p2pnet - rss feed: MySpace, et al, to police UK pedophiles
p2pnet news | Crime:- The likes of Facebook, MySpace and Bebo are to police almost 30,500 paedophiles in the UK.
Sex offenders will have to give police their mail addresses when they go on the official register and police will then pass the details to social networking sites which will then be, "expected to monitor offenders using the sites or bar them access," says Times Online.
"Under the proposal announced today child sex offenders will face up to five years in prison for failing to give police an e-mail address or providing a false address," says the story, going on:
"The proposal is a further tightening of the registration requirements for the database, which last year included 30,416 names. Sex offenders currently register their name, address, date of birth and national insurance number."
The scheme will be co-ordinated by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) centre, says PC Pro.
"However, CEOP and the Home Office don’t seem to have any clear idea of how they’re going to prevent sex offenders from simply registering new webmail addresses to access social networking sites," says the story
"The announcement has just been made," a spokesperson for CEOP told said. "It’s down to CEOP and the online industry to see how we can make that work."
The story goes on >>>
When asked whether the technical practicalities of such a law had been considered before today’s announcement, the CEOP spokesperson replied: "That’s the challenge in front of us."
When challenged on how the police would prevent sex offenders from registering new addresses on GMTV this morning, the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith admitted the system is flawed.
Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said that new registration requirement would be introduced after Parliament has passed legislation giving ministers a wider power to vary the the notification requirements for the register, says Times Online, adding the measure is in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, currently in the Lords, but expected to be in force by the autumn.
"We will work with the industry," the story has Coaker saying.
"It will be a matter of partnership between industry and law enforcement to make sure this law is made effective."
The mind boggles.
Times Online - Paedophiles to be forced to disclose e-mail addresses, April 4, 2008
PC Pro - Will Home Office’s new plan really snare sex offenders?, April 2, 2008
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April 4th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Jacqui Smith was on the BBC News this morning, and she knew so little of what she was talking about that I ended up swearing at the TV - something I don’t do all that often. There are two very serious flaws in this latest attempt to ‘police’ the internet:
a) Hotmail (or any other free email service). Paedophile opens hotmail account, paedophile registers with Bebo/MySpace/Facebook, peadophile deletes hotmail account.
b) Most of the major social networks are based outside the UK, so will just ignore this latest bit of neo-Labour bluster
Oh and as a slightly-relevant bit of info for the benefit of your US readers, Bebo is by far the most popular social network in the UK (by millions of users over Myspace and Facebook)
April 5th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Not only these sites, but online gaming is also a place these creepazoids hang out. It’s really the responsibility of everyone, those that are members, to be aware of what’s going on, and protect all the kids as much as we can.
The nature of an anonymous internet will always be a haven for these sickos. The only way I see this working is to require an internet ID for all users, which seems like an absurd idea to me.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
how useful. a law that can’t work, prompted by public panic over a threat that doesn’t exist, but which weakens existing privacy protection and other civil rights.
perhaps that was the intention from the beginning…
April 6th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Of course it’s the intention. It’s just a move towards fucking over the average citizen.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
agreed. The control and identification of every action on the internet will hopefully never happen. It would be quite possible, but it would be ludicrous to give up those rights - namely privacy.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
The Home Office are clueless, PR driven, make stuff up as they go along, and living in Britain “That’s the challenge in front of us ” as mere citizens.
CEOP are an FBI expectation agency, (they respond to the work of others) they’re not allowed to do teachers on their own account.
Britain has spent 400 million dollars not banning sex offenders from working as teachers. CEOP are a spoof spook agency in other words.
Nobody is in jail in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand because of CEOP, which in an era of collective offending more or less establishes they’ve done nothing clever, ever.
They get really upset if anybody points out they’re a fake agency.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
“Jacqui Smith was on the BBC News this morning, and she knew so little of what she was talking about that I ended up swearing at the TV ”
Yes, but as schools minister importantly,
she allowed the schools to be swamped with dubious creatures, and that is her primary job at the Home Office, trying to make sure the public don’t get the impression it is a bit risky to send the kids to school.
The UK has the most sexually abusive teaching profession in the developed world. The British make Japanese metro transport look positively safe for schoolgirls. Brit teachers are so icky.