Posted on 04/05/2008 11:00:57 PM PDT by KingofZion
The British government wants to ban convicted pedophiles from using social networking Web sites such as Facebook, the Home Office said Friday.
The plan involves forcing sex offenders to give any e-mail address they use to police, who will then ask the Web sites to block their access, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said.
Smith said the proposal is aimed at sending out the message that the Internet is ''not a no-go area when it comes to law enforcement.''
''We are changing the law ... so that we have got better control over the way in which child sex offenders are able to use the Internet,'' Smith said on GMTV.
The government wants to prevent pedophiles from using social networking Web sites to groom children to be sexual abuse victims, according to the Home Office.
Under the proposed legislation, it would be a crime punishable by up to five years in prison for a convicted child sex offender to use an e-mail address that has not been registered with police, a Home Office spokesman said on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.
*snip*
The proposal faces many hurdles, including the fact that anyone can instantly create a new e-mail address online and that Facebook, MySpace and most other popular social networking sites are based outside Britain.
In addition to the new proposal, British police already have a range of means to monitor and assess the threat convicted sex offenders pose over the Internet, including obtaining warrants to search convicted pedophiles' home to make a risk assessment, the spokesman said.
The legislation is expected to be put before parliament by the end of the year and will apply to the more than 30,000 sex offenders already on the register as well as any new convictions, the Home Office said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Here’s a novel idea: How about keeping them in jail?
Who came up with that lame idea?
How do you enforce it?
Capital punishment.
Good idea!
I just wish there was a way to actually do it.
Should use IP address instead.
Yes, this cannot be practically enforced. One can get thousands of email boxes and could use multiple IP addresses that are not easily traced back.
It hasn’t become law because it is a brainless idea.
OK, Joe Pedophile is convicted of crime. Joe goes to police and gives email address ‘pedophile@hotmail.com‘, police say ‘thank you good citizen, now behave yourself’.
Joe goes home and signs up on Facebook with ‘pedal-file@hotmail.com‘, calls himself ‘Jerry’.
Oh, you want to talk about IP addresses?
Two words: proxy servers.
And if that’s not enough, pedophiles can always go to public internet sites and get access there.
The idiots who come up with these proposed laws are totally without a clue as to the technical feasibility of their grandiose plans.
Correction: "Britain Seeks to Ban WHITE MALE Pedophiles from Social Network Sites."
This law, of course, is not applicable to MUSLIMS.
In that case, their religion allows for them to be pedophiles since Mohammed was a rampant pedophile.
Gotta be culturally selective with Common Law, you know.
Thats Zanu-Labour for you. Always willing to think up a headline-grabbing policy without actually thinking about it first....
But check the archives and you'll see that "sex offenders" also include
a 16 year old boy having sex with a 15 1/2 year old girl
a teacher who turns on a computer in class that had previously been infected with porn spam by another user
a man "exposing himself" by taking a leak in what he thought was a deserted alley.
So I want to know exactly what the crime is before making blanket statements.
This is bad. Next it will be only government issued email addresses for everyone. The solution to pervs on line is impossible if we value freedom. I really don’t care what pervs do to children on line, because I don’t consider the teenagers talking dirty right back to be innocent. My line in the sand is actually physical contact of a sexual nature, not just showing up or typing on a keyboard 50 miles away.
Just what we need -another law on the books,right that will stop it.
Think about it for a minute and you might figure out why -- although it has been proposed by others who didn't stop to think. The following is an extract of a posted letter on same:
Not only will this do little to nothing to protect children, it has a great potential to make life even more dangerous for them.First, such a law will engender a feeling of safety online, a feeling that is dangerously false. ... I read a quote that of the 200 predators caught on MSNBC's Dateline show “To Catch A Predator”, only 4 were registered sex offenders. In any event, the cautionary example against letting one's guard down is the current high-profile case in Puget Sound [I think this refers to a high-profile Navy officer trapped in such a situation]; whatever the numbers, a great of predators have never yet been caught. (This case is also why I support such “sting” operations.) I will note also that according to the U.S. Department of Justice statistics, half or less of sex offense convictions are repeat convictions.
Second ... many might not know how many e-mail addresses they have; recently I cut mine down radically, but then... my cellphone turned out to have an e-mail address! Will this law be used against people in these situations? Given that they're registered sex offenders I'm sure it will, and at least some registered sex offenders will realize their vulnerability. ... An additional effect here will assuredly be to turn registered sex offenders who are working at going straight into scofflaws; likely another bad thing according to psychologists.
Third, new e-mail addresses are ridiculously easy to get and that a registered sex offender is using a new one, for any reason, virtually impossible to detect. Such a law will do absolutely nothing to deter the real predators. They're planning to commit a crime that, if caught, will in many states put them away for a long, long time if not forever. What would be their concern about a comparatively minor penalty added on if they're caught? I'm guessing nothing.
Fourth, and this is an “if”, the government's track record of keeping “private” information private has been rather poor of late. One leak and the whole system is compromised. Registered sex offenders will be abandon their registered e-mail addresses wholesale, if only to avoid harassment. (And might I add: the instant they acquire another, even with no criminal intent, they are now criminals subject to prosecution even though they register the addresses at the first available instant.)
Fifth and worst, even if none of the preceding become realized issues, the concept of making the database accessible in any way, even if it's a “yes or no” response to a query on an e-mail address, will prove to be extremely hazardous. Consider the spammers who would love to have such a highly-qualified list of prospects to their porn-merchant customers. All they need to do is, once they have any kind of access to the database (even the minimal one I note – and an awful lot of online information has been compromised), is to run their list against it – and who among us is NOT on one spam list or another? Once they have that, expect sales pitches, much more aggressive than they'd dare send to the general public, going out to the registered sex offenders. This is a sure-fire recipe for greatly increased recidivism, and thus an increase of newly victimized children! The law intended to protect them works against them.
More likely they're looking for a reason to brag "We're making you(r children) safer!" and folks like the original poster here will buy it hook, line and sinker.
It's for the children, don'cha know.
And who wants to be against the children?
P.T. Barnum was right.
You have defined it perfectly. Well said.
Except all they have to do is have a dynamic IP vs. Static. All they have to do is use a library computer. All they have to do is hijack someone else’s WiFi...
It’s not enforceable as a preventative measure. The best you could do is essentially make it an add-on charge when they are already caught. That would be OK by me, but I sincerely doubt that such a law would keep many pedophiles off of MySpace.
Frankly I think the real solution is much tougher penalties for convicted pedophiles and an elimination of the idea that they can be “cured”.
you guys don’t get it. it is not about getting them to comply. it is about putting them back in jail when they DON’T comply, which will be easy to prove once their computers are seized.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to just keep them in jail in the first place?
If you read my comments, I do get it. But what I get is that it will never have the effect they claim it will have. It will not make social networking sites any safer. If anything even more stupid parents will ignore what their kids do online because they are foolish enough to trust the government.
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