MySpace Finally Bows to Subpoenas To Turn Over Sex Offender Info

[TXCharlie]

http://www.nbc5i.com/technology/13358740/detail.html

Company Had Previously Refused

POSTED: 11:50 am CDT May 21, 2007

RALEIGH, N.C. -- MySpace.com will provide law enforcement officials with data on registered sex offenders who use the popular social networking Web site, the company said Monday.

Survey on Web Site: Should MySpace Turn Over Data?

Attorneys general from eight states demanded last week that the company provide data on how many registered sex offenders are using the site and where they live. MySpace initially refused, citing federal privacy laws.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Monday the company agreed to comply with subpoenas from at least 14 states.

"Our subpoena compels this information right away within hours not weeks, without delay because it is vital to protecting children," Blumenthal said. "Many of these sex offenders may have violated their parole or probation by contacting or soliciting children on MySpace."

Blumenthal said along with names and addresses, his office also will be looking for detailed information about how each sex offender used MySpace. That information will be cross-reference against the terms of probation and parole for each of those MySpace members, he said.

"Contact with children, is likely to be prohibited in many of these cases," Blumenthal said.

MySpace obtained the data from Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., which the company partnered with in December to build a database with information on sex offenders.

"We developed 'Sentinel Safe' from scratch because there was no means to weed them out and get them off of our site," said Mike Angus, MySpace's executive vice president and general counsel.

Angus said the company, owned by media conglomerate News Corp., had always planned to share information on sex offenders it identified and has already removed about 7,000 profiles out of a total of about 180 million.

"This is no different than an offline community," he said. "We're trying to keep it safe."

Angus said the company had also made arrangements to allow law enforcement to use the Sentinel software directly.

Previous Stories:
May 16, 2007: MySpace Refuses To Turn Over Sex Offender Data
May 14, 2007: States Seek Sex Offender Data From MySpace

[blackcamaro8895]

This was an exellent idea.

[conalabu]

Not going to change anything.

[BEB]

Not going to change anything.

Surprises me anyone uses their real information on MySpace. But then I don't get the whole MySpace thing in the first place.

That leads to the question though. How many laws am I breaking at present by using fake names whenever some online newspaper demands registration to read an article? (no, I'm not a sex offender)

MySpace Lobbies for Sex Offender E-Mail Registry
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20070517/bs_nf/52368

Under increasingly intense fire from parents and child-safety advocates, the popular social-networking site MySpace is hoping that new federal legislation will assist it in ferreting out convicted sex offenders who establish accounts on the site.

Even without legislative assistance, MySpace has been actively working to identify and delete accounts of individuals identified as registered sex offenders.

Early last year, MySpace hired Hemanshu Nigam, a former federal prosecutor with extensive trial experience in child predator cases, to serve as its Chief Security Officer. And in December, the company joined with Sentinel Tech Holding to develop software to help identify MySpace accounts held by sex offenders.

MySpace Pressured

The issue gained greater intensity this week, however, when eight state attorneys general wrote to MySpace, demanding detailed information about the identities of sex offenders known to have MySpace accounts.

MySpace responded by saying that it had eliminated the accounts of "every registered sex offender that we identified out of our more than 175 million profiles." However, the company said that it was prohibited by federal law from releasing any other information, and called on the attorneys general to support a federal solution.

"We need cooperation from lawmakers to drive mandatory sex offender e-mail registration legislation at the federal and state level to make blocking predators from community-based Web sites a more efficient process," Nigam said in a written statement to CNET. "Our hope is that the Attorneys General who signed onto this letter, and other Web sites, join us in pushing this legislation into law."

Predator E-Mail Registry

Known as the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual-Predators (KIDS) Act, the proposed bill would require sex offenders to provide the National Sex Offender Registry with any e-mail address, instant message address, or other Internet identifier used to communicate online. Failure to do so could result in a fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The KIDS Act was introduced on January 30 in the Senate by Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record) (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (news, bio, voting record) (R-Ariz.), and in the House by Earl Pomeroy (news, bio, voting record) (D-N.D.). It currently is in committee in both houses of Congress.

Senator McCain said that the information gathered by the National Sex Offender Registry would be made available to commercial social-networking sites to assist them in filtering out convicted sex offenders from their user base. "I am pleased to report," Senator McCain said, "that both MySpace and Facebook endorse the KIDS Act. I look forward to other commercial social-networking Web sites endorsing the bill and using the registry information after the bill is signed into law."

In his remarks, Senator McCain acknowledged that there were limits to what Congress could do to protect children online. "We all know that engaged parents are the best deterrent against sexual predators looking to prey on our children on the Internet," he said. "Parents that monitor their children's access to the Internet or are present when the child or adolescent is online are able to better ensure their children are not drawn into inappropriate online conversations with sexual predators."

[conalabu]

Unless you are logging into a government site, none. The only ones you can't lie to are the government.