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MySpace Gets False Positive In Sex Offender Search
gbulmash writes "In its eagerness to clear sex offenders off its site and publish their identities, MySpace identified an innocent woman as a sex offender. She shares a name and birth month with a sex offender who lives in a neighboring state and that was apparently enough to get MySpace to wrongly brand her and completely ignore her protests."
...that MySpace isn't the government, and this woman is still "innocent", and is, in fact, not a sex offender, regardless of whether MySpace's own internal processes "identified" her as one.
It's amusing to me that the summary tosses around words like "wrongly brand", when MySpace hasn't "branded" - which implies a public, overt identification - anyone as anything. And even if the woman's friends ask why her profile is gone, it's not as if they're going to accidentally and arbitrarily believe she really is a sex offender.
Since the only mechanism via which MySpace can identify possible sex offenders registered on the site is comparison of items such as name, locale, DOB (for which many public lists, even of sex offenders, only use the month), etc., is this surprising? That someone with the same name, same birth month (which might have been all the matching information they had), and same location, which is pretty much all the information they have, could be seen as a match?
Is it further surprising that MySpace doesn't yet have a reasonable mechanism to deal with improper identifications as yet? Sure, maybe they should, but from their perspective, it's more important for them to respond to the requests to get people who are obviously sex offenders registered with their real information off the site. Since MySpace isn't a court or the government, the whole "better to let a hundred guilty men free than jail one innocent man" doesn't apply in the least. (Unless, of course, you think having MySpace removed from your life is a significant "punishment".)
No one has a right to a MySpace profile, MySpace isn't the government, and hasn't identified, much less "branded", the woman in any public fashion as a sex offender.
This of course ignores that sex offenders/pedophiles/etc. can clearly register under bogus names, addresses, and so on. On the other hand, is it a good idea to let registered sex offenders (arguments about an 18 year old with his 16 year old high school sweetheart getting tagged as a "registered sex offender" aside) who are registered with their real information remain on a site like MySpace? And just because "they can come back and register with false information," is that any reason to let persons who have registered with their real information stay? Sure, the mechanism for identifying such people may be imperfect, but again, repeat after me: MySpace is NOT the government, even if it was acting under pressure from various states/municipalities/etc.
But people do need to recognize that all a sex offender has to do is register with a false name and nothing more, and MySpace will not be able to identify them at all. However, MySpace can still say it has still done all it can reasonably do in response to the various demands to "remove" sex offenders from the site. MySpace's own business interests in this arena trump an exceedingly small number of individuals from possibly getting improperly flagged.
MySpace is so 2004.
Big company comes up with big brother type plan. Said plan is flawed and screws their customer. Company doesn't care. I am unsurprised. The only surprising part is that the government wasn't involved somehow.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
...and she doesn't know how to spell 'myself' or construct a proper sentence? Yep, par for the course. Money well spent.
http://xkcd.com/386/
It's hard to cry "I'm innocent" when Chris Hansen tells you to 'have a seat right over there.'
Trolling is a art,
Are you surprised? I for one can say that I'm not at all surprised. Stuff like this is bound to happen. It's the reason why MySpace should take a stance that their site is an open forum, and they do not control what goes on there. Otherwise, if Myspace starts saying they are sex-offender-free, and then some still slip by, they are in for a huge lawsuit.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
but isn't that pretty clear slander?
It would be nice to be able to read the article : )
As someone said in another post, myspace is SOOO 2004 so the whole thing is, if not boring, inane.
Do people seriously post real information publically online anywhere?
Many times that's the only security question I get from various customer service.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?"
Clearly, here, the system correctly implemented its design.
The problem is that the design is fundamentally flawed.
That dumbass should have never used real information on a web site. When the hell are people going to learn this? It should be all the more self-evident to people with common names like "Jessica Davis".
I am O.K. with myspace doing this, it is their right. But it is NOT their responsibility. What irks me is they were pressured into doing this through lawsuits. That is wrong. They are not forcing kids to get myspace or talk to sex offenders. Parents should be responsible for what children do online. Granted parents cannot watch every moment, but they can warn their kids about sexual offenders and how to avoid them. etc.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
MySpace is not a public monopoly who is required to serve everybody equally in return for that monopoly status. Some people think that a Driver's License is their Constitutional right. It isn't. And while it hurts MySpace to deny users when they want to control this entire space themselves, how much federal law can apply to a private venture trying to make a profit? At what point are you pwned by said federal government?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Of course there are going to be false positives! People want Myspace to check for these people, but the fact of the matter is that anyone can register with any name and birthdate, and using the information publicly available to identify sex offenders is only going to lead to misidentification. In my opinion, there's not going to be a reliable way of dealing with this issue other than parents being more in tune with their kids' internet habits and education. I honestly can't believe they actually tried to implemented a server-side solution to this problem. Hopefully Myspace will simply say "I told you so" and move on. -Julius
Doesn't having a MySpace account make you a suspected sex offender, ipso facto?
A customer can leave and take their business somewhere else when dissatisfied. MySpace is free (as in beer). So how can you refer to any MySpace user as a "customer"?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And as more and more information is collected, it is only going to make it worse and easier for identity thieves. Why, with every zipperhead bureaucrat running around with laptops with this information and with insider's willing to sell your information to criminals, it's only going to get worse - IMHO.
I had a really interesting conversation with a banker the other day. She's seeing more and more identity thieves. All she can do is refuse the transaction and call the cops when she catches one - the thief takes off. How did this conversation start? I asked why I needed all of this identification and all this paperwork just to open a checking account for my business. Long story short - PATRIOT ACT. Yes sir, in order to "protect" us from the terrorists and drug lords, our government is making it easier and easier for these crooks to steal our information by requiring certain businesses to gather as much information as possible and NOT requiring them to secure it properly.
Stopping now because I'm getting really pissed.....
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
how to find out if anyone with a similar name/address/age/etc. is on the sex offender list? Perhaps a stupid question, but it would be good to post such information here
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Money is the ONLY thing they understand.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
This needs to be expanded to include domestic violence offenders. That would be really valuable for dating sites.
MySpace does no sort of valid name, age, or date of birth verification. Hell you can go on there now with an existing profile and change your last name as many times as you wish. Mine is Weibowitz, at least as far as myspace is concerned. I just did that to keep annoying spam bots from bugging me.
Regardless, if a boogie man wants to sign up for myspace and go about doing some e-Stalking, this exercise in "security" theater won't stop them. I suspect myspace even probably knows this and is just going through the measures to shut the states AG's up.
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
who failed "her" Gender Test at the 2006 Asian Games?
c le/2006/12/18/AR2006121801384.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
Now be honest, how many people saw "MySpace," "woman," and "sex" and clicked the link right away?
You're right, nobody has a right to a MySpace account and it's not provided or vetted by the government.
But.
There's an alarming trend in this country to "outsource" legitimate government functions and then deny lawful access under the color of claiming "it's just a private company". Courts will often rule against them -- if it's done on behalf of the government then it's subject to the same restrictions as if it were done by the government itself -- but that takes time and money to pursue. And it's definitely not a given -- it's clear that some government agencies are collecting massive dossiers on law-abiding citizens via private company data aggregators specifically because they can't do it themselves.
So nobody has a right to a myspace account. But what about companies doing outsourced government work? What about companies that have become critical parts of the public space, e.g., google. I find it hard to say that a private company will always be clear of any legitimate oversight guaranteeing due process.
P.S., I don't know the specifics in this case, but MySpace must still respect laws such as slander and libel. Ideally they will handle these issues quietly, but it's not hard to imagine some ill-informed do-gooder trying to contact all of a person's 'friends' and letting them know that the person 'is' a sexual offender. IMHO that definitely crosses the line even if the person isn't identified by name on their page. (You probably still have pictures, area of residence, etc.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
"...and that was apparently enough to get MySpace to wrongly brand her and completely ignore her protests."
Homeland Security holds a patent on that algorithm - Someone alert their lawyers!
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
Sooner or later you'll have to prove your innocence after some social networking site identified you as sex offender or terrorist. After all, they have all the social networking data, so they should know...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Imagine they would have identified a man. Aside of sexism, imagine would would go down if that was a guy. Imagine a guy who created a profile and, to make matters worse, imagine he had an interest in computer games, "modern" music or other activities usually associated with teenagers, and if he even had a few teenagers in his friends group (or whatever it's called in MySpace).
Think he could've escaped the witchhunt?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I know this may not be a popular stance, but once a sex offender has served their time (probation and all) can we dispense with the whole sex offender registration bullshit? If we can't live with the fact that these people are released from prison, then the whole system is flawed.
And can we please get our sex offender laws in a state in which we can not prosecute kids who sleep with other kids (i.e. 18 year olds and 16 year olds having sex). Personally, I'm tired of the whole sex offender "bogieman". It has gotten to the point where the term gets associated with the worst kinda behavior. Maybe I'm just biased because I've never been "sex offended" but I can't help but think that their are degrees of sex offense, and our system just seems to lump them all together, to the point of hyperbole. As a result, I believe that the whole term "sex offender" is becoming watered down to the point of it being worthless as a metric to judge whether a person is a real threat.
Why stop there? Lets make drug offenders register as well.
Let us think of some possible scenarios: random rape, date rate, child rape, child molestation, groping, lewd conduct, public nudity. Of these, which ones do you consider serious? Do you believe they should all be grouped as sex offenses? I don't even know if they are all considered sex offenses, I tried to look it up to determine if my list was valid, but in the short time I looked on google for sex offenses, all I got were sex offender registry links, so I can't even look up to determine what constitutes a sex offense.
The other problem is when people get falsely accused of a sex offense. When you have 2 people, one says they did something, and the other denies it, how do you determine who is correct, provided there is a lack of specific evidence? Kids have been known to falsely accuse. Adults have been known to falsely accuse. The whole matter has gotten out of hand.
>"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?"
I know you're being sarcastic, but that's exactly the point: even if I am a law-abiding, ordinary citizen, I *do* have to worry about being falsely accused. That's one of the most important reasons that due process exists -- to protect the innocent. And that means the accused, no matter how serious the (supposed) crime, because mistakes do happen.
I don't want my travel to be mysteriously hindered because I might happen to have the same name as some well-known terrorist on a "no-fly" list. I don't want to have my home invaded by a police SWAT team late at night because they mistakenly traced some spoofed internet traffic to my house, or because my fingerprint looks close enough to one found on bomb-making materials that somebody mixes it up. And I sure as heck don't want to be mistakenly labelled a pedophile, even if only tentatively or as a "person of interest", because some company trying to do the "right thing" did something as stupid as assuming a name / date of birth match == same person.
False positives are one of the many reasons innocent people should be fearful of how much power is handed to law enforcement and government, because even a false accusation can do much harm. Worst case, if they try to arrest you, what if they shoot you on sight because they mistakenly think you are holding a gun? I know law enforcement tries to be careful, and real criminals are a constant risk, but caution also requires that the accused be treated as innocent until proven guilty, just like the law says, because people really might be innocent.
On the scale of things, being barred from a MySpace account doesn't rate very high, of course, but serious examples of innocent people getting swept up in dragnets do exist, such as a guy from Oregon who was accused of being involved with the Madrid train bombings because the FBI mistakenly identified his fingerprint at the scene. He got an apology -- only after spending 17 days in jail.
The registries exist because sex-offenders are much more likely to re-offend. While there are habitual murders, they're much more rare.
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
All those jews should be listed where we know who they are.
All those communists should be listed where we know who they are.
All those terrorists should be listed where we know who they are.
All those sex offenders should be listed where we know who they are.
Each step, is one step closer to fascism.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Turns out they were offering cash bounties, so a lot of people in Afghanistan turned over anyone they didn't like for a cash reward.
Same with MySpace pervs - chances are tons of them are just into S&M or B&D (consensual adults), but after ruining their reputations, they can never get them back.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
PP: You can't say that! It's slander! JJJ: It is NOT! ... pause ...
JJJ: It's libel. Slander is spoken.
-
If you take away their access it's one thing, but if you publically post that this person is a sex offender, that's got nothing to do with "private corporations." That amounts to libel. Myspace screwed up. They made this public domain by publically announcing her as a sex offender. Therefore it does fall under the domain of US law and she can take action appropriately. She doesn't have to get her site back, but she sure as hell can sue for damages and ask for a retraction and apology.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I agree wholeheartedly.
Murder a few people, go to jail, come out, you're fine. You've done your time.
Why are sex offenses so much worse than murder? What about assault? Why is it just sex that's so horrifying?
Evan Reynolds evanthx@hotmail.com
Two peanuts crossed the street. One was assaulted.
Sex offenders, let me narrow my argument to child predators, are far different from other criminals. Most other criminals typically get tired of cycling through jail, get bored with crime and mature, kick the drug habits that put them there, etc. Child predators are for whatever reason programmed to be attracted to kids, who are weak and naive. NO ONE wants one living next door. If I had kids and one moved in next to me, I'd bet I'd do whatever it took (short of murder or assault) to get rid of him. False accusations and imprisonment is another (and serious) issue. And, I agree that we need to come up with stronger definitions of what a sexual predator is. I'm thinking of the awful case of the A student all star athlete (a senior in high school) who got busted having sex with a freshman. For reasons largely due to race, he was convicted under sexual predator laws and sent to prison for something like 10 years.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
This business of private companies, beholden to no one, labeling people as sex offenders without anything remotely resembling due process of law, needs to stop. It should never have happened in the first place. If sex offenders aren't allowed to use MySpace, then let it be a condition of their sentence and a job for the police to catch them at it. I barely trust the police to do it right, where there's public oversight; no WAY do I trust a private company to.
I piss off bigots.
MySexuallyOffensiveSpace.com
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
You don't have permission to access
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
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They can terminate a site for any reason. Sucks to be her, but that life.
:)
At least she wasn't publically ridiculed and be put on some registry by mistake. THAT could ruin your life. But losing a myspace page? I think having one is worse
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The site has been taken down, due to being Slashdotted, but the article has been cached by Google here.
Ask and you shall receive
What baffles me is that it seems sensible to everyone to register them in a database, but no one seems to be suggesting mandatory extensive psychological treatment. If they have an uncontrollable and dangerous compulsion, then they are psychologically ill. We have institutions for treating that sort of thing, but everyone is so busy being disgusted by child predators that no one is willing to consider that some of them might be sick, and that it might be better for society as a whole to try to treat them.
Yet, inconveniently, they apparently need to live somewhere. And everywhere is next door to someone.
Livejournal has apparently been shutting down journals and communities with "questionable" subject matter, under pressure from an outside group. It's not clear how far they're taking it.
http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/
You are right the problem of false the sex offence accusation.
If I was deep this is would be profound, if smart then wise, if a poet then verse. Here it is, you judge!
of being a sex offender when they are innocent. Like anyone named Brian Peppers who does not live in Ohio or something.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The problem is that once their sentence is served, they cannot be held any longer. It's not like they got life, and have been paroled. An argument can be made that they never should have served jail time anyway, being mentally ill, and should have been in a mental hospital for treatment, and can only be released after an extensive psychological evaluation.
Except the public would be in an uproar about child molestors not getting jail time, and playing the "insanity" card. So instead the public gets in an uproar about something they could have prevented by having the appropriate laws passed. Maybe the law should give "X years in jail plus mandatory psychological evaluation, requiring Y years in a mental institution, prior to release."
personally i think in these cases the government should pay TAX FREE the wages of the person at the maximum rate for the time they were in jail (include minimum time x 1.5 and don't forget you are "on the clock" unless you are asleep)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place....
I think the phrase you are looking for is "You have no privacy. Get over it."
Just some FYI. In my state there are three categories of "sex offender." Level Three are those people who are "highly likely to re-offend." They refuse any treatment for their sexual proclivities. They've been caught more than once already. Most of them, frankly, are real nutcases and the kind you'd better be wary of. One look at their mug shot and you'd think Nick Nolte was a sharp dresser.
However, this leads to a catch-22 for those people who are accused, but are innocent. I know of one case (boarder of a mother of a friend), a middle-aged woman, who absolutely insists she is innocent and attributes her troubles to a very nasty ex-husband in a divorce case. She refused treatment on the basis that she was innocent, so not only did she refuse treatment, she showed no remorse. This double whammy shoved her into Level Three, where she not only has to register, but her mug shot is on the county web site for all to see.
Now, I have no idea whether she is "really" innocent. MOST ALL criminals are innocent if you ask them about it. But let's say she WAS innocent. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. It's like Kafka's "The Trial."
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
How does this qualify under anyone's rights online? This is a case of interaction between two private parties, one of whom is bound by an acceptable use policy put forth by the other party. Regardless of whether MySpace correctly identified the party in question, it is their wont to take any action they believe necessary on their site. This is not at all about a government organization seeking sanction against an individual and by passing due process.
Try explaining to your boss how you're not really a sex offender even though "The computer says you are one." Sometimes I think your perfect Libertarian paradise here sounds a little bit like a scene from Hell in the Twilight Zone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender
Google fails again, wikipedia for the win
Because of the recidivism rate with sex offenders (especially pedophiles) the public rightly expects reasonable efforts to protect children.
Source, please? This has been discussed on Slashdot before. It seems to be a popular misconception that sex offenders have a higher rate of recidivism than other criminals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_of_the_World#Ant i-paedophile_campaign
6 42006w onit_hires.jpg
O DEL_IN_THE_SESSION=2296
In response to murder of Sarah Payne, the News of the World "named and shamed" scores of people it said were guilty of sex offences against children.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/848759.stm
Representatives from the NSPCC, a children's charity, Nacro, which helps offenders, and Tony Butler, the chief constable of Gloucester, went to tell the paper's chiefs that their actions are counterproductive, and even dangerous.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/862416.stm
They might not *be* Govt. but they act like they choose them :
Be it conservative
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=32
http://www.nmauk.co.uk/nma/uploads/2296/Sun---Wot
or Labour
http://web.univ-pau.fr/~parsons/sunblair.html
Here's a selection of front pages from the biggest selling paper in the UK.
http://www.nmauk.co.uk/nma/do/live/historicpage?M
Think on before you support them with your MySpace
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
They should also include anyone who has gone to jail before, hell even anyone who's gone to trial (just in case someone was set free who was actually guilty). Why not just expand it to include everyone - after all, just because someone hasn't yet committed a crime doesn't mean they won't in the future. It's the only way to be safe!
1) theyre trying to block sex offenders....but myspace doesnt ask for any ID when you sign up....it would take 2 seconds to create an account with a fake name (or even just slightly mis-spelled name) and you could use myspace all day and night 2) why is there such an emphasis on sex offenders? no other type of criminal has to go door to door and notify their neighbors, not use myspace, have their picture online in the sex offender database, etc.....has anyone actually gone through the sex offender database? so many of them are "sex with a minor", stuff like that. Hell, when i was in high school my girlfriend was 16 and i was 18, technically i could be a sex offender if a cop ever found out....it seems like a lot of them in the database are sex with a minor....you have to wonder how many were consensual, and only under 18 by a few years.....how messed up is that? you have sex with your girlfriend a few years younger than you, you have to register the rest of your life, tell your neighbors, get your myspace account deleted, etc....but a murder doesn't have to do any of that....
Another reason why I will never sign up for MySpace.
Standard response from our New Labour government:
"Procedures are being put in place to stop this kind of thing happening in the future, and security is being tightened up. We can ensure the public that this won't happen again."
Yes, it's infuriating to live in this retards' society.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I googled "sex offender registry inclusion requirements site:.gov" and found and example pretty quickly -- the below is from the State of Michigan's FAQ on sex offender registries.
(from http://www.michigan.gov/msp/0,1607,7-123-1589_187So it would seem that if you're caught "indecently exposed" while, say, doing a striptease at a party, and it happens more than once -- you're a sex offender. If you're "indecently exposed" three times, regardless of context -- you're a sex offender.
Also, if you get a Disorderly Person conviction three times -- yep, you're a sex offender.
Re-goddamn-diculous.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Why is this informative when its wrong?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No, you are getting this all wrong.
We need more scare, more laws, more punishment, life-time registration and all that.
Because, you see, the really, really evil thing is that these people are sex offenders. Got it? It's sex for christ's sake, or better not for his sake because we need to think of the chiiildren. And we have to make sex illegal. Since we can't do that (hey, we've tried for 2000 years, for some reason it just doesn't stick) at least let us turn as much of it into a taboo as possible. The term is great. "sex offender". It doesn't say a thing about what they actually did, but it says it's about sex and they offended us, and that's as close as we'll get to the "sex offends us" as we can get right now. Of course, sex scares us as well, but that's just because we don't have much of it, except with the choir boys and that doesn't really count, does it?
Thanks for listening,
Your friendly neighbourhood christian fundamentalist club
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Excuse me ... that is not functioning properly at all. That is a major malfunction, caused either by a bad design or an error in programming. Merely having the same name absolutely cannot be used for this kind of matching, even if the birthdates matched exactly (which they did not).
That is on top of MySpace's utter failure to actually do any real investigation when they were informed that an error had taken place. So they compounded the error with a lie, and can no longer just blame it all on Sentinel.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
On a side note, she probably "matches" (approximately, sort of, if you don't count not at all) to some woman who took a leak behind a dumpster at a club and then told the cop to go Fsck himself when caught.
Anybody who believes that the fact someone is on a "sex offender" list makes them a person who committed a sexual based offense really has no clue how the world works. I can take any random person off the street, compare them to any random person an such a list, and be able to say the exact same thing: They may have committed a sexual offense, or then again, they may not have.
Finally, a lot of people seem to be missing the fact that Myspace shares this list of "offenders" with District Attorney's offices throughout the country.
Are they criminals? I guess that all depends on if you think conspiring to destroy lives for profit is a criminal act or not
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Because it's not wrong, you just don't like it.
Sorry, but you need to check the statistics on recidivism and STFU.
Don't forget the Terrorists. They should be banned from the dating sites too. That would really suck to meet the person of your dreams, then have them blow themselves up the next day...
Sounds like a case of libel. Making untrue statements about someone in print.
They are essentially tarnishing her good name in print without basis, which is basically the definition of libel.
You can sue a company for libel very easily.
You're forgetting that, in the process, they're labelling someone unjustly without a shred of due process or even the legal statue to do so.
More importantly, if this had been a private notification it would have been a simple dispute, but it's gone public and this woman's life is likely to be affected by it. They should be sued to smithereens for ever having dreamt up the idea and - more importantly- then relying on it absolutely,
Frankly, this is such a violation of rights that they ought to be put on an 'extraordinary rendition' flight to Singapore and be given a public flogging. IMHO this may impart executive clues like nothing else ever will...
Insert
The database for domestic violence offenders is available. It's used by gun dealers. If we're going to have those restrictions for sex offenders, they should also apply for criminals.
Whenever you bow to hysteria, fear, and hype like this, innocent people can and will get hurt. Any shrill screamer who uses the tired old phrase, "Isn't anyone thinking of the children?" should be sent to a camp somewhere for the safety of everyone else.
You didn't post a single study, and for every study you find supporting your view, there are at least 20 that refute it.
Also, your "recidivist" link gave me a different number than you claim. I won't say how different, only that it was significantly different from the number you give, enough to question the usefulness of your link.
In addition, your link lists only those that have been caught. Why do you think this number has anything at all to do with the actual number of recidivists out there?
You don't like that sex offenders have a glaringly high recidivism rate, but that changes nothing, nor does digging up what are some of the least credible studies out there, nor does relying on flawed attempts to make a point that is not supported by empirical data.
In any social group, misinformation about a person or sub-group can cause very real damage (emotional, financial, discriminatory, etc) to the victim(s). Any person harmed in this way has the fundamental human right to demonstrate that the information is incorrect and to halt its spread.
It's about time the U.S. Constitution was ammended to explicitly protect that right. That would put a stop to so many modern problems (credit record screw-ups, false criminal accusations hanging over your head forever and denying you job opportunities, identity theft, corporate and government cover-ups and misinformation campaigns, religious zealots trying to inject fiction into public schools as fact, political campaign smear-ads, etc).
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
"What baffles me is that it seems sensible to everyone to register them in a database, but no one seems to be suggesting mandatory extensive psychological treatment."
First, ask yourself if this is really true (how many sex offenders do you know? what were the conditions their release?) but the real reason people who are educated about the subject don't crow about mandatory treatment is because it doesn't work.
At the moment, there is no course of treatment that reliably changes the recidivism rates among the most serious sexual offenders (we're not talking about alley-pissers or streakers here).
There are certain combinations of treatment that can be effective, but they all have a medical component (chemical castration, actual castration, etc.) and frankly, it scares the hell out me to think about the long term ramifications of giving the criminal justice system that kind of power.
Warriors for Innocence and other vigilantes, that's who. Guess what they could do with Google Street Views.
Take a look here: http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/
"Fearing the worst, and getting no help from the social networking site, she went straight to the press who might offer some help."
She took it public.
"if this had been a private notification it would have been a simple dispute"
So, I guess then you're pissed at her now?
Or are you going to fall back on the old "well if Myspace hadn't fucked up in the first place" ploy, that completely ignores the fact that, as you said, had she not gone public herself no one but her would know why her page was taken down.
And to all the trolls planning to claim that "people would know", Myspace pages get taken down for all kinds of things apart from being a sex offender, most of which are totally innocuous.
Child predators are for whatever reason programmed to be attracted to kids
Wait, what? Why would God make somebody that way? It's their choice to want to screw little kids, and it's nobody's fault but their own if they keep doing it over and over again. They just need to accept Jesus into their lives, he'll make all the bad things go away.
After stopping discrimination based on race and gender, when will we stop discrimination based on name?
RTFM. plzkthx.
The SE registry has never really sat well with me for various reasons as you have described. however, a registry that actual dealt with sex offences (and one specific for offences against minors) which were in fact rape or due to a large difference in age should exist for repeat offenders.
People can change and turn their lives around, but there should be a certain number "strikes" allowed. Then again, maybe if those who are repeat-offenders at high risk weren't let out to re-offend in the first place, there wouldn't be a need for a registry.
Without some lame form of silly public concern, politicians would generally need to do real work. Bogie men (and women I guess) are cheap, handy scapegoats that allow politicians to do trivial things that look like public protection and don't "cost" significant ammounts of votes. And, such "work" is laudably bipartisan as well as seeming to improve public safety without cost. Taxpayers are happy, voters remain satisfied. Meanwhile the berks in office can continue to loot public funds, conduct wars no one can make sense of and generally do what they please. Meanwhile the public feels snugger in their beds and can contentedly watch "reality" shows about pirates.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
If they are sharing the list with DA offices, then a false positive can adversely affect two people.
One of those people is the actual sex offender. They may be clean when it comes to parole violations but having a false positive could send them back to jail.
The other person is the one who has their site taken down. I can see a situation where a DA office uses the MySpace data to update current addresses for those people that are missing from their own databases. This, in turn, could result in the innocent person being arrested. (Hopefully people aren't dumb enough to do this. But there are enough idiots that have 'brilliant' ideas that are simple, obvious and wrong.)
Some issues:
Q: Should sex offenders continue to be punished after they have served there sentences?
A: Probably not. It doesn't help them adjust to society and may cause more harm than good. If they are dangerous, then just keep them in jail. Companies should not encourage bad behavior.
Q: Can Web site owners accurately determine who is a sex offender?
A: If the sex offender gave accurate information when signing up, then probably most of the time. Otherwise these private policing policies are just marketing hype.
Q: Aren't Sex offenders too dangerous to be taken lightly?
A: It's all about FUD and marketing. There is no one standard definition of sex offender, and laws differ within states and countries. The peeing-in-the-park sex offender is but one example. I'm sure there are people who would like Bill Clinton labeled as a sex offender.
Q: Can't private sites do what they want?
A: Pretty much. I (and other's here) are just pointing out how stupid these large companies can be. It's another example of (apparently) uneducated business people and politicians taking a rather complicated social issue and offering simple-minded solutions.
Q: So what can be done?
A: Stay smart and keep educated, and pass this knowledge onto your children. If you can't rely on yourself, then don't expect easy solutions from other people.
Why stop there? Why not list people convicted of:
Murder
manslaughter
vehicular manslaughter
DUI
narcotics possession and/or trafficking
assault
battery
fraud
theft
dead-beat dads (and moms)
Sex offenses are a bad thing. Why, though, do we single out sex offenders as the only criminals that have to wear a scarlet letter?
I really think that we can only fairly brand one if we brand all. And branding all isn't a good solution either.
Truly, I fear my wife getting sexually assaulted, but I have much more fear for her getting murdered, hit by a drunk driver, or killed by someone's criminal negligence.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
Since Chris Hansen apparently wasn't involved in this instance, you're bearing false witness.
For that matter, MySpace is doing the same thing with their 'fuzzy' selection methods.
I'm surprised at how many people didn't pick up on this rather obvious implication. People, Americans especially, seem ready to start a revolution at government abuse of private data, and pay no attention at all when the private sector does it.
MySpace flat out committed libel. There are probably packs of lawyers out there seeing this as their ticket to early retirement.
Apperently, I grew up next door to a child molester.
However, I didn't know this until I was an adult. He apperently molested 30-40 boys in the neighborhood, but not me.
I was right next door, but I was never chosen, what was wrong with me? Why didn't he choose me? being neglected was a heavy blow to my self esteem.
Yes, I think the home addresses, telephone/fax numbers, emails of all family members and relatives of all politicians, police, FBI, etc. should be published on public websites. I mean, if they haven't done anything wrong, what do they have to worry about?
Look at the ages of offenders. Criminals outgrow crime for the most part. Knock out males under the age of 24 and life is peaches. Sense and Nonsense about Crime and Drugs: I think is the name of the book.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I, for one, welcome our fascist overlords!
Kid-proof tablet..
Jessica,
You have my sympathies. Give them hell.
gbulmash,
Please never subject us to that site again. Is is staffed and trolled by FARK rejects?
"If you have no proofs of my wrongdoing, what is your reason for bothering me?"
I don't know what's considered "sex offense" at US.
Can anyone explain to me? (really)
Thanks
One of the nice things to have a compulsory ID is that you don't get misidentified.
Your faults are yours and no one's else.
Privacy concerns? Government already knows everything about you, at least if you was not born in the mountains, brought up with wolves...
LOL, mod parent Funny.
The funniest thing is that i can't really know if you're kidding or not.
""It has come to MySpace's attention that you are a registered sex offender in one or more jurisdictions," the email said. "MySpace is committed to removing registered sex offenders from its site, and will take all necessary means to block or remove anyone it determines to pose a threat to its users.""
Ok, this distrubs me because IF the latter statement would be true, a lot more then just sex-offenders should be removed. Fact is, as always - especially in the USA - the reeal focus is the 'sex' part, not the 'feel safe' excuse. So, what, a sex offender poses a threat to its users, but, say, a serial killer doesn't? If they were really serious about their proclaimed goal, they should remove *everyone* with a criminal record.
I've never understood the implied argument that, somehow, sex offenders are the worst criminals that walk this earth, and the law therefor has to focus on them. I agree raping people is morally wrong and a criminal act...but is it worse than someone who kills people? There are still crimes that are worse, IMHO, and yet serial killers seem to have it easier then sex offenders.
Logically, this doesn't make sense, unless one deems rape worse than murder.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
just out of interest, which old days? 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s?
In my country it's the lunatic right wingers we had in power for 18 years who kept on going on about mythical old days of warm beer and cricket on Sunday afternoons on the village green.
The past is a different country. They do things differently there. Some things better but also some things a lot worse. I had a great childhood too but while I was messing around making camps in the woods the big cities had signs in lodging houses which said "No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs". Things weren't all wonderful.
pages on the net?
Just curious.
It's the reason I don't use MySpace. Well, that and the fact I'm not a bubble head poser trying to impress teenagers.
You said
"More importantly, if this had been a private notification it would have been a simple dispute, but it's gone public and this woman's life is likely to be affected by it"
It was private until she took it public.
Then you said
"So I'm all for this woman going public,"
This makes no sense. The only reason this wasn't a "simple dispute" is because SHE made it that way. Yet you go on to argue it was Myspace's fault somehow. That is wrong.
I'm puzzled by your clear inability to form a coherent post.
"I'm on the woman's side. MySpace screwed up by labelling someone an offender (of whatever type) without due process"
That's NOT what happened. I'm beginning to see the problem.
"Accusing someone of ANY crime is not something that should be done lightly, because it will ALWAYS damage the target's life."
They didn't ACCUSE her of anything beyond being on a list. That is not a crime. You see they DID NOT say she was a criminal, they said her name appeared in a database. That is not a fine distinction, so I fail to see why you can't grasp it.
Ultimately it is clear why your post appears to be incoherent, you don't understand the situation and are making assumptions based on faulty information and your lack of mental faculties.