Social Media & Law Enforcement

Sex offenders are being purged from social media sites due to new laws, “Amen.” Sex offenders being banned from social media sites is not a new tactic, but due to recent state laws in several states this process has been streamlined. There is also a national law under construction by the US Justice Department to require a national email registry for sex offenders. While this is an admirable effort on part of the social media giants Facebook and MySpace, there is much more work to be done.

MySpace has been the most aggressive in seeking and banning registered sex offenders from their website. FaceBook has also been diligent in launching identified sex offenders from their social media community. But what about unidentified sex offenders? What about dishonest sex offenders? Social media websites can only do so much based on the information they have, information they do not have they cannot act on.

I applaud the efforts by Facebook and MySpace, what about Twitter, FriendFeed, Friendster, Ning, and so on. Sex offenders are not rehabilitated when banned from Facebook or MySpace, they merely migrate to other websites that are not yet working to ban sex offenders. There is also a disparity in comparison to the numbers of users and banned sex offenders. Facebook registered just shy of 130,000,00 unique visitors for October 2009 and MySpace a little less than 50,000,000 unique visitors during this same time. In comparison Facebook has only banned 2,782 identified sex offenders and MySpace 1,796 as of this year. Statistically speaking the numbers don’t match up with the amount of people using both these social media sites.

So what about the dishonest sex offenders, yea, I know that sounds unlikely (insert sarcasm here)? Sex offenders do not always register for regular physical monitoring that almost all states require, let alone registering for email monitoring. They could also lie! Yes, opening a new account on any social media website requires an active email that is it. Unless the US government allows for social media websites to scrub emails for actual identification of the user then banning sex offenders based on their honesty is like the kid putting his finger in the leaking dike.

Being aware of your surroundings is the best way to prevent from becoming a victim in real life, off the grid. This same strategy should be used when online and communicating with others on social media websites. Tell your wife, children, and friends to be careful for users who ask funky sexual questions, which at first may not seem weird. But, take into consideration that if you are being sought out by someone in a social media site and you feel uncomfortable, then let your intuition reign and ban the person. Another powerful feature on all social media websites is you can report any user for inappropriate use. Don’t do this willy nilly, do this only if you are truly a victim of a weirdo.

Social media websites that are making an effort to ban identified sex offenders is a noble cause, but this attempt is a drop in the bucket. The current efforts based on the amount of users could be in my view window dressing. I wonder if any of the social media sites have actually thought about hiring prior law enforcement to help in they’re policing of their sites. The day is coming where crime will increase in social media communities. I hope the social media heavy weights are preparing for the problems that come when a lot of people get together. Remember criminals are mostly opportunistic, so be careful, use common sense and prevent from becoming an online victim.

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