Two Bills Proposed to Protect Minors in Cyberspace

Two legislative proposals, one in Georgia and one national, seek two different ways of making it more difficult for predators to meet minors online. The first, proposed by Senator Cecil Staton, a Georgia State Senator (R) and incoming Chairman of the State's Senate Science and Technology Committee, seeks to require parental permission for all minors who create a web page or social networking site. Senate Bill 59, as it's known, would also require sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com to allow parents or guardians to have access to their children's web pages at all times.

Another bill, introduced by Congress at the federal level, is asking that convicted sex offenders be required to register their email and IM names with law enforcement officials. The same legislation calls for operators of websites that have commercial social networking to check members' addresses against the National Sex Offender Registry. (Today, the National Sex Offender Registry is open and searchable by the public but doesn't contain email or IM information.) The sites would be able to check the Registry's names against public cyber-profiles. According to reports MySpace has expressed support for the bill.

Both bills could be difficult to enforce, each for a different set of reasons, but it's worthwhile to look at both approaches.

Seeking parental permission and verifying that permission will be costly and time consuming. Kids are already adept at "fudging" their ages to gain access to websites (sometimes with parental consent); many have access to credit cards (the most common adult verification method).

But before pooh-poohing the idea entirely, it should be noted that there have been some recent successes with sites that require parental permission for younger networkers: places like Imbee and Club Penguin. And companies like Privo have created businesses as intermediaries that perform parental verification for websites.

Similarly, requiring sex offenders to report their email addresses would be more foolproof if there weren't as many workarounds. A sex offender could create multiple email accounts, anonymize their accounts, or log in from a public facility like a cybercafé. The proposed bill would make these misrepresentations crimes as well, but enforcement is tough. This bill is being sponsored by Sen. Chuck Schumer, U.S. Senator from New York (D), and U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona (R). A similar bill is being introduced in Congress.

Required parental consent? Adding email and IM to the data we keep about sex offenders? Which, if either, resonates more with you?