TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Category: Social Media Crime

  • Webcam Lawlessness

    Webcam Lawlessness

    Young Turn to Web Sites Without Rules:

    This is an article from the New York Times that talks about new websites that are social sites, sort of like MySpace. However, they allow live cam to cam chat between users sometimes without any moderation or enforceable age restrictions.

    Popular Web sites like YouTube and MySpace have hired the equivalent of school hallway monitors to police what visitors to their sites can see and do by cracking down on piracy and depictions of nudity and violence.

    So where do the young thrill-seekers go?

    Increasingly, to new Web sites like Stickam.com, which is building a business by going where others fear to tread: into the realm of unfiltered live broadcasts from Web cameras.

    The site combines elements of more popular sites, but with a twist. In addition to designing their own pages and uploading video clips, its users broadcast live video of themselves and conduct face-to-face video chats with other users, often from their bedrooms and all without monitoring by any of Stickam’s 35 employees.

    Well, if that doesn’t have predator haven written all over it, I don’t know what does. It’s almost like the owners of the site see a hornet’s nest and decided to whack it with a stick. Once the first lawsuit comes, they’ll probably change their minds.

    What makes it even worse is that the site’s owners have the unabashed arrogance to say their site is safer than MySpace…

    Mr. Kihioka of Stickam said that in some respects, his site was actually safer than other social networks. Live video feeds let users ‘know who they are talking to,’ he said. ‘Unlike MySpace, it is hard to disguise yourself.’ But he added that his company had the same concerns about child safety as MySpace and was working on an automated system that would monitor live video feeds for indecency.

    Here’s an idea, Sparky. How about getting that little bug straightened out before going live?

    Not only that, but think of how many sites have gotten in trouble for unmoderated cam to cam chats or unmoderated webcams. Yahoo, I’m looking at you.

    Considering the site’s feature has been banned by MySpace itself, that should tell you something about the relative safety of its features.

    Thanks to Jessica for the link.

  • Matthew Bergeron: Manchester Molester

    Matthew Bergeron: Manchester Molester

    Man charged after MySpace hookup with girl, 12:

    19-year-old Matthew Bergeron of Manchester, New Hampshire was arrested for sexual assault after meeting up with a 12-year-old girl on MySpace.

    Matthew Bergeron, 19, was arrested Saturday on three counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault, five counts of felonious sexual assault, one count of indecent exposure and one count of use of computers prohibited, police said.

    Here’s the thing. I found two MySpaces for a Matthew Bergeron of Manchester. They’re definitely two different people. Rather than posting both and risk branding an innocent man as a predator, I decided not to post either of them until someone can send me some confirmation.

  • Louisiana MySpace sting

    Louisiana MySpace sting

    Santa’s Helpers child predator operation:

    This is a story about an internet sting that took place recently in Louisiana.

    In Acadia Myspace.com helped the Acadia parish sheriff’s department and the Attorney General’s office take alleged child predators off the street.

    Christopher Patton, Mark Whitney, Troy Kimble, and Robert Brenneman were arrested during the sting, which involved setting up fake Myspace profiles of underage girls to which the suspects allegedly responded and set up meetings.

    “There are a number of statutes that play. The person who exposes himself on his webcam has violated the law. The person who arranges to meet a child for sex is breaking the law. The person who asks for child porn has violated the law. The typical has violated all three.

    And it just wouldn’t be Christmas without the MySpace profiles of at least some of the suspects.

    I was able to find the MySpaces of Patton, Kimble, and Brenneman.

    Thanks to Kirk M. for the tip.

  • Brandon Bigsby: sex offender and parole violator

    Brandon Bigsby: sex offender and parole violator

    MySpace.com Used To Track Sex Offender:

    Registered sex offender Brandon Bigsby, 24, must have really been addicted to MySpace considering he broke basically all of his parole conditions to use it…

    On Thursday, officers were dispatched to Taft College, where they found Bigsby’s GPS tracking device. He was believed to have left an hour previously to the deputies’ arrival. Deputies tracked Bigsby to the Beale Library in downtown Bakersfield, where he accessed a MySpace forum. Officials arrived and found Bigsby, where he was arrested.

    Bigsby pleaded guilty to one count of a lewd and lascivious with a child under 14 years of age in May 2003, according to Superior Court records. He was sentenced to three years at Wasco State Prison and required to register as a sex offender. He is listed on the Megan’s Law Web site.

    If parole violations aren’t enough to keep predators off MySpace I don’t see how any legislation could either.

    I was unable to find a MySpace for Bigsby.

  • More on Virginia’s proposed MySpace legislation

    More on Virginia’s proposed MySpace legislation

    False promises on MySpace safety:

    I’m kind of relieved that I’m not the only person who thinks Virginia’s proposed MySpace legislation is pointless…

    Flummoxed by bad press, the folks at MySpace.com are scrambling to derail the perception that they’ve become the preferred dating service of pedophiles.

    The first arrow in their anti-Cupid’s quiver is to enact state and federal laws requiring that convicted sex offenders register their e-mail addresses just as they already must register their physical one. Armed with the new database, MySpace and other sites will be able to bar the cyber-gates against perverts.

    On Monday, Virginia’s Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced his backing for the required legislative changes here.

    McDonnell is right to be concerned about the issue, but if his loud endorsement causes parents to ease up on supervising children’s Internet use, the effort will be worse than irrelevant. The idea is so ridiculously full of holes that any predator familiar with such obscure Internet technologies as Yahoo! and Google can get around it with a minute’s effort.

  • Va. Attorney General piles on MySpace

    Va. Attorney General piles on MySpace

    Virginia Attorney General Proposes MySpace Bill:

    Another State Attorney General who doesn’t get it jumps on the MySpace scarewagon. This time from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

    Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced plans today for legislation to require convicted sex offenders to register their online identities with the state.

    That would allow social networking Web sites like MySpace to delete or block access. McDonnell’s says in a statement that Virginia would be the first state to propose registration of e-mail addresses and instant messaging identities on the state’s sex offender registry.

    McDonnell says it’s important these changes be made at a state level because most prosecutions of sex offenders happen at the state level. There are more than 550-thousand registered sex offenders in the United States and 13-thousand in Virginia.

    MySpace officials applauded the Virginia announcement, saying the Internet “is a community as real as any other neighborhood and is in need of similar safeguards.”

    In my opinion, this proposed legislation is just to garner votes from the equally clueless soccer mom types.

    Again I say, what’s to stop the sex offenders from creating another account different from one registered with the state. And how will this prevent those predators who haven’t been caught from claiming another victim?

    When you have those questions answered, then you’ll have some legislation with teeth instead of the same old crap that legislators have been trotting out.

    Politicians and lawmakers should learn how to use the internet first before they start legislating it.

    And again, not one mention of more vigilant parenting.

  • Douglas Russell

    Douglas Russell

    Man met alleged victim on Myspace:

    PEKIN – A Pekin man is being charged with committing criminal sex abuse three months after he is alleged to have had sex with the 14-year-old girl he met on the Internet.

    Douglas M. Russell, 18, was arrested in September for criminal sexual abuse.

    The charges were filed on Dec. 6, the same day police arrested Russell for allegedly having sex with the 14-year-old girl again.

    On Sept. 12, the Pekin Daily Times reported that Russell and the 14-year-old girl met through the popular networking Web site Myspace.com. According to police reports, the two spent hours chatting online before they finally decided to meet.

    Arrangements were made between Russell and the 14-year-old girl for him to come to her residence so he could crawl through her bedroom window, police said.

    Through their investigation, officers learned that Russell had been to another Pekin residence. Officers went to that house and spoke with a 14-year-old girl who told officers that Russell had recently left the house, Salmon said.

    The 14-year-old girl told police she heard a knock on her bedroom window, saw that it was Russell and let him into the house.

    Detective Dustin Salmon said police did not know if the two continued to communicate between the summer encounter and the most recent incident.

    Russell is charged with criminal sex abuse, a Class A misdemeanor, criminal trespass to private property, a Class 4 felony and obstructing justice, a Class 4 felony.

    I was unable to find a MySpace for Russell.

    And again I have to ask why these 18-year-olds are continually going after underage girls. Can’t you get girls your own age? If you have to tap on somebody’s bedroom window late at night, you know you’re doing something wrong.

  • The overlegislation of MySpace continues

    The overlegislation of MySpace continues

    And while we’re plugging other blogs (because you know, we were) Pat from BelchSpeak has a great post about new proposed legislation that would make it illegal for sex offenders to use fraudulent e-mails to sign up for MySpace…

    The danger in this is that the Federal government suddenly gains the power to monitor the email activity of everyone in order to enforce a law against a small portion of the population. Otherwise this law banning the use of non-registered email addresses is unenforceable. Are liberals going to be outraged over the civil rights of sex offenders being violated?

    Thank you, Charles Schumer and John McCain. Is there nothing you two won’t try to legislate?

  • More on the MySpace database

    More on the MySpace database

    Can MySpace Protect Its People?:

    This is basically an article from Internet News about MySpace’s declaration of their sexual offender database and how they’re going to keep sex offenders off MySpace and how that’s not going to work…

    “We are committed to keeping sex offenders off MySpace,” Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace chief security officer, said in a statement. The database is a “significant step to keep our members as safe as possible.”

    MySpace said Sentinal Safe resulted from talks with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. But in a statement, Blumenthal called the new measure “ineffective without age and identity verification.

    “Convicted sexual offenders” can swiftly circumvent these protections by using fake names,” he said. The tobacco and alcohol industries already employ age and identity verification on the Internet, he added.

    Nigam said a gap will still remain in the ability to keep sex offenders off social-networking sites until legislation is passed forcing convicted offenders to use registered e-mail addresses.

    How can you force anyone to continually use the same e-mail address? That sounds like a waste of taxpayer money to me. Just because you can legislate something doesn’t make it feasible.

    The article also quotes some really smart people…

    “If predators really want to get around [the barrier] they can easily do it,” Ron Teixeira, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, said. A blog titled MyCrimeSpace.com lists news items of adults meeting children on the social-networking site.

    Well, that’s not all I do here, but you get the point.

  • New Jersey calls out the usual suspects

    New Jersey calls out the usual suspects

    Keep kids’ photos off Web sites, state attorney general warns:

    The New Jersey State Attorney General thinks pictures are the problem…

    The playground isn’t the only place parents should watch over their children, state Attorney General Stuart Rabner says.

    Rabner said Web sites that let users put their picture online are unsafe and the owners of those sites should adopt a policy to make it easier for people to report harassment and crime online. He said he is mainly concerned with social networking sites, sites made up of picture profiles and descriptions of children and adult users who befriend each other and comment on each other’s pages.

    Rabner asked the chief financial officers of 10 social networking Web sites, such as Myspace, Xanga and Facebook, to consider installing a link that would appear on every page of their site, on which users could click if they felt bothered by another person.

    This link would alert not only site officials but also law enforcement officers in order to catch criminal activity, such as sexual harassment, he said.

    In a Nov. 16 letter to Web site owners, Raber expressed the need for such a policy.

    “The use of your service for illegal activity, and as a medium through which child predators identify, learn about and contact potential victims, poses a serious threat to the public safety of some of our most vulnerable citizens and creates significant risks for the positive reputation and continued operations of your business,” Rabner said.

    “I believe these goals can best be accomplished by making it easier for users to identify and report suspicious activity and illegal content, such as child pornography.”

    Yeah, that won’t cause a plethora of false alarms.

    I noticed that nowhere in his letter did Attorney General Rabner call for better parenting.