New Web Law May Be 'Worthless,' Watchdog Warns

10-15-2008 National:

Legislation signed by President Bush on Monday that requires sex offenders to provide Internet identifiers to state sex offender registries and tasks the Justice Department with creating a system that lets social networking sites compare their users' identifiers with those provided to a national sex offender registry may not achieve its intended aim of protecting children, according one high-tech policy expert who tracked the bill. That official, Center for Democracy and Technology general counsel John Morris, said Tuesday that the statute may prove "almost entirely worthless" and warned that it may also carry with it serious unintended consequences.

The bill was introduced in January 2007 by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz., now the GOP presidential nominee, and a companion measure was sponsored in the House by Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D. Pomeroy revised and reintroduced his bill after hearing concerns from CDT and other groups, but that version of the bill did not win Senate approval. Instead, the Senate version won out and minor modifications were made to alleviate critics' biggest fears, Morris said, acknowledging that "we have fewer concerns than we once did." Pomeroy's retooled measure would have let probation officers who supervise sex offenders install software on offenders' computers to monitor their Web whereabouts and target supervision to those who actually pose threats to kids.

Nevertheless, Morris believes the new law will not be effective because sex offenders who want to subvert or circumvent their conditions of probation, release or supervision -- which already typically stipulate that they cannot interact with minors -- will forge ahead regardless of the registry requirement. "If they're already intending to violate provisions that apply to them, why wouldn’t they also register a real e-mail and then go create another account," he said in an interview. "It is so trivial to create a new identifier, create a new e-mail address, or social network page. Anyone who is going to pose a risk to minors that this system trying to screen against can easily circumvent it."

CDT is also concerned that the congressionally approved definition of a social networking service is too broad and could "sweep in a great percentage" of blogs, discussion groups and other Internet offerings, he said. Before passing the final version, lawmakers refined the language to exempt many e-commerce sites like Amazon.com that could have unintentionally been covered in previous iterations of the bill by adding a provision that states voluntary compliance would apply to Web sites that whose primary purpose is to facilitate online social interactions.

Furthermore, Morris is worried that even though compliance is voluntary, the long-term impact of the federal government defining social networking could be daunting. "Congress or state legislators might take this new definition from the federal code and try to use it for some regulatory requirement," he warned. "We're increasingly seeing government officials at both the federal and state level pressuring private companies to do things 'voluntarily.'"

Meanwhile, popular social networking site Facebook hailed the legislation's passage and Bush's signing of the measure. The company's privacy chief Chris Kelly said in a blog post that the law "takes an important step in dramatically reducing the opportunities to harm children online." Facebook has long barred registered sex offenders from the service and currently works with individual states' attorneys general to check users against state-registered sex offender lists, he said. But those lists "lack the essential e-mail and IM data" and the process is less efficient and effective than anyone, especially concerned parents, would like, Kelly added.

In response to CDT's concerns, a Facebook spokesman said penalties in the law are severe, as they should be, and the company hopes the statute will be a deterrent. "We’re going to work with law enforcement to identify and prosecute those who aren’t deterred," he said. Facebook plans to add the forthcoming DOJ registry to its existing safeguards and will use the database "as vigorously and comprehensively as we can," Kelly said. Specifically, the site will check new users at sign-up and review existing users as regularly as the technology allows. "Anyone on the list will be prevented from joining Facebook. Anyone already on Facebook who is added to the list will have his or her account disabled forever. End of story," Kelly said.

..Source.. by Congress Daily