing of these projects, Mizulina said, was the creation of stricter anti-pedophile legislation that would introduce criminal penalties for the possession of child pornography. Currently, she said, Russia lacks a clear legal definition of "child pornography" that is on par with international legislative standards.
It was not clear what sort of information the database suggested by Mizulina would include, but she said the U.S. has such a database and uses it effectively in fighting child pornography.
Mizulina is a controversial figure, notorious for her role in the U.S. adoption ban. She has used her position as head of the Duma's Family, Women and Children Committee to promote increasingly conservative legislation.
In her attempts to tackle Russia's persistent demographic and familial crisis, she has targeted "nontraditional" sexual orientations, gay marriage and divorce.
Aside from the adoption ban, Mizulina's most controversial piece of legislation was the so-called homosexual propaganda law, which banned the dissemination of any material "aimed at the promotion of nontraditional sexual behavior."
In November 2013, Mizulina proposed an outright ban on surrogacy in Russia, saying that it was the "most frightening phenomenon that threatens not only Russia but all of mankind with extinction."
