5-14-2009 National:
WASHINGTON - Cyberspace can be a dangerous place for young people, and the federal government has to start backing programs to teach students what to avoid and adults what to do when something goes wrong, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said Wednesday.
The mother of an 18-year-old Ohio woman who committed suicide after being tormented by classmates over a nude photo that was widely distributed, said schools need to know how to respond as much as youths need to know the potential consequences of their actions.
"For a school full of professionals to turn their back on her and never send a letter - they had to know something was going on with my daughter," said Cynthia Logan, whose daughter, Jessie, had sent a photo of herself to her boyfriend. "She took her own life when no one would help her stop the harassment."
Logan and child safety advocates joined Menendez and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., to tout a bill that would provide up to $175 million over five years to identify the best Internet safety programs for children, and provide competitive grants to non-profit groups and schools to spread the word.
Menendez said he hoped it could be considered by the full Senate this fall.
Menendez said students need to know how to avoid sexual predators, identity thieves and even possible criminal penalties for sharing sexually explicit photos of themselves or others.
Teachers and school administrators also need to be trained how to react when they discover students have been sharing nude photos of each other through social networking sites or cell phone images.
An online poll conducted by cosmogirl.com and the National Center to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found 20 percent of teens had sent or posted nude or semi-nude photos of themselves and 33 percent were sending or posting suggestive messages.
"As Internet access becomes even more widespread, we can't afford to have young people roam cyberspace without giving them the basic tools of good sense, individual responsibility and respect that we teach them to use offline," Menendez said. "These dangers aren't going away. They're only becoming more widespread."
In New Jersey, Attorney General Anne Milgram has concentrated on Internet safety, particularly for young users. Her office developed the Report Abuse! icon, which encourages social networking site visitors to flag potentially dangerous posts and to complain about bullying or other unwanted attention.
Milgram's staff also worked with police investigators and members of the Legislature on a package of bills to protect users from online predators. One measure would reduce the anonymity of Megan's Law registrants. Another would criminalize the communication of sexually suggestive materials. A third would require technicians who repair and maintain computers to report discoveries of child pornography.
Other bills involve stalking, identity theft and similar crimes. In all, the Assembly passed eight of the bills in March; they are awaiting action by Senate lawmakers.
Aftab, a security and privacy lawyer who is also the executive director of WiredSafety, said the New Jersey bills were a good start, but Ohio is considering a bill to address situations where youths sending pictures of themselves face serious criminal charges.
She also said law enforcement needs clearer directions.
"They either overreact or underreact. Justice shouldn't depend on which cop answers the phone that day," she said. ..News Source.. by Herb Jackson
May 14, 2009
Internet-safety bill takes aim at sexting
January 27, 2009
DC- UNH report: Technology alone can't protect minors from online sex predators
1-27-2009 Washington DC:
DOVER — A year after popular social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook agreed to a series of technical restrictions aimed at protecting children from online predators, a national report released Wednesday that relied heavily on research by the University of New Hampshire cautions against an overreliance on technology to address the problem.
The report, "Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies," also found the risks children face online are "not significantly different than those they face offline, and that as they get older, minors themselves contribute to some of the problems."
The report was compiled by a task force that included Internet service providers, social networking sites, and child safety organizations. UNH's Crimes against Children Research Center contributed about two-thirds of the research used in the report, according to Director David Finkelhor.
The report was presented during the fifth annual "State of the Net" conference Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
Last month, the report was reviewed by dozens of attorneys general across the country.
It found that some of the steps taken by social networking sites, such as setting up forums for high school students only and prohibiting registered sex offenders from using the sites, "are helpful in mitigating some risks to minors online, but none is fail-safe."
To complement the use of technology, greater resources should be allocated to education initiatives for schools, libraries, law enforcement, and social service organizations, the report stated.
"Our basic view is that the problem is not there are sex offenders who can see children and write them," Finkelhor said. "I'm not really sure technical solutions and attempts to restrict who can communicate with whom will be all that effective ... the notion that somehow you create a "children's ghetto" — and that's what protects children — is based on a misunderstanding of the dynamics of this crime."
He added, "The key issue has to do with making sure children know how to deflect overtures."
That can be achieved mainly through education, he said. Making children aware of online predators needs to be part of their "life curriculum" taught by parents and teachers, he said.
The report emphasized sociological and family-related issues tend to be bigger risk factors for children who fall victim to Internet predators than the social networking sites themselves.
Finkelhor said based on data from 2002, about 1,000 people a year are arrested for the sexual solicitation of minors. He added with the rise in popularity of social networking sites, that number has probably risen in recent years.
In December, MySpace attracted about 70 million visitors to its site, compared with 50 million who visited Facebook in the same month, according to ComScore, a global website tracking firm.
New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte said that while the report was an important step forward in identifying how to combat online predators, it relied on "outdated and inadequate research that downplayed the effects of child predators."
"The task force report is one piece of information, but I don't want people to be left with the impression that there is not a problem," Ayotte said. "Unfortunately, we still see cases here in New Hampshire and across the country where children are being solicited."
The state's last high-profile case involved 28-year-old Craig Marcotte, of Manchester, who police say sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy he met on MySpace. Marcotte was arrested last April.
In a prepared statement, Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer, said the site has implemented more than 100 safety measures in the last two years, including: reviewing images for inappropriate content, checking discussion groups, removing registered sex offenders, enforcing age requirements, limiting contact between adults and minors, and collaborating with law enforcement on safety and education.
Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said in a statement the site has added privacy rules limiting the amount of information available through searches and used technology to track "anomalous" behavior.
Ayotte said multiple state laws regarding the online abuse of minors have been updated to include computer-related incidents. Indecent exposure, for example, now includes images sent over the Internet.
She added online predators remain a "very real" concern.
"It's not a problem that's going to be solved by any one group," she said. "It has to be a concerted effort." ..News Source.. by JASON CLAFFEY
November 22, 2008
The Net is a circuit of safety concerns
11-7-2007 National:
If you watch TV or read the news, you know sexual predators hang out on the Internet, looking for underage victims.
Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator" features men being lured by the promise of meeting underage girls. Several state attorneys general recently have called on social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook to ban registered sex offenders and make their sites safer. Newspapers have been filled with stories about the dangers children face when they post too much personal information. And victims have testified recently at congressional hearings.
Some worry that parents are falling victim to "predator panic" and overreacting to unlikely dangers, unintentionally turning children off to safety messages altogether.
"One of the misunderstandings that we think is widespread is that what sex offenders are doing is picking out kids (online) and stalking them and deceiving them and abducting them and raping them," says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
"That's not what's going on."
Abductions by strangers are so rare that many experts can't name a single case in which a predator attacked after only seeing a child's profile online.
'Grooming' their victims
In most cases, predators seek out vulnerable teens — those who post sexually suggestive pictures of themselves, talk about sex online or frequent places where hook-ups are made, Finkelhor says. They spend weeks, even months, forging a relationship and gaining the teens' trust.
Usually, those who become victims eventually agree to meet the perpetrator face to face; often they know that the person they're meeting is older. But by the time they meet him (usually it's a man), they often think they are in love. It's a process called "grooming," Finkelhor says.
"It's the kids who respond to somebody and start talking about sex that puts them at risk — or kids who use sites to communicate with lots of people they don't know, or put very sexualized images online," he says.
The Internet allows predators "to form supportive relationships with emotionally vulnerable teens," says Nancy Willard, author of Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the Internet Safely and Responsibly.
Though there are no comprehensive national annual figures on Internet crimes against children, Finkelhor says, overall sex crimes against children are down, with the notable exception of child pornography. Sexual abuse cases were down 51% from 1990 to 2005 — from 22.8 per 10,000 to 11.3 per 10,000 children, he says.
Feeling safe doesn't make it so
Studies show that most teens feel relatively safe online. A Pew Internet & American Life Project report last month showed that though children, especially girls, who posted pictures of themselves on social networks were more likely to be contacted by strangers, only 7% of online teens said they had ever had an interaction with a stranger that made them feel scared or uncomfortable.
And a report out last year by Finkelhor's center found that from 2000 through 2005, the number of children ages 10 to 17 who received unwanted solicitations online declined from 19% to 13%.
But calls to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's hotline have been on the rise, says president Ernie Allen. In 2005, there were 2,660 reports of online enticement of children; in 2006, there were 6,374. In the first eight months of 2007, there were 9,533. Some of the increase can be attributed to greater Internet use and increased awareness of the hotline, Allen says.
He agrees that education is a key to Internet safety. But he says the Internet does make it easier to prey on children.
"Just like in the physical world, those people who seek to prey upon kids go to where the kids are," Allen says. "We don't think the sky is falling, but there (are) adults hiding behind the relative anonymity of the Internet to try to achieve what they either can't achieve or can only achieve with great risk in the physical world. America's moms and dads really need to catch up."
Though it's good to educate children and parents about dangers, some experts worry that the message may backfire.
"If you are petrified of predators but are not worrying about cyber-bullies, loss of reputation, spending too much time online and the other less frightening but more likely dangers of online use, then you are misplacing your energy," says Larry Magid, co-director of ConnectSafely.org. "You're petrified of something that's probably not going to happen and failing to pay attention to the dangers that are far more likely."
Allen says messages should be balanced, but parents do need to stay aware of the problems. "The good news is that the vast majority of America's kids are much smarter and much more aware. …
"But the bad news is, there are a lot of (predators) out there who are still seeking, overwhelmingly for grooming and seduction. This remains a significant problem." ..News Source.. by Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY
