iPhone App Tracks Sex Offenders 358
The Narrative Fallacy writes "All 50 states in the US require the 50,000 people convicted of sexual offenses to sign a register so that their whereabouts can be tracked and monitored. The Telegraph reports that now users of the iPhone Offender Locator application can search for sex offenders living nearby a friend or colleague whose address is stored in their Apple iPhone address book, or they can type in a street address to generate a list of convicted sex offenders in the local area. 'Offender Locator gives everyone the ability to find out if registered sex offenders live in their area,' says the application developer, ThinAir Wireless, on its iTunes page. 'Knowledge equals safety. They know where you and your family are...now it's time to turn the tables so that you know where they live and can make better decisions about where to allow your kids to play.' Offender Locator uses the iPhone's built-in GPS to pinpoint the user's location, and then provide a map listing sex offenders in the local area. Tapping on one of the 'pins' dropped on to the map brings up a photograph of the offender, as well as their address, date of birth and list of convictions."
Tired of scare tactics. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's great for the very stereotypical creepy, mustachioed child molester, but ever-increasingly the phrase, "sex offender" has nothing to do with children at all. That same title now applies to people convicted of statutory rape, even if they were 17 & 18 at the time. It applies to people who streak, people who are caught skinny-dipping, people who are caught having sex in public (including in their car), and even people who happened to urinate behind a tree in some places. Yet they have the same social stigma & registration entries in the database as people who raped children.
So yeah, it might help protect your children, or it might just show you the house of a guy who really needed to take a leak, and happened to get caught. But hey, feel free to use it and get extremely paranoid at the rapidly growing number of people it shows...
Debt to society? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many more years until realtors no longer sell houses in certain areas to sex offenders? Or even more scary, how long until we only let them live in certain areas? Maybe even put up a fence around the area? Post guards at the gates?
Ya, getting a little dramatic, but this BS where any soccer mom can pick up her iPhone and gawk with her friends at all the "criminals" in their neighborhood.. It's getting sickening..
If these people are still dangerous, keep them locked up. If they are no longer dangerous, don't make public lists that they have to register on.
Either you're guilty and you pay your debt, or you're paid your debt and are no longer guilty.
Personally, if I had a daughter, I'd teach her to be aware of her surroundings and be wary of strangers, just like I was taught. List or no list, if a predator is out there, he's going to hunt. Some list that further punishes those that have paid their debt won't save my child, or yours.
You'd have thought that a mobile provider (Score:3, Insightful)
Tracker... or hit list.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yay, eternal punishment. (Score:4, Insightful)
I care more about knowing where known pickpockets are, in relation to my current whereabouts.
Not whether someone got caught taking a piss behind a bush, or who had sex with someone two years younger than them when they were a teenager.
When you overextend a label such as 'sex offender' (adding noise to signal), the label becomes meaningless, and those that actually deserve that label are less noticeable in the noise.
But not before dumb vigilantes attack a few paediatricians ...
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:5, Insightful)
this is pretty much my sentiment. I hope the application comes with a tag saying what the crime was (ie child molestation or rape or weeing in the street) when it happened (was it 2 years ago or last week) and where it happened (did it happen in their house, or in Vegas)
Last thing you want is what happened in the UK when this stuff is leaked
this [bbc.co.uk] pretty much covers UK Law in relation to violent sex offenses
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like what is stated in TFS.
Yeah, I must be new here.
Beware! Here be sex offenders! (Score:3, Insightful)
Beware! Sex offenders!
Doesn't take much to get people up in arms. Most of us imagine some rampaging dirty old man abducting screaming children from the streets. It's terrible. They need to be tracked and dealt with - obviously.
But what percentage of the sex offenders really fit that description? How many were teenagers whose girlfriend/boyfriend was maybe a year or two younger than themselves? How many offenders were under age themselves at the time of the offence? Which offences are included in the category and what percentage of the offences fit into each of those categories? Does the category include men who have patted a women on the behind and ended up in court on the strength of it? Are women who brazenly expose their breasts at public events included too?
Before we go bandying around the 50,000 figure let's at least establish what it means.
Re:Debt to society? (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone read Les Miserables? The story of Jean Valjean sounds very similar - the label of 'Convict' was carried for life. The fact that he had committed a crime in his youth meant that he was a criminal forever, in the mind of society and the law - he could not hold a job, travel, or live without permission from the police.
I don't think that specific knowledge as to former criminals who have served their time and are now living in your area is necessary. It would be not be helpful in any meaningful way to the public and would make it very difficult for the people on the list to live normal lives. The fact that the sex offender list is very loose as to who becomes assigned to it makes the situation worse.
making it easier to find your next target... (Score:1, Insightful)
How long until this gets turned into a vigilante application?
Making it easier to find the next person to beat up and leave your conscience free.
Umm, nice society some of us live in.
Re:Debt to society? (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, if I had a daughter, I'd teach her to be aware of her surroundings and be wary of strangers, just like I was taught. List or no list, if a predator is out there, he's going to hunt. Some list that further punishes those that have paid their debt won't save my child, or yours.
Not only that, but the thing no one seems to mention with all this "think of the children" crap is that, by far, the most cases of child abuse (sexual or not) are perpetrated by family members.
Re:Why Sex Offenders? (Score:5, Insightful)
On January 19th, a Florida state appeals court decided that minors could be prosecuted for child pornography even if the subject of that pornography is him/herself. The case involved two Florida teens who took pictures of themselves involved in sexual behavior. The photos were intended for their own personal use and neither teen shared the photos with anyone else. From Police Blotter [cnet.com]:
On March 25, 2004, Amber and Jeremy took digital photos of themselves naked and engaged in unspecified âoesexual behavior.â The two sent the photos from a computer at Amberâ(TM)s house to Jeremyâ(TM)s personal e-mail address. Neither teen showed the photographs to anyone else. Court records donâ(TM)t say exactly what happened nextâ"perhaps the parents wanted to end the relationship and raised the alarmâ"but somehow Florida police learned about the photos. Amber and Jeremy were arrested. Each was charged with producing, directing or promoting a photograph featuring the sexual conduct of a child. Based on the contents of his e-mail account, Jeremy was charged with an extra count of possession of child pornography.
Source [wordpress.com]
Re:Debt to society? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lemme see.... A sex offender is anyone convicted of a sex based offense. I was under the impression that going to a hooker is an sex offense in some jurisdictions.
And also... What happened to the idea that once you served your time your debt to society is paid?
Make no mistake I want to keep my kids safe. But isn't this a perfect way of pushing an offender of the track again??
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Statutory rape is the same if she was 13 and he was 30 or if she was 17 and he was 18.
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:5, Insightful)
What it is is a way to permanently marginalize an increasingly large segment of society. In Miami, I think it is, there's now a community that sex offenders have to live in. "Community" is a nice way of saying, "a bridge they have to live under." This is because the city won't let them live within a certain radius of any school, day-care or other facility that has children. So... what you get is a rapidly growing, very disenfranchised group of people, essentially randomly selected from society (of course, if you had enough money to hire a really good lawyer, you won't be there). How long before they out-number other neighborhoods? Who knows, but then we'll have to build a wall, right? I mean, think of the children.
Of course, at some point, the wall will seem insufficient. We'll have to move them all forcibly out to less populated areas. But they won't have any way to support themselves... hey, I know they can work for their food....
Re:Debt to society? (Score:5, Insightful)
any soccer mom can pick up her iPhone and gawk with her friends at all the "criminals" ... If these people are still dangerous, keep them locked up.
There is a gigantic dose of frightening irony in all this: Sex offenders (and for the moment let's assume the very worst kinds of sex offenders such as kiddie molestors) are statistically much more likely to reoffend when exposed to high levels of stress ... for example the kind of stress that comes from having a bunch of iphone-wielding soccer moms tsk-tsking to their friends ans scowling every time they see you in public ... the kind of stress that comes from being socially isolated and shunned when a person is making a good faith effort to get well again, be part of a neighbourhood, and function in society.
Stress is a known addiction trigger, and this app is a guaranteed stress generator.
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:5, Insightful)
17? Fucking hell... where I live (Prague, Europe) 14 is legal (before it was 15, but parliament change it year ago (at least to my best knowledge from local media).
But this is the US where seing a breast on TV (the same where people are shown being shot by cops - or vice versa - all day long) will scar you for life and will force the network to issue a public apology.
Your body is dirty, *dirty* do you hear ? It's the work of the devil !
Re:Debt to society? (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole concept of the "debt to society" is hosed. Was Bruce Perlowin's debt paid? The so-called "King of Pot" is an unrepentant smuggler of marijuana who has now gone legit, and is the head of a successful public company that's helping to promote the medical use of the plant. It's not a debt, it's an agreement. We have an agreement that we want to live in a certain kind of world. If you don't agree, we'll lock you up and smack you around for a while. If you still don't agree, we'll do it again until we just decide to stop letting you roam the streets. If you play ball, you get a house and 2.5 kids. That's the American Dream.
What's problematic, here, is that we have a class of "disagreement" that we won't let go, so no matter how reformed you are, we won't shake hands and make nice. In essence, we're violating the agreement.
IMHO, there's a place for laws like this. I do think that someone who has committed violent acts in the past should be monitored for some period of time after they're released. If those violent acts are against children, I can see parents wanting to know if they're moving into an area where someone who hasn't yet been cleared lives. Problem is a) we don't classify crimes in a way that maps to future risk and b) we don't have any way that someone can clear their name by demonstrating an ability to abide by the agreement over time.
If we solved those two problems, then this iPhone app would only be a concern in so far as people tend to take the law into their own hands. Because of that, I do think that the information should be anonymized for the public (knowing that there's someone living on this block is one thing... knowing their address and name is asking for problems).
Safer with a list? Hardly. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is where I lose people. How does a list protect you, in _any_ way?
Do you routinely allow your children to walk into the homes of strangers? I suppose this list would tell you what strangers houses should be off limits.
Do you routinely follow _every_ "criminal" on the list in your given area and make certain to call your child on their cell phone to give them directions to "avoid" said "criminal? If so, I suppose this list could help.
Fact of the matter is, list or no list, predators will hunt. They will hunt their prey. Children, cute women, men that look scared, etc, etc, etc. A list will do _nothing_ to stop a predator. Unless you really believe that a sick individual with intentions to harm "your" child really will second guess their decision and decide, "you know what, I'm on a list and should probably stay in and watch a movie instead of picking up and molesting that little boy down the street. I know my loins tingle at the thought but you know, that list calms me right down and makes me not want to do it now!". Ya, the list saved another!
So again, how would a list like this _ever_ make you safer than before you had that list?
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't expect the list of convictions to be meaningful. No way is the system going to be honest about their own bullshit. The guy busted for taking a leak will be convicted of public lewdness, just like the guy who waggled his weiner at the kids in the preschool playground.
The kids busted for sexting will be convicted of manufacture and distribution of child porn and the 17 year old busted for fooling around with a 15 year old will be convicted of statutory rape and probably indecency involving a minor.
All very much not helpful in evaluating the true nature of the people caught in the witch hunt.
Re:Debt to society? (Score:3, Insightful)
Disingenuous at best.
The notion of debt to society is fallacious. Some crimes carry a cost to the victim that is never repaid. In the minor cases, like a relative of mine whose house was burglarized, they'll never again feel quite the same level of security. Putting someone in jail for a little while won't bring that back. It is not as simple as "Go to jail for a while, and the scales are again balanced." That is all the more starkly true in the case of violent crime. There was a story in the news a while back about a teen who seriously beat an elderly couple and tried to rape the wife. Or succeeded, I don't recall. The victims don't have forever to recover and get back to a normal life. Their children and extended families suffered the wounds of having their parents victimized. How do you fix that? You don't. It will never be all good again. It's a tough notion that we can cause permanent harm and never be able to set it right, but it's true.
If you had a daughter, you would most certainly not feel like the person who was a sex offender in jail last week is not a threat anymore just because he was released yesterday.
The point of a prison sentence is deterrence. Don't do bad things or you'll go to jail. The point of a prison sentence is isolation. People who do bad things don't get to be around the rest of us, who don't want bad things done to us.
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't help when the high school senior who had sex with his girlfriend who happened not to have had her birthday yet - they still list it as "Rape of a child"
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:reading all these slashdot comments (Score:2, Insightful)
you do realize that some of you sound more hysterical than the "won't somebody think of the children" tired meme you are supposedly skewering, right?
let's put it this way: underneath all of the teenagers emailing each other naked pictures, there actually exists actual pedophiles who actually harm children, and society has every logical and moral reason to do something about them. btw, they are also highly recidivist: you murder once for certain reasons, then you may never murder again, but once a pedophile, always a pedophile
so here's a clue for the whole lot of the slashdot high holy indignation brigade: you figure out a better way to deal with pedophiles. until then, criticizing without proposing a superior alternative means nothing will change. and no, i'm sorry, doing nothing is not a viable alternative
because, believe it or not, there are parents out there who aren't sex-phobic social conservatives who are genuinely and rightfully worried about their children's exposure to actual, real pedophiles who prey on prepubescent kids. yes, you heard it here first (apparently): believe it or not, pedophiles aren't made up bogeymen, pedophiles actually exist, and are actually a danger to children in their communities
you may now say they are few and rare, that exposure to sex with an adult is harmless, etc., etc.
and completely miss the point of my comment
and therefore continue to exist in the same useless hysterical population of people you are supposedly standing against
No, I think you're the one missing the point. As a society, we have a lot of problems to deal with. We rank those problems in terms of seriousness and the long-term consequences of ignoring or not adequately addressing the problem. Given that only a tiny sliver of the population consists of "real pedophiles who prey on prepubescent kids", and only a small percentage of those will actually commit a crime, because of all the protections already in place against murder/kidnapping/rape, and given -- let's be brutally honest here -- that a lot of victims mostly recover, at least to the point of being productive and relatively-happy citizens, where do you think this "problem" falls in the ranking of problems we have to deal with? Pretty damn low, I'd say. Many of our other problems have many more victims, and often those victims never recover. Think terrorist bombs. Think polluted air/water/food, leading to cancer. Think gang violence.
Yet, a hugely-disproportionate amount of time/effort/energy/focus/resources/money is spent on the "pedophile problem" -- each measure more expansive in its scope, and more draconian with respect to its targets -- compared to more pressing issues. Why? Because it's politically productive to do so. That's where the application of "think of the children" meme to anti-pedophilia efforts derives, and the understandable cynicism which it expresses. Not simply because we think the measures often misfire with respect to e.g. teenagers mailing each other nude photos and the like, or because such measures intrude too heavily on the civil rights of those it targets (e.g. Freedom of Association and whatnot). Those are concerns, certainly, but the main point is that the "pedophilia problem" is being treated disproportionately, and other larger problems aren't being addressed properly. It's a matter of priorities.
P.S. Don't you think "underneath" is a bit of a strange choice of preposition, especially given the context of the discussion?
I'm a geek AND a sex offender (Score:1, Insightful)
Posting as Anonymous Coward for obvious reasons, something I rarely do. I've been using Slashdot since 1999. Six years I didn't. Why? 13 years I screwed up, was 19 and messed with someone I knew who was 15. I was turned in out of spite from someone else. Guess what? A 15 year can't drop the charges. She even sent a letter to the judge saying she didn't want me to go to prison. Lucky me - he gave me 6 years instead of the ten the DA was asking for. Lost my career, my finances, my marriage. Was in prison surrounded by perverts with drug cases. You know what is considered acceptable behavior in there? Masturbating in front of officers. Finding yourself someone who isn't violent and making them your "punk". These are the folks who should be registered as sex offenders. Remember these things whenever you hear a rap song that glorifies prison life.
So I did six years. Never got into any trouble, which is damned nearly impossible in there. Denied parole nonetheless. I finished my sentence, and was released. Now, a bit over 6 months out, I'm back into programming, doing pretty good. Except your typical paranoid company won't even consider hiring me, despite the fact that I'm more qualified, even with my time away from the field, than 3/4 of their applicants. (and 3/4 of Slashdot, for that matter) Thankfully I've managed to build on what few connections I still had and get into a decent niche working from home. Hell, I'll come close to clearing this year what I did in 2002.
No place will rent me an apartment. I live alone: I just need a bedroom, a place for my computer desk, and an Internet connection. But since no apartment will take me, I'm renting a huge house that I don't need, as a house is easier to get into because I'm the only tenant at this property he is accountable to. Paying probably $300 more than I should.
I have to register every 3 months. Takes like 5 minutes. I walk in, they ask if my address/job/car/health has changed. I sign a piece of paper and leave. Have the police checked on me? Not once. (So much for the soccer moms who think the nice authorities are keeping track of all the dangerous perverts like me.)
My point? Sex offenders aren't some far away group we can debate from our safe little zones. They are in your midst, wherever you are. Hell, there's probably quite a few on /. and I'm the only one with courage (or at least as much as someone posting as Anon COWARD can have) to post.
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no place in the system for acceptance that once the offender has taken his punishment, he should be able to start again. I'm not a fan of creeps, but the idea that they should be stalked unto the grave after they have served their punishment is nothing short of sick. It amounts to a suggestion that anyone caught up in the system should be summarily condemned to death, but without having the guts to carry out the decree - while the miscreant has to wear his death warrant around his neck for the rest of his life.
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then of course we will have a community of sex offenders, who will have children, who by law must attend school.
So a school is built, and all of the children move away.
Re:Charging? (Score:3, Insightful)
They're charging you not for the data, but for an application which will point out where the offenders are registered as living based upon where you're standing at that moment, without you having to perform a manual search.
If someone is paying to see how many Offenders are around them at any given time, rather than just a school, public area, or permanent residence, I'm seriously concerned with their possible intentions.
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Idaho prosecutes kissing in public between an 18 year old and a 17 year old as "Lewd conduct with a minor" - sounds terrible doesn't it?
A wise use of the application would show that the person who got a "Lewd conduct with a minor" charge 5 years ago and is now 23 might not be a worry, especially compared to the guy convicted last year at the age of 47...
Ah, who am I kidding? Everyone who sees a red pin will assume it's a child rapist who posted the pictures to the internet.
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Most child molesters are family (Score:5, Insightful)
As Tarzan of the Apes said to the beautiful young Countess de Coude, "One does not judge the gazelle by the lions that attack it." That book, with that line, read when I was about 14, literally saved my life. I wish all victims of abuse of all kinds could realize this. It's NOT YOUR FAULT!!!
Re:Debt to society? (Score:3, Insightful)
The concept of legally condoned persecution for live has NEVER existed in American law prior to this whole "sex offender registry" bullshit.
This is simple logic: if the nature of the person and the crime make them an actual, clear and present danger to members of the public, then they should be behind bars and stay there unless and until that situation changes.
If they are NOT a danger to the public, and they have served their time, then set them free without restriction.
Morally and ethically, you really can't have that both ways. There is very little room for a gray area. If they are known to be dangerous to the public, lock them up. If they are not, let them go. End of story.
Re:Safer with a list? Hardly. (Score:4, Insightful)
"It's for the children" won't wash anymore. That excuse has been so grossly abused, and has been the cause of so much injustice, that I feel like spitting on anyone who says it anymore.
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Another big problem is that there will be people who are dangerous who are not on such lists at all. Even including those who have been found guilty of crimes. If the idea is to "protect the children" it appears daft not to have the details of convicted child murders available. It wouldn't be too big a suprise if there were convicted child sex offenders (especially women) who were omitted from such lists through some technicality or other.
There is no place in the system for acceptance that once the offender has taken his punishment, he should be able to start again.
Which would be hard to square with parts of the US where "convicted felons" are forbidden to vote even after supposedly serving their sentence.
Re:Tired of scare tactics. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tired of scare tactics. At first (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought this system was for iPhone-owning sex offenders to report in. I only thought that because, other than blocking it in foil (which might make it overheat), or shutting down the phone or jamming all phones are pretty much traceable 24/7 except in geographic areas that are poor reception. It might be a cheaper way to find out where ex-convicts/ex-offenders-accused to passively report in.
Then the entire cell network, via a phone, "tethered" (literally, as in a modem and an anklet or bracelet), could probably save states much money, and make the systems accessible to ALL states and the federal government if there is not already some reciprocal data exchange.