Slashdot Mirror
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."
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!
It's simple. People who fall under the umbrella of "Sex Offenders" don't deserve rights, or freedom, or voting privilages. They aren't permitted to live in certain places, move without carpet bombing notifications to the neighborhood, or even walk by certain areas. According to some in our society, they should be executed, castrated, or put away for life.
I find it funny that Myspace was asked to filter for "sex offenders" before it was asked to filter for terrorists or murderers. No, wait, funny isn't the word. What am I looking for? Pathetic, sad, alarming, depressing?
More Twoson than Cupertino