News Report 2

"Sex offender arrested for violating parole on Myspace"
Elinor Mills, CNET
February 4th, 2009
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10157193-93.html?tag=mncol;posts


Myspace has recently caught a pandemic of sexual offenders who have created accounts in attempts to solicit underage persons. The recent count of violators numbers 30, but over 90,000 sex offenders were suspected to have personas on the social networking site. While the man in question did not yet attempt anything explicitly illegal on the site, his parole contained provisions which prohibited him from making a page. Four other men, who did not yet appear to be registered sex offenders, were arrested for trying to solicit sex from undercover agents posing as minors. Myspace has since handed over the names of these people to the Connecticut Attorney general, who requested their submission. In an attempt to get the bad spotlight of them for a minute, Myspace called out rival networking site Facebook and accused it of having over 9,000 sex offenders registered. Some argue that both sites contain accounts which appear to be sex offenders, but are really just fake profiles made up in attempts to raise the total number of users or lure potential predators into capture.

First of all, the number of supposed sex offenders on Myspace especially, and Facebook, is astounding, if those numbers are indeed true. I do not know much about Myspace, but that seems like a ton on people. It just reiterates how careful young people and especially girls should be on the internet, and hopefully parents are involved in these accounts. And while I am glad that the authorities are taking measures to clean these sites up, I do sometimes have reservations about their tactics. The way they described catching these predators reminded me of a show I sometimes watch on television, called “To Catch a Predator.” Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the show, and the people they catch truly are disgusting most times, but it just seems so low in a way. Is there no better way to stop these people? Maybe not, and the important thing is that they are caught after the way they handle the situation, but sometimes these officers posing as minors can initiate the conversation and throw themselves at the offender. I am certainly not condoning what happens after the initial invitation, but at times it seems like a big scheme to set someone they don’t like up. I just wonder how the dialogue the agents use parallels that used by real underage girls. Nonetheless, it is gratifying that these guys aren't going unnoticed, and perhaps the crackdown on the sites and the TV show will deter other adults from conducting similar behaviors.