A Cyber Eye On Predators

May 25, 07:05 AM

Current Headlines: By Colin Poitras, The Hartford Courant, Conn.

May 25--Internet e-mail addresses used by convicted Connecticut sex offenders may soon be in the hands of law enforcement.

In the latest attempt to stop online predators, the House passed a bill Thursday requiring convicted sex offenders to register all their e-mail addresses, in addition to their home addresses, with state police.

"We feel this is a very, very important tool as we go forward to protect children," state Rep. Stephen D. Dargan, D-West Haven, said in announcing the proposed legislation at a morning press conference. Dargan is co-chairman of the legislature's public safety committee.

The House of Representatives passed the measure by a 149-0 vote Thursday afternoon. The legislation, part of an omnibus bill dealing with changes to existing sex crime laws, now goes to the Senate.

For now, lawmakers are focusing on the e-mail registration effort as the primary way to increase Internet security on popular social networking sites such as MySpace.com.

The proposal to require e-mail registration grew out of recent discussions between Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and executives from MySpace, who have been working together for the past two weeks to crack down on convicted sex offenders using the popular youth-oriented site.

Earlier this week, MySpace officials said they had identified more than 5,000 registered sex offenders nationally who had created personal profiles on the network, including about 100 individuals from Connecticut.

MySpace released the names to law enforcement officials after receiving subpoenas from Connecticut and several other states. Connecticut authorities are currently reviewing the data to see whether any of the offenders, by creating the profiles, violated the conditions of their probation and parole.

Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer and a Cheshire native, was present Thursday when the e-mail bill was announced at the Capitol.

"This is a critical issue for Internet safety," Nigam said.

"As the social activities in the online communities increasingly mirror that of the offline world, our laws need to change with the times," Nigam said. "We can no longer unwittingly provide an advantage to predators online."

The bill stipulates that the e-mail addresses would be maintained by police but would not be part of the state's sex offender registry accessible to the public on the Internet.

Blumenthal has been pushing state lawmakers to adopt an alternate bill requiring social networking sites such as MySpace to verify the age of every user before allowing them access to the network. The bill is pending in the legislature but its future appears in doubt with Thursday's passage of the e-mail registration bill.

Capitol insiders say Blumenthal's proposal has some technical problems. MySpace executives favor the e-mail registration campaign, which is being touted on the national level by Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Charles Schumer of New York. Federal legislation requiring e-mail registration is pending. Three states, Virginia, Kentucky and Arizona, have already passed similar measures.

While supportive of e-mail registration, Blumenthal said the bill doesn't go far enough.

"This step would be historic -- but this one step alone is insufficient," said Blumenthal, who is co-chairman of a national task force of attorneys general studying Internet safety. Blumenthal said age verification is a more thorough way to screen out potentially dangerous individuals.

"Many predators have never been convicted of any sexual offense and many more use aliases and fake information," Blumenthal said. "Against this threat, we need age verification, identity checks and other measures to protect children on social networking sites."

The proposed e-mail legislation requires convicted sex offenders to register all their e-mail addresses, instant message addresses and any other Internet identifiers with state police. Failure to comply carries the same penalties as not reporting an offender's home address, which carries a jail term of up to five years.

The legislation also makes it a crime, punishable by a prison term up to 10 years, for those misrepresenting their age to entice a minor on the Internet to engage in sexual activity. It also includes people who repair computers as "mandated reporters" of child abuse should they discover possible evidence of maltreatment or sexual abuse.

House Speaker James A. Amann, D-Milford, who sponsored the 1995 state law requiring sex offender registration, said adding e-mails to the requirements makes sense.

Contact Colin Poitras at cpoitras@courant.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Hartford Courant, Conn.

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