Sex offender crackdown in online realm

AUSTIN (KXAN) - The sex offender registry of the 21st century may soon require sex offenders to hand over more than just their home phone numbers and physical addresses.

In an effort to bring the crackdown on sex offenders up to speed, Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, passed a bill out of the Senate, which would require sex offenders list all of their e-mail addresses and online screen names on their information form for police.

The additional information would not be public but it would be available to law enforcement and social-networking sites.

"It would give those sites the ability to screen for those e-mail addresses and reject those people from joining," said Shapiro.

As to why the information will not be made public, Shapiro said they are not yet sure if that would be constitutional.

"We don't want to be the test-site for that," said Shapiro.

The Attorney General’s office has been pushing for this legislation because it said it would make their jobs easier.

In July 2008, the office arrested five sex offenders for illegally joining MySpace. They said having that database would allow them to track those sex offenders faster.

In Connecticut, a similar bill passed, and MySpace ended up kicking 90,000 sex offenders off the social-networking site. However, unlike a street address, a new e-mail address is pretty easy to come by.

"It's incredibly easy to set up an e-mail account," said Internet security expert Robert Hansen, CEO of SecTheory."It might catch a few people, but that's about it."

Hansen cited sites like Hushmail, which allow people to sign up for free e-mail addresses without having to provide a valid e-mail address during registration.

"If it becomes a problem, then the next the thing the bad guy is going to think is 'how do I get around this?' With one or two online searches, they'll find out how to create new e-mail addresses."

Although the bill punishes those who create e-mail addresses without notifying authorities, it will be tough for the state to enforce. That is why Sen. Shapiro said she does not want parents to become less vigilant when monitoring their children's online activities.

"The one thing I don't want people to believe is this is the answer to everything," said Shapiro. "Parental involvement is the number one tool."