The Liberal Patriot

Google Defies the Morality Police

Mary MacElveen-January 22, 2006

Once again in our government’s infamous stupidity and arrogance wants Google to hand over their records to show who has been logging onto various pornography sites. I first want to clarify, if you are a consenting adult above the age of 18 and are engaging in these activities with others who are also of the age of consent; the government has no right to invade your privacy. Hey, for some that is the only way to get their rocks off and we should just leave those people alone.

If people logging onto these sites is abhorrent to you, what is far more abhorrent is the war in Iraq. I would say the taking of lives trumps one’s desire to log onto these sites. You want to play the morality police? Which is more immoral? Then again, the religious right wing is more concerned with sex on TV then it is with violence.

If you are afraid of pedophiles contacting your child on the Internet, as a parent: Where are you when your child is logged on? Do not expect the government to protect your child if you are not. That is first of all abdicating your responsibility as a parent.

The government does a real bang up job at protecting our children from these predators, but more on that later.

On Friday, November 11^th, 2005 Dateline NBC aired an investigative piece which trapped many of these pedophiles. They did so with the help of a group that engages these pedophiles online, only to catch them. The name of this online service Dateline NBC used is Perverted Justice. Through their service, they have brought many of these predators to justice and where many have been convicted.

According to Dateline NBC: “Children spend hours chatting online with their friends, and sometimes with strangers. A recent study found that one in five children online is approached by a sexual predator, a predator who may try to set up a face-to-face meeting.” If you as a parent are alarmed at this, you should be.

I strongly suggest that all parents with minor children read the full transcript of this show by reading: Dangers Children Face Online Perhaps, you will then take the necessary steps to protect your child. Please remember it is up to you, and not the government.

Now, I am going to take a bold step here especially since I am a parent of two minor children and state Megan’s Law or other notification laws are a panacea that lulls all of us into a false sense of security that our children are indeed being protected.

If you are among the many parents working longer hours in order to make ends meet, are you even aware of the pedophiles that have moved into your area? Have you checked? Many times school districts will mail home notification cards which can be mistaken for junk mail. Do you bother calling the school district up to obtain the identity of this predator? If you do, now what do you do with this information?

We as a society are not trained to deal with these predators, nor are they our responsibility. The responsibility in dealing with these monsters is with the criminal justice system. There have been many instances of vigilantism and where innocent people have been caught in the cross hairs and it is your duty to protect the innocent. Several years ago, in New Jersey the wrong address was placed on a notification notice and the result of that was someone shot through the window of an innocent man killing him, where the pedophile lived a few houses away.

There are various stressor points that lead up to an offender re-offending and are we trained in psychiatry to identify these stressor points? Even some psychiatrists have found it hard to identify an individual’s stressor points. So, if these predators are living amongst us, when do we know they will strike again? They are also cagey and if one is not really monitoring them or our children, a rape of an innocent child will happen.

In a previous Newsday article, “Listing Sex Offenders Online” which ran on May 4^th, 2005, legal aid attorney Robert Newman cautioned that a “information overload, making it harder for the public to identify the small number of truly risky individuals buried among thousands” Now if you are a working parent, just how do you sift through this online registry which can be hacked? There have been numerous cases where an innocent person has been put on these registries. No online registry is fail-safe. In this article, it states that this site will list the names of “21,000 sex offenders” Do you as a parent have the time to go through these 21,000 names?

I have been engaged in this issue by researching it for years now and since pedophilia has a high recidivism rate, the chances of these predators re-offending are high. So, that leaves me to ask this question: Why are they not behind bars for longer periods of time? Last year, Newsday reported where a pedophile received a two year sentence. He will then be let out amongst us and our children. Is our justice system then protecting our children? If you steal a car, most likely your sentence will be far longer than two years.

Last year, two children from Florida and one from Iowa were raped and murdered by registered sex offenders, so how is this law protecting our children? No registry protected these children. In response to the Florida murders Governor Jeb Bush to his credit signed into law where child sex offenders who rape children go away for twenty five years and are not out within our communities. While some will say: Where do we put these predators when the prisons are overflowing? My answer to that is to free prisoners who have been convicted of possession of drugs. Many are still in prison here in New York State as a result of the Rockefeller Drug Law. Who is more of a threat to our society?

As you will see through my piece, these notification laws do not work and our government does not want Google’s files to look up these predators or any consenting adult who visits any pornography site. That is bogus if you ask me. Once again, our government just wants to invade our privacy.

In closing, if you truly want to protect your children, then what needs to be done is to demand of our elected officials to put an end to Megan’s Law or similar notification laws. We must be our children’s advocates by demanding that these predators be locked up for longer periods of time.

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