AfterTek

Lawmakers have created a bill that will keep sexual predators away from Facebook and Myspace. The bill allows for the e-mail address and restricted use of the internet against the serious sex offenders. The initiative behind the bill is called the Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act or E-Stop. The legislation restricts certain sex offenders’ (high risk Level 3 offenders defined as those offenders with a “high risk to commit another sex crime) use of the Internet, updating Megan’s Law “for the Internet age.”

E-Stop would require sex offenders to register any and all email accounts and Internet identifiers used in instant messaging, chatting and other forms of Internet communication and social networking with the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services just as they would register their home addresses. If the said offender creates an email address and doesn’t tell the authorities with 10 days of its creation, he or she is violating the law, Mr. Cuomo said, and could be hit with a violation of their parole or probation.

The bill also gives the division of criminal justice services to pass along the email addresses and identifiers of some sex offenders to the networking sites (so far MySpace and Facebook have committed to working with New York) so that they can remove any sex offenders that have registered their emails with the sites. MySpace and Facebook officials support the bill and said that they would notify law enforcement of any sex offenders they catch using their site’s services.

“We avoid letting our children go to the playground, now. We avoid the opportunity for them to walk to school alone and not have some protection, or go to the mall alone. Yet our children are as much at risk in our own homes as they are anywhere, on our computers,” Mr. Lentol said. “We have to get up to snuff.”