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MySpace Agrees to Share Sex Offender Data 297

mikesd81 writes "The Seattle Times is reporting that MySpace will be providing a number of state attorney generals with data on registered sex offenders who use their site. Attorney generals from eight states demanded last week that the company provide data on how many registered sex offenders are using the site and where they live. MySpace obtained the data from Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., which the company partnered with in December to build a database with information on sex offenders. Attorneys general in North Carolina, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania asked for the Sentinel data last week."
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MySpace Agrees to Share Sex Offender Data

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21, 2007 @05:54PM (#19213917)
    "state attorney generals" => "state attorneys general"

    General is an adjective, not the noun. You pluralize the noun not the adjective.
  • by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @05:57PM (#19213955)
    ... do remember that it's never been easier to commit a sex crime that requires that you're place in a registry. Even people who get busted for 'indecent exposure' while urinating in an unwise place can end up on a sex offender registry.

    http://www.criminal-law-lawyer-source.com/terms/in decent.html [criminal-l...source.com]

    Theoretically, you have to be trying to 'assualt' someone by exposing yourself. Of course any DA with an agenda can make certain charges stick with a plea-bargain deal, even when they might not otherwise be applicable.

    How many people can afford to hire lawyers necessary to try to defend themselves in such a case? If you do try to fight it, I hope you've got a damn good Public Defender.
  • Age verification.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by twigles ( 756194 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @06:01PM (#19214037)
    I enjoy reading the repeated calls for age verification on social networking sites. Never does anyone making this demand suggest a feasible solution, they just pound their shoes on the table and say, "make it happen!" Even better are the calls for requiring parental permission for minors. Think for about 30 seconds about how one might accomplish that feat. Yeah.
  • Re:Bullshit. (Score:1, Informative)

    by moderatorrater ( 1095745 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @06:08PM (#19214127)

    Ask someone who was raped, and get back with me on that
    To actually make that accurate, you'd also have to ask someone who'd died, and preferably someone who'd gone through both.
  • Re:Privacy (Score:5, Informative)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @06:15PM (#19214217)

    I personally applaud this. Those who break these type of laws...
    Which laws are we talking about?

    Oral sex is illegal in: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and Washington D.C. (OK, I admit, I got great head in MN)

    An erection that shows through a man's clothing is illegal in: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington D.C. and Wisconsin. (Lock me up for pretty much every time I had to read to the class in French classes during my teens)

    In Missouri sexually deviant behavior between people of the same sex is classified as a class A misdemeanor.

    In Willowdale, Oregon it is against the law for a husband to talk to dirty in his wife's ear during sex.

    In Washington State there is a law against having sex with a virgin under any circumstances (including the wedding night!).

    Newcastle, Wyoming it is illegal to have sex in a butcher shop's meat freezer.

    In Washington D.C. there is a law against having sex in any position other than face to face.

    Source [sfsu.edu]

    I say lock the dirty bastards up and throw away the key!

    Or, alternatively, accept that demonising people for being sexual deviants, without classification as to the act, is complete b.s.
  • by Peter Mork ( 951443 ) <Peter.Mork@gmail.com> on Monday May 21, 2007 @06:19PM (#19214271) Homepage

    the recidivism rates for many sex offenders are incredibly high.

    From the Bureau of Justice [usdoj.gov]:

    • Within 3 years of release, 2.5% of released rapists were rearrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for a new homicide.
    • Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders.
    • Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders.

    To me, these statistics do not indicate an "incredibly high" recidivism rate. Sure, sex offenders are more likely than non-sex offenders to commit a sex offense, but if 2.5% recidivism is high enough to justify lifetime tracking, then 1.2% (for murder!) is as well.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21, 2007 @06:20PM (#19214277)
    u-bend, your facts are indeed around the u-bend.

    Sex offenders statistically have the LOWEST recidivism rates of ALL offenders. Go look it up, it's been shown time and time again.

    This fact is inconvenient for various persecutions and pogroms so people choose to ignore it.

    You've bought into the media frenzy. Check your facts before you post next time.
  • by Evanisincontrol ( 830057 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @06:20PM (#19214291)

    "state attorney generals" => "state attorneys general"

    General is an adjective, not the noun. You pluralize the noun not the adjective.

    wouldn't that be "State Attorney's General"?


    No, because that would completely change the meaning of the sentence. Adding the apostrophe and then an "s" makes the word 'attorney' be possessive. Therefore, you are turning 'general' back into a noun, and saying that the attorney possesses the general.

    The GP is right; the correct format would be "State Attorneys General." As he stated, 'General' is an adjective that modifies 'State Attorneys.' It's a little-used style of notation, so that's why it may seem foreign to read it that way. It's almost the same as if you were to write it like, "State Attorneys (General)."
  • by W. Justice Black ( 11445 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @06:24PM (#19214341) Homepage
    The summary has both "attorney generals" and "attorneys general." Does anyone care to hazard a guess as to which one is correct? The word "general" describes the attorneys--it's "general" the adjective, not the noun.

    That and "son of a bitches." Bah. It's SONS OF A BITCH or SONS OF BITCHES (depending on the number of dogs involved). Our science isn't advanced enough to generate one son from more than one female dog, damn it!
  • by Evil Poot Cat ( 69870 ) <repairpack AT gmail DOT com> on Monday May 21, 2007 @06:35PM (#19214459)
    And since Georgia is one of the states mentioned in this article, let's observe that Genarlow Wilson is still in prison, http://www.wilsonappeal.com/index.php [wilsonappeal.com] , and will be on one of these lists in about 8 years when he gets out. Not bad, for getting a blow job from a 15 year old when you're 17.

  • Re:Age verification? (Score:4, Informative)

    by RWarrior(fobw) ( 448405 ) * on Monday May 21, 2007 @06:36PM (#19214463)
    > it's easy to prove adulthood, by demanding a credit-card check.

    That is a defense in American statutory law, but not in practice. There are any number of outlets where anyone of any age with a sufficient amount of cash may buy a Visa gift card. [allaccessgift.com] I once sent an 8 year old to do it and he came back to me with a legally-purchased, fully working card I used to buy a subscription to a porn site.

    Indeed, Visa specifically prohibits using a Visa card number as an age verification mechanism in their Rules for Merchants [visa.com]:

    "The merchant must not use the account number for age verification or any purpose other than payment."

    (Approximately 60% of adult industry transactions carried our by credit card on the net are carried out with Visa cards.) cite [ccbill.com]

    Even if Visa permitted such a use, the merchant fees make it unworkable: Visa charges a percentage of every transaction, and the acquiring bank charges a fee as well, generally anything from a quarter to a dollar per transaction, PLUS a percentage, ranging anywhere from 2.3% to 15% of the ticket price, depending on a lot of factors they won't tell you about. This means that it simply isn't economical to use credit cards as a verification mechanism: It costs the merchant too much. To make a credit card transaction pay for itself, the merchant must make enough profit on the transaction to cover the fee, and if there's no fee, there's no profit one can use to cover the cost of the transaction, so it's a money-losing proposition.

    So, right now, there is no way to effectively prove age, either adult or minor, on the internet. None.

  • by Gyppo ( 982168 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @07:22PM (#19214949) Homepage
    Why are most people assuming that the sex offenders are being identified by their user profile information? The FBI/Attorney Generals are probably already monitoring their behaviors and provided their IPs or other identifying information to MySpace, making it easy to track and report on their myspace habits.
  • by 1u3hr ( 530656 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @09:23PM (#19215957)
    It should be "attornies", but for some stupid reason, the word "attorney" isn't pluralized the way other words are.

    You mean like: keys, abbeys, monkeys, valleys, jockeys, surveys, turkeys, trolleys ...

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @10:08AM (#19220827)
    Since lists are broken down by state -- state laws about length of time on the list vary as well.

    Illinois for example only requires a 10 year term on the list as long as you're not a repeat offender.

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