Social Networking

Seen at CNN:

Popular Internet social network MySpace said on Monday it reached an accord with eight U.S. state attorneys general and has worked out a legal mechanism to hand over information on convicted sex offenders found on its service.[...]

MySpace and the attorneys general group, led by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and North Carolina AG Roy Cooper, have worked out a system to hand over information to be used to pursue offenders, although that process could differ from state to state.[...]

Blumenthal said he has been issued a subpoena for the information. “Our subpoena compels this information right away — within hours not weeks, without delay — because it is vital to protecting children,” he said in a statement. “Social networking sites should not be playgrounds for predators.”

and privacy laws are apparently being mostly-preserved in the process, for which MySpace still deserves credit for taking the high ground for.

Blumenthal’s statement still irritates a sore spot I have when it comes to the treatment of sex offenders — if these folks are a danger to society, why are they free enough to have (for example) apparent unfettered access to a computer?

Seen in the AJC:

Citing federal privacy law, MySpace.com said Tuesday it won’t comply with a request by attorneys general from eight states to hand over the names of registered sex offenders who use the social networking Web site.[...]

In a letter Monday, attorneys general from North Carolina, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania asked MySpace to provide information about registered sex offenders using the site and where they live.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday blasted MySpace for refusing to share the information and said no subpoena is needed for MySpace to tell the attorneys general how many registered sex offenders use the site “or other information relating to possible parole violations.”

That’s got to be an uncomfortable situation MySpace is in. On the one hand, they can violate one of the few federal privacy laws in force and disclose personal information about some of its creepier users. On the other hand, obeying the law causes MySpace to look like it’s protecting predators.

I think the AGs’ deserve a bit of a wrist slap for acting in the vein of being media wh*res. If this were information of vital interest to their states, the subpoenas required and legal procedures to be followed aren’t particularly onerous.

However, I think it would have been strategically wiser for MySpace to issue a statement saying, “To give you attorneys general a feel for the size of the problem — we identified n predators in our database and removed their accounts. We would be pleased to share additional information if the appropriate legal procedures are followed. If this phenomenon is still perceived as a real problem, here are the technological challenges we face, and let’s work together to find a viable solution.”

And, of course, my regular observation still applies — If convicted sex offenders are such a danger to society, why the heck are they out and about? Either they have paid their debt to society and are free to move on with their lives, or they should be under close supervision if they pose a danger.

As seen at My Left Nutmeg, it appears that legislation that originally sought to provide stronger consumer protections from phishing and identity theft has morphed into something far more sinister.

The bill, as quoted at MLN reads:

(a) As used in this section:

1) “Protected computer” means any computer that, at the time of an alleged violation of any provision of this article involving that computer, was located within the State of Connecticut;

2) “Social networking website” means a website on the Internet that contains profile web pages of the members of the website containing the name or nickname of the member, photographs placed on the profile web page by the member, and other personal information about the member; contains links to other profile web pages on the social networking website of friends or associates of the member that can be accessed by other members or visitors to the website; and provides members of or visitors to the social networking website the ability to leave messages or comments on the profile web page that are visible to all or some visitors to the profile web page and may also include a form of electronic mail for members of the social networking website.

b) No owner or operator of a social networking website shall allow a minor using a protected computer to create or maintain a profile web page on a social networking website without first obtaining the permission of the minor’s parent or guardian and without providing such parent or guardian access to such profile web page at all times.

(c) Any owner or operator of a social networking website shall adopt and implement procedures to use independently obtainable information to confirm the accuracy of personal identification information collected from members, parents and guardians at the time of registration.

(d) A violation of any provision of this section shall constitute an unfair trade practice under subsection (a) of section 42-110b. For purposes of this section, each day that an owner or operator of a social networking website fails to adopt and implement the procedures required under subsection (c) of this section shall constitute a separate and distinct violation.

Of course, careful reading will find that the term “social networking website” is rather broadly defined and can effectively include webfora and blogs. Also, there’s the implicit obligation that folks running web fora and blogs that permit reader/commenter registration would have to seek to confirm the identities and ages of any participants who might possibly one day be located in the State of Connecticut, in order to comply with the law.

I’d be very concerned about this but for the fact that federal courts have generally ruled that statutory obligations for adults to confirm their ages and identities is “too much” in the eyes of the Constitution and common sense, at least given the current state of the art.

I wonder how long it will take Connecticut’s attorney general, Blumenthal, to propose the Great Firewall of Connecticut when he finds his efforts foiled.

I think that a Georgia legislator or two is somewhat misinformed about the efficacy of certain types of regulations online. From the AJC:

The measure would make it illegal for the owner or operator of a social networking Web site to allow minors to create or maintain a Web page without parental permission. Senate Bill 59 also would force MySpace.com and FaceBook.com to allow parents or guardians to have access to their children’s Web pages at all times.

Sen. Cecil Staton (R-Macon), the bill’s sponsor, said that while he believes parents should be actively involved and aware of their children’s activities, the social networking companies also should be held accountable for the safety of minors.

So, Senator Macon isn’t aware that online, everyone’s over 21? Or, perhaps teenagers in Georgia are far more truthful than the norm.

Seen at 27B/6:

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to force libraries and schools to ban social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms in order to save children from online predators, part of an election year campaign by Republicans to appeal to suburban voters, according to Declan’s News.com story[.]

The net thrown by Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 could include sites such as LiveJournal, Amazon, hosted wikis, AOL/Yahoo/Microsoft’s instant messaging software, Slashdot, Daily Kos, Redstate.org, Kuro5hin, all hosted blogging, Yelp, Ning and Yahoo 360.

I suppose that it’s illegal to send a few Congresscritters a clue. Jeez, overreach much?

From the Boston Herald:

From a wire service story:

The community college has blocked the site in response to complaints about sluggish Internet speed on campus computers.

An investigation found that heavy traffic at MySpace.com was eating up too much bandwidth, said August Alfonso, the school’s chief of information and technology. Forty percent of daily Internet traffic at the college involved the site, he said.

“This was more about us being able to offer Web-based instruction, and MySpace.com was slowing everything down,” President Carlos Garcia said.

I think after my exam tomorrow, I may have to spend a bit more time checking out MySpace. I’ve written before that I just don’t get the place from my brief visits there. Hopefully an afternoon of exploratin will enlighten me.

Or, I could just go ahead and start admitting that I’m getting old and don’t understand these young people today.

Boy, MySpace can’t win for losing in the media these days:

After relying heavily on fixed ” and thus vulnerable ” Web sites until early 2002, al Qaeda quickly switched to hiding its online operations within more legitimate bulletin boards and Internet sites offering free upload services or connecting through such popular social network sites as Orkut and MySpace.

Although that ABC News article specifically picks on MySpace…I think their headline writer was a bit unfair. The article itself is about the tricks terrorists and terrorist-supports are using to surreptitiously communicate on the net:

According to Pakistani intelligence sources, the use of free and anonymous e-mail services such as Yahoo! or Hotmail by al Qaeda operatives is widespread.

To avoid being intercepted, the messages are not sent but saved in the account’s draft box.

They can then be retrieved by other operatives by simply logging on to the same e-mail address ” with a shared password.

None of the tricks described in the article are all that surprising, at least not if you think about them for a moment.

I can’t wait to see what Homeland Security and Congress attempt to do with this information. Will we have to get new fancy identi-cards which we have to swipe or scan whenever we want to send an email, or log in to Gmail? OK, maybe not…but I could easily imagine new laws quietly being passed to grant intelligence agencies more authority to snoop.

That’s fine…assuming those agencies can be trusted.

I’ve written a few posts about MySpace here, usually in the context of media overhype of the site blended with how a few nefarious folks are abusing the space.

What I haven’t written about is the fact that the site doesn’t really make much sense to me. I didn’t want to admit what was most likely cluelessenss on my part.

Actually, my not getting it is apparently a sign of my impending geezerhood and senility. Via Scobelizer, I found this article by Danah Boyd that discusses the communication mode that makes MySpace work…and why it may seem bizarre to those of us old enough to remember the days before the net succumbed to perpetual September.

This has been fairly big news locally over the past few days:

The state attorney general’s office is investigating a website popular with teens that police say is linked to the arrest last month of a Berlin man accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old Bristol girl.

The website, MySpace.com, is also at the center of five sexual misconduct investigations in Middletown and is raising concerns among other police departments across the state, as well as with school officials and parents.

Bristol Police Chief John DiVenere said parents need to monitor information their children are putting on the site.

“I’ve seen some of the postings on the website and they are horrendous,” DiVenere said. “The way [teens] portray themselves and the photographs and personal information they provide for the site should raise a lot of concern for any responsible parent.”

I’ve written about this previously. It’s entirely understandable that teenagers would seek sites to express themselves and personalize in the virtual world. Sites like Livejournal and MySpace are wonderful places to network and find new friends with similar or complimentary interests. And, its a shame that sometimes teens (and adults) lack the wisdom to avoid crossing the line between self-expression and disclosing too much information.

And, it’s even more of a shame that there are those who would take advantage of younger people through what-should-be-innocuous sites like LJ and MySpace. Sometimes it seems like this is an awfully sick, sick world….