NY AG pushes e-safety bill, Facebook, MySpace back it

New York's attorney general and state legislative leaders presented a bill
on Tuesday aimed at protecting people from sexual predators on the Internet,
as Facebook, MySpace
and Yahoo backed the effort.

In a press conference, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader
Joseph L. Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced legislation they
called "groundbreaking" in its proposed restrictions and controls
of sexual offenders' online activities.

"Today I believe we're proposing the most comprehensive, smartest, toughest
law in the nation to keep people safe online, especially minors," Cuomo
said.

The Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP) responds
to the widely documented use that sexual offenders make of the Internet, in
particular social-networking sites, to stalk and victimize people, particularly
minors.

Specifically, e-STOP would require convicted sex offenders to register their
e-mail addresses, instant message screen names and any other online identifiers
with the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. That data would
then be made available to social-networking companies and other online services
so that they can then block access to sexual offenders and remove them from
their sites.

The bill also calls for allowing sentencing courts and the state's Parole Board
to restrict the online activities of sex offenders who used the Internet to
commit their crimes, victimized a minor or are considered highly likely to repeat
their offenses. In particular, the bill would ban many sex offenders from using
social-networking sites.

There are more than 627,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., about 25,000
of whom are in New York, according to Cuomo's office.

State attorneys general have been very vocal about their concerns over online
safety, in particular of minors who are preyed upon by sexual offenders on social-networking
sites, which are widely used by teens.

The attorneys general have often criticized Facebook, MySpace and other sites
for, in their view, not doing enough to protect minors, but the two sides have
recently seemed to get on better terms and have rolled out several joint security
initiatives, partnerships and agreements.

The e-STOP bill is needed to help social-networking companies keep their sites
safer and will complement these companies' in-house security efforts, Cuomo
said.

MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam agreed and said laws need to
keep up with the times and technology. "We hope [e-STOP] becomes a model
for other states to follow," Nigam said.

"As Facebook and other Internet companies do our best to exclude [from
our sites] those who would do our users harm, we need help from the government,"
said Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer.

Ideally, legislation like e-STOP would get enacted widely in U.S. states and
also at the federal level, Cuomo said.