Congress, MySpace Team Up to Fight Sexual Predators

January 30, 2007 — -- It's a parent's worst nightmare: Internet sexual predators stalking their children on popular Web sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com, where visitors routinely post pictures of themselves and share their interests with a vast social network.

With the popularity of social networking sites exploding among teenagers, the perception is growing, particularly among parents, that these sites make children more vulnerable to Internet sexual predators.

MySpace is joining with a bipartisan group of representatives and senators, who introduced legislation in their respective chambers today, designed to force sex offenders to register their e-mails, instant message addresses or other Internet identifiers with the Department of Justice's National Sex Offender Registry.

"Sexual predators will not be able to hide under the cloak of their email addresses anymore," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is co-sponsoring the Senate bill with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

The bill is called the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators (KIDS) Act of 2007.

The idea is that the Department of Justice would then share this information with administrators of social networking sites like MySpace.com, who would in turn compare the data with their users' profiles to identify online sexual predators.

The bill would also make it a crime, for the first time, for people over the age of 18 to lie about their age online for the purpose of engaging in sexual conduct with a child.

One in seven children who regularly use the Internet will be solicited for sex online, according to a 2006 study by the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"It became clear as we tried to develop solutions to keep these guys off our site that they lie about their names and e-mail aliases, and there needed to be a ramification for that," said Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for MySpace, in an interview with ABC News.

MySpace.com has 150 million registered users, and is adding an additional 320,000 more each day. With 21 million of its users under the age of 18, the company says it has stepped up efforts to protect children from online sex offenders.Reps. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., and Paul Gillmor, R-Ohio, are the lead co-sponsors of the legislation in the House of Representatives, along with Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., and Rep. Steve Chabot, R-OH.

"Our kids are pretty astute at cruising around on the Internet," said Rep. Chabot. "Maybe more than the parents," he warned, saying there are more and more people preying on teenagers online.

Last July, congressmen Gillmor and Pomeroy joined together to pass legislation standardizing the National Sex Offender Registry. Rep. Pomeroy's district was home to Dru Sjodin, a University of North Dakota student who was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 2003 by a registered sex offender from Minnesota.

The members said that the bill has broad, bipartisan support in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and expect it to pass.

However, critics say the legislation only works if the child predator gets caught.

"It's not a foolproof solution," admitted Rep. Weiner. "Maybe you can't track these predators, maybe you can't change their ways," he said. "But you can increase the penalty and increase the way we track their movement."

But Sen. Schumer argues that sex offenders will be required to list their email addresses as well as their street addresses when they leave jail. He said the bill give law enforcement the ability to charge offenders and send them back to jail if they're caught with an unreported Internet email or alias. Sen. Schumer also said the bill gives police the ability to check the computers of sex offender to search which aliases they have been using.

"This is going to make a world of difference," Sen. Schumer said. "It's going to be hard for sexual predators to avoid detection here," he said.

The legislation comes as child advocates argue that MySpace.com and other social networking sites cannot protect their young visitors.

Earlier this month, four families whose teenage daughters were assaulted by adults they met on MySpace sued the company. And while the company won't discuss details of the pending litigation, it argued that it has stepped up efforts to protect children from online sex offenders.

Nigam argued that by making it more difficult for Internet predators to lie about their age online, they are attacking the very first step some child molesters take in befriending and gaining the trust of their online victim.

In December, the company announced it had purchased technology that would allow a 24-hour MySpace security team to cross-reference its users against state databases that included 600,000 registered sex offenders.

"This is a very effective tool to keep sex offenders off our site," said Nigam.

MySpace is developing nascent image recognition technology for the future that will try to match photos on the MySpace site with police mug shots of sex offenders.

The technology includes an image recognition device that attempts to match photos on the MySpace site with police mug shots of sex offenders.

If the security team at MySpace discovers a sex offender on the site, it kicks the offender off the site and, in some cases, refers the offender to law enforcement officials.

Monday, MySpace announced that it would share its new database technology with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Still, the company said that parents are ultimately responsible for their children's safety.

"Parents are the first line of defense when it comes keeping their children safe online," said Nigam, suggesting the Web site allows parents to restrict who views their child's online profile.

"Just as a parent would tell a child to look both ways before crossing the street," Nigam said, "so must they be active when it comes to their child's safety online."

But some child advocates argue the social networking sites are like candy shops for child sex predators, and some parents don't have the technical know-how to protect their children.

Studies show that a majority of children who encountered unwanted sexual material online did not tell a parent or guardian. Only 27 percent of children aged 10 to 17 informed a parent after receiving sexual pictures or letters, according to a 2006 study by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Currently, MySpace is the only social networking site that has requested the National Sex Offender Registry from the federal government in order to cross-reference it with their own user list.

However, the members of congress expect other sites like Facebook.com and Friendster, that are attractive to teenagers, will sign on as well.

"They don't want to be creating a haven for child sex predators," said Rep. Pomeroy.