Lawmen demand names of sex offenders using MySpace website

Published on Tuesday 15 May 2007 00:44

THE top law enforcement officers from eight US states yesterday sent a letter to MySpace.com, demanding the social networking site hand over the names of registered sex offenders who use the service.

One attorney general branded the website "a playground for predators". The letter asks MySpace, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, to provide information on how many registered sex offenders are using the site and where they live.

Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's attorney general, said that he learned of the large number of sex offenders on the site as a result of an investigation, but did not make clear his source.

"Mixing sex offenders with children on MySpace is a recipe for tragedy," he said. "MySpace is more than a place for friends to meet. It's a playground for predators."

The attorneys general of Georgia, Idaho, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and New Hampshire also signed a letter to the company asking it to provide the information.

Roy Cooper, the attorney general of North Carolina, said law enforcement agencies have identified more than 200 cases nationwide of children "lured out of their home by predators they met on MySpace".

In their letter, the attorneys general also asked that MySpace describe the steps it has taken to warn users about sex offenders and remove their profiles.

MySpace's policy prevents children under 14 from setting up profiles, but it relies on users to specify their ages.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Defence (DoD) has decided to block access to 13 websites from its network, including MySpace and YouTube, because of an overabundance of "recreational traffic".

General B B Bell, the military commander in South Korea, said use of those sites "impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge".