CA - Sex-offender laws are ineffective and unfair, critics say

Original Article

10/17/2014

By Puck Lo

Frank Lindsay, 62, is a father, small-business owner and avid surfer. He’s also one of 105,000 people in California — and 760,000 nationally — listed as a sex offender. In accordance with federal law, his name, photograph and home address appear in a public, online offender registry. In 1979, Lindsay, then 27, was convicted of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14.

“I thought I could do whatever I wanted,” Lindsay says. “Add on some alcohol, and I was a real asshole.”

Today, Lindsay considers himself a reformed man. He says he hasn’t had a drink in 30 years, is a Taoist and advocate for restorative justice — encouraging violent people to make amends for their actions. But, he says, “It seems that I can never be forgiven.”

Few groups are as widely despised as sex offenders. Activities prosecuted as sex offenses vary by state, but can include public urination, consensual sex between teenagers, streaking, prostitution, downloading child pornography and rape. In some states, law-enforcement officials distribute flyers to notify neighbors of registrants’ convictions. Some registrants are prohibited from using the Internet. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that indefinite detention at psychiatric hospitals — or “civil commitment” — of sex offenders is constitutional.

The first law requiring sex offenders to register publicly and for life was passed in California in 1947 and targeted gay men, according to Andrew Extein, executive director of the Center for Sexual Justice. But many of today’s laws have their origins in the late 1970s, when feminists and social conservatives worked together to publicize high-profile “stranger danger” attacks on children, says Roger Lancaster, anthropology professor at George Mason University and author of “Sex Panic and the Punitive State.”

Beginning in the mid-1990s, several laws went into effect that changed how sex-offense cases were prosecuted. In 1994, states were required to create databases of sex offenders. Two years later, Megan’s Law, named for a 7-year-old in New Jersey who was brutally raped and murdered by a neighbor with two previous sex convictions, allowed states to make those registries public. States passed their own versions of the law; in some cases, they required that neighbors be notified of paroled offenders’ previous convictions. Later laws moved those sex-offender databases online, created a national registry, required lifetime registration of people 14 years old and up and imposed harsh mandatory minimum sentences for crimes involving children.

But almost 20 years after the passage of Megan’s Law, criminologists and judges, along with a burgeoning movement of sex-offender registrants and their families, are challenging not only the constitutionality of the laws but their effectiveness in reducing sexual assault. In January, a California court ruled in favor of a paroled sex offender who had argued that city and county “child-safety zone” ordinances prohibiting people in the registry from using parks, beaches and similar recreation areas were an unconstitutional form of banishment. In April, the state Supreme Court upheld the ruling by declining to review it.

See Also: California Reform Sex Offender Laws

Read the entire article

NJ - Trying to Ban Sex Offenders from Social Media Is a Waste of Time

Original Article

01/29/2014

By Jason Koebler

New Jersey has become the latest state to try to regulate how (and if) sex offenders can use social media, an increasingly tricky problem facing legislators around the country. But privacy experts say the laws are problematic, and probably unconstitutional.

The proposed bill would require all sex offenders in New Jersey to disclose the fact on all of their social media accounts.

A similar measure was introduced, but not passed, last year. The measure has been pre-filed for the 2014 legislative session. Donna Simon, an assemblywoman who sponsored the bill, said anyone caught violating the law, if passed, could face a $10,000 fine and 18 months in prison.


“Sex offenders are very sneaky and despicable,” she said. “What they will do is they will have a myriad of screen names and other identities to use for communicating to children.”
- Underage children are not suppose to be on Facebook based on their terms of service.  Why don't you teach kids in school, or better yet, the parents be parents and teach their own children about the sharing of personal information online or talking to people they do not know?  A major study was done years ago that shows most children are approached by their peers about sex, not a stranger, although that does happen.

Of course, stopping even a small number of sexual assaults is a laudable goal, but in many cases, laws that limit social media access are quickly struck down in court, making the whole exercise nothing more than a waste of time and money. A year ago, a federal appeals judge ruled that an Indiana law that banned sex offenders from using instant messaging, social networking sites, and chat programs was unconstitutional. In that decision, a federal judge wrote that the law “targets substantially more activity than the evil it seeks to redress.”

Nathan Wessler, an attorney with the ACLU, says that New Jersey’s proposed law is a similar overreach. The law would require sex offenders to disclose all of their online accounts to law enforcement, including E-mail addresses, screen names, social media accounts, message board handles, and more. Similar provisions in laws passed in Indiana, Nebraska, Georgia, Utah, California, and Louisiana have been struck down. A law banning sex offenders from social media was struck down in North Carolina last year, but a New Jersey ban on social media for sex offenders that are out on parole was upheld.

“The reporting requirement is particularly problematic, because you have a right to engage in anonymous debate online,” Wessler said. “You have the right to ask about embarrassing medical matters online to write on the Facebook page of the Mayo Clinic or post on message boards. The government is requiring people to turn over these anonymous identities so they can watch what they’re doing online even when it’s protected anonymous political speech.”

Wessler says that besides being unconstitutional, the requirement is “onerous and impractical,” because it requires disclosure of things such as randomly-generated email addresses from Craiglist and disclosure of accounts that may have long-since been forgotten about.

The New Jersey law is modeled on a law passed in 2012 in Louisiana and goes a step further, too. It “requires person who are required to register as a sex offender to provide notification of that fact on social networking sites” and also has to include “notice of the crime for which he was convicted, the jurisdiction of conviction, a description of his physical characteristics, and his residential address.” The offender must also link to their sex offender profile on a social networking site.

That’s a lot of information, and a lot of it is impossible, logistically, to follow through with, Wessler says.

“It is literally impossible to include all that information in 140 characters, so anyone on the registry who wanted to use Twitter would be automatically violating the law,” he said, forcing people to “choose between complying with this restriction or giving up the ability to engage in conversation in what has become the new town square.”

Some social media networks, such as Facebook and Match.com, already ask that sex offenders not register for their sites in their terms of service.

All of this may sound overly sympathetic towards sex offenders, but laws that do mainly superficial things such as trying to ban sex offenders from social media run the risk of diverting attention from other prevention efforts. The stereotypical image of a creepy old man preying on unknowing children is a popular—and certainly scary—one, but in reality, few sex offenders use social media to perpetrate their crimes.

“Numbers suggest that Internet-initiated sex crimes account for a salient but small proportion of all statutory rape offenses and a relatively low number of sexual offenses committed against minors overall,” according to a 2008 study published in American Psychologist (PDF).

More than 90 percent of sex offenders personally know their child victims, and in over 50 percent of cases, the perpetrator is a family member—far from a creepy stranger they met online.

“These laws end up being counterproductive,” Wessler said. “They’re not tailored at all to addressing the harm the state should be concerned about. Anytime a legislature relies on inaccurate stereotypes of the problem, they’re diverting attention away from ways to address the real problem. It can create a false sense of security and divert law enforcement resources.”

And, if the goal is to rehabilitate sex offenders who have served their time in jail, requiring them to abstain from social media can seriously hinder that. Because sex offenders often have a difficult time finding jobs, many are self-employed and start their own businesses. If they want to start a social media page for their business, they’d be required to comply with the law.

“A lot of times, they’ll try to make their own goods and sell them online or start a business that you can’t successfully do without marketing online,” Wessler said. “Complying with this is probably going to completely destroy their ability to promote that business online.”

NETHERLANDS - Virtual child (en)traps online "pedophiles"

Original Article

11/04/2013

Terre des Hommes - An international charity which concentrates on children’s rights based in the Netherlands has created a virtual 10-year-old girl “from the Philippines” named “Sweetie.”

Sweetie was designed to track down, and hopefully convict, online pedophiles who use “webcam child sex tourism.”

I’m not sure where Terre des Hommes got these numbers, but they state at any given moment there are least 750,000 pedophiles online. That’s a staggering number of nonces with webcams, IMO.
- Hmm, 750,000 pedophiles?  Yeah right!  That number is very close to the number of sex offenders in the USA, but a majority of them are not pedophiles!

Warning: This video may be upsetting to some viewers

Dissenting Factions Withing the Internet Safety Community

Original Article

10/24/2013

By Dr Rachel O'Connell

In a blog post entitled Beware of the Internet Safety Industrial Complex Larry Magid, highlighted the factions that have emerged in the Internet safety world.

On one side is the ‘Internet Safety Industrial Complex’ faction that includes representatives of companies that sell internet safety technologies, i.e. Internet filtering, monitoring and age verification technologies. Members of this faction also include internet safety experts who promote the idea that internet safety technologies, along with education and parental engagement are key factors in mitigating the risks to children and young peoples’ well-being online. Larry Magid urges readers to ‘beware’ because he alleges the ‘Internet Safety Industrial Complex’ faction exaggerates the nature, scale and extent of online risks to children and young peoples’ well-being online.

The other faction, of whom Larry Magid is one of the key figures, is the ‘Anti-Media Panic’ faction, relies on selective pieces of research, which serve to substantiate their position. The central tenets of the Anti-Media Panic faction is that the majority of children are not at risk online, and, in fact any perceived risk has its genesis in ill-informed media hype generated to a large degree by the Internet Safety Industrial Complex faction.

When and why did these factions emerge and what effect is it having?

Let’s start with the Anti-Media Panic faction, who, for more than five years, has been talking about the media coverage of online child safety issues and describing it in terms of “media panic”. This narrative can be traced back to the mid 2000’s, but it really coalesced in 2008, in the aftermath of the publication of a report by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF). The ISTTF was a multi-stakeholder Task Force convened in response to a request by the US Attorney Generals to explore whether or not the age verification solutions available on the market at that time were fit for purpose, i.e. could provide the global internet industry with scalable, commercially viable, proportionate, low-cost, privacy preserving, age verification methods that would augment the safety of children online.

The Task Force was comprised of representatives from industry, law enforcement, child safety advocates and technical experts and it met several times over a one-year period. The meetings were convened and hosted by the Berkman Institute at Harvard University. The circumstances that prompted the US Attorney Generals to ask for this Task Force to be convened were that Myspace – remember them? – had used the Sentinel solution to scrub their database of users against a data set of known sex offenders. MySpace found approximately 40,000 sexual offenders and there were some procedural delays in handing over this information to the appropriate authorities. The Attorney Generals were not happy about this situation and felt that industry could be called upon to do more to protect vulnerable children and young people online and so the ISTTF was convened.

Continue Reading This Article | Part 2

OR - Man's neighbor downloads child porn on his wireless Internet

Original Article

10/24/2013

By Molly Smith

PORTLAND - Internet users are always advised to protect their information and be careful what they post on the web.

One case in Oregon is reminiscent of advice that an Internet signal is just as vulnerable as bank accounts if left unattended.

A Portland man was nearly arrested because of what was happening on his wireless Internet account. The man's wireless Internet signal was not password protected and his neighbor was using it to download child porn. The undercover police investigating the issue assumed it was him.

Authorities say the neighbor was using a mobile directional antenna to pick up the Wi-Fi network. However experts warn even if users have a password they are still vulnerable to hackers with these kinds of tools. The experts say if web users notice a sudden slowdown on their network while surfing the web -- it could be a sign someone has hacked the network. Internet users are also reminded to check their guest log regularly to see who has been using it.

UK - New powers to restrict potential sex offenders

Original Article

10/09/2013

The police will have greater powers to restrict the freedom of any individual they suspect of being a potential sex offender, under government proposals.

The restrictions - which could be used against a person never convicted - include limiting internet use and preventing travel abroad.

Breaching a sexual risk order could lead to a five-year jail sentence.

The government said the police will have greater powers to restrict "any person they judge to be a risk".

A second type of order, for those convicted of or cautioned about sexual offences, is also proposed.

The sexual harm prevention order - which would replace sexual offences prevention orders and foreign travel orders - would last a minimum of five years and have no maximum duration. It would apply to those convicted of sexual or violent offences either in the UK or overseas.

A sexual risk order would last a minimum of two years and also have no maximum duration. It would replace the risk of sexual harm order.

Both proposed orders have wider remits and lower risk requirements than the current measures in place.

'Very worrying'

Richard Atkinson, who chairs the criminal law committee of the Law Society, told BBC Radio 4's PM programme he was concerned about the move.

"Of course, a great deal of stigma is attached to anyone who has such an order made and if the process of obtaining these orders is less than that is needed for a conviction then that's a very worrying departure from our normal standards," he said.

The orders will be granted if a court agrees that an individual has engaged in an act of a sexual nature that could pose a sexual risk to the public.

Previous orders have been granted if a defendant meets more specific criteria.

A report commissioned by Peter Davies from the Association of Chief Police Officers and obtained by the BBC earlier this year said the use of orders was "grossly disproportionately low" compared to the total number of child sex offenders.

This was because the legal test that had to be satisfied was too high and measures "over-complicated", the report said.

The new orders were tabled in the Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which is expected to be given Royal Assent next spring.

Police and National Crime Agency (NCA) officers could apply for either type of order through a magistrates' court.

A sexual harm prevention order could also be made by a court when a person is convicted.

Individuals will be able to appeal against the orders and either the police or person subject to the order will be able to apply for it to be varied, renewed or discharged.

Policing and Criminal Justice Minister Damian Green said: "The UK has some of the toughest powers in the world to deal with sex offenders."

"Today, we are going even further by giving police and National Crime Agency officers the power to place greater restrictions on any person they judge to be a risk."

"Our proposals support the Childhood Lost campaign to tighten the law on sex offenders and make it easier for police to monitor them."

FL - Experts: Social networking a "playground" for predators

Original Article

10/08/2013

By Isabel Mascarenas

TAMPA - Parents teach children at a young age to not talk to strangers, but it's a lesson that seems lost when it applies to the Internet, a place cyber crimes experts call a playground for predators.
- The term "predator" covers more than just sexual crimes! The Internet is also a "playground" for many other criminals as well, like identity thieves, spammers, hackers, hate groups, etc, but those don't stir up emotions like the sex offender hysteria. Technology is always exploited by people and always will. If someone is intent on committing a crime they will. Parents and schools should be teaching kids common sense and educating them on sexual abuse, privacy, security, etc, not fear mongering BS!

Every time a teenager turns on their smart phone, computer, iPod, Xbox, or any electronic device with Internet access, there are countless of places to travel to and meet people.

"All the bad people in the world have access to you if you have access to them ... With technology, it's becoming a target-rich environment for pedophiles, for people preying on children," says Detective Bill Lindsey with the Cyber Crimes Unit at the Pasco Sheriff's Office.
- Based on the true definition of pedophile, pedophiles are rare and not the norm like the media continually tries to make it seem.  Just because someone molests a child, that doesn't mean they are a pedophile!

Lindsey says one popular site is Meetme.com. It claims to have 90 million members as young as 13 years old. Until last year, users knew it as Myyearbook.com, described on Facebook as "a social networking site for teens." Members have live webcams, where Lindsey says predators solicit videos and pictures.

Lindsey says, "The kinds of adults that are getting on Meetme.com and meeting children are doing that with malicious intent."

Unlike sites such as Facebook that will match one up with mutual friends or interests, sites such as Meetme.com will recommend people based on where one lives. 10 News checked for sexual offenders and predators and found 314 within a 5-mile radius.

Lindsey says, "It's terrifying. Parents don't know how much danger their children are in."
- If the parents and schools were educating their children, then this wouldn't be much of an issue, now would it?

Lindsey says teens often give away too much information online, listing schools, interests, and hangouts, providing predators with a road map to them and to trouble.

"We've had juveniles who have met adults online because they were their suggested friends, and adults take advantage of that online relationship, set up meetings in person, and engage in unlawful sex with minors," says Lindsey.

"In my situation, he wasn't a predator. He was a normal guy who swept me off my feet. I fell in love with him," says 18 year old Alexis Carrascos. Her nightmare began when she is 16 years old. She says, "To think all this started online from me posting a little too much information."

When Alexis met her ex-boyfriend, she thought it was a chance encounter. Later in the relationship, she learned he stalked her on Facebook first through mutual friends and pictures she'd tag online while out with those friends.

Alexis says, "If I could go back and un-tag myself in all those locations I would. It could have saved me a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache, a lot of lessons I think I learned too early in life."
- You can as far as we know.

Alexis says three months into the relationship she learned her 17-year-old boyfriend was really 18, and she says he became aggressive. Alexis says, "He started being very pushy, very jealous, very controlling."

And she says he became very violent, from grabbing her to punching walls. The break up included a restraining order against him. "He would stalk me," she says.

Alexis says she needed therapy plus extra protection. Alexis started carrying a taser and a trained dog for protection. Six months after the relationship ended, she's learning to trust again. "I'm still very alert with who sees my things, who likes my things, who's my friend on Facebook or Instagram or whatever."
- This is how everybody should be.  Don't post personal information at all.

Her advice to teens is to use caution online. She says, "If you don't know them, don't friend them. You don't need to necessarily tell people where you are because it's so easy for a predator, anybody that looks like a normal person, to become a stalker, to become possessive or abusive, lead to something that you don't want."

Meetme.com says it has "zero tolerance for abuse" and has staff to monitor images posted 24/7, Lindsey says, "Meetme.com is the most proactive of the social media online at policing their own website. They make an incredible amount of complaints to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children."

Detective Lindsey and Alexis say that doesn't replace parents from keeping an eye on their kids' online activities.

Alexis says, "This generation, we're too friendly. We think no one is going to cause us harm."

Detective Lindsey advises parents to know their child's passwords and frequently review each account with them. Also, make sure each friend is someone they know. And don't stop at Facebook; he suggests checking all their online accounts, including messaging sites such as kik, Twitter and Instagram.