MySpace exposes sex predators
2007-05-22 07:24
San Francisco - MySpace said on Monday it has begun to release data to state justice officials on convicted sex criminals it finds using the youth-oriented social networking website.
The move ends a standoff between MySpace and top prosecutors from eight US states that had demanded the identities of sexual predators who have posted their profiles on the News Corporation-owned website.
The state attorneys general gave MySpace a deadline of May 29, 2007, but the company responded that it was barred by law from revealing the data.
MySpace said talks with US attorneys Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Roy Cooper of North Carolina resulted in a way to legally share the information.
MySpace is providing what it knows of sex offenders on its website for criminal investigations and probation or parole proceedings, according to Mike Angus, general counsel of News Corporation's Fox Interactive Media.
MySpace said it is checking its membership roster with a Sentinel Tech Holding Corp database of registered sex offenders and removing profile pages of those that match.
The two companies created together Sentinel Safe, touted as the nation's "first proprietary software dedicated to identifying and removing sexual predators from online communities". It was installed on the website on May 2.
"In addition to immediately removing registered sex offenders from MySpace, our plans have always been to provide the information collected by Sentinel Safe to law enforcement," Angus said.
The justice chiefs of Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and New Hampshire had contacted MySpace after getting word that it had ferreted out thousands of convicted sex offenders with profile web pages.
"We look forward to working collaboratively with the attorneys general on all future efforts to make the internet a safer place for teens," said MySpace chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam.
MySpace is lobbying for a federal law requiring convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses to make it easier to screen them from membership websites used by young people.
US law already requires people convicted of sex crimes to register their addresses with local police after they are released from custody.