MySpace Woes
Sex Offenders in Cyberspace
By Daniel Muniz

In a chilling revelation, MySpace.com announced that 29,000 registered sex offenders created profiles on their immensely popular social networking site. They had originally identified 7,000 profiles of convicted sexual predators but more than likely, there are already tens of thousands additional sex offenders as well as a number of other criminals and miscreants who are covertly using MySpace.

Perhaps the greatest fear among parents is the perverts who pose as teenagers in hopes of enticing their kids into a rendezvous. And there are also plenty of full grown adults who do not lie about their age and actively seek out and proposition teenagers.

As a result, a number of state attorney generals and law enforcement agencies want to track down these sexual predators because using sites like MySpace is already a blatant violation of the terms of paroles and probations. These violators need to be identified and punished so that they can be prevented from harming anyone else especially since they already have a record of being convicted of such heinous acts.

So in order to accomplish such a task, sites like MySpace would have to provide law enforcement the necessary personal information of such predators.

Naturally, News Corp., the owner of MySpace, refused to cooperate.

On the surface, I can agree with companies withholding customer data from the courts and from the police because they need a damn good reason explaining why it should be handed over. As a free society, we don’t want an intrusive government stampeding over privacy rights because there are plenty of corrupt public officials and other bureaucrats who have a score to settle by mining this kind of data. Such information can be used for blackmail or for securing a political victory against their opponents.

But when it comes to sex offenders, that is reason enough to cooperate with law enforcement which MySpace eventually did do by removing the profiles of those 29,000 miscreants.

However, MySpace is only one of many venues that sex predators can use to troll for unsuspecting children although it is currently the most popular. But what is alarming is to the length that these perverts are willing to take to circumvent the system so they can prey upon our youth.

They obviously represent a threat so parents and law enforcement must take effective measures to counter it.

One idea being tossed around is to require minors under the age of 14 to have their parent’s permission to use these social networking sites and then verify the parent’s identity. If the verification fails, then the minor is not allowed to create a profile.

The biggest drawback to such an approach is that phony or stolen identities can be used. Identity theft is already a huge problem in this country so acquiring an identity to fool this verification system is problematic at best.

And even if a parent does give such permission, parental involvement is still needed to help steer kids away from trouble.

So in other words, these kinds of measures may end up only giving a false sense of security if a parent thinks that the government and businesses is already proactively protecting their children.

One doesn’t have to look very hard to find disturbing news stories of teenagers being sexually assaulted by the people they meet on the Internet. The Internet itself is much too unaccountable of a venue which allows predators to exploit all of its weaknesses. Besides, the Internet was designed for connectivity instead of being an arm of the nanny state. There simply is no way to create a foolproof system without using intrusive means.

That is not to say that sex offenders should have free reign to prey on children.

But rather, the problem itself needs to be addressed. A web site like MySpace is only a component of the dilemma but it is not the problem itself. The real danger lies in the sex offender.

States really need to get tough on these miscreants.

Sexual predators need to be locked up for longer periods of time and when they are paroled; they need to be closely monitored with many more severe restrictions imposed on them. But more importantly, repeat sex offenders need to be locked up for life. And there should be no wiggle room for that because these are not the kind of repeat offenders that should be roaming our streets or roaming through cyberspace.

The bottom line is that a site like MySpace needs to be a more responsible business but it is not the problem so making more cumbersome laws and rules cannot be the answer. It is time for states to crack down on the real criminals and keep them locked up with stiffer sentences.

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