7 MySpace sex offenders arrested
p2pnet.net news:- Seven convicted sex offenders were arrested after MySpace gave police details of their identities, says the Texas attorney general’s office.
After initially declaring it wouldn’t hand over details, MySpace did an about-face, giving in to legal demands made initially by 8 US attorneys general.
The arrests followed America’s first “large-scale crackdown” on registered sex offenders using MySpace, says Texas AG Greg Abbott.
Six of the men had opened MySpace.com accounts in violation of parole or probation orders which had specifically barred them from going online, and a seventh had failed to register as a sex offender.
“In May, the Texas Attorney General issued a subpoena to MySpace.com that forced the network to release subscriber information of all registered sex offenders who established online member profiles,” says a statement.
“MySpace.com provided Attorney General Abbott with data from Sentinel Safe, a database of information on registered sex offenders that the network compiled to verify the identities of their users.”
The arrested men are said to have sexually assaulted girls ranging in age from 4 to 14.
Also See:
statement – First-In-The-Nation Crackdown on Sex Offenders Using MySpace.com Yields Multiple Arrests, June 14, 2007
did an about-face – ‘Why me?’ – asks sex offender, May 24, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 15th, 2007 at 11:34 am
The sex offenders arrested were (A) violating the terms of their probation or parole by using MySpace, or (B) arrested for failure to comply with existing registration laws.
It’s not a crime for a sex offender to use MySpace. Many of them that do have legitimate reasons for doing so, not unlike the reason you and I would use it. It’s important for these kinds of over-hyped stories that play on the public’s fears to garner support for law enforcement and politicians to be put into perspective. Sex offenders arrested for violating terms of probation: a big fat non-story.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
AMEN!