The iPhone Sex Offender locator: considered harmful

8-13-2009 California:

On the California Megan's Law Web site, which maintains a publicly accessible database on our state's registered sex offenders -- where they live, what they look like, what they were convicted for -- the word "masturbate" is spelled incorrectly. On the page that lists the extensive catalog of penal codes detailing offenses for which one would have to register and give up personal privacy for all the world to see, offense 311.3(b)(3) is, in fact, "Sexual exploitation: masterbation."

I highly recommend that if you're hauled downtown and readied for conviction under 311.3(b)(3) that you bring a dictionary. Then you can pull it out (the dictionary) and say, "But no, Your Honor. I was engaged in masturbation."

Hey, at least they spelled "penal" correctly.

If it seems like I'm making light of a serious situation, it's just my hysteria seeping out about how absolutely broken our system is around dealing with sex crimes. I mean specifically predatory, violent, awful, and nonconsensual sex crimes -- the kind that should be illegal, which are illegal and punishable. However, take a trip down Megan's List and you'll never run Bay To Breakers again when you see 314.1 -- "Indecent exposure." Granted, take a closer reading of Section 314.1 and you'll see it expressly "prohibits conduct that is intended to direct public attention to his or her genitals for purposes of sexual arousal, gratification, or affront where there are other persons present to be offended or annoyed." (Citation: In re Smith (1972) 7 Cal.3d 362, 366. PDF) Simple nudity such as sunbathing or skinny dipping is not prohibited under 314.1. But annoy someone with your exposed penal code... and anyone busted for it must register as a sex offender for the rest of his or her life.

It's no wonder that while I was researching the popular, then pulled, then replaced in a limited edition "Offender Locator iPhone App" I was aghast at which non-violent offenses might land someone's private information on the registry. I remarked about this and got a response on my Facebook page from a woman who works in the East Bay saying, "don't get me started...I work with sex offenders, some of whose "offenses" that they now have to register for are ridiculous."

In case you're wondering, I tested the application (no, not on my precious N97 -- I am not of the Cult of iPhone) until it kicked me out for making too many searches. I'll put that on my resume. Enter an address or let it use your geo-location, and it gives you a map of offenders' home addresses. I searched my neighborhood -- the Castro -- and I searched SF City Jail (850 Bryant) and I searched the Marina Safeway, because, well, it seemed a good place to look.

Disturbingly, the brief search icons of three menacing-looking men's faces are all ambiguously nonwhite. Just sayin'. I also got addresses and pictures and phone numbers for lots and lots of guys -- right there and ripe for accessible harassment.

As The Economist put it in Sex laws: Unjust and ineffective, "The registry is a gold mine for lazy journalists." It's also an unofficial hit list. "Publicising sex offenders' addresses makes them vulnerable to vigilantism. In April 2006, for example, a vigilante shot and killed two sex offenders in Maine after finding their addresses on the registry. One of the victims had been convicted of having consensual sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend when he was 19. In Washington state in 2005 a man posed as an FBI agent to enter the home of two sex offenders, warning them that they were on a 'hit list' on the internet. Then he killed them. Murders of sex offenders are rare, but harassment is common. Most of the offenders interviewed for this article said they had experienced it."

The article is a must-read, and goes in depth into one of the most glaring errors in the system, Wendy Whitaker, who lives as a registered sex offender for a sex act she did as a teen (with another teen), charged under a law that no longer exists. In Kids Charged for Child Porn: When Teens Make Their Own Porn, Who's Being Exploited? we learned about at least five more teenagers in various states who have been arrested and are currently charged for trafficking in child porn for texting naked pictures of themselves -- to each other. In Crazyland, USA, your kids are sex offenders and will end up on an iPhone app.

As offenders, they will have no privacy, live in constant harassment, and laws like Megan's will make them live under bridges. This punishment is how you damage an (allegedly) already damaged human being to the point of no return. But aren't all legally bona fide sex offenders hateful and deserving of everything evil? Hate is easy currency to trade on, as you likely see in the comments of this column every week.

Yes, the information on the Offender Locator iPhone App is public, as they claim to get their data from those carefully spell-checked online government databases -- just as anyone convicted of a crime is public record. It doesn't help though that app creator, TheVision2020, uses negative marketing scare tactics on their home page to sell their product -- spuriously stating, "Typical child sex offenders molest an average of 117 children." Says who?

Is this company, ThinAir Wireless (aka TheVision2020.com) violating anything in providing, or profiting, off of this information? (If for profit, it'll likely be back and ad-supported, just like the free version I rode hard and put away wet -- which creepily had Harry Potter game ads across the top.) Who does this app actually help? It's not my question to answer, but we all need to ask whether or not the sex offender laws (which vary from state to state) are helping the people who desperately need help.

In From sexual trauma to healing sex, we heard from the other side of the sexual abuse coin: the survivor. Author Staci Haines opens up about sexual healing after incest, rape, or abuse and her experience teaches us about the predators and the offenders we're too freaked out to even look at. Haines tells us, "The statistics of people who have experienced sexual abuse, from incest to adult rape, are shocking. One in three girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before their 18th birthday. These statistics cross class and cultural differences; there is not one group who sexually abuses while others do not. Most sexually abused children know their perpetrator (60-80 percent)." And as Haines knows all too well from her work at Generation Five, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, 93% of children who are victims of sexual abuse are victimized by family members or acquaintances.

No wonder that despite there being 63,000 sex offenders registered in California (population: 36,756,666) the Offender Locator found so many, seemingly so close by. In a generation, the little map pins might just point right into your own house.

So until sex offender laws make sense, and having access to the resulting information in your pocket actually helps people, please try to keep your penal code in your pants. ..Source.. by Violet Blue