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MySpace Gets False Positive In Sex Offender Search

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the not-if-but-when dept.

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."

56 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. It's a good thing, then... by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

    1. Re:It's a good thing, then... by purduephotog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is very well written and I agree with every statement.

      While I can't read the article, there should be a mechanism for her account to be re-instated- a 'white listing' that proves she has been validated. As was said, no one has a 'right' to a myspace profile. Those that say "Free Speech" mis understand the intended purpose- the Government can not Censor a Newspaper... not whether or not a company can let you post (baring discrimination based upon gender, race, orientation, ability, or intelligence).

      I share the same name as a debtor, his calls come to my house. I have a 3" thick file on him. The government can do nothing to protect me, and there are no laws on the books to stop them from harassing me. Today's a good day- I can make light of it. Catch me on a bad day and I'll be in a foul mood for a week after one of their harassing phone calls.

      In the end she'll work it out, I'm sure- if all else the press generated will pressure the company to reinstate the profile. Which is as the system should be.

    2. Re:It's a good thing, then... by Chr0me · · Score: 5, Informative

      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? Considering that there are probably a lot of people named "John Smith" born in June a name and month match would be highly likely. You glossed over the fact the the DOBs for these two women were two years apart. And a human decided that a 22 - 26 month difference was "close enough."

      You also ignore that the register sex offender was registered in Utah and that the woman whose page was taken down lived in Colorado and Florida previously, but not in Utah. so your same place argument falls too.

      Did you RTFA before spouting off? Oh wait /., I forgot where i was.
    3. Re:It's a good thing, then... by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      Actually, this is not quite as innocuous as you seem to imply. If a myspace profile is suddenly gone and people know MySpace is removing known sex offenders, it is entirely possible they will assume she is a sex offender, especially if they search for her name and find info that seems to imply that. Worse, they may well make comments to that affect on their own pages, seeding Google with further slander. People tend to believe authorities and in this case, they may well assume MySpace has better resources to identify sex offenders than they do.

      Just this morning I was talking to someone whose co-worker has a hard time getting jobs because if you do a Google search for his name, the first things that come up are articles about him being accused of being a rapist. Even though he was exonerated and some of the articles do mention that at the bottom in small text, it has still had significant negative impacts on his life.

      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.

      True, but the fact that they are falsely identifying people is very good information to know. The fact that they don't have a good policy for fixing their mistakes is good to know. It gives users one more reason to move on to a more responsible site before they've invested more effort into that social network.

      MySpace is clearly acting to deceive the public. They're intentionally taking actions they know will be ineffective at solving the problem in an attempt to trick users into thinking they have made real progress. At the same time they're misidentifying innocent people and not properly dealing with that problem. Basically they are being a big evil business. If being purchased by Fox news was not enough reason, this is just one more reason to distrust and avoid MySpace and that is news everyone should be hearing so they can decide for themselves.

    4. Re:It's a good thing, then... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      "Those that say "Free Speech" mis understand the intended purpose- the Government can not Censor a Newspaper... not whether or not a company can let you post (baring discrimination based upon gender, race, orientation, ability, or intelligence).

      I share the same name as a debtor, his calls come to my house. I have a 3" thick file on him. The government can do nothing to protect me, and there are no laws on the books to stop them from harassing me. Today's a good day- I can make light of it. Catch me on a bad day and I'll be in a foul mood for a week after one of their harassing phone calls.

      In the end she'll work it out, I'm sure- if all else the press generated will pressure the company to reinstate the profile. Which is as the system should be."

      The thing I would wonder about...what all other 'databases' are now being filled with information from MySpace? I'd bet you 10 to nothing this lady now turns up as a sex offender on other systems....other systems that may NOT get their data corrected.

      Isn't that nice? It would be a shame for this inacurate information to catch up to her in the future, denying her a job, a clearance, a loan...raise her insurance rates...all those nice things that bad data can do to you these days.

      I guarantee you ...the info pulled off MySpace indentifying predators...it also being distributed to at least a few police, state and fed systems. Of course you have nothing to fear if you are innocent? Try telling that to her in the future..when she gets mis-identified again due to data from this data pull....hell, she might not even know she's been turned down for something due to this...no one says they have to tell you why.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    5. Re:It's a good thing, then... by bleh-of-the-huns · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually, I believe there are laws about creditors harassing people, you should only have to notify them, and provide proof that you are not the individual they are looking for, if they continue, you can take legal action against them. Is it worth the money, probably not as the lawyer fees will probably be sky high...

      As for the article, although the user wants her myspace account back, I believe the bigger picture is that myspace is going to share the database of sex offenders (or those they atleast thing are, whether or not they are correct) with the state attorneys general. This, in the long run, could come back and cause serious problems for an individual who is in fact not a sex offender, and never was.

      --
      I came, I conquered, I coredumped
    6. Re:It's a good thing, then... by ptbarnett · · Score: 2, Informative
      I share the same name as a debtor, his calls come to my house. I have a 3" thick file on him. The government can do nothing to protect me, and there are no laws on the books to stop them from harassing me.

      Yes, there is. You just have to dig a little deeper.

      I had a similar problem: my name was the same as a guy that was married to a delinquent debtor, and I would get calls from collection agencies trying to find her. When I made the mistake of talking to one of them to try to correct their error, they copped an attitude and it went downhill from there.

      If you ask, they must identify themselves and provide a snail-mail address. I wrote a letter reiterating that I was not the person they wanted or related in any way to her. I cited the relevant penal code in my state and their state, and stated flatly that any further attempts to contact me would be considered harassment and I would file charges with the appropriate law enforcement agency.

      I sent the letter registered, return-receipt requested, and I sent copies to the Attorney General in both states.

      I never heard from them again.

    7. Re:It's a good thing, then... by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      As TFA points out, MySpace provides list of users whose accounts it deletes for such reasons to law enforcement. It's very unlikely that the Colorado AG's office had Ms. Davis listed as a sex offender since the offenses were committed by a different person in other states; now, quite possibly now it does.

      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?

      Her name is Jessica Davis, for God's sake. There are probably at least two people with that name in the US who share a birthday for every single day of the year! If she had a (much) rarer name I could see why this happened; and I can see why an automated records check might have turned up her name as someone to look at, but presumably a human being had to make this decision, and any human being with an ounce of sense would have realized that name and birth month is not nearly enough for a match in this case.

      (arguments about an 18 year old with his 16 year old high school sweetheart getting tagged as a "registered sex offender" aside)

      "Arguments about the three thousand dead people aside, September 11th 2001 was a really nice day!"

      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.

      When MySpace starts acting like the government, and in cooperation with the government, it's no longer just filling the role of a private corporation. If you're not a cop, you probably don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about things like probable cause and Miranda warnings -- but if you go around gossiping about how you think one of your neighbors is a child molester because he has the same name as somebody you read about in the papers, you're still going to be liable when events run their course and the false arrest suit is filed.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    8. Re:It's a good thing, then... by HikingStick · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just a clarification...If spoken, it's slander. If printed, it's libel. Also, a key component of libel is that it is published, not merely privately disclosed. If only the user got the notification as to why her page was removed, there is no case for libel. If they placed a warning on her former page that said "this user's page was removed because s/he was a registered sex offender", then the case would be clear.

      At the same time, however (and if memory serves correctly), libel cases have been rare in recent years and have not had great success at trial.

      --
      I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
    9. Re:It's a good thing, then... by jedidiah · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, this woman is infact being branded. She's being associated with some very heinous criminal activity solely based on identity matching technology which is KNOWN to be crap. This is slander and this slander is being passed onto law enforcement where official harrassment by the state is likely to ensue.

      These sorts of associations are nothing to trifle with.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    10. Re:It's a good thing, then... by rblancarte · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Again, read the GP post. This woman was identified/branded/labeled as nothing.

      The fact is, they did a very lousy job of cross referencing their sex offender DB and got a bad match. The fact is that a real search would actually result in a true positive.

      NOW, what this does demonstrate is the lack of effort being put forth by MySpace in their "efforts" to identify sex offenders. This false positive really demonstrates that they are not doing a lot to really validate their lists. Along with the point of the GGP post where they state it is a simple matter for a registered sex offender to use false information on their MySpace registration.

      RonB

      --
      It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
    11. Re:It's a good thing, then... by Foobar+of+Borg · · Score: 4, Funny

      Maybe someone needs to be..oh I don't know..tried before a judge and their peers before being branded guilty of a crime? I just thinking off the wall here...
      That thar sounds like terrorist talk to me! Why do you hate America so much?
      --
      Similar to the upcoming US election results
    12. Re:It's a good thing, then... by kabocox · · Score: 2, Interesting

      MySpace is clearly acting to deceive the public. They're intentionally taking actions they know will be ineffective at solving the problem in an attempt to trick users into thinking they have made real progress. At the same time they're misidentifying innocent people and not properly dealing with that problem..

      All MySpace has to work is the information that the government releases for known sexoffenders, which is usually name, dob, sometimes height/weight and hair and eye color and sometimes current addresses. Does slashdot go through all its useres and call use up or physically ID us to make sure we aren't sex offenders? Nope. Why should MySpace? Both groups seem to have a large portion of kids posting to them.

    13. Re:It's a good thing, then... by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What's funny is that this is exactly what all of us predicted would happen: a lot of false positives and people wondering why their profiles were yanked---probably without actually stopping a single actual sex offender from doing anything illegal.

      What makes this even funnier is that the sex offenders using their legitimate names (assuming they aren't complete idiots) are the ones we should least worry about. They are identifying who they are, which means that if they do something wrong, law enforcement can easily determine their identities. The LAST thing that government or MySpace should be doing is punishing those who aren't breaking any laws or trying to conceal their identities. They are effectively telling sex offenders that because they made a mistake in the past, they can never have a place in civilized society again unless they break the law and pretend to be someone else. In essence, they are directly encouraging further illegal behavior by former criminals. Apparently entrapment is legal if you're sneaky enough about it....

      There's a reason that there are limitations on how long you can put someone in prison. You're supposed to do your penance, repay your debt to society, whatever, then be accepted back into society. By creating these artificial barriers, the legal system is effectively shutting them out, which will, in turn, cause them to not consider themselves members of society, and will encourage behavior outside the accepted norms for decent society. Indeed, it has been shown repeatedly that criminals who are reintegrated into society without being treated like outcasts are less likely to be repeat offenders.

      How is this really any different from indentured servitude for debts? Make a mistake and pay for it for the rest of your life. There's a reason we have laws to limit the amount of time that somebody can get screwed over for financial mistakes, and with the exception of wacko stunts like this, those same limits apply to crimes of all sorts. I think it is long past time that we stopped using "think of the children" as a boogeyman for getting all sorts of abusive laws passed that affect the freedom of everyone in this great nation. If we allow one person's MySpace profile to be yanked, whether actual sex offenders or just people incorrectly identified, it is no different than allowing everyone's profiles to be yanked. After all, you could make money through that MySpace profile. What's to stop the next purge to be anyone who has ever defaulted on a credit card payment? You could use it to distribute messages to Al Qaeda through steganography in images on your profile. What's to stop the removal of profiles of anyone who has ever downloaded an encryption program? Where does it end?

      It's time for MySpace users to tell MySpace that they won't be bullied before it gets out of hand.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    14. Re:It's a good thing, then... by TheCarp · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You know... I actually find myself having to agree here.

      "Sex Offender" can really mean many things. Of course, rapists and child molesters come to mind. However, I have a friend who was in his early 20s, met a girl who claimed she was 18, had her stay with him a few nights, and the next thing he knew the police came knocking at his door.... she was 16, and a friend of hers told her parents where she was.

      Eventually they pleaded the case down and he did not end up having to register as a sex offender, but it was clearly possible. I need to check, but I have heard that public exposure can lead to a sex crime conviction... shit... who doesn't know someone who got drunk some night and took a piss in a park or alley way at 3 am? Does a person really deserve to be on a sex offender list for taking a piss against natures original urinal?

      I mean there are some truly heinous sex crimes, and some really scary people. However, theres also some really pretty innocuous stuff too. I am not sure I can support lumping them all together.

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    15. Re:It's a good thing, then... by DragonWriter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The LAST thing that government or MySpace should be doing is punishing those who aren't breaking any laws or trying to conceal their identities.


      You seem to think this is about protecting people. It's not, it's about corporate PR. It is certainly in MySpace's PR interest to have no one who appears to be a known sex offender on their site. And that's what this policy prevents.

    16. Re:It's a good thing, then... by MeanderingMind · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This woman was identified/branded/labeled as nothing.


      This isn't an accurate statement. From a government standpoint, she hasn't been labeled anything. That is correct. However, this is not an issue of government at all.

      When I am in high school and called a "nerd" I am identified, branded or labeled as such. It doesn't matter that the administration of the school doesn't recognize that my name now hashes to a pool of "nerds". What matters is that other people have labeled me, rightly or wrongly.

      Similarly, if MySpace labels someone a sex offender the government's official registry is largely irrelevant to the fact that within the bounds of MySpace that person is now "branded" a sex offender. In legal terms, they're completely innocent and need not worry about being in some government database as one. In realistic terms they're baffled/confused/shocked/traumatized to discover that they've been labeled something they are not.

      Don't underestimate the power of "unofficial" labels, brands, or identifications.
      --
      Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
    17. Re:It's a good thing, then... by daveschroeder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The thing I would wonder about...what all other 'databases' are now being filled with information from MySpace? I'd bet you 10 to nothing this lady now turns up as a sex offender on other systems....other systems that may NOT get their data corrected.

      No. She cannot and will not be added to any sex offender lists or any other governmentally maintained lists because of this. She is not a sex offender.

      Isn't that nice? It would be a shame for this inacurate information to catch up to her in the future, denying her a job, a clearance, a loan...raise her insurance rates...all those nice things that bad data can do to you these days.

      Except it won't, because she is not a sex offender. And you know what? Some searches for things like mortgages, background checks, due diligence legal searches, and so on, are (intentionally) overly broad and do get "false positives". But the difference is they don't just assume you're that person; if you're not that person, you're simply not, and you are given the opporunity to show it. This is routine and happens thousands of times a day for employment, divorce proceedings, security clerance investigations, credit checks, and so on. MySpace doesn't really care, apparently, if it purges a few people who aren't really sex offenders. But it's not the reverse that's happening

      I guarantee you ...the info pulled off MySpace indentifying predators...it also being distributed to at least a few police, state and fed systems. Of course you have nothing to fear if you are innocent? Try telling that to her in the future..when she gets mis-identified again due to data from this data pull....hell, she might not even know she's been turned down for something due to this...no one says they have to tell you why.

      Um...huh? You actually believe that police records and sex offender lists and government databases are going to be changed on the basis of MySpace's garbage matching...using sex offender lists in the first place? (Not only will this not happen, at all, do you see the error in your logic here? MySpace isn't "identifying" sex offenders. They're letting the people who pressured them know that they removed people who they THINK to be sex offenders based on its processes, to show that it is doing something; not that these people ARE sex offenders.) She CANNOT and WILL NOT have ANY negative entries in any databases or law enforcement records, because she HAS NOT committed any crime, and IS NOT a sex offender, no matter what MySpace says or does. Why does no one here understand that, and why are they all getting modded up? Repeat: MySpace has NO POWER to suddenly make people appear as sex offenders or criminals in ANY database, ANYWHERE.

      That doesn't mean what MySpace is doing is right or even productive. But it also doesn't change the accuracy of anything I said above.

    18. Re:It's a good thing, then... by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Does that mean that Google is in the wrong as well? Should they pre-emptively strike content that may prove damaging to someone down the road?

      Google acts impartially, not claiming to be censoring or classifying sex offender information. As such, they bear no responsibility for that content. The responsibility belongs to the people writing and publishing it.

      Ahh, now we know the angle you're taking on this. Not that News Corp. (let alone their subsidiary Fox News) has anything to do with this, but I suppose nothing fetches karma like bashing Slashdot's favorite pariahs.

      I bash Fox news and news corp at every opportunity because they deserve it. They went to court and argued that they have no responsibility to not intentionally lie to viewers, which is true, but it also makes them deserving of that fact being pointed out every time they claim to be news or for every situation where the question of whether or not they should be trusted is raised. Most people are not aware that Fox does not publish news, but simply whatever they want people to think (propaganda). Any enterprise they run is deserving of intense scrutiny.

      Aside from that, however, I was just pointing out their unethical behavior in this instance, as documented by the article. If they act unethically, why should any of us trust them or invest our time in their enterprise instead of elsewhere?

    19. Re:It's a good thing, then... by cbreaker · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I agree with you.

      I work at a prison. It's really showed me how pointless prison is, and how punishments for a lot of things are just too harsh. Capital crimes might get you 20 years, but having an ounce of weed could get you 15. It's completely out of whack.

      But the sex offenders "list" goes way beyond serving your sentence. It's like a damned scarlet letter. And let's be realistic: not even a sex offender thinks they'll be caught, so what is some list going to stop someone that intends to re-offend?

      What do these lists do besides further punish people that served their sentences in full?

      There's got to be a better way.. I say put bracelets on their ankles for 10 years, if you're that worried about it. At least it's not a big sign over your head.

      --
      - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
    20. Re:It's a good thing, then... by randyflood · · Score: 2, Interesting


      Well, it depends on exactly what Myspace tells the person when they delete their profile. If Myspace states that they are removing their account because they are a sex offender, then the person might be able to sue for Libel.

      There was a case one time where someone was fired because their employer thought that they were guilty of stealing. So, anyway, when they went to interview for other jobs, they were asked why they left the previous company. They said it was because they were accused of stealing. Then, they went back and sued their former employer. They won, despite the fact that their employer never directly told other people. The court felt that they should not have to lie to the people they interview with.

      So, let's say that you were some kind of marketing company with a myspace profile that had 10 million friends on it. Now say that Myspace comes along and deletes your profile, and they say that they did it because you were a sex offender. If your 10 million friends ask you why Myspace deltes your profile, and you tell them, then I would think you would have a (perhaps weak) case against them based on the similarity to the above situation.

      --
      Randy.Flood@RHCE2B.COM
    21. Re:It's a good thing, then... by daveschroeder · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I know the idea here is to really stretch the logic and see what it might be possible to occur. And no, I'm not being sarcastic when I say that.

      But I'm sorry, even in Asshat County, they have the same mechanisms for checking for criminal records, outstanding warrants, and so on. Even if there were a newspaper story about this, it would be about how she was wrongly identified as a sex offender by MySpace, not that she actually is one. She won't be added to any sex offender or other law enforcement databases. She won't have a criminal record. She hasn't been convicted of a related crime.

      And even if she WAS a registered sex offender, she wouldn't be thrown in jail at a traffic stop. Getting into the whole "well, if they knew she was a registered sex offender, they might harass her" area is shaky ground. Just because you THINK they might or because cops sometimes do the wrong thing isn't really relevant or meaningful to this situation.

      But that's beside the point, because she isn't a registered sex offender, and won't be added to any list or database that any police agency - even in Asshat County - searches. And let's take this situation in particular. Let's just say for some reason that this story is in Bodunk Times-Ledger in Asshat County. This whole thing about how this woman was incorrectly identified as a sex offender via MySpace. For one thing, the only reason it's public is because she chose to make it public. And second, the whole story is that she is improperly identified as a sex offender because she shares a name and a similar birthdate and lives in a neighboring state, not that she actually is a sex offender.

      Look, I know you're trying to imagine the slipperiest slope possible. That MySpace's "list" could somehow become public, and might somehow be misused. But the criminal and judicial systems and databases in this country are pretty damned accurate. If you do have the misfortune of sharing the same exact name, birthdate, and even city/state as a real criminal, there are even ways out of that. But the legal/criminal standard is much, much, much higher than the crap, purposely inexact matching MySpace is using. People don't just randomly get criminal records, warrants, or added to state-maintained sex offender databases just because of what MySpace is doing, and that's not even the purpose of this; in fact, it's the exact opposite: MySpace is contracting with a database company to try to match its users against existing, legitimate sex offender databases. No matter how poorly of a job it does, it isn't making the information public, and the information isn't intended to say that someone is a sex offender, just that they think a particular profile may match someone who already has legitimately been identified as a sex offender by the legal and judicial systems.

      But no one is going to get tossed in jail in Asshat County because of what MySpace is doing. Not unless Asshat County wants to spend its entire year's highway budget on the inevitable settlement payout. And not only that, Asshat County will never find out, because that person will never be in any legitimate criminal database, nor can be legitimately considered to be a target of investigation, because MySpace's matching mechanism isn't coming from thin air; it's coming from legitimate databases that already exist, and aren't designed to be some sort of "new" list, and aren't even intended to be public, much less remotely to be used for any law enforcement purpose.

    22. Re:It's a good thing, then... by ktappe · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You have to think twisted like the people you're trying to catch. They are going to lie to do what they're doing.
      Your argument justifies a whole lot of false positives to catch one offender. At what point (if any) will you draw that "OK, too twisted" line? For those of you who claim to be geographically-enlightened, Utah to Colorado may be "just next door" but it's also quite a number of miles, so why stop with Colorado? Why not Kansas, or Wyoming, or Idaho, or Nevada, or California, or New Mexico? And if you're going to go that far, why not the whole country, considering that airline tickets are $49 now? Next, if you assume the person is going to lie about their age, then you've just eliminated any benefit from an age search. And then why not assume that if they can move and lie about their age, why not lie about their name? Bingo, you've just invalidated EVERY SINGLE SEARCH. So just STOP your wild-eyed zeal to catch sex offenders and consider that if you over-widen the search, you might as well not search at all.
      --
      "We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
    23. Re:It's a good thing, then... by daveschroeder · · Score: 2, Informative

      No. It is factually incorrect that she could be added to sex offender databases because of what MySpace is doing. You MUST have been convicted of a crime which classifies you as a sex offender to be, or be required to be, in a sex offender registry. That is a factual statement and is in no way "unverified"; that is how sex offender registries work and their very purpose. You cannot be added to a sex offender registry for any other reason or in any other way. You need to have been convicted of a crime by a court of law that classifies you as a sex offender.

      Further, the whole purpose of MySpace's matching is to take existing, legitimate sex offender databases, and match them against its own users, in what will always be in imperfect fashion. The very intent of this is to use an existing database for this, and I trust you see what's wrong with thinking that incorrect matching my MySpace somehow would contribute BACK to a sex offender database, when the only way a person can even BE in a sex offender database is via the mechanism I described above.

      I know you'll still want to believe that somehow what MySpace is doing is building sex offender databases somewhere, when it's doing essentially the exact opposite, which is using government-administered sex offender databases with known, convicted sex offenders in an attempt to match those persons with persons in MySpace, using an intentionally overly broad process. This is unrelated to whether or not what MySpace is doing is a good idea, which I don't believe it is.

    24. Re:It's a good thing, then... by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 3, Informative

      Guess what? All media outlets can (and usually do) do it!

      Really? You have evidence of any major news outlet going to court and admitting they intentionally lied to viewers and that it was legal for them to do so? I'd like to see some citation of that.

      See CBS News, where Dan Rather insisted for several days after the documents were posted to LGF and other blogs that there was no evidence of forgery in the Killian memos.

      Googling for that story I find:

      Although CBS and Rather defended the authenticity and usage of the document for a two-week period, continued scrutiny from independent and rival news organizations and independent analysis of other copies of the documents obtained by USA Today raised questions about the documents' validity and led to a public repudiation on September 20, 2004. Rather stated, "if I knew then what I know now - I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question,"

      CBS did not defend their right to lie in court and neither did Dan Rather. They claimed that as soon as they found reliable evidence that the documents were faked they admitted to that and they claim that if they knew they were fake they would not have published the story. They did not say they knew they were fake but that it was okay for them to publish them anyway because they have no legal responsibility to not tell lies.

      Sorry, your comparison is way off. That is not the same issue at all. CBS at least publicly claims they will always print what they think is the truth. They have never openly defended intentionally lying to the audience.

    25. Re:It's a good thing, then... by nightfire-unique · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I mean there are some truly heinous sex crimes, and some really scary people. However, theres also some really pretty innocuous stuff too. I am not sure I can support lumping them all together.

      You know, this is a problem we "liberals" have; in general our arguments against the absurd are usually a little too polite and reasonable. All the while, right wing pundits and talkshow hosts yell inflametory bullshit at their viewers; we find it difficult to take a strong position on anything (for fear we may be wrong).

      But how about this (not directed at you; I know you're just trying to be polite):

      If you think lumping violent rapists in with public pissers is anything less than offensively absurd, idiotic, and a demonstration of your malevolence towards others then you are part of the problem.

      In the interest of returning the nation to rationality, I think we need to stop being so polite!

      --
      A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
  2. Are you surprised? by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  3. Re:I am unsurprised by daveschroeder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, the only reason MySpace finally did this was because of pressure from various states' attorneys general, etc., making such demands:

    http://news.google.com/news?q=myspace+sex+offender s

    More info:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace#Child_safety

  4. IANAL by ukpyr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:IANAL by Nimey · · Score: 2, Informative

      Libel. Slander is spoken, libel is written.

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
  5. Same name ... and kinda the same birthday ... by Hektor_Troy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sentinel CEO John Cardillo told ABC News that the system functioned properly, because an actual sex offender existed with the same name, and a date of birth two years and two days apart from Davis.
    I wonder how many Johbn Cardillo's exist in the sex offender databases. And I wonder how many kinda sorta have a similar birthday?
    --
    We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
  6. Standard response to concern about privacy issues by LineGrunt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?"

  7. The Question is... by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 3, Interesting
    This real question is: Do you have a right to use MySpace? Are they required to give you access if not violating, or even in spite of, any anti-discrimination or other laws?

    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."
  8. myspace by flynt · · Score: 4, Funny

    Doesn't having a MySpace account make you a suspected sex offender, ipso facto?

  9. Domestic Violence Offenders should be banned, too. by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This needs to be expanded to include domestic violence offenders. That would be really valuable for dating sites.

  10. It's all irrelevant... by xtermz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  11. Jumping to conclusions by rehtonAesoohC · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now be honest, how many people saw "MySpace," "woman," and "sex" and clicked the link right away?

  12. Re:How is this surprising? by cashman73 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the, "old days," back when I grew up, parents actually talked to their kids and educated them not to talk to strangers. Today, parents don't seem to be capable of this, and instead want the government, schools, and internet service & content providers to make sure their precious little f**ktards don't get into trouble.

  13. Just wait... by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  14. Fortunately, a woman by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  15. Can we quit with the whole sex offender thing now? by johnny+cashed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  16. Blacklist them all! by Lost+Penguin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  17. Re:Can we quit with the whole sex offender thing n by evan1l38 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  18. Re:recidivism. by DragonWriter · · Score: 3, Informative

    The registries exist because sex-offenders are much more likely to re-offend.


    This is the premise, but the problem is it isn't really true. Pedophiles who target victims outside of their own family are much more likely to re-offend than most other criminals. Other sex offenders are not. Published sex offender registries are not restricted to the class of sex offenders that are much more likely to re-offend.

    Of course, there is also the problem that the registries, even where they list people who are more likely to reoffend, do little to actually protect anyone.
  19. Re:Can we quit with the whole sex offender thing n by mschuyler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  20. Re:recidivism. by MedicinalMan · · Score: 4, Informative

    As other people have pointed out your are COMPLETELY wrong about your recividism statistics, which are meaningless themselves unless broken down by type of crime committed. "Sex offender" is a meaningless title because the crimes that fall within its umbrella are extremely varied. Peeing in an alley (indecent exposure) and rape (of any age) are both "sex offenses". So is "producing child pornography" by the child him/herself for his/her own use read this /. post And you altogether miss the point: Sex offender registries are made to make people feel safe. But how about the great majority of sex offenders who just have not been caught yet? The pool of potential offenders is large enough that rates of sexual crimes don't go down when you lock up the ones you catch. As a parent, I don't give a shit about the registries. I make sure my kids don't come into contact with any adults they don't know, expect of course in group situations like school or sports where they are not alone. When it comes to my wife, she takes general precautions to keep herself safe. What the hell am I supposed to do with a map showing all the sex offenders living around me? Knock on their doors and ask them to be nice? Tell the guy my daughter can't go to his house?

  21. to all the people who say no big deal by gelfling · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  22. Re:Your Rights? by Catbeller · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Human rights transcend contract law. You can't sign away the right not to be falsely accused of pedophilia. Corporate person or real person, contract law has limits.

    Somewhere in the vast wasteland of your software licenses, some joker may have inserted the right of his company to adopt your children against your will. Ha ha, you clicked through.

  23. Re:Can we quit with the whole sex offender thing n by Proteus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    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.

    • Indecent Exposure While Engaging in a Lewd/Lascivious Act (M.C.L. 750.335a(2)(b)), if previously convicted of violation of M.C.L. 750.335a.
    • Three convictions of any combination of:
      • Disorderly Person (M.C.L.750.167(1)(f));
      • Indecent Exposure(M.C.L. 750.335a(2)(a));
    (from http://www.michigan.gov/msp/0,1607,7-123-1589_1878 _24961-158366--,00.html#16)

    So 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
  24. Re:Can we quit with the whole sex offender thing n by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

    "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."
    ROTFL ... you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  25. Re:Can we quit with the whole sex offender thing n by Tom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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
  26. Major malfunction by Skapare · · Score: 3, Insightful

    By Thursday, Sentinel, the company that built the database for MySpace has acknowledged the error. Sentinel CEO John Cardillo told ABC News that the system functioned properly, because an actual sex offender existed with the same name, and a date of birth two years and two days apart from Davis'.

    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
  27. Re:recidivism. by richarddshank · · Score: 3, Informative

    Its easy to say that sex offenders have a high recidivism rate, but what facts do you have to support it? There are a number of studies showing sex offenders as have the second lowest recidivism rate of all offenders (homicide being lowest).

    Want proof? There are 11884 registered sex offenders in the state of North Carolina (tally up the offenders from this page http://www.ncfindoffender.com/stats.aspx). Now do a search of recidivist http://www.ncfindoffender.com/search.aspx and there are only 71. Sorry, that is not a high recidivism rate.

    I also had my account deleted from MySpace. I am actually a registered sex offender. I also play music. I had a page for my music. I'm not going to cry about it because MySpace can allow and kick off who they want to. The thing that bothers me is the ignorance that is floated as fact about sex offenders. It ultimately does less to protect children. The truth is you have more concern about your child being a victim of a family member than someone on the registry re-offending.

    From the perspective of a past offender, I'm glad I was caught and convicted (I ended up being incarcerated for 15 months). It gave me the chance to get into therapy, deal with the screwed up things in my life. I now life a very happy, healthy and productive life.

  28. Re:recidivism. by SpecBear · · Score: 3, Informative

    I frequently see this claim as a justification for demonizing sex offenders, but I've never seen any hard data to back it up. And the U.S. Department of Justice seems to disagree.

  29. Issues by unlametheweak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  30. Sex Offenders... by Kaenneth · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.