Posts tagged sex offenders

“Who me?
Yes you!
Couldn’t be!
Then who?”

goes the familiar poem. Except MySpace didn’t ask that last question. In fact, MySpace (after erroneously deleting a young woman’s profile), didn’t say much of anything to her. This is what I was afraid of.

In MySpace’s “search and removal” of sex offender profiles with the assistance of Sentinel, there was a legitimate concern that there would be incorrect matches and people who were not sex offenders would get caught in the net.

Jessica Davis experienced just that.

It took nearly a week for Jessica Davis to get an explanation about why MySpace had labeled her a sex offender and pulled her profile from the social networking Web site.And when her name was finally cleared, it wasn’t because of anything MySpace did.

In fact, the response she got from MySpace simply said:

Your profile has therefore been removed from MySpace.com. Please do not attempt to re-register on MySpace.com. Registered sex offenders are not allowed on MySpace.If you believe this designation was made in error, you may appeal your removal by writing to AccountSafe@myspace.com within 14 days. Please note that if you make a false appeal, MySpace may bring this to the attention of the appropriate law enforcement authorities.

So why did she get flagged? Well, there is a Jessica Dawn Davis who is a registered sex offender. Their birth dates are two days and two years apart and they live in (the entire State of) Florida at “roughly the same time”, according to Sentinel’s CEO. Awesome.

Let’s ignore the fact that they don’t really look anything alike. (See picture above – courtesy abcnews.com). As far as I can find, her profile hasn’t been restored and she has had to spend two weeks to clear her name. Guilty until proven innocent, indeed.

It really has become a saga. The internet is abuzz with it. First, eight attorneys general requested [pdf of request] that Myspace turn over the data it has collected via the Sentinel database of registered sex offenders on MySpace.Then, MySpace said that it had deleted sexual predator profiles.

The action comes a day after eight U.S. attorneys general demanded that the News Corp.-owned company hand over offenders’ names and addresses, and delete their profiles from among MySpace’s 175 million user base.”We’ve made it clear we have a zero tolerance policy against convicted sex offenders,” MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “We’ve said numerous times that the goal was to delete them.”

Finally, MySpace refused to turn over the data to the attorneys general, saying that it was prohibited by Federal privacy laws from doing so, unless ordered to via subpoena or warrant.

Christian Genetski, an attorney who has represented MySpace, said the Electronic Communications Privacy Act requires subpoenas, court orders or search warrants, depending on the information sought.”It’s a clearly defined law that most providers and prosecutors understand and work with on a daily basis,” said Genetski, who covers information security and Internet enforcement at a firm in Washington, D.C. “My understanding is (the attorneys general) want the private personal information, and that’s clearly the information the ECPA protects.”

Okay. So you probably know all of this already. So what do I think of it? I think the AsG are barking up the wrong tree. Really, how difficult is it for anyone to create a profile on MySpace? It doesn’t require that you enter your actual real first name (and I doubt that they can require that anyway) or last name or your real age (if you lie about it, so what? They’ll boot you. Boohoo.) or where you live or anything. Try it. Set up a completely fictitious profile on MySpace. What’s that going to get them? How are they going to prove that it was indeed the sexual predators that set up these profiles? It may just serve to publicize the issue, which may not be a bad tactic if that the was the goal.

What bothers me is those that may have inadvertently been deleted during MySpace’s “purge” of sexual predators. Then you’re almost forced to provide your real information to exonerate yourself. That’s guilty until proven innocent.

Instead of hounding MySpace, hound parents. Yeah, those people whose jobs the State is being forced to do. Perhaps parents need a “how to protect your kids from the dangers of the internet” class. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t be an idiot and give out your personal information to strangers on the web. Don’t talk to strangers on the phone. Don’t agree to meet strangers alone. Yada, yada, yada.

In loco parentis no more.

For additional coverage, see SOI, Windypundit, SexCrimes and my previous post.

Edit: So, in hindsight, maybe my tone was a little harsh toward parents. My point still remains, though. Greater control at home means less problems on the internet.

Phase one of the federally funded NJ study of the effectiveness of Megan’s Law is complete and the results are interesting.

A declining trend of sex attacks on children began before the law took effect and has continued, raising the suggestion that New Jersey’s Megan’s Law – one of the first laws of its kind in the nation – may not have influenced the trend, researchers say.

“We don’t know whether Megan’s Law really works,” said Witt [a consultant on the study], who helped create the risk-assessment system used by New Jersey’s courts to classify sex offenders.

“Just a few studies have looked at whether community notification laws are effective,” he said. “I believe they have very little effect.”

The first phase charted sex offenses in the decade before 1994 and the decade after.

Researchers said they were surprised to find that a steady decline in sex crimes across New Jersey had begun in 1991 – three years before Megan’s Law.

Sex offenses against children have also declined since Megan’s Law was enacted, but there has been no way to know whether that’s because of the law.

“Sex-offender rates are down, and we can’t attribute it to Megan’s Law,” said Kristen Zgoba, a Corrections Department researcher leading the study. “Is it worth the amount of money and manpower we’re pouring into it?”

Nationally, sex offenses against children fell 49 percent between 1990 and 2004, according to the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. Meanwhile, the broad category of violent crime in the United States also plunged, according to government figures.

If only more states were to conduct such a study, so we can get a better idea of whether Megan’s Law does lead to reduction in crime. I suspect that even if there is a decline that can be attributed to Megan’s Law, it will be negligible.