Vt. mulls ban on aliases online for sex offenders (AP)

Friday, February 11, 2011 6:01 PM

MONTPELIER, Vt. – Vermont lawmakers are considering making it a evildoing for guilty stimulate offenders to ingest false names on ethnic media sites same Facebook, after one much incident was reported in the state.

Only two states hit attendant measures, said Erik Fitzpatrick, a attorney on the investigate body for the Vermont Legislature: New York and Illinois bar guilty stimulate offenders from using ethnic networking sites at every as a information of their probation. The National Conference of State Legislatures was unaware of kindred laws or pending legislating in another states.

A past pedagogue at a edifice for boys who had sworn stimulate crimes told a land Senate NGO weekday that he spotted a Facebook strikingness last start with a represent of a past enrollee in the program who was using an alias.

Chuck Laramie, the past teacher, said the 26-year-old Negro had embellish Facebook friends with 14- and 15-year-old girls.

The Negro was guilty in 2004 of sexed assault, defined in Vermont accumulation as engaging in a stimulate behave with another mortal without that person's consent, and has not completed a stimulate offender communication program, the state's online stimulate offender registry shows.

Laramie said he saw Facebook messages the Negro dispatched the girls, telling them he was "struggling with his sexuality and thinking he might be gay. Some of the girls were replying by saying, 'Oh, no, you're not.' He was effort these teen girls to see sympathy for him," town said. "It was a classic grooming situation" in which sexed predators psychologically cook potential victims.

If the Negro were a stimulate offender disagreeable not to re-offend, that was "an extremely high-risk status to place yourself in," town said.

Facebook takes extensive steps, including teams of internal investigators employed with accumulation enforcement agents around the country, when it detects people on its network behaving suspiciously, the consort said in a statement. Contacting conference or users of predominantly one sexuality are seen as clues, and Facebook uses systems including a national database of guilty stimulate offenders to do real-time checks, the evidence said.

"Protecting our users, especially the some children who ingest Facebook, has ever been a crowning priority for us. We've devoted momentous resources to nonindustrial innovative and complex systems to proactively guardian the place and its users," the consort said.

Some land senators questioned whether Vermont could forbiddance stimulate offenders from using computers altogether, but one, Sen. Jeanette White, a Windham Democrat, noted that some public services, much as applying for long unemployment benefits, require using computers.

The bill under review would attain the evildoing a offense illegal by up to two eld in jail. The NGO said it would continue to study the bill.


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