Attorneys General Demand MySpace Give Up Sex Offenders

The top law enforcement officials in eight states are demanding that MySpace identify the sex offenders it found in a search of its user rolls inspired by my report on MySpace sex offenders last year.

Last October, I reported how I used a Perl script to screen-scrape the Department of Justice's National Sex Offender Registry and run all the names and ZIP codes through MySpace's search engine. The result was 744 verified matches from half the search results -- 497 of them with convictions for crimes against children. One of them was actively trolling for underage boys, and was arrested as a result of my investigation.

MySpace responded in December by announcing that it was hiring a background-check company called Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. to conduct a similar search, using a new, custom database containing height, weight, eye and hair color, and the complete offense history of each perp. Now word has leaked out of Sentinel that, as a result of the more advanced search, "thousands of known registered sexual offenders have been confirmed as MySpace members," according to a letter to MySpace (.pdf) signed by eight attorneys general.

If true, this dramatically exceeds the report from Wired magazine, which found 744 registered sex offenders with MySpace profiles. Perhaps thousands more sexual predators -- not registered or using fictitious names -- are lurking on your web site. We remain concerned about the design of your site, the failure to require parental permission, and the lack of safeguards necessary to protect our children.

We therefore request the following information: First, how many registered sex offenders in the Sentinel database have been cross-referenced against MySpace's membership? Second, what is the exact number of known registered sex offenders who have been identified as members of MySpace to date? Please forward a list of the names of the registered sex offenders that you have identified with profiles on MySpace and the states in which they reside. Third, what steps has MySpace taken to alert law enforcement officials as well as MySpace users of such sex offenders? Finally, what steps has MySpace taken to remove sex offender profiles and how many have been removed?

All good questions. But I don't know why the AGs want the names of the sex offenders -- it's not yet illegal for a former sex offender to be on MySpace. The social networking site had planned to ban all the sex offenders it found, so maybe law enforcement hopes to investigate them first, and bust any recidivists before MySpace scatters them to the four winds.

The letter is signed by the attorneys general of Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. It asks MySpace to respond by May 29th.

Update: In a statement, MySpace told El Reg: "We are in the initial stages of cross referencing our membership against
Sentinel's registered sex offender database and removing any confirmed matches."

No word on why it's still in the "initial stages" five months later.