MySpace: Offenders’ Profiles Removed
By Colin Poitras, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
May 16–Popular Internet service MySpace.com said Tuesday that it has removed all the registered sex offenders who it believes set up profiles on its social networking site, but Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the company still isn’t doing enough.
MySpace’s announcement came the day after Blumenthal and seven other attorneys general around the country wrote to MySpace demanding detailed information on thousands of convicted sex offenders they suspected of using the site.
But officials at MySpace said Tuesday they cannot give the attorneys general the names, addresses and other personal information about the sex offenders without violating federal and state laws.
“We are doing everything short of breaking the law to ensure that the information about these predators gets to proper authorities,” MySpace’s chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam said Tuesday in an e-mailed statement to reporters.
MySpace started using special software to match personal profile information to a national sex offender database 12 days ago, Nigam said. Company officials have not disclosed how many sex offender matches were made.
Blumenthal said the detailed information he requested is critical for law enforcement to pursue any sex offenders who may be violating the conditions of their probation or parole by accessing the network.
“We will use every available avenue to pursue this because it is vital to protecting children,” Blumenthal said late Tuesday.
Even though MySpace has said it cleaned out its profile base, Blumenthal said he wanted to know more about what the company did and what assurances it can give that offenders will not be able to create new profiles using different names.
Contact Colin Poitras at cpoitras@courant.com.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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