NEWS: Keeping Paedos off Facebook? That'll Work!

CULTURE: Keeping Paedos off Facebook? That'll Work!

The UK government is attempting to block registered paedophiles from using social networking sites.

The Home Office has been working alongside the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and children’s charities including the NSPCC, to develop new measures to keep children safe from online ‘grooming’ by paedophiles.

Under the new plans, police will provide websites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo with the email addresses of registered sex offenders. Those email addresses will be used by police to track the online activities of previous offenders, and by the sites themselves to block certain users.

I’m unclear how these measures will impact upon any but the most careless of child molesters. It seems unlikely that a registered offender would attempt to register on a social networking site, using the same email address which they gave to the police.

Graham Cluley of computer security firm SOPHOS isn’t impressed:

The government’s guidelines will also urge young people to be vigilant about what they do and don’t share on their profiles.

I find it interesting that the responsibility for ensuring privacy is put with the children, and not with the sites whose default settings these are.

There’s also the question of how well Facebook et al will look after the information that police have given them. After the murder of Sarah Payne in 2001, the News of the World championed a ‘naming and shaming’ policy, and took it upon themselves to print information on past offenders which had been leaked to them.

As a result:

Meanwhile, the actual offenders, alerted by the News of the World, fled their homes or otherwise ‘went underground’ – making them harder, not easier, to trace.

In Michigan, which is, of course, in the US, parole and probation conditions prohibit registered sex offenders' access to the internet, even via mobile phone. Often, the conditions prohibit ownership of a personal computer altogether. Until supervision monitors offenders' computer / internet use as effectively as most employers monitor their staff, sex offenders (paedofiles) just shouldn't have access.

It's heartening to see that governmental ignorance of technology isn't the exclusive domain of the US.

seems to me that the next step is a ban on all but government issued email addresses.

so let's not point out the government's folly, because they'll just try to fix it.

Beats the shit out of doing nothing at all, hanging your head and wringing your hands.
And a registered sex offender will have to register all e-mail addresses. I expect them to do so about as much as you do, but it does mean another way to sling them back in prison for 6-24 months.

Until it gives everyone a false sense of security and results in even more dangerous conditions.

Paedo?

Oh, pEdos! Fucking english spelling divide!

It's not hanging one's head or wringing one's hands to point out an ineffective and expensive idea. The idea that "we must do something, and time is short" is a typical mantra of politics, and it's what decides most elections. Where's the analysis of long term effects, such as giving full regulatory power over the internet to a handful of powerful gov'ts?

This is, in fact, a terrible idea, and "doing nothing" only means keeping your already vast law-enforcement system going.

When did the sex offenders register become expensive and ineffective? extending the provisions of Pt 2 of the sexual offences act 2003 into cyber space is a simple way of keeping a useful tool current.

Nobody is saying "hey great no more paedophiles on the internet".

I'm no fan of the sitting government, wasn't of the previous and I doubt I will be of the next. And god knows that MAPPA is kinda like sticking a plaster over a shotgun blast, but the people who actually make up MAPPA are pretty good at what they do, imaginative little tinkers too.
This is a tweak, nothing more. Certainly not a way of keeping the internet safe. But it is a rather ellegant tweak.

I think the money would be better spent on a public information campaign to educate children how to protect themselves, and for parents to better monitor their child's online activities. That's not to say that it's the parents' or childrens' fault that this shit happens, but I think it would be a more effective way of protecting children than a bunch of easily circumvented measures on the criminal's end.

Also, lock the pervs up for longer periods of time to begin with.

I don't think the point was that the Sex Offenders Registry as a whole was expensive and ineffective, but that the attempt to get a bunch of pervs who thrive online to register their e-mail addresses as a possible means of stopping them from approaching children online, would be*. I personally have 5 seperate e-mail accounts, and each one took about 3 minutes of my time to set up. All a paedophile would have to do to keep himself out of trouble is go to some type of cyber-cafe, and set himself up a new e-mail addy. Meanwhile, parents and kids will think they are safer because of the e-registry. So why waste the money on something that will be next to useless? It would make more sense to use that money on educating children and parents about the risks of the internet, and what precautions to take.

*Have faith that I, as a citizen of Canada, fully understand the concept of a useless registration system, thanks to the Canadian Gun Registry.

^^ footnote made me smile.