Slashdot Mirror
MySpace Predator Caught By Code
An anonymous reader writes, "Wired News editor and former hacker Kevin Poulsen wrote a
1,000-line Perl script that checked MySpace for registered sex offenders. Sifting through the results, he manually confirmed over 700 offenders, including a serial child molester in New York actively trying to hook up with underage boys on the site, and who has now been arrested as a result. MySpace told Congress last June that it didn't have this capability." Wired News says they will publish Poulsen's code under an open-source license later this week.
PWND.
[sarcasm]While most of us here know how trivial searching for string a in string b is, I for one believe that Tom couldn't do it. Aside from all the horror that it is conceptually, the (lack of) stability of their site actually makes that statement believable![/sarcasm]
Just skimmed the article, and it didn't seem all that easy even with the code. Though I guess 200 people is a lot comparitively speaking.
This article isn't credible. It must be a hoax. I mean, c'mon, you really expect me to believe someone wrote a 1,000 line perl script. And that it did what it was supposed to?
The perl code used to catch myspace pedos is the exact same unchanged script they use for page layout at wired mag.
I am a big fan of privacy. But I am also a big fan you losing your rights to privacy when you continually break the law in a fashion that puts others at risk, especially minors.
Maybe Myspace is just really that stupid (heck, their site design casues me to thik their programmer can;t be all that bright).
___________________________
Free iPods? Its legit and simple. 5 of my friends got theirs. Get yours here!
It took 1,000 lines to do a string compare?
I know what he did was a good thing, but what if I wrote a script to go through MySpace looking for other "stuff?" Isn't this a breach of privacy and wouldn't this person or MySpace be vulnerable to lawsuits?
It looks like from TFA that the code did very little of the work, and the vast majority of effort was done by hand. So this guy wasn't really "caught by code", was he?
~ The Fudge Report @ http://mywebpages.comcast.net/fudgereport/
Thus spake the article:
No amount of rummaging through any database is going to detect someone who registers under a false name, so no MySpace will NEVER really have the ability to find all the sex offenders, unless they can somehow verify that people are who they say they are when they sign up. Though they do now have the ability to catch the really stupid ones it seems.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Given all the people with convictions that were checked, less than one in a thousand had a conviction since 2000 and were on MySpace. Of those couple of hundred, one seemed to be trying to prey on little girls. This seems to be pretty much of a non-problem.
On the other hand, if I had to worry about anybody, I'd worry about our senators. A way higher proportion of our elected elite prey on the young than we have caught doing so on MySpace. In case you hadn't been paying attention, here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Foley_scandal
We spend way too much time worrying about things that aren't much of a problem and way too little time worrying about the things that can really get us.
Perl is a great language for writing such sophisticated logarithms.
With tens of thousands of teens visiting a site daily there is a significant risk is that a couple of sex predators are on the prawl.
So the question is... does Slashdot check all users if they are registered sex offenders or does this Paulsen guy have to run his script here too?
Tell your friends about xenu.net
That seems like a complicated way to get the same results as:
SELECT * FROM userbase WHERE SexOffender="1";
see http://www.myspace.com/robots.txt
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
As an ex-MySpace drone, I only joined becuase I wanted to see how far I could customize the HTML for my own account. I did very well, then looked at all the friends list and figured... "Who the hell are these people?"
No doubt, all sorts of personalities exist on MySpace. I can deal and respect many of the objectionable ones, but I think a couple of crimes are universal. Child (a real child not 'underage' teenager, a *child*) molestation, and ratting on another person. Even those incarcerated tend to target such people found guilty of these crimes. A lot can be said here, if even those the greater society outcasts chose to outcast such people.
I suspect the answer will illustrate why a white hat wouldn't be doing this sort of thing.
And then there is Jacob, one of the kids this 39 year old had "friended":
So Jacob's parents can't be bothered to, you know, go see wtf this kid is doing on MySpace? The earlier comment snippet makes it seem like the parents of this kid are totally off the hook here, but guess what? Wether your kid is hanging out at the local corner or someplace online, you really need to know where they are and what they are doing. And then there is the whole issue about not talking to stangers in the first place; apparently his parents have completely missed the boat in that area. Scary.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I'm quite glad for this guy; but law enforcement's malaise still cheeses my off a bit. Indeed, writing a Perl script to spider MySpace is not rocket science -- I whipped one up six months ago as part of a graduate school project. Immediately sensing the possibilities of catching people like this, I contacted several people in the CIA and FBI through my school. After several painfully blunt explanations, none of them could grasp how the script could be used in their agencies. Governments and major corporations wonder why China can get into "secure" sites and "kids" write viruses like "ILoveYou" or "Blaster". It's because they're so monolithically slow, stupid, and blind that they can neither see nor react to their environments. Maybe law enforcement will "wise up" and start offering prize money / sponsoring competitions, just like the recent Bio-Tech news here on Slashdot.
3 pages of articles
;)
Only to get to a misdomeanor charge of attempting to endanger
What a let-down
With a MAX of 90 days in jail, gee, the world is safe now
They had hundreds of hits on the names and that's the best they got?
I am all for catching the bad guys, but you have to KEEP them to do any good ya know.
MySpace needs to be whacked, hard. Harder.
The lazy, lying bastards should be shut down, made an example of. At the least, they're now liable because someone showed it could be done, and because they were too lazy to do it themselves, they now have a liability exposure for any child that was preyed upon through their web site.
Best regards.
He's probably duplicated several CPAN modules in the process, too.
You're just going to have a huge drain on resources from people doing redundant searches (to put it simply, the search feature is going to get a captcha). It would be better to have mySpace cross check user data with sex offender data and then take the time to verify and then pass the information quietly off to officials who can double check before knocking on any doors.
It would also be trivial to implement reports on age discrepencies. If someone is messaging a number of people that are significantly younger then the user would be flagged and the communications checked to see if there's a potential problem. It's entirely possible a teacher is communicating with students so obviously a real human is going to have to verify findings.
Since all the data resides on mySpaces server, as long as they don't publish their findings publically, there isn't an issue with privacy.
It's very simple why mySpace doesn't want to implement this ability into their system: it costs them money and people will whine about privacy.
Privacy for you means privacy for everyone including criminals.
Work Safe Porn
So how many false positives and false negatives does this produce? i.e., how many non-offenders does it misidentify as being offenders and how many offenders does it misidentify as non-offenders? Furthermore, of the offenders properly identified, how many of them are actually committing, planning to commit, thinking about committing, wanting to commit, or some other way being involved with the committing of a sexual offender related crime on myspace?
While the tool may produce results, are the results good enough and non-damaging enough to be useful? (I'd consider any given non-offender being identified as an offender and subsequently harrassed as such rather extensively damaging.)
Dark Dante is such a narq nowadays.
Should read: Jim Foley breathed a sigh of relief when MySpace told Congress last June that it didn't have this capability.
Hey folks.
Picking and choosing when it is/is not OK to cooperate with authorities in a criminal investigation might be very convenient for Kevin Lee Poulsen, but it should give his sources -- past, present, and future -- significant pause.
Wired News -- and Kevin -- have shown that writing a splashy story means more to them right now than the danger of blurring the lines between reporter and cop. This isn't about protecting kids, or about what MySpace should or should not do. It's about eroding the role of the journalist as a fair and impartial witness, in a time when too many people are already barking up that tree.
A hacker should know better.
-- Adrian Lamo
the myspace security officer wanted a list of email addresses from sexual predators
it sure sounds like a good idea like mandatory sex offender registration (sarcasm.. since most dont register)
couldn't a pervert use a disposable email account? however a majority of them aren't very intelligent so it might stop a bunch of them.
a better solution is to legalize the assault of sexual predators. if you got your ass beat over touching kids, wouldn't you stop doing it after awhile?
Looking at myspace I doubt if their programmers COULD write a 1000 line perl script. Just because you're average slashdot user has this technology, does not mean that the programming geniuses at myspace do.
Think MySpace is incompetent with the "We can't do this" statement? Try one better. You really, really don't want to actually do the below; it's probably illegal. I am not responsible for how anyone abuses the below conjecture.
MySpace seems to let users put JavaScript on their pages. MySpace also seems to check your authentication token on their pages. So, javascript to use xmlhttpobject and go to their profile pages and submit a password change, invisibly? One better, steal the MySpace login form code and throw an HTML hidden area that's a log-in form and let Firefox/IE/Opera auto-fill with their password, and send its contents to your personal Web server with XMLHttpObject.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Sure, you might get them to register their ISP email address. I doubt very much though that offenders are going to register Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo or any other free email services. And who is going to police the offenders? Who is going to check the IP numbers against all the free email services and a the list of sex offenders to make sure that they are not using a "secret" email address? Oh I know they will get PervertedJustice http://www.perverted-justice.com/ and Dateline http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/ to do it. Yeah, those two groups would be perfect. They can't even keep track of sex offenders in the real world.
I suspect that once this is released under that open-source license, a lively round of Perl Golf will follow.
"I can write that script in 70 characters or less, George!"
That green slime had it coming.
kdawson, I am not sure that you read this, but hopefully someone will forward this on to you.
Some of us slashdot readers actually use the categories when looking at stories to read. I am unclear on what the 'Security' aspect of this MySpace article is, but 'The Internet' is aptly used. Your use of the Enlightenment category to label this story about the Illuminati books and about hardware recycling make it seem that you have no idea that the Enlightenment category is used for the GUI, rather than the spiritual process. Please understand what a catagory means before labeling stories with it.
On the random topic of categories, why doesn't an editor just create a 'Social Networking' category already to file all the MySpace/Facebook/Friendster stories under already.
Do you think Ruppert Murdoch cares more about quarterly earnings or sex offenders roaming his digital empire?
I sure hope he wore gloves and/or other protection for that part!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
He's probably too old for these "manual confirmations."
And how do you check if they are related. I like knowing what my nephew is doing on line, but because of a serperation an marriage, his last name, my last name, and his mom's current last name, and his mom's previous name do not match.
I can see keeping someone out that has been tried and found guilty in a court of law, "Stop it now before abuse happens" smack of guilty until proven guilty. You don't even get a shot at proving yourself innocent, yet alone being presumed innocent. I agree with check to see what is happening. Require an email address for a guardian for anyone under 18, and notify them if an adult wants to be the child's friend, but there are several reasons for an older man and younger kid to interact on the internet as well as real life.
In my above situation we are related. In another, my live in girlfriend has a 6 year old daughter that I am not related to, but lives with me. She already has an email account, that her mother monitors strictly. In a few more years, when she gets her own computer with internet access, I am the one that is going to be making sure she learns about the internet. If she has an account anywhere, I will be monitoring it on a regular basis. There is no way to determine that I am a protector and not a predator other than asking her parents.
On top of that, people seem to get child molester and sexual offender mixed up. He wrote a script that checked for sexual offenders. A few of them turned out to be child molestors. In some states if you are caught at a frat party in your underwear, you are a sexual offender. I think it was Ohio that tried to pass a law, that if you were accused of being a sexual offender, you had to register as a sexual offender for 7 years before you could petition the court to get your name removed.
that thinks MySpace is a huge overdone, bloated, kitsch, piece of crap? I personally like multiply.com 10x better...
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Good work. -jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That he manually confirmed 700 of the results.
That doesn't say how many false positives he sifted through to get to those.
Should Myspace be required to have people who manually confirm all users aren't sex offenders?
My twitter
Do you know how many intelectual conversations this would have denied me as a kid? My peers were Neanderthals, the internet was full of smart adults, and not once, ever, have I been solicited by anything other than porn spam, and since I am not retarded, no threat there.
Really, for every person they caught with this perl script, there must be a hundred who just made up an alias when they created their MySpace account.
I agree to some extent, the parents should definitely be very heavily involved in any relationship a 12 year old boy has with a 40 year old man. Furthermore, for a 12 year old boy to develop a relationship with someone he met online is extremely risky.
Having said that, mentoring relationships can be extremely valuable. Some of my parent's friends, for example, have provided me with incredibly valuable guidance - not just direct advice but also as examples of how to live and solve life's problems.
Basically, I think younger people should seek out older people for guidance much more often than they do but, for younger children in particular, the parents do need to be heavily involved.
If some 12 year old boy contacted me on the internet, I would want to talk to his parents before I had any kind of interaction with him at all. On the other hand, if some 17 year old boy contacted me to discuss a scientific topic then I see nothing wrong with corresponding. If I did start to become friends with the 17 year old then I would want to get to know his parents but, although I would restrict my interaction to technical topics (no advice on relationships), I wouldn't rule out a casual friendship.
... I did the same thing with only 3 lines using Ruby ....
The script is written in perl - the cure is worse than the disease!
MySpace saying they didn't have the technology reeks of the same tactic used by the Saw manufacturers in response to the SawStop technology. If they don't offer a service like this, they can claim a lack of responsibility. In case you don't know, SawStop stops a saw as soon as it hits flesh -- the manufacturers said no thanks for this very reason. But if they offer this service and a sex offender gets through because of some sort of idiotic programming error someone will sue them as fast as possible.
If they screw up the code that, say, rotates a signature or something (proud to say I've never even been to myspace -- had to make up a feature here) no big deal. If they screw up their MySpace-anti-pedo feature, all hell breaks loose.
This is great for them. They don't have to support it OR its failures and the users get the benefit of the code anyway. Can't say that I blame them.
1000 lines, bah. I could have done it with .NET in 10,000 lines.
I run a CS Clan, we have many members that range from 12 years old right up until 40. Yes we all talk together, are all friends and *GASP* meet up every month for a Lan party. And I could say the same about my local Cricket club.
Couldn't somebody then, in theory, write their own perl script to take the list of "known" sex offenders names and create hundreds or thousands of profiles with those names, with the sheer number of fake profiles on myspace already I have to imagine it'd be possible. Hell, throw in some polymorphic code for writing profile information or have it randomly scrub an existing profile and copy its information, that ought to send the number of false positives through the roof. Being on the wrong side of a name mix up has made me a little bitter and suspicious of this approach I suppose....
I once used an image from an offender website as a message board avatar.
Really, really scary looking guy, convicted of several counts of incest.
But, HE didn't have an account, his image was used without his knowledge or permission.
We are so worried about things that have little chance of harming us that we're willing to let the government take away the civil rights that our forefathers fought for.s _everywhere.htm
What's more dangerous, terrorists or cars? Cars win hands down.
http://www.doctorsiegel.com/usa_today_terrorism_i
What's more dangerous, guns or swimming pools? Swimming pools are way more dangerous to our kids than guns ever were.
http://timlambert.org/2001/07/levittpoolsvsguns/
I think we should indeed worry about our senators and congresscritters but maybe not because they are pedophiles. I find that I am beginning to agree with the Democrats (perish the thought) on one thing; they seem to be starting a 'fearless' campaign and that sounds like a good thing. It's time we quit worrying about a lot of things that are very little danger to us. In this case, that means predators lurking on MySpace. It really does sound like a non-problem.
I can't decide whether mods should mark this funny or as a troll. You'd think that adults and minors lived in totally seperate physical universes normally. At least I hope it's a troll.
the word "PERL" does not appear in the article. What does the original poster know that we don't?
Andrew Lubrano will soon be open source himself!
---southpaw
If Mr. Lubrano had been a high ranking belgian official he would have fared a lot better
than he did. Same thing goes if he had been a US senator. At least he should have either
maneuvered himself into a position where stop an investigation with a phone call.
Another precaution he could have taken was to indulge himself in South America, Eastern
Europe (Romania comes particularily to mind) or South East Asia. After researching these
countries carefully and making the right contacts he could have given his perversions
free rein over an innocent child. He might never been invited to the Bohemian Grove but
he could have at least sampled in some of their pleasures. Travelling abroad for pleasures
would have been only more expensive for him cash-wise. Now instead of plunging his cock
into a six-year old's ass he's instead yet again going to be reminded by Mohammed and Leroy
and all the other "big and bad old nigguhs on Block C" what it's like.
All in all it boils down to perspective and circumspection. Lubrano had neither. He will
definitely take it in the ass.
Nah, just have then check off the "I am not a sex offender" checkbox
Is that because of Perl, he can't change or understand the script anymore, therefore any judge will throw his case out.
I, for one, welcome our new new Perl overlords...
I made it!!! Mum, come see this...
How in the world did that get modded as informative and not 'funny'?!?
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
Especially those of an untraceable crossbow.
Those things are quiet, too.
Setting aside issues of what is a "sex offender" vs what I think the public perception of one is, are all "sex offenders" not allowed to use MySpace?
This is a little like cross referencing a list of library card holders and comparing it to the list of "sex offenders" and waxing hysterical that there are "sex offenders" in the library. Do the same with Blockbuster cards, or the phone book. Geee gads, there are "sex offenders" in the city...
Yes, there are young people on MySpace, but not all MySpace users are young. Some people are well into their 30s and 40s and use it to connect with other 30 and 40 year olds.
The mere presence of "sex offenders" should not be cause for concern anymore then if they were in a library, Wal-Mart, mall, grocery store, etc. This is reinforced with the fact that many "sex offenders" really aren't-people who were 18 and their partner was 15, public urinators, that guy that grabbed that girl to yell at her for jaywalking or whatever, etc.
I posted it under another "funny".
I think there are folks who take the mod system way too seriously and have some sort of problem with the fact that "funny" doesn't garner "karma", so they feel obliged to give it "insightful" or some such. I don't care, If I post a "funny", I don't expect "karma".
My personal opinion is that "funny" is just that - for those who think it is funny. Maybe having zero karma for funny is "right", maybe it is "wrong".
I dunno.
Hey mods - don't zap me down too much. I didn't mod myself up. You are in a pissing match with other mods! (Not that I give a shit what my "karma" is, I am soo going to hell, maybe, depending on who you ask.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1836/a09.html? 999
... rotten. What do I think the chances are? She has much more chance of being raped by some guy at school, date rape for instance, than by some sex maniac lurking on the street. Living is a matter of taking chances. We can't live without choosing risks to take. I've made my choices. One of them doesn't involve telling my kids to stay off MySpace. On the other hand, I have pointed out to them the risks of giving out personal information.
The link points out that spending on prisons is outstripping spending on education. So, my daughter is maybe a little safer because a bunch more criminals are behind bars. On the other hand, the school she goes to could be a lot better. I think it's a bad deal.
Consider the Canadians. They seem to be just as safe or maybe safer and yet they put way fewer people in jail. I'll bet their schools are better too.
Lots of people are killed by drunk drivers and yet we get bent out of shape by pedophiles. We really are freaked out by all the wrong things. As for how I would feel if my daughter were assaulted
Sometimes grownups do things that make us feel... uncomfortable. If you're upset and want to talk about it, send me an IM.
Maf54
MySpace told Congress last June that it didn't have this capability.
Looking at the site, I completely believe them. Myspace is a teettering pile of junk, and unless I miss my guess, could very well been done in coldfusion (was it, I'm not a full time web guy?).
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
This may be why MySpace/News Corp claimed the task couldn't be done (also likely: incompetence). However, for an already-registered sex offender, I hope data from this Perl script would be enough at least to warrant a request to the offender's ISP and e-mail service provider to see if the MySpace account is authentic.
Like others in this thread, I too find it hard to sympathize with sex offenders. I do, though, understand the cause for a more general concern: could organizations such as the RIAA use a positive outcome from one of these cases in order to argue its many repudiated cases into court? Can they say, "If the method we used is good enough to convict people of sex offenses, it's good enough for a civil case, too"?
Any lawyers willing to speculate?
As I am running a couple of Internet-communities, I think I have more understand of these matters than most others, MySpace included.
;)
On my sites there is a simple "report this member" button. If someone is trying to pick up kids, they will be reported. It's that simple and it works just fine.
As for name-searching: Some people really really didn't like an older guy that dated a 17-year old girl. So what to do? Of course register a user in his name and pretend to search for kids to molester.
Once I've worked with the police. It was a 13-year old girl that was supposed to be kidnapped by her boyfriend. And he got convicted to 2 years because USA has a law-system stuffed with morons, bribed people and psychopats that care nothing about justice. The real story was that he resqued her from a molestering father and she had a nice time on the run before they got caught partly from me and partly from MSN-logs. She was at least saved from her father in the end.
And then we have the reports that say "He talked to me and I'm 15 and he's like 30!!!" (And the talk was something like "I really like the style you draw in").
But I've had one real offender. He threatened a lot of girls and got kicked out (He tried to get back in some times, but I hope he's in jail now) and then he threatened to report me to the police because it was possible to do illegal stuff with kids on my sites. Good luck to get that through Interpol and to Sweden!
After reading about Spamhaus I realize that it however is a real problem for me, so I'm not planing to go to USA. It's much safer to run a Internet community from another country because the accusations have to go through two legal systems. I'm quite small in Sweden and 50% or more of the users are in USA.
MySpace is in the USA though, so please sue them out of business and I'll have a competitor less!
Oh wait, it's written in Perl. My bad.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
only a child molester would think that way, and besides, the vast majority of child sex abuse is committed by a family member...ergo, you're probably a kidfscker
This totally deserves to be modded insightful, BTW
... that Minority Report and "PreCrime" were intended as illustrative warnings, not how-to DIY guides. Damn you, Tom Cruise!
So has murder, rape, robbery, torture, etc. Those things aren't any less evil just because they've been around for a long time.
Again, how does that imply it's not evil? Only things that kill, maim, or emotionally scar someone for life are truly evil?
I think the point he was making was NOT that child molestation isn't a bad thing; rather, that it's no different than murder, rape, etc. Possibly even less of a crime than murder or other violent assault. Murder deprives you of your life, and it is thus the highest of crimes. Assault deprives you, sometimes, of physical health and capabilities. Lesser forms of assault deprive you of your rightful control of your own body and leave nothing but psychological scarring; non-violent rape (e.g. the kind where you are not beaten or stabbed, etc) falls into this category. (Violent rape obviously falls into the former category, and nonviolent rape can segue into for former if STDs or unwanted pregnancy follows). Mind you, I'm not in any way saying that these lesser crimes are at all OK; I'm just saying, look at them in comparison to other, much greater crimes.
Child molestation is categorically no different than rape; the victim is just younger. Some "child molestation" (statutory "rape" of 16 or 17 year olds, who are biologically adult) is even less of a crime, since the act would by all objective standards be considered consensual if it weren't for the legal fiction that people younger than 18 are incapable of giving consent.
But we freak the hell out about child molesters and lose all sense of rationality when anything about them comes up. We don't freak out this much about murderers. We still *do something* about murderers; that's why we have police, and courts, and jails and such. We still do something about people who physically assault others, but you don't see this vigilanteism toward your run of the mill violent criminals around. You don't see people writing 1000-line perl scripts to try to identify known gang members on MySpace - particularly because there's not as convenient a list of known gang members to compare with. But a lot of those people are violent criminals guilty of much greater offenses than the pedophiles that every mom in America is terrified of.
Americans just get particularly worked up about sex, and particularly worked up about children; combine the two together and you get instant emotional frenzy, no rational thought involved. Pedophiles, rapists, witches, communists, terrorists... hell, the whole terrorist scare seems sane in comparison to the frenzy that people get into over sex offenders. At least terrorists actually murder people. Pedos and rapists are the next nearest the top on that little list I just gave, and at least they're a step up from just persecuting people with different beliefs (witches and communists). But next time you or anyone else starts to get riled up about sex offenders, ask yourself why you don't feel the same way about all the more violent criminals out there. Do you want them all on watch lists too? Every man who's ever gotten into so much as a fist fight, a much more violent act than rape? Are you constantly concerned about your children running into people like them on MySpace? If not, why not?
If so, well, at least you're consistent. I have to give you that.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Whats the point in open sourcing something newscorp would no doubt buy from you real fast to limit the negative publicity.
The Internet is a mighty tool, and like all mighty tools, it is terrifying, dangerous, and not for use by unsupervised children or maniacs.
You know what I wonder? Why are so many pedophiles let out of prison? We live in an age with psychologists, criminologists, advanced statistical techniques, implantable tracking devices, power surveillance systems, etc. A reasonable law-enforcement system would attempt to make intelligent decisions about whether a given sex-offender is rehabilitatable or not, and -- at the conclusion of supposedly rehabilitatable offenders' sentences -- evaluate whether they have in fact been rehabilitated or whether they need more time with the shrinks. And once released, they can be monitored until a certain level of confidence in their rehabilitation has been achieved. Actually, this would be sensible for any kind of repeat violent offender. After all, the legal system isn't just about punishment. Rehabilitating the salvagable criminals and confining the maniacs that can't be fixed is a vitally important aspect of the process.
This is just such a wonderful example that solution to a problem often is not provided by intelligence but the multitude of views on the problem. I believe MySpace truely couldn't solve the problem. Not because their people are not intelligent, but simply because you cant beat the problem cracking force of the public.
Penguins rule again.
Isn't it about time he stopped getting other people to do the work for him while he sits back and reaps all the glory and fame? When is he going to learn how to control 'his' creation?
!asleep
Ahahahahahahahaha.
how is babby formed?
I'm glad they caught this guy. But if the FBI wrote this to catch a terrorist, /. would be up in arms. I'm just saying.
NICE
This man is as close as it gets to heroes for me. .)
Trust,I hold controversial views on the care and
handling of Pedophiles that isn't congruous with
any Constitutional or human rights they are alleged
to have.(prove they are human,go on I challenge you
Scripted watching,now thats fullfillment of tools
and technology.I wonder where it will appear next.
google? Of course I suppose it has a downside too,
It could be used to glean other demographics too.
Privacy was a thing of yesterday,of course we could
look forward to a future of licensed pedophile hunting
season.Then I'll be on the cover of Sports Afield with
a shotgun on my thigh and my bag bleeding at my feet.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
You'd think that Adults and Children exist in two totally seperate universes. Parents need to watch their kids and what they do. It's that simple. So what if the guy didn't use his real name or picture? The kids would still be at risk. No amount of regulation or supervision will prevent every crime. Don't expect the Government to watch every bad guy, because they can't.
go and sin no more.
oh, you want a second opinion? YESSSSsssssss!!!! Woo! good work!
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Seriously, how stupid must a convicted sex offender be to put any accurate info into their MySpace profile?
Also, something struck me as curious from the article:
That's because much of what happens on MySpace unfolds outside public view. The computer crime unit has erected bait profiles registered to fake underage teens, but so far the tactic has netted only one arrest. Proactively scouring MySpace pages is futile: The smarter sexual predators stick to private messages, and diligently prune their public comment boards of any posts from young friends that hint at what's happening behind the scenes.
Dateline NBC's To Catch a Predator has been FAR more successful. I'm guessing this is because they have an actress (or is it more than one?) who looks underage using a webcam to talk to the perps. Can't the cops learn from this? It can't be the budget, it's for the children!
From the page above about the young girl who lured bands to her home and locked them in the basement and made them play for her:
"Online band predators are such a big concern that the RIAA has created a website warning bands about the problem. The site gives a few warning signals that bands should watch out for:
* If you think the record executive is a "nice person" then you aren't dealing with a real executive. It's common knowledge that all record executives are assholes.
* If the contract you're being offered seems "fair" then you're dealing with an online band predator."
It can't be an Onion story, because this is so possible. There is no music in the music business (its a farce) so bands that think there is and try forever to make money at it become desperate and pathetic for anything. Its terrible.
Bands need to realize, you can't make money selling sound. It just doesn't work anymore. It hasn't worked for ages. At least not for a band. Its intensively competitive and the returns on it can be measured in the pennies
He was misquoted. He clearly said "Al Gore Rhythms" and thus he is a liar (Duh! Politician...) Everyone knows Al Gore has no rhythm whatsoever. ;-)
It was a jet. You missed the point of the GPs post entirely.
His point was that the GGP shouldn't be so quick to throw innocent people in jail.
As for your other point, there should be a difference between a predator and an offender.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I do not agree with anyone simply reacting to an older (what was it, 39 yours old) person being interested in individuals of a significantly younger age, because I think this is an odd social stigma that's simply fed by ignorance. The truth is that we are partially trained to revere youth, especially those in the late teen and early twenties age range.
It is all about one's (in)ability to consent, and thus no adult should be sexually active with an individual that is under the legal age to consent.
For every new type of scam criminals conceive of for crime, the computer is also the means to capture the criminal. We see this is in the case of plagarism. We are seeing this now for predators in social networks.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
bbspot is like the onion.
read their article on how kids are being arrested for using "php"
Here's an idea to ponder:
An adult molests a child of age 10, gets caught, and goes to jail for a period of a couple of years. Afterwards, s/he is let go and put on a registry. The victim (now age 12) finds out, looks up the person's name on the registry and where they live, tracks them down, shoots the person, and kills them. Meanwhile, at this same moment (bear with me), another 12 year old gangster-wanna-be breaks into an occupied house, shoots and kills the owner, then steals their new Playstation.
Both children are later caught.
The question is: what happens to both children within our judicial system, why does it happen, and why so often does it turn out to be hypocritical in the application of justice?
Age of consent? Pffft...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Today only, 5:30pm Pacific time in Second Life:
i ew=day&course=11&cal_d=17&cal_m=10&cal_y=2006
h p?id=17
http://stateofplayacademy.com/calendar/view.php?v
It's a virtual class in Second life that a group of Uni people are experimenting with. Show up and see what's happening in there! Kevin's an interesting guy and this class should be fascinating..
Info on State of Play Academy: http://stateofplayacademy.com/mod/resource/view.p
"...we all know..." Oh, how I love that argument: "I think, therefore we all know..."
I'm grateful to have no idea how tech-savvy my local or state cops are, or FBI field agents for that matter. Frankly, I don't believe you have any idea, either. Oh, I'm sure you assume you know; it's widely believed fact, etc. It must be true, otherwise people wouldn't say it; isn't that right?
Funnily enough, justice professionals have a very good reason to not be as assuming as you are of them: it's their job. I'm not a lawyer, but I've been told there's this small event that occurs between catching "the bad guys" and throwing them in jail. You know, that bit where the prosecution stands up and says, "Well, we're a small town so we din't really investigate the case. We din't ask for any ISP logs whatever one of them there things is, din't look through his e-mails 'cause we don't care for that there technology, din't search his computer 'cause we couldn't find the power button, din't scan his telephone records 'cause we done lost 'em, and din't ask him any questions 'cause he's a pedophile. But we are sure he done it, and we can prove it: his name done popped popped up when we searched MySpace for sex offenders."
The defense stands up, stretches, yawns, sits back down, and rests.
See the line that says "Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass."
It may have helped at one time.
If you're going to use media sensationalism as an argument at least cite the West Memphis 3 or any case that has at least gone to trial. People, even those superhuman creatures we call prosecutors, make mistakes. Here's a crazy thought: maybe that's why we have trials!
No, the system isn't perfect. Yes, sometimes a case like the West Memphis 3 slips through. This is not the rule. Honestly. Things that make international news do so because they are exceptional. Exceptional, as in: "unusual", "not typical", "not the rule". Do you have any idea how many criminal cases don't make international news? I'll give you a hint: it's more than 2. If you can prove a significant number of those is similarly handled, I'll believe you. In the meantime, 2 bad cases, or 2 bad prosecutors, especially considering the angry Fox-media-fed mob who want to see "something done about it", suggests no rule.
Like the cases you cite, your argument is poorly founded.
great, so before we could catch them all, they now know to duck underground...?