News for the Week of May 13, 2007
By far the biggest story in youth-tech news this past week involved a bunch of state attorneys general and MySpace...
AGs ask, MySpace reponds
Eight state attorneys general Monday sent a letter to MySpace requesting that, by the end of the month, the social-networking site turn over data on registered sex offenders who use the site," CNET reports. The AGs represent Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
MySpace responded Tuesday that it was prepared to work with the attorneys general, but "its cooperation hinges on whether the state officials follow the law and subpoena the names, a step that a leader of the state attorneys general said was not necessary," the New York Times reports (MySpace was referring to a federal law basically barring disclosure of criminal records without a subpoena). The social-networking site also said it had "already taken down the profiles of thousands of sex offenders since the beginning of May when it began running its own database check." In an earlier statement, Nigam said MySpace "had launched software in early May to proactively identify and remove any known sex offenders from the site." The company's doing so using a national database of sex-offender data that it created with the help of ID-verification company Sentinel Tech.
More needed
But even with that national list, finding all registered sex offenders is difficult without a law requiring them to register their email addresses and other online contact info. MySpace lobbied for such a law last year, and Sens. McCain and Schumer introduced legislation to this effect early this year (see my 12/8/06 item). The legislation's still pending. Although eliminating all sex offenders on any social site would certainly help, not all pedophiles have been arrested and convicted. Too, MySpace is not the only social site where they could be active, and I wonder if the attorneys general plan to send similar letters to the many other social-networking sites that have teenage members.
In other news...
- Can online kids be verified? This question keeps coming up because politicians keep insisting it has to happen and ID verification professionals keep saying it's not possible. And it's not, actually, unless or until personal information on minors is as available as personal information on adults. By personal info, I mean credit records, mortgages, mother's maiden name, social security number, etc., all pulled together in the kind of database credit bureaus have. There is no such database on minors for any ID or age-verification technology to check against. And does this society, particularly parents, want such a national database on children to exist, given all the database hacking and theft in the news in recent years and given the attractiveness of squeaky-clean minors' credit records to ID thieves? In fact, there is a federal law that protects children's personal info in the US. So, certainly, online adults' ages and identities can be verified, but not children's. Jacqui Cheng recently blogged about this in ArtTechnica.com, referring to a one-day conference that thoroughly vetted the options and aired many perspectives, hosted by the Washington-based Progress & Freedom Foundation; here's the transcript.
- Technically speaking a sex offender? A news story about proposed legislation in Connecticut that would revise the state's statutory rape law brings out the tragic, unintended consequences of labeling some people sex offenders. The Hartford Courant tells the story of a man who, at 18, was convicted of having sex with his then-15-year-old girlfriend, "who told investigators she was a willing partner." It appears that the girl's non-custodial father turned him in. The Courant also explains that if the age gap between the two teens had been less than two years, "he wouldn't have been arrested under the state's second-degree sexual assault statute." The Courant also reports that "attorneys and legislators have complained that the two-year age difference is too narrow and that teenagers experimenting with sex can be treated like sexual predators because of it. Others say a felony conviction stigmatizes teenagers who wouldn't otherwise have been arrested and makes it difficult for them to find work." So legislation is being considered in the state legislature that "would increase the allowable age gap between sexually active teens from two to four years."
- Youth: Cellphones not landlines. More than a quarter of US 18-to-24-year-olds don't even have landlines, and even more - 29% - of 25-to-29-year-olds are cellphone-only users, the Associated Press reports. That's according to a just-released study by the Centers for Disease Control. "The percentages declined with age after that, with 2% of those 65 or over having only cellphones." Youth shares this move away from landlines with one other demographic group: the poor. The CDC told the AP that "the trend away from landline phones affects the telephone industry, 911 emergency service providers, and government and private polling organizations, which rely heavily on random calls to households with wired telephones."
- Cough-med abuse promoted on Web One in 10 teenagers (2 million+) have abused cough medicine, according to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. "Both in liquid and gel-cap forms, they're highly accessible and cheap and come with little social stigma attached. But, like other over-the-counter drugs, they can be dangerous when abused," US News & World Report reports. It adds that "thousands of Web sites promote the abuse of cough medicine" and detail ways to use it. Abuse of its active ingredient, dextromethorphan, can cause "serious cognitive problems, including psychosis and paranoid delusions," according to US News, which adds that some abusers are taking 25-50 times recommended dosage. Parents should also know that there are no treatment programs or FDA-approved treatment specific to cough-medicine abuse.
