Facebook's safety chief responds to KIDS act

Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly has put out a statement to the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act (KIDS), which President George W. Bush signed on Monday along with the Protect Our Children Act.

In short: Facebook supports the act and says it will cooperate with it.

"We see KIDS as an important tool to prevent inappropriate outreach from ever occurring," Kelly wrote in a post on the company blog about the law, which mandates that registered sex offenders have all identifying Internet names, including e-mail addresses, on file with the National Sex Offender Registry. "The penalties and consequences for registrants violating KIDS' provisions are so severe, we hope they'll deter potential predators from coming online altogether. This is a vital step in protecting children online, and it is by no means the end of our efforts."

Kelly continued: "At Facebook, we've long barred registered sex offenders from our service. Currently, we work cooperatively with individual states' attorneys general to check users against state-registered sex offender lists." He's referring to the negotiations that the social network underwent with state lawmakers who claimed that Facebook misrepresents how safe it is for minors.

But, Kelly said, both Facebook and legal authorities "consistently find that these (state) registries lack the essential e-mail and IM data for comprehensive and rapid screening. The process is also less efficient and less effective than anyone, especially concerned parents, would like, which is why we're such ardent supporters of the KIDS Act Registry."

Social network MySpace also supports the KIDS act.

[Pete Bardo]

What a concept! What makes anyone think the sex offenders will comply? And hat about the predators who haven't been caught yet? How does this help at all?

It is way too easy to fake all your credentials on any web site. What makes Facebook different?

[tacit]

Funny thing; in America, all you have to do if you want to ram through some kind of nonsense law is to persuade people that you're "protecting" kids from "predators" and the people will line up like obedient sheep.

The moral panic we have in this nation about sex is ridiculous. People actually seem to believe that registered sex offenders are predators. Funny thing about that; just out of curiosity, a couple years back I spent a few hours browsing the sex offender registry in my state. The overwhelming majority of the "registered sex offenders" in the database weren't really "sex offenders" at all; they were convicted of "crimes" like taking a leak on the side of the road (exposing of the genitals in a public space is considered a "sex crime" in many states), or consensual sexual activity with adults (in some states, in this day and age, even things like oral sex are "sex crimes," and yes, the laws are still enforced).

People hear "sex offender" and think "pedophile"--which is to say, they don't think at all. Nonsense like this doesn't serve the purpose of protecting kids; it actually makes protecting kids harder, by burying genuine, dangerous predators under an avalanche of inane drivel.

[Had_to_be_said]

The sad fact is that this... along with so much of the absolute HOGWASH currently being rammed-through into "Law" (The Patriot-Act, the "bail-out", the Copyright-Czar)... has absolutely nothing to do with "protecting" any legitimate societal-concern. This is about expanding Government (and special-interest) interference, control, and power... pure and simple.

In fact, it is painfully-obvious that it is, actually, our politicians who are, once again, EXPLOITING "children" for their own political-ends (...the power to monitor, and control, average citizens... and are setting the stage for even greater expansions, and abuses, of power).

Interestingly, Microsoft has just begun re-pushing their soon to be, necessarily, legislatively-imposed (according to Microsofts own "white-paper" on the subject), "machine-readable" national Biometric-ID cards, scheme (just for people to be allowed use the Internet/their computer, at all). Amazing how "REAL-ID" (already, pretty-much, a completely done-deal), is scheduled to, soon, be forcibly-imposed upon the citizens, isnt it..? And, what do you want to bet, very soon, various politicians (and numerous other Big-business interests) will be chiming-in, claiming that this simply HAS to be done... for all manner of, so-called, "security" reasons... including, of course; "...to protect the children" (amongst other, patently-thin, rationalizations)..?

Freedom... I miss it already. I just hope I live long enough to see the end of the coming chaos.

-And... finally... Just remember, the Nazis, and Stalin, also had a public-rationalization... for every single crime that they committed. And that those LIES were accepted by a startlingly high-percentage of those affected, and externally-observing, the atrocities that were being committed against their-own citizens. And, the biggest question, after the fact, has always been... HOW were these psychopaths allowed (by their victims, and the world) to do these things? Well..?

[crosstecdoug]

The Keep the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators (KIDS) Act passed by the legislature is a great 1st step in protecting kids but it is no substitute for parents taking firm and proactive steps to protect their own children. Facebook can't do it, MySpace can't do it, Schools can't do it. Only Parents can do it.

The KIDS act is only going to be as effective as the perverts who may or may not follow its rules. These predators, these twisted law breakers, will simply assume new private identities. We know this because most likely they used fake identities BEFORE they were arrested and they did it on Facebook too. Don't think the government or a website can protect our children - We have to do it ourselves.

I installed Spector Pro from Spectorsoft.com after seeing their Editors? Choice review in PC Magazine. Within a day I started seeing bad stuff. As a parent of two teenagers I was simply amazed by what I saw. My son was doing things (visiting sick sites) I didn?t even think he was capable of and my daughter was constantly being stalked on MySpace. I immediately used Spector to block risky site categories (like Adult), restrict when they both could go online (vs. just doing their homework) and I blocked some of the rude (boys, girls and maybe adult men) who she was chatting with. Monitoring rocks. I see every chat, every search they do, every email, websites they visit and even screen shots. It?s not big brother or a trust issue to me. These are good kids but I saw what they were doing online. This is vital protection for our most important assets ? our children.