MySpace.com
RALEIGH -- MySpace.com has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on the popular social networking Web site -- more than four times the number cited by the company two months ago, officials in two states said Tuesday.
North Carolina's Roy Cooper is one of several attorneys general who recently demanded the News Corp.-owned Web site provide data on how many registered sex offenders were using the popular social networking site, along with information about where they live.
After initially withholding the information, citing federal privacy laws, MySpace began sharing the information in May after the states filed formal legal requests.
News 14 Carolina's Shawn Flynn has more on how the attorney general hopes to reduce the number of child predators on social networking sites.
At the time, MySpace said it had already used a database it helped create to remove about 7,000 profiles of sex offenders, out of a total of about 180 million profiles on the site.
Cooper spokeswoman Noelle Talley said MySpace provided the total to state officials last week. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who also had pressed the company earlier for sex offender data, confirmed the number in an interview later Tuesday, adding that it came from top MySpace executives.
"I'm absolutely astonished and appalled because the number has grown so exponentially over so short of time with no explanation," Blumenthal said.
MySpace declined to comment on the figure, focusing instead on their efforts to clean up its profile rolls.
Attorney General Roy Cooper
"We're pleased that we've successfully identified and removed registered sex offenders from our site and hope that other social networking sites follow our lead," MySpace chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a prepared statement.
The site, which is the largest of its kind, allows users to create personal profiles with pictures, music and text. Users can allow their profiles to be viewed publicly, browse profiles and send messages to each other. They also can block undesired contact from other individuals, or make their entire profile accessible only to their designated "friends" using MySpace.
Cooper is pushing for a state law that would require children to receive parental permission before creating social networking profiles, and require the Web sites to enact procedures for verifying the parents' identity and age.
Cooper is working with top law enforcement officials in other states in pressuring MySpace to use age and identity verification methods voluntarily. Based on media reports, Cooper's office found more than 100 criminal incidents this year of adults using MySpace to prey or attempt to prey on children.
Most recently, a Virginia man pleaded guilty Monday to kidnapping and soliciting a child by computer, charges related to a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old North Carolina girl he met on MySpace, according to authorities.
"All we're doing is giving parents the right to make a choice whether their children can go online," Cooper told a state House committee, which is considering a bill Cooper said will lead to "fewer children at risk, because there will be fewer children on those Web sites."
Advocates for Internet-based industries and privacy issues testified against those restrictions, saying they would establish broad parental verification standards that would be found unconstitutional in court because it prohibits free speech or impedes interstate commerce.
The plan also isn't foolproof, they said, because information can be fabricated by the computer user or a child can type in a parent's information.
The parental verification requirement "makes promises to consumers that cannot be kept. It is dangerous language," said Emily Hackett, executive director of the Washington-based Internet Alliance, whose clients include AOL, Yahoo and VeriSign. "There is no way to eyeball a user."
Sen. Walter Dalton, a primary sponsor of the bill, scoffed at the testimony.
"I don't buy any of those arguments I just heard," said Dalton, D-Rutherford, adding that he and Cooper's office believed the age verification requirements could withstand judicial scrutiny.
The bill, which already passed the Senate, would require a social networking Web site to compare information provided by a parent with commercial databases containing public records or other government-issued identification.
The sites also could be in compliance if they required a parent to use a valid credit card or fill out a printed form, then confirm with parents that permission had been granted.
Registered sex offenders who access the sites would face felony charges.
The bill, which was sent to a subcommittee for more consideration, may not stop all sexual predators from getting on social networking sites, but it addresses a problem that shouldn't be ignored, Dalton said.
"There is obviously a compelling state interest to protect our children from sexual predators," he said.
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