Online protection deserves approval

5/30/07
If there's one item on the political agenda that all parties agree on, it's protecting children. A bill passed in Hartford last week by the House of Representatives and now up for approval in the Senate is another step toward that goal.
In another move to target sexual predators operating on the Internet, the bill would require convicted offenders to register all e-mail addresses with local authorities. They're already required to register physical addresses, so this is just another step in an ongoing process.
The move comes in the midst of an effort to protect users of popular online networking sites like MySpace.com. Parents and authorities worry that unsupervised users are in danger from adult offenders lurking on the site, often using false identities. In conjunction with a nationwide effort for states to force such sites to turn over information on registered offenders, this latest push will help cross-identify potential criminals.
Last 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 people from Connecticut. MySpace released the names to law enforcement officials after receiving subpoenas from a number of states including Connecticut, where authorities are reviewing the data to see whether any of the offenders, by creating the profiles, violated the conditions of their probation and parole.
The bill stipulates that the e-mail addresses would be kept by police but would not be part of the state's sex offender registry accessible to the public on the Internet. That's a good idea; police need the knowledge for investigations, but putting the addresses online would be an invitation for harassment. State officials are also looking for ways to force the networking sites to verify the ages of all users before they are allowed access, but that is a longer-term process.
It's always a good idea to protect children whenever possible, and the online realm is a vast, poorly understood new frontier, where parents and authorities are still learning their ways around. Guardians and law enforcement personnel have a long way to go before the mere act of unsupervised Internet surfing by a child doesn't bring a few shivers.
And while this bill deserves passage, nothing can substitute for parenting and one-on-one guidance. The best we can hope for is that if a child comes across a suspect individual, in person or online, the child will know how to react and how to protect himself. Not all dangers can be legislated away, but we can encourage common sense, awareness of potential trouble and knowledge. And we can do our best to keep those situations as rare as possible.