Thousands of NY sex offenders purged from Facebook, MySpace
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- December
- 1
  Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced today that more than 3,500 registered New York sex offenders have been purged from the social-networking sites Facebook and MySpace.
  The names were removed as part of the first database sweep since the state’s new “e-STOP” law took effect last year. The Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act prohibits many sex offenders from using social-networking sites while on probation or parole.
  “We created e-STOP to help put an end to sexual predators using the Internet as a tool to prey on the innocent,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Facebook and MySpace are successfully using e-STOP to help make the Internet safer, and it’s time for all social networking sites to do their part to keep others from being senselessly victimized.”
  E-STOP requires convicted sex offenders to register all their e-mail addresses, screen names and other Internet identifiers with the state. The state makes the information available to social-networking sites and certain other online services, which match the names up with their users and make the purges, or use it to prescreen users.
  Facebook identified and disabled accounts linked to 2,782 registered sex offenders and MySpace did the same with accounts held by 1,796 offenders, said Cuomo, who will be in Rochester later today to discuss the findings. Some sex offenders were on both sites, so the total number of people purged was 3,533.
  To date, Facebook and MySpace are the only such sites that have requested this information from the state, according to Cuomo.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 12:21 pm by Cara Matthews.
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This is a placebo law which is only effective as political hype. It prevents only legal activity. Note that none of the former offenders whose accounts were deleted were charged with any illegal conduct. It is simple enough for anyone who wants to do anything illegal online to create an anonymous e-mail address.
All the attention given to registered sex offenders gives a distorted perception of the more likely perpetrators of sex crimes against children. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 93% of children who are victims of sexual abuse are victimized by family members or acquaintances. 94% of those arrested for the sexual molestation of children in New York State are first time offenders who are not listed on any registry. To put it another way, if a child has been the victim of sexual abuse, the odds are 4 in 1,000 that the child was victimized by a stranger who is a registered sex offender. The odds are far greater, 874 in 1,000, that the child was victimized by a family member or acquaintance who is not listed on the sex offender registry. The primary effect of sex offender registries is to give the public a false sense of security.