E-Stop Bill Has FAIL Built-In
New York introduced a bill to their legislative assembly to ban known child molesters and other sex offenders from contacting kids online. They are asking all of the dirty pervs (who have never been known to do anything “sneaky”), to turn over their screennames, IM handles, anonymous email accounts on Yahoo, hotmail and gmail, to the state.
Once the state has the information, they will allow Facebook and MySpace to access this database. Anyone using one of those email addresses will not be allowed to signup to the social networking sites.
From CNET here:
New York’s lawmakers have introduced legislation to keep convicted sex offenders off the likes of Facebook and MySpace.
In a press conference on Tuesday, New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo, state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, and state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver unveiled details of the Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (E-Stop), a new bill to crack down on the presence of sex offenders on the Internet, specifically on sites where they could get in touch with minors. The legislation aims to restrict convicted sex offenders’ Web use, banning them from social networks like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace.
Under E-Stop, registered sex offenders in New York would have to turn over online identity information, such as e-mail addresses and instant messaging screen names, to the state. Participating social-networking sites would have access to the registry so they could block access.
These politicians are breaking their own arms patting themselves on their backs to congratulate themselves for a huge steaming pile of FAIL. Email addresses are cheap and plentiful, as are screen names. Even if the sex offenders comply and turn over their data, what’s to stop them from using a different alias? Nothing, that’s what.
New York Legislators are hopping aboard the bus to Fail City.
As I have said before, the problem with criminals using social networking sites can be solved by a for-fee payment system using a credit card. The payment doesn’t have to be expensive, merely 1 dollar per year. You see, there is only one unique identifier for all Americans, and that is the social security number. All criminals register their social security numbers into a law enforcement database. All credit cards are tied back to the cardholder’s social security number. Allow social networking sites to check credit histories (by machine to enforce privacy) to match the social security numbers with a national criminal database, and problem solved.
And if the social networking sites print the url of the profiles onto the billing records, parents would be better able to keep track of children who are using their parents’ cards to get an online profile, and it will also enforce age verification since you must be 18 to get a credit card. Identity theft victims would be able to see when someone used their card to purchase a facebook profile. Criminal activity such as cyberbullying and fraud would decrease if such activity could more readily be traced to a real live person who holds the account.
E-Stop proponents can cheer if they want to. They have solved nothing.
