MN might ban sex offenders from social sites

Minnesota state legislators want to help social network sites keep predators off their sites. A committee of the state House of Representatives approved legislation this week that would prohibit any registered sex offenders from "logging on to sites like Facebook or MySpace," Minnesota Public Radio reports. "Participation in Web-based chat rooms would also be banned," the public radio service added, which would not be a bad thing, since - based on Pennsylvania's experience, anyway (see "PA case study: Social networking risk in context") - most sexual contact between sex offenders and minors seems to happen in chatrooms. Minnesota legislators say that, if it passes, the law would actually help keep offenders from going to social sites in the first place - "state officials could warn sex offenders about the ban in a regular notification of prohibited activities."

Young sex offenders branded forever

One of the scary things about the social Web is how much exposure its users bring to their everyday lives and innermost thoughts. But think about the impact of mixing exposure - to public view or just to law enforcement - with impulsive, unthinking adolescent behavior that involves sexual exploration with peers. For example, in the state of Washington alone, "since 1997, more than 3,500 children in the state - some as young as 10, though on average about 14 - have been charged and convicted as felony sex offenders, a mark that remains on their records forever, barring them from careers in medicine, teaching or a host of other professions that serve the vulnerable," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. A 13-year-old (now 23) whose story led the article was arrested at home by himself and handcuffed to a plastic chair while his mother was called and told her "pervert son was going to jail." The vast majority of these young felons are rated least likely to reoffend, the article continues. Even so, the Post-Intelligencer reports, "Washington is among the few states to include juveniles in its sex offender management plan, assessing youths with tools designed for adults and funneling them through the courts with adult-sized punishments."

18-year-old registered sex offender

He was 17 when he downloaded child-abuse images. From the news reports, we don't really know why he did so. We do know that when he was interviewed by prosecutors, he "made full admissions," saying "he had no idea why he had done it," and "had no previous convictions, cautions, warnings or reprimands," the Hemel Gazette reports. We also know that "he had been spending a lot of time isolated and alone on his computer" because, his attorney said, "he had been bullied at school. At the beginning of 2006, when he was 16, he was beaten unconscious in the street by a gang, including bullies from the school." His sentence is a fine and two years of community service, and he will be on his local sex-offender registry for five years.

Schools' sex-offender detection tech

The national sex-offender database is being put to another use in some of the US's public schools. The Washington Post describes a new computerized security system being put in place in the Prince William County School District, Virginia's second-largest. The system, called "The Raptor" "scans government-issued identification cards and checks them against a database of listings of 460,000 sex offenders from across the country." Designed by a Texas company, it's now in some 4,000 US schools, the Post reports. "In many cases, the security programs can also store parental custody information and tabulate parent volunteer hours." Some parents think it's a lot faster than waiting in line to sign in. But some immigrant-rights organizations worry about possible privacy violation, though school officials say IDs will only be checked against sex-offender registries. "Signs are being placed at schools' front desks to advise visitors that they can show an ID other than a U.S.-issued driver's license, such as foreign driver's license, a passport, a green card or a reentry permit."

NJ AG's wider social-Web effo

This is one of the more unusual stories I've seen in the news about a state attorney general dealing with teen social networking: Instead of focusing only on MySpace, as many attorneys general have done (at least on the public airwaves), New Jersey's seems to be more practical. Attorney General Anne Milgram "has asked a dozen Internet social-networking sites to find out whether convicted New Jersey sex offenders have created profiles on their sites," FoxNews.com reports . The sites are Xanga, Facebook, Community Connect, TagWorld, Bebo, MyYearbook.com, Tagged, Friendster, LiveJournal, Imeem, Hi5 and Gaia Online. The AG's office found "at least 269" sex offenders registered in New Jersey in the latest list MySpace provided attorneys general. Of the 269 … 109 are either on probation or parole," and one has been charged with a parole violation, the AG's office told Fox News. What is not known is how many other sites have the technology to detect and report registered sex offenders on their sites. General Milgram said New Jersey would help the sites in their searches.

Sex offenders on MySpace: Some context

Last week Larry Magid and I co-wrote a commentary that ran in the San Jose Mercury News Sunday. Hundreds of news outlets worldwide had picked up the story that MySpace has deleted the profiles of 29,000 registered sex offenders. The news may have been shocking to a lot of parents of teen social networkers, so we felt parents deserved some perspective on this. Here's a slightly condensed version of what we wrote….

Finding and expelling sexual predators from social Web sites - something MySpace says it now does routinely - is a good thing. Other social sites are similarly cooperating with law enforcement. But this announcement from North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper (see General Cooper's "Protecting Children from MySpace," a link under "What's New" on his page) was only possible because MySpace took the initiative to develop a law-enforcement tool the federal government called for in a recently passed law but failed to create: a national sex offender database that MySpace then donated to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for broader use.

Beyond the Web. Sex offenders aren't just in social-networking sites online. They're in chatrooms and newsgroups, on discussion boards and file-sharing networks. They've been on the Internet since before there was a World Wide Web, long before social networking took off. Now social sites are helping to expose their online activities.

The numbers. Let's put the 29,000 profiles in context: More will probably be found, but there are more than 190 million profiles on MySpace at the moment. Now let's move from the Net to "real life." There are 602,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. That's just registered ones - those who've been caught and convicted. The vast majority of child molesters are not strangers whom children meet online. Very, very few are strangers in real life even: According to the California Department of Justice, “90% of child victims know their offender, with almost half of the offenders being a family member. Of sexual assaults against people age 12 and up, approximately 80% of the victims know the offender."

Actual cases. Last spring I was looking for a solid figure for sexual exploitation of minors in social-networking sites after hearing Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's reference to "the towering danger of sexual predators" (see "Predators vs. cyberbullies"). General Cooper's office told me there were approximately 100 known cases in MySpace in 2005, but that number was based not on government statistics but a Lexis-Nexis search of news reports. That's 100 cases too many, but an extremely small proportion of the 12 million teens who use such sites, and it pales compared to the number of kids molested by acquaintances and family members.

No kidnappings. In all those cases, a teenager willingly got together with someone he or she met online and, contrary to what many people think, the kids often knew what they were getting into and, in every known case, went to meet the offenders themselves. This doesn't excuse these crimes in any way, but parents need to understand how this victimization works and what signs to look for….

Who's actually victimized. At a recent hearing on Capitol Hill, David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, gave a profile of what he described as a fairly typical victim of online predation: "Jenna" was 13 and "from a divorced family, frequented sex-oriented chatrooms, had the screenname 'Evilgirl.' There she met a guy who, after a number of conversations admitted he was 45. He flattered her, sent her gifts, jewelry. They talked about intimate things. And eventually he drove across several states to meet her for sex on several occasions in motel rooms. When he was arrested, in her company, she was reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement authorities" (see the full story). "Jenna" is not a typical teen or social networker; she's a typical victim of online predation, a high-risk teen offline, representing somewhere between 2% and 5% of online teens, Dr. Finkelhor indicated in a recent briefing on Capitol Hill.

Social networking's very individual. Whether it's a positive or negative experience depends on who uses it. The vast majority of our online kids are for the most part using social sites to socialize with their friends at school. Some are decorating their pages and learning graphic design, writing software code, playing with digital photos, producing and editing video, and so on, all in a very collective way. Unfortunately, some teens are seeking the wrong kind of validation online for destructive behaviors such as eating disorders, cutting, and substance abuse. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline told us over a year ago that MySpace was its No. 1 source of referrals, so teens are also getting help in MySpace for depression, domestic violence, loneliness, and substance abuse, as well as suicidal thinking, through the work of 120 crisis centers nationwide whose work the Lifeline coordinates.

Cyberbullying affects a lot more teens. So far two nationwide surveys in the US have found that about one-third of online teens in this country have been victimized by cyberbullying (one in Canada put the figure at about two-thirds for Canadian kids!). That's at least 8 million young people in the US (this too in "Predators vs. cyberbullies"). This peer harassment needs to be addressed, which will certainly happen at home and in school, as we teach our kids to be good friends and "citizens" online as well as off.

So let's keep these scary predator announcements in perspective. We want parents to have the facts so they can remain calm. When parents (and officials) overreact and start banning things, kids just go underground - as they have since the beginning of time. Only now they can do so online too - on hundreds of social networking sites, in IM, on phones and all sorts of other devices and at proliferating connection points in parks, libraries, cafes, and at friends' houses.

Related links

As of this writing, there were more than 600 links in Google News to coverage in multiple countries of the North Carolina attorney general's announcement. That was just the start. The story has continued to unfold, so here's a sampler of coverage:

"Multi-front predator battle" - The Washington Post goes in-depth on the different aspects of this effort, including 10 states' new legislation requiring sex offenders to register their email addresses and what's involved at MySpace to catch offenders on the site.

Parental-permission piece dropped. North Carolina state legislators deleted from a proposed bill a requirement that the state's teens "get their parents' permission before signing up for social-networking sites like MySpace, saying it raised constitutional questions that couldn't be addressed," the Charlotte Observer reports.

Closer look at parental verification. Here's an audio discussion (podcast) on "The Pitfalls of Age Verification" by tech-public-policy experts Tim Lee, Braden Cox, and Adam Thierer. Cox and Thierer testified before the NC legislature on this subject. Here, too, is Advertising Age on this subject.

A twist in the UK. "Convicted sex offenders should not be prevented from using social networking sites such as MySpace, Scotland Yard said yesterday," The Times Online reported. The UK police agency's spokesperson said, “Just because you’re a convicted offender doesn’t mean you’re still offending,” a spokeswoman said. “Why would we pursue them in this way? These are people who have served their time.”

China's take. "MySpace weeds out 29,000 sex offender profiles," Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

Canadian view. "MySpace kicks out sex offenders - but not in Canada" at Canada.com

MySpace's view. "MySpace defends efforts to vet sex offenders" in InformationWeek

AG looks at Facebook. An anonymous person who said he or she was "a concerned parent" contacted the New York Times about a fake teen profile he (we'll make it "he" to simplify) created apparently to check into the predator risk on Facebook, the Times reports. The Times put this account into an article that led with Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's announcement that "investigators in his state were looking into three or more' cases of convicted sex offenders who had registered on Facebook." The Times added that "Mr. Blumenthal said he was taking a particular interest in Facebook because his children use the service."

AG's spotlight moves to Facebook

An anonymous person who said he or she was "a concerned parent" contacted the New York Times about a fake teen profile he (we'll make it "he" to simplify) created apparently to check into the predator risk on Facebook, the Times reports. The "parent" had this imaginary teen join sex-related groups (ongoing discussions users can join) and add some of the members to "her" friends list. Since that made her screenname and photo visible to other members, the imaginary teen started getting sexual solicitations. Facebook's terms of use prohibit such activity, but it relies on a combination of staff monitoring and user abuse reports to take action, and, the Times article indicates, not everything can be caught, at least not right away. What's hardest to stop is when people, including imaginary ones, are looking for trouble, Facebook indicated in the Times article (for info on exactly this type of user and vulnerability, please see "Profile of a teen online victim"). Other pieces of this story include Facebook's own project for reporting registered sex offenders on its site, and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's announcement that "investigators in his state were looking into three or more' cases of convicted sex offenders who had registered on Facebook." The Times adds that "Mr. Blumenthal said he was taking a particular interest in Facebook because his children use the service."

TX arrests 7 social-networking sex offenders

With identity info provided by MySpace, Texas police have arrested seven sex offenders, the state’s attorney general announced Thursday. CNET reported that “the seven, whose profiles on MySpace had already been removed under an internal program to weed out sex offenders prowling the News Corp.-owned site, were arrested for breaking parole or probation rules.” Six were picked up because they had MySpace profiles and their parole requirements banned their Internet use.

Catching online parole violations

States are now catching violations of convicts on parole with the information MySpace is supplying attorneys general. USATODAY reports that “many convicted sex offenders who had profiles on the popular MySpace website are on parole, and some may be sent back to prison for emailing minors.” Connecticut’s attorney general told USATODAY that “more than half of the 210 sex offenders from his state who used the social networking site are on parole. One was returned to state custody last week for using the Internet, a violation of a condition of his release.” MySpace has been lobbying for federal legislation requiring convicted sex offenders to register their email addresses and other online contact data (not just street addresses and phone numbers); such legislation, which also attaches penalties for failure to comply, is now working its way through the US Congress.

MySpace seeks court's guidance

Sometimes states ask MySpace to turn over sex offenders’ email addresses, sometimes the content of their emails. Addresses are one thing, but the content of private emails seem to be another. “MySpace has provided the profiles of offenders,” Reuters reports. “However, MySpace has not provided private email correspondence, citing legal restrictions.” Federal law (the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986) “prevents Internet service providers such as MySpace from turning over a user's electronic communications without a search warrant.” Another problem Reuters cites is the difficulty of obtaining a search warrant for an offender not currently under investigation. The upshot of all this is that MySpace filed a request in a Pennsylvania court that is seeking its guidance on how the site “can legally provide local authorities with the private emails of convicted sex offenders on it.” MySpace handed the emails over to the court so it could decide whether or not to share them with law enforcement. What the court decides “is seen as a test case for how local US authorities and MySpace can cooperate in sharing information without violating federal law.” Here’s CNET’s coverage.

MySpace gives sex-offender data

MySpace and the state attorneys general have worked out a solution. Apparently without notifying MySpace, eight AGs last week publicly called for the social site to turn over sex-offender information. MySpace countered saying that federal privacy law required a subpoena or some other legal instrument before such data could be turned over. Today MySpace announced the two parties had arrived at “a process to expedite the delivery of useful information to enable the attorneys general to use it in their pursuit of any of these individuals who are breaking the law." The Associated Press reports that MySpace general counsel Mike 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.” Here's last week's coverage.

Technically speaking a sex offender

A news story about proposed legislation in Connecticut that would revise the state’s statutory rape law brings out the tragic, unintended consequences of labeling some people sex offenders. The Hartford Courant tells the story of a man who, at 18, was convicted of having sex with his then-15-year-old girlfriend, “who told investigators she was a willing partner.” Her mother knew of the relationship. It appears that the girl’s non-custodial father turned him in. The Courant explains that if the age gap between the two teens had been less than two years, “he wouldn't have been arrested under the state's second-degree sexual assault statute.” The Courant also reports that “attorneys and legislators have complained that the two-year age difference is too narrow and that teenagers experimenting with sex can be treated like sexual predators because of it. Others say a felony conviction stigmatizes teenagers who wouldn't otherwise have been arrested and makes it difficult for them to find work,” which is the case for this young man now 22. Legislation is now being considered in the state legislature that “would increase the allowable age gap between sexually active teens from two to four years.”

MySpace & the attorneys general

Eight state attorneys general Monday sent a letter to MySpace requesting that, by the end of the month, the social-networking site turn over data on registered sex offenders who use the site,” CNET reports. MySpace responded Tuesday that it was prepared to work with the attorneys general, but "its cooperation hinges on whether the state officials follow the law and subpoena the names, a step that a leader of the state attorneys general said was not necessary," the New York Times reports (MySpace was referring to a federal law basically barring disclosure of criminal records without a subpoena). The social-networking site also said it had "already taken down the profiles of thousands of sex offenders since the beginning of May when it began running its own database check." In an earlier statement, Nigam said MySpace “had launched software in early May to proactively identify and remove any known sex offenders from the site." The company's doing so using a national database of sex-offender data that it created with the help of ID-verification company Sentinel Tech. But even with that national list, finding all registered sex offenders is difficult without a law requiring them to register their email addresses and other online contact info. MySpace lobbied for such a law last year, and Sens. McCain and Schumer introduced legislation to this effect early this year (see my 12/8/06 item). The legislation’s still pending. Although eliminating all sex offenders on any social site would certainly help, not all pedophiles have been arrested and convicted. Too, MySpace is not the only social site where they could be active, and I wonder if the attorneys general plan to send similar letters to the many other social-networking sites that have teenage members.