Add e-mails of offenders to registry, official says
The state attorney general said convicted sex offenders should have to register their online identities.
By Laurence Hammack
  981-3239

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Already required to make public their name, age, height, weight, the color of their eyes and hair, and their home and work addresses for a statewide registry, convicted sex offenders in Virginia soon may have to provide some additional information: their e-mail addresses.

In a news release, Attorney General Bob McDonnell said Monday he will propose legislation that would make Virginia the first state in the nation to require sex offenders to register their online identities with state police.

By putting the information on the state's Sex Offender Registry, authorities hope to curb what they say is the escalating problem of sexual predators going online to find young victims through e-mail and Internet chat room banter.

Since 1999, Virginians have been able to go online to see if a convicted sex offender is living in their neighborhood or across from their school, thanks to a law requiring the felons to provide their addresses and other information for a database maintained by state police.

"But in the 21st century, it is just as critical that they [sex offenders] register any e-mail addresses or IM [instant messaging] screen names," McDonnell said.

McDonnell's proposal is the first to come from his Youth Internet Safety Task Force, which has been studying the issues of sexual solicitation and the spread of child pornography online. The task force is scheduled to release additional recommendations next week.

Although arrests for online sex offenses have risen rapidly in recent years, critics say there is scant evidence to support the assertion by some political and law enforcement officials that the problem has become an epidemic.

To the extent that there is a problem, forcing sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses with police is the wrong way to address it, said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that addresses free speech and privacy issues in the Internet era.

"I think this is a constitutionally dubious proposal that seems to be a reaction more to fear than to facts," Bankston said of the proposal by McDonnell and a similar national initiative announced last week by U.S. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

Proponents of such measures say grouping sex offenders by e-mail addresses will allow social networking sites such as MySpace.com to block them from accessing their Web sites. In fact, it was a MySpace official who serves on McDonnell's task force who first suggested the idea in Virginia.

"I hope other social networking sites will join Myspace.com in implementing the software necessary to accomplish this goal," McDonnell said.

While any private company has the right to deny service to whomever it wants, Bankston said legal concerns are raised once the government enters the picture.

"There is a constitutional problem when the government requires people to register the pseudonyms under which they speak and associate," he said. He likened the proposed law to a state prohibiting a sex offender from anonymously publishing a book about his experiences in prison.

Constitutional issues aside, there's also the practical question of how well McDonnell's proposal would work. Bankston said it would be "incredibly easy" for sex offenders to circumvent the law by registering one e-mail address with police and obtaining a second one they don't report.

"This is not a foolproof approach," McDonnell acknowledged Monday in a news release, "as we all fully realize how easy it is to get a new e-mail address. But by requiring registration, and by making the penalties for failure to register the same as those for failure to register physical and mailing addresses, we will take another positive step towards protecting children online."

McDonnell said his proposed legislation will be introduced in the upcoming General Assembly session by Sen. Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover County, a member of his task force. Other proposals being considered by the panel include beefing up the punishment for online sex offenders.