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MySpace Agrees to Share Sex Offender Data
mikesd81 writes "The Seattle Times is reporting that MySpace will be providing a number of state attorney generals with data on registered sex offenders who use their site. Attorney generals 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 obtained the data from Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., which the company partnered with in December to build a database with information on sex offenders. Attorneys general in North Carolina, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania asked for the Sentinel data last week."
... but do regular people actually sign up with their real name / information, and even if they do, is it likely that sex offenders do too?
"state attorney generals" => "state attorneys general"
General is an adjective, not the noun. You pluralize the noun not the adjective.
Joe Slashdot: >www.myspace.com
,.^$.!G*...
"You are not permited to access myspace. Your IP is on the Sentinel watchlist"
JS: WTF??? What is 'Sentinel'??? Ok, >google 'Sentinel'
"We at Google regret to inform you that you cannot access Google at this time. Your name has been flagged by the Arkansas State Outstanding Warrants Project"
JS: I've never been to Arkansas in my whole fucking life!!!! >Yahoo search
"Yahoo does not do business with people who have overdue library books"
JS: Ok, I'll ask slashdot! People there know everything. >slashdot.org
---Message from Southwestern Cable Services: Your account has been terminated. &%.,78(*...NO CARRIER
... do remember that it's never been easier to commit a sex crime that requires that you're place in a registry. Even people who get busted for 'indecent exposure' while urinating in an unwise place can end up on a sex offender registry.
n decent.html
http://www.criminal-law-lawyer-source.com/terms/i
Theoretically, you have to be trying to 'assualt' someone by exposing yourself. Of course any DA with an agenda can make certain charges stick with a plea-bargain deal, even when they might not otherwise be applicable.
How many people can afford to hire lawyers necessary to try to defend themselves in such a case? If you do try to fight it, I hope you've got a damn good Public Defender.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Problem: People (children included) seek viable mates via MySpace. Prospective mates turn out to be rapists or sexual deviants.
Solution A: Don't seek mates on MySpace & teach your children common sense about acceptable human mating practices. Show your children how to safely use the internet, how to meet real people and make friends in reality instead of through a virtual layer.
Solution B: Police MySpace at the expense of everyone's (180 million) privacy.
Now, which solution is the correct one? The one that involves you being a responsible person/parent or the one that involves you infringing on a person's basic rights? If you are going to argue for the latter, first answer how they will acquire information about sex offenders without first examining everyone's behavior.
If they are at risk of re-offending, don't release them.
It is really fucking lame to let these guys out as if they had 'paid their debt' like any murderer, rapist or thief and then treat them as second-class citizens. The murderers don't have people telling them where to live! Thieves don't have to sign up for a 'watch list' and tell people when they move, because they might steal again!
What's worse? The death of a human or the sexual abuse of a human? Since I don't believe in that nonsense about an 'afterlife', I must say killing is worse than sexual abuse. Way worse. Way WAY worse.
I've had enough of my rights infringed upon in the name of the 'innocent defenseless children' so that dog won't hunt. Try another angle, brotha!
Blar.
Up until the last couple of years, consensual homosexual acts have been able to put you on the sex offenders register in many states. Sex with a consenting partner, in a park, after midnight, when all children should long since be in bed - you're a sex offender. Oral sex in Utah? Mississippi's ludicrous "sex with a minor unless you can prove she was not of previously virtuous character.."? They all merit a place on the list.
I don't dispute that identifying those who prey on children may have its merits. Given the sex offender registry is a great way of stitching red letters on the chests of anyone that offends good conservative taste, that is hardly its sole effect.
Given how open to abuse the system is, how long before the MPAA figures, "Hey, there's hardcore porn on them there torrents. I wonder if we could get anyone that uses them labeled a sex offender, destroy their lives, and kill off torrents that way, without worrying about trying to prove actual piracy."?
I've never got caught having sex in public nor getting a blowjob in Utah. I also happen to be straight. Still, even if I had been caught for any of those acts, it's absolutely none of their business whether I use MySpace.
Mind you, I also grew up in England where, after the Daily Mail posted a list of 1,000 sex offenders, including some errors, a paediatrician got their house burned down. Dirty paediatricians! I hate the way they look at and touch children!
While /. usually is all for privacy in cases such as this I believe the sex offender made a choice to give up their privacy as soon as they performed the criminal act.
/. or somewhere else but I do remember reading a very heated discussion about sex offenders recently.
Unfortunately there are numerous cases that have caused a person to be labeled as a "sex offender" that should have never occurred. In some cases children (People under 18) have been convicted of child molestation. Or parents who take pictures of their children in the tub have been arrested for child pornography. Right now the major issue is that laws designed to protect children can be used against children.
I don't remember if it was on
Oral sex is illegal in: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and Washington D.C. (OK, I admit, I got great head in MN)
An erection that shows through a man's clothing is illegal in: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington D.C. and Wisconsin. (Lock me up for pretty much every time I had to read to the class in French classes during my teens)
In Missouri sexually deviant behavior between people of the same sex is classified as a class A misdemeanor.
In Willowdale, Oregon it is against the law for a husband to talk to dirty in his wife's ear during sex.
In Washington State there is a law against having sex with a virgin under any circumstances (including the wedding night!).
Newcastle, Wyoming it is illegal to have sex in a butcher shop's meat freezer.
In Washington D.C. there is a law against having sex in any position other than face to face.
Source
I say lock the dirty bastards up and throw away the key!
Or, alternatively, accept that demonising people for being sexual deviants, without classification as to the act, is complete b.s.
Touchy subject.
Personally, while many may subscribe to your view, your view is helping to undermine all of our civil liberties.
This notion that it's ok to monitor this one group of people for the remainder of their lives seems unconstitutional.
They were convicted, sentenced and then served their time. But that's just the beginning... now they will be watched and monitored till they die.
Do we do the same for a convicted murderer or armed robber?
I have never seen any homicidal watch lists.
Aren't murderers and robbers as well as those convicted of DUI also likely to reoffend?
Why don't we watch these people.
Why aren't these people who are at high risk of killing you, those you love and our children being put on watch lists and having their movements tracked?
The Constitution explicitly states that we shall not single any one group or individual out for "special punshment" (not the exact wording, but in the spirit. Also, we shall not have cruel and unusual punishment.
Well, the way this country and others handles crimes of a sexual nature against children flies in the face of these notions of eqaulity and fairness under "civilized law", even being accused of a crime such as this causes such social stigma and outrage against the accused, they are already guilty in the eyes of the public. And then even if exhonerated and found innocent, they will still bear that burden. But being found guilty, they must now do a prison sentence and then forever bear that label, even having to announce that to any community they try to move to. Forever will they be subject to court imposed ridicule, humiliation and be made the target of public anger.
Do we force convicted murderers to undergo the same fate? Must you advertise that you killed a person?
If you were convicted of a DUI, would you not think it cruel and unusual punishment to be forever held to that and made to make that public in whatever community you lived till you died?
I'm not trying to diminish or deny the great amount of harm and suffering these people inflict. Personally, I find these people just as sickening as you do. However, this "Think of the children" BS is dangerous and all too often we see people willing to throw away their principals over this charged emotional issue.
And when we start seeing the constitution ignored for the sake of going after something that sickens and terrifies us, what good is that document? For over time, we will allow more and more "bending of the rules" and "blind eyes" to be turned in the name of the children or terrorism.
And we do see more and more excesses being taken and more liberties infringed in a rapidly increasing manner since 9/11.
And perhaps you may feel confortable with the infringement upon all our liberties to go after pedophiles, but I think the system would be better off to find more creative solutions that follow both the letter and spirit of the Constitution that all laws are meant to uphold.
The death penalty for pedophiles that Texas is considering is a worthy example. It falls within existing law, does not single out a group, only widens an existing group. And while I am no death penalty advocate, that solution would be effective in insuring that pedophile did no further harm. Perhaps a more "humane" route would be mandatory life imprisonment. More suiting, since no life was taken.
So as you see, the idea here is not to turn a blind eye, or to be more lenient. But to make the sentences and treatment of these offenders both strong and in line with the Constitution.
And since Georgia is one of the states mentioned in this article, let's observe that Genarlow Wilson is still in prison, http://www.wilsonappeal.com/index.php , and will be on one of these lists in about 8 years when he gets out. Not bad, for getting a blow job from a 15 year old when you're 17.
I am a doctor who has some "sex offenders" among my patients. They range from rapists and paedophiles to people who harmed nobody but those with a narrow religiously based world view (eg people having sex in a public place without intent of being discovered, like in a bush after dark in a park).
I define sex offenders as people who cause grief to others through non-consensual acts.
However, U.S. legislation has a much broader view on this, depending on state - in some states the term includes virtually everybody who doesn't fit into a very narrow minded strongly religiously biased cultural view.
My first observation would be that very different people are lumped together under the same tag, a tag which will cause suffering way beyond whatever suffering they may or may not have caused to others.
We all remember the case of a female teacher having had consensual sex with a physically fully developed but legally under age boy. She was convicted as a sex offender, put to jail, and after she was released, the boy married her. Who has suffered here? The boy? Obviously not. He said so, and he demonstrated it by marrying her after she was released from prison. Only he woman suffered grievously under the assault by the legal system, and will probably suffer from the consequences of the conviction and the label of "sex offender" the rest of her life. To what avail? Just to have satisfied the puritan narrow minded views of a few judges and religious zealots.
Plenty of legal cases, mostly from the US, going along similar lines.
The point is that a number of people are deprived of their constitutional and basic human rights. While I agree that in some extreme cases this might be necessary in order to defend others, in the majority of people who are tagged with the label of "sex offender"this is definitely not the case.
The US judicial system is increasingly mutating from a system designed to protect people into a system to enforce the narrow world view of a few zealots; a system that cannot even be reconciled with the constitution.