Sex offender e-mail rule would waste police time

View the article here

I truly believe we have a bunch of idiots running this country. It's so easy to create new email addresses, so how will this protect anyone? If a person is intent on committing another crime, they can create a new email address in minutes and do what they have set out to do. This is more feel good, knee-jerk reactions from politicians who do not know what the hell they are doing.

04/23/2007

FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY WOULD BE PRIMARY RESULT

Requiring all sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses with the government is fad legislation that is sweeping the nation. Two states - Virginia and Kentucky - have passed it, and a dozen more, plus Congress, are considering it. California's legislators should resist the instinct to join them.

The scope of California's bill is too broad. Even if it's constitutional, it wouldn't accomplish what proponents want.

Most convicted sex offenders have to tell the police where they live and whenever they move. The proposed legislation would extend this to the virtual world. The government would not publish e-mail addresses, as it does street addresses of some Megan's Law registrants. Instead, it would provide or sell them to online social networks like MySpace, which could then deny them access to their sites. Ex-offenders who failed to give the government their e-mail addresses and online screen names could be returned to prison.

Assembly members Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena, and Shirley Horton, R-Lemon Grove, are sponsoring AB841. Its intent is worthy: to protect children from predators contacting them through chat rooms and e-mail.

But the bill would apply to nearly 90,000 sex offenders, including those who have been off parole for decades and whose crimes involved adults, not children. The definition of a commercial social network is so vague that it could include not only MySpace and dating networks like Match.com but also sites like Amazon and eBay, in which customers can publicly comment on products.

It is already against the law for adults to try to entice children to commit sexual acts. Last year, California voters passed Proposition 83, which makes it a crime for adults to lie about their age in an effort to entrap children. These rules make sense, but there is no justification for denying access to the Internet to individuals who have shown no predisposition to endanger children.
- But it's ok for law enforcement to lie about their age in order to entrap adults? So I guess they are above the law!

People change e-mail addresses more frequently than they move. Those who want to contact children will ignore the law, but others will be inadvertently ensnared by strict reporting deadlines. They could be re-imprisoned for technical violations at a time that legislators should be looking for ways to reduce the number of inmates at overcrowded jails and prisons. Just keeping track of the changes in screen names and addresses will take substantial time and resources for law enforcement.

MySpace, to its credit, has raised safety issues. It has created a software program that tells parents if their children are faking their ages on their Internet pages. More education and oversight are needed.

But trying to deny sex offenders access to Internet sites would create a false sense of security while creating one more pointless burden for the criminal justice system.