Bill To Bar Sex Offenders From Social Networking Sites

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and other lawmakers are planning on introducing a new bill to keep sex offenders off the social networking sites, Myspace and Facebook:

The law would require all registered sex offenders to submit any e-mail addresses and other Internet identifiers, such as screen names used for instant messaging, to the State Division of Criminal Justice Services within 10 days of their creation, just as with their home addresses.

The bill also would allow the state to share the e-mail addresses with sites like Facebook and MySpace. Officials with both companies have agreed to check their databases against the lists provided by the state. If the addresses match, the companies said that they would terminate the users’ accounts and alert the authorities. When setting up accounts with the sites, users must submit valid e-mail addresses.

Although this bill is not 100% foolproof, it is a step in the right direction. The next bill that should be introduced needs to contain provisions where convicted felons, who engage in online scams, are banned from the social networking sites.

For example, Stan "Pampy" Barre, III, a convicted felon had his Myspace page deleted when the site realized that he was impersonating a famous rapper. That however, did not stop Stan "Pampy" Barre, III. He just started using the site again under another account. Social networking sites need to institute provisions that ban people, like Mr. Barre from using their sites since he used the social networking site, Myspace, to lure an underage person into engaging in drinking.