7 Sex Offenders Who Use MySpace Arrested

[Ace]

HOUSTON — Seven convicted sex offenders with profiles on MySpace.com have been arrested in what Texas officials said was the country's first large-scale crackdown of registered offenders who use the social networking Web site.

The men were arrested in Houston, Austin, Round Rock, and Glenn Heights during a two-week operation by the Texas Attorney General's Cyber Crimes and Fugitive units.

They were picked up after MySpace.com released the names of offenders with online profiles to the state Attorney General's Office, which had issued a subpoena for the site's subscriber information.

After it was criticized for failing to protect underage subscribers, the site supplied names to attorneys general in other states, and began checking subscribers' criminal histories through Sentinel Safe, a database of registered sex offenders.

READ MORE

This may not be enough to deter all repeat and future offenders but I like the aggressive actions taken by our government to put pressure on sites like myspace. What else could we do to round up these offenders? What other steps can be taken by authorities to curb offenses like this?

**Special thank to Slacker for providing this article**

[rstonecousley]

I was about to be annoyed by this story but before I posted a reply and dug a little deeper. Turns out six of the seven, as conditions of their parole, were prohibited from using the internet. In that case, no problemo. And I say law enforcement should take more proactive measures like this to protect innocent children.