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Where Predators Gather Thousands Of Registered Sex Offenders Created MySpace Profiles By COLIN POITRAS Courant Staff Writer May 22 2007 Authorities today are sifting through the names of at least 100 convicted Connecticut sex offenders believed to have created profiles on the popular Internet site MySpace.com, possibly in violation of their probation or parole. In response to subpoenas, MySpace officials late Monday gave law enforcement authorities in Connecticut and at least seven other states the names, addresses and other personal information generated by the profiles. "There are at least 5,000 registered convicted sex offenders [nationally] with MySpace profiles posing an immediate, urgent risk to children - potentially violating their parole and probation," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Monday in announcing MySpace's decision to comply with subpoenas issued by Blumenthal and the other attorneys general. "I commend MySpace for taking this step and welcome this cooperation," Blumenthal said. "Social networking sites should not be playgrounds for predators." Blumenthal is co-chairman of a national task force studying ways to increase Internet safety. He and the other attorneys general have been pushing MySpace to disclose the profile information since learning of its existence a week ago, after MySpace conducted a comprehensive internal review of its registry. Although MySpace disclosed its review publicly, it declined to release the results for privacy reasons. MySpace is believed to be the nation's largest social networking site, with more than 175 million registered users. The company hired Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. last December to check the site's profiles against a national registry of convicted sex offenders. That comparison was completed a few weeks ago. MySpace officials said they immediately deleted all the profiles created by sex offenders, although the information has been retained for possible use by law enforcement. "In addition to immediately removing registered sex offenders from MySpace, our plans have always been to provide the information collected by Sentinel ... to law enforcement, including the attorneys general," said Mike Angus, executive vice president and general counsel for Fox Interactive Media, which owns MySpace. Blumenthal called Monday's developments an important first step but said much more needs to be done to protect children using MySpace.com and similar sites like Facebook, Friendster and Xanga. The sites are popular with young people because they allow individuals to share photographs and personal tidbits, such as where they live, favorite books and music and other information. "These 5,000 convicted sex offenders are only the tip of the iceberg because they have decided to use their real names after a conviction," Blumenthal said. "There are thousands of other predators lurking on this site that lack convictions or use aliases." States across the country are confronting the issue on several fronts. In Connecticut, Blumenthal is pushing the legislature to approve a bill this year that would require sites like MySpace to verify users' ages and to require minors to get parental permission before they could post profiles. Blumenthal said the networks could apply technology used by credit card companies and tobacco companies online for stricter control. Sites that fail to comply would face civil penalties of up to $5,000 a day, under the proposed legislation. MySpace currently prohibits individuals under 14 years old from having a profile, but relies on those creating the profiles to identify their age without any verification. At least six alleged assaults involving older men and younger girls who met through MySpace were investigated in Connecticut last year, Blumenthal has said. Law enforcement sources have identified more than 100 cases nationwide of children being lured out of their homes by predators on MySpace, authorities have said. MySpace's Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam, formerly of Cheshire, said the age verification system touted by Blumenthal and others would not solve the predator problem. He said it could create more dangers for children on the Internet by giving them a false sense of security if a predator manages to pass through the screen using bogus information. Nigam and other MySpace officials favor a national effort to require e-mail registration on social networking sites. Those cyberspace addresses, like addresses in the "real world," are direct links to the user and can be tracked and enforced, Nigam said. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York last year proposed the "Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children Act," which would require that sex offenders provide state registries with their e-mail addresses and other online identifiers. The legislation is pending. Three states, Virginia, Kentucky and Arizona, have passed similar measures into law. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, co-chairman of the national task force with Blumenthal, has proposed e-mail registration legislation in his state this year. Ken Dreifach, former chief of the New York attorney general's internet bureau and now a lawyer in private practice, said requiring networking sites like MySpace to obtain age verification and other personal information before people can access a site is difficult to enforce and raises privacy and First Amendment issues. If states require American corporations to require age verification, what is to stop international companies from creating networking sites that don't have such a requirement, Dreifach asked. He said sites that started requiring extensive personal information from their customers have seen customer use drop dramatically, as people who didn't want to be bothered simply went elsewhere. Dreifach, whose law firm represents other social networking sites, such as Yahoo, said courts have favored the use of Internet filtering devices, education and tighter parental supervision as the best way to protect children. Dreifach said he does not personally represent MySpace. Contact Colin Poitras at cpoitras@courant.com. Copyright 2007, Hartford Courant |