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Program Uses GPS To Track Sex Offenders 338

43 sex offenders in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County are wearing GPS monitoring devices as part of a pilot program designed to keep track of their movements. If the offender moves into an "exclusion zone," police are called. “Exclusion zones for example [are] schools, daycares, playgrounds, facilities where children congregate for those sex offenders,” John Hudson, a security consultant, said. “We’ve identified in their red zones. If an offender with a device goes into one of the red zones, an exclusion zone, we’ll be notified immediately.”

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Program Uses GPS To Track Sex Offenders

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  • WTF (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @12:54PM (#34850758)
    I understand the need to protect the kids. But what about you pay for your previous mistakes and then you can continue with your life if you learned ? So not only this person goes to jail, but he has to pay for the same mistake all of his life ? Where is the justice in that ?
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by spun ( 1352 )

      Unfortunately, sex offenders have a very high recidivism rate. Real sex offenders, that is. People do get added to the sex offender list for the wrong reasons, IMHO. But real sex offenders have a disease that is not cured by jail time.

      • Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rotide ( 1015173 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:04PM (#34850944)
        If you're a danger to society, go to prison. If you're no longer a danger, go free. This gray area of "you're free... but..." is just insulting on so many levels.
        • Re:WTF (Score:5, Informative)

          by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:08PM (#34851024) Journal

          So, what do you suggest we do, keep dangerous sex offenders in prison forever? How is that any less cruel than letting them go free, but keeping them away from situations likely to trigger their disease? It's more expensive, as well.

          • Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

            by rotide ( 1015173 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:13PM (#34851100)
            Look, if you're a danger to society, you should be removed from that society. Don't put people that you've removed from society because they were a danger back into it if you think they still pose a threat. It's just illogical. Plus, if it's a mental disease, prison wasn't the answer in the first place. A mental institution/facility would be more appropriate, don't you think? Only release when rehabilitated enough to no longer pose a threat and/or are "cured".
            • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

              by alta ( 1263 )

              Look, if you're a danger to society, you should be removed from that society.

              Finally someone that agrees that we should greatly expand the death penalty!

              • by toriver ( 11308 )

                ... or institute Muslim Sharia criminal law. Same thing.

              • by vlm ( 69642 )

                Look, if you're a danger to society, you should be removed from that society.

                Finally someone that agrees that we should greatly expand the death penalty!

                Its funny to look at how ingrained some cultural beliefs are. "There is either picket fence suburbia with a school or daycare every 500 feet and a law preventing being within 500 feet of said building, or .. death".

                Somebody with that illness might make an excellent farmhand at a non-family industrial farm, or as part of an all male all adult crew on a ship, or all male all adult construction worker or civil engineering project worker, or some weird child free "colony" type ideas come to mind in certain sem

              • by Cwix ( 1671282 )

                DNA evidence should be mandatory and the results should be checked by at least three labs. Putting someone to death without failsafe, bullet proof evidence is wrong.

                If you can make a case that ensures, absolutely positively ensures, that the defendant did the crime then I would not be closed minded to expanding the death penalty.

                • Cool. So you can kill someone, and never be convicted of it, just so long as you dont leave DNA around the scene.
                  Gotcha.

                  Any other great legal ideas?

                • It's a lot easier to leave fake DNA evidence behind than fake fingerprints...
                  • by Cwix ( 1671282 )

                    Frankly its not hard to do either. There needs to be some failsafe evidence that the accused is guilty of a capitol offense. If there is no way to do this, well then there should be no capitol punishment.

                • by Wansu ( 846 )

                    Putting someone to death without failsafe, bullet proof evidence is wrong.

                  Convicting people of ANY crime without failsafe, bullet proof evidence is wrong. If wrongfully convicted people are being exonerated from death row, there's bound to be lots more wrongfully convicted persons languishing in prison for lesser offenses.

                  Most end up there due to prosecutorial abuses. Our justice system is rigged to produce convictions.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 )

              So we can go the 1960s-2000 US route and life imprisonment, or the Soviet route and medicate and isolate?

              I like this third route, track and monitor while letting them have some sort of freedom. It costs less to the tax payer, allows more freedom for the convicted. This program is a condition of their parole, so they've volunteered for this tracking rather than stay in prison.

            • by icebike ( 68054 )

              Don't put people that you've removed from society because they were a danger back into it if you think they still pose a threat.

              Define "You" in the sentence above.

              Define "think" in the sentence above.

              Then ask yourself if you personally would like to live in a society where you could be imprisoned forever because someone "thought" you might commit a crime sometime in the future.

              This is exactly what is happening at Guantanamo Bay. People being held because someone "Thinks" they might return to terrorism. Many, if not most who were released (freed, not simply transported to another prison) have returned to jihad. So they get held fo

            • If anyone who poses a danger to society must be removed from it, I'd say that about 30% of the society would be removed.
              DUIs, sloppy gun keeping, establishments with poor hygiene conditions, there are millions of ways where people are endangering others in a serious way, and yet "removing them from society" is not only unjust, as completely impracticable.

            • Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @03:54PM (#34853692)

              But the whole crux of the argument is, "are they a danger?"

              The "common knowledge" is that sex offenders are drooling perverts with no self-control.

              Statistics and data don't back that up. In fact, they indicate exactly the opposite is true. Sex offenders are the least likely to have committed other crimes, to have damaged property, or caused physical injuries to others outside of of their obvious sex crimes. Being "black" is a much better indicator (statistically speaking only) of future criminal behavior than being a sex offender.

              So are they REALLY a danger?

              And if so, what does that indicate about other groups which have a higher than usual proclivity to crime, like males in their 40s who have never been married, or people who are on antidepressants?

              Did you know, starting about 5 years ago, the greatest danger to kids aged 8-16 today other than accidents is actually suicide? Not abduction or murder, but suicide. Kids are treated like property, are locked up and kept "safe" their whole life and now they're killing themselves in numbers that far outstrip the number of murders and abductions that these wacky behaviors are intended to prevent.

              Score one for the good guys, right?

              They are locked away

          • Re:WTF (Score:4, Insightful)

            by RollingThunder ( 88952 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:15PM (#34851122)

            Essentially, yes, keep them in prison until they're not a danger.

            Of course, it only works to keep them in there if the prison industry is completely thrown on it's ear, and turned from a penal system into a treatment system, trying to rehabilitate instead of just incarcerate.

            Remember though that there are different types of "incarceration", and some include home stay or open prisons. In essence, yes, these released people ARE still incarcerated, just in their own homes, and under constant monitoring. That may be the only balance that works.

            • Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:41PM (#34851538)

              The larger problem is, the recidivism rate is drastically increased by the treatment of those who serve their sentences when they get out. This applies not just to "sex offenders" but just about all of the population.

              Can't find a job, can't get a home? Increased recidivism rate. Yet how many jobs ask for a background check and whether you've served jail time in the past X years when you apply, and won't hire anyone with any record at all?

              Sex offenders get it really bad because of problems like this [go.com]. Imagine you're a "sex offender" whose only option, thanks to the "exclusion zones" getting bigger and bigger and overlapping all over, is to live in a shack under a fucking bridge. Now imagine you can't find work because any commute takes you through an "exclusion zone" even if you could find a job. Fuck, even "low income" or manual-labor jobs like construction are out of the question; you are actually under more restrictions than the illegal aliens even if you're desperate enough to work for illegal-alien, under-the-table slave wages.

              Step one is reforming the prison system to work more towards rehabilitation and less to "throw them all in a dang pit and forget about it." In this, the Republicans really can be called Retardicans, because they're the ones calling for ever-increasingly-tough "punishments" constantly until the punishments massively outstrip the crimes and tend to serve not to rehabiitate, but forever debilitate the incarcerated so that they'll never be able to reform and rejoin society, ever. Retardicans are responsible for the fact that today's prisons are places where violent gang criminals [albanyherald.com] are taught to be even nastier.

              Step two is making sure that, once people get out and reenter society, they're given a chance to actually reintegrate and become productive members. Our current system of "exclusion zones" may help somewhat, but it's far too onerous and makes it impossible for those caught in its web to survive. "Instant GPS phones the cops" is going to mean "fuck, he clipped the edge of it trying to get food in a grocery store" for these amazingly huge zones - a 2500 radius exclusion zone is 5 city blocks' radius.

          • In Canada we do keep dangerous offenders [wikipedia.org] in prison.
          • How is that any less cruel than letting them go free, but keeping them away from situations likely to trigger their disease?

            The problem is that this "well it's not jail, right?" attitude is precisely what made it so easy to put people on sex offender lists. If categorization really did mean an open-ended jail term (until, say, a qualified medical panel decides that the risk is low enough), do you think many people would still be in favor of treating indecent exposure and such as sex offense?

        • The idea of parole has never been insulting. That's all this is...parole. Screw up and back you go....

        • How do you gauge something like that though?

          It's never black and white, there's a reason for the grey area. I do a crime, I do some time. Am I safe for society? Who knows. I'll spout whatever your lawyer says to get you on parole.

          How do I know you aren't a danger to society right now? How do I know you won't commit murder tomorrow? Should I lock you up as a danger to society? Or how about being Jailed for a decade - can I assume you've learned your lesson? The whole idea of the grey area is to be both fair

      • But real sex offenders have a disease that is not cured by jail time.

        Which should kind of make you think that maybe we're not responding to their actions in the correct way. Imagine you have a dog that pisses in the house, and every time it does you lock it in it's crate for an hour but the dog's behavior doesn't change. Are you just going to keep locking the dog up every time it pisses inside or are you going to try something else to change the behavior?

      • Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Omnifarious ( 11933 ) * <eric-slashNO@SPAMomnifarious.org> on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:05PM (#34850984) Homepage Journal

        That is a common misconception. In fact, the recidivism rate among people convicted of child molestation is lower than for any other kind of criminal. It is true that there is a core population of child molesters who are incurable recidivists, but that represents less than 10% of the total, and I think less than 5%. Look up real statistics from actual research on criminal behavior and don't rely on the stories fed to you by the media.

        • by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:14PM (#34851120) Journal

          It appears you are entirely correct. I had always heard that high recidivism was the reason we treated sex offenders differently. Turns out that sex offenders have a lower recidivism rate than any other class of crime except murder. So why do we treat them differently?

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender#Recidivism_rates [wikipedia.org]

          • by rotide ( 1015173 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:17PM (#34851148)
            Simple answer, punishing boogymen gets people elected/paid.
          • by Omnifarious ( 11933 ) * <eric-slashNO@SPAMomnifarious.org> on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:19PM (#34851166) Homepage Journal

            We treat them differently because as a society we do not want to think about this sort of crime at all. We don't want to understand it. It's scary and frightening and we would prefer to class those who commit these sorts of crimes as monsters than trying to understand why and what might be broken that would cause these sorts of things to happen.

            I also have a theory that every generation has a way of trying to class a group of males as totally unfit. Men and women are born in approximately equal numbers, but in fact we are somewhat polygynous in our actual behavior. This requires getting a large number of males either killed, or out of the dating pool.

            That last theory I realize is highly speculative and somewhat trollish. :-)

            • we are somewhat polygynous in our actual behavior. This requires getting a large number of males either killed, or out of the dating pool.

              Or we need to acknowledge that women are promiscuous also; humans are not gorillas.

            • >I also have a theory that every generation has a way of trying to class a group of males as totally unfit. Men and women are born in approximately equal numbers, but in fact we are somewhat polygynous in our actual behavior. This requires getting a large number of males either killed, or out of the dating pool.

              We already have the later - they're called /. readers...

          • Even if the recidivism rate was inline with other serious crimes, that still wouldn't explain why we'd let a convicted child murderer or a serial rapist go free after his or her prison sentence was complete, but not a child molester (or, as is more frequently the case, a public urinator or an 18 year old with a 17 year old girlfriend).

          • by tukang ( 1209392 )
            Is it possible that the recidivism rate is lower *because* we treat them differently? Isn't that the entire point of programs like these - to lower the recidivism rate?
            • Is it possible that the recidivism rate is lower *because* we treat them differently? Isn't that the entire point of programs like these - to lower the recidivism rate?

              I'd like to see the recidivism rate over time, since the moral panic of pedophiles and the subsequent complete destruction of any possibility for a normal life after conviction seems to be a recent thing.

        • There you go, clouding the issue with facts.

      • I agree. However there are the stupid mistakes + a hard ass judge.
        General Rule of thumb if you are older (Age/2)+7 is the minimum age you should date for the US Culture.
        So if you are 22 and younger mistakes of a healthy mind can be made, causing criminal time and branding for life.

      • by ClioCJS ( 264898 ) <cliocjs+slashdot.gmail@com> on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:24PM (#34851246) Homepage Journal
        Stop spreading bullshit. The rate is 5 percent. According to the Office of Justice Programs of the United States Department of Justice, in New York State the recidivism rates for sex offenders have been shown to be lower than any other crime except murder. Another report from the OJP that studied recidivism of prisoners released in 1994 in 15 states accounting for two-thirds of all prisoners released in the United States that year,[4] reached the same conclusion. Read some facts yourself [wikipedia.org], then verify them with google [google.com].

        Not being full of bullshit: an easy process.

      • by mldi ( 1598123 )

        Unfortunately, sex offenders have a very high recidivism rate. Real sex offenders, that is. People do get added to the sex offender list for the wrong reasons, IMHO. But real sex offenders have a disease that is not cured by jail time.

        I agree, but this "solution" is just a bit over the top. I didn't RTFA, but is there some kind of time limit to this (red zone for 5 mins = police)? Can it detect intentions (did the pedo try to travel near that playground or did it just happen to be along a route he was taking)?

        • by mldi ( 1598123 )
          Sorry for responding to my own post, but I'd also like to add that most people would be surprised what constitutes a "sex offender". There are also varying degrees and different crimes that make up these people. Does everyone get GPS tracked or is it just the pedos (that's the only one I can think of that would have "red zones")? Shouldn't we reserve this for more serious sex crimes or multiple offenders? What happens to the 19yr old that had sex with a 17yr old (depending on the state the 19yr old lives in
      • People do get added to the sex offender list for the wrong reasons, IMHO.

        food for thought: That means, Mr. Allender wrote, based on studies of teenage sexual activity, that “nearly half of the teenagers in North Carolina and Virginia are felons.” [nytimes.com]

        This tracking system appears to violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

      • by nbauman ( 624611 )

        People do get added to the sex offender list for the wrong reasons, IMHO.

        You mean like this guy.

        http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11bar.html [nytimes.com]
        A Place on the Sex-Offender Registry for a Crime That May Be Off the Books
        By ADAM LIPTAK
        January 10, 2011

    • FTFA:

      More than 1,100 registered sex offenders live and work in Allegheny County and 43 of them are now wearing monitoring devices as a condition of their parole.

      Really, I don't understand the whole "it's uncool to RTFA" thing. Reminds me of the redneck middle school I attended, where it was "uncool" to be intelligent.

    • I do agree with your general sentiment, but these guys are on parole. They haven't served out their time completely yet.
  • Sad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Theotherguy_1 ( 1971460 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @12:55PM (#34850776)
    The modern Scarlett Letter. What a sick, sad joke.
    • by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

      Hey, does it work like Dan Brown's "GPS dot" in the Da Vinci Code?

      / can't believe I read that book all the way through

      // should have followed my instinct to stop after the second blatant spelling error

      /// haven't seen it, but maybe the first time the movie version is better than the book?

    • Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SirWinston ( 54399 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @04:36PM (#34854320)

      I'd say the scarlet letter is the public sex-offender registry, and that we also unreasonably impose a modern form of exile by making too many areas "exclusion zones" where past sex offenders are forbidden to live and work (so they end up living under bridges, at seedy motels etc., and at far greater risk of re-offending). I've actually thought for a long time that better, cheaper GPS technology would create a healthier alternative, but that unfortunately the older laws would never be repealed and we'd just create more layers of cruft on a poor system. That seems to be what's happening here.

      Now, what they should do instead of adding GPS tracking on top of public sex offender registries and live/work exclusion zones, is use it _instead_ of those even more draconian measures. If we can track where every past sex offender is at any moment, that in itself is a powerful deterrent--a permanent record of movements would put any such person at the scene of any crime, and knowing there's a 100% chance of getting caught would deter most would-be offenders. Those not deterred, who re-offend even knowing they'd eventually get caught, would clearly be the worst of the worst and could be imprisoned permanently. But that other 99+ percent would be allowed to live normal lives, not be subject to public harassment by having their names and addresses and charges on a publicly accessible list, and be able to be productive citizens provided they don't spend more than a normal commute time traveling through real exclusion zones like school areas. And anyone afraid that their would-be babysitting neighbor or boyfriend shouldn't be left alone with their children could still find out if the guy's a convicted sex offender by asking him to lift his pant legs, but the general public need not know.

      That will never happen because no politician wants to be the guy who says, "Yeah, let's get rid of the sex offender registries! We don't need 'em anymore thanks to technology!" But I think it would be a far better solution to the issue.

  • is No Molesting. The White Zone is...
  • Uhh.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Antisyzygy ( 1495469 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @12:59PM (#34850828)
    I don't really understand why people like this aren't kept in prison. If they have a high chance of committing another crime, enough so this device is warranted, why would you not keep them in prison to protect people? Why not just give every criminal something like this and completely get rid of prison. If you are a violent offender and your blood pressure goes up along with your adrenaline, the cops are called. If you are a thief and you go to the store, a cop is called. It just seems ridiculous that they spend more time and money locking up nonviolent offenders when the only thing our prison system in the US is good at is isolating people from society.
    • by mark-t ( 151149 )
      I believe that cost and lack of space are the key reasons why they are not kept locked up.
      • Thats because they lock up people that would probably be more suited to an enforced drug rehab program.
      • Well, maybe we need to reconsider some of the other things we throw people in prison for. If it has gotten to the point where we have so many people in prison that we are forced to release (presumably) dangerous people, we are definitely doing something wrong.
    • Why not just give every criminal something like this and completely get rid of prison. If you are a violent offender and your blood pressure goes up along with your adrenaline, the cops are called. If you are a thief and you go to the store, a cop is called. It just seems ridiculous that they spend more time and money locking up nonviolent offenders when the only thing our prison system in the US is good at is isolating people from society.

      I've been saying this for years now. Of course it won't happen becau

    • If they have a high chance of committing another crime, enough so this device is warranted, why would you not keep them in prison to protect people?

      because that is not what prison is for. The legal system is there to punish people for things that they have done, not a place to put people who might do something.

      If you are going to use prison to keep 'dangerous' sex offenders off the street, I want at-risk children proactively locked up for life, because they are statistically most likely to become viol
      • Not entirely. If a child molestor/rapist has done it twice or more times already then they should be isolated from children (which is easiest to do in prison) until such a time that they are cured of their problem. Prison doesn't have to be some horrible place, that's what makes it a shitty thing to do. However, some people need to be separated from society such as serial murderers, rapists, and people you keep committing assault.
      • by vlm ( 69642 )

        ... I want at-risk children proactively locked up for life, because they are statistically most likely to become violent criminals. Also, get more illiterate, minorities, and mentally disabled in there too, because they are more likely to cause problems for society.

        We already do that. We segregate our homes by income, and run the "poor kids schools" like a wannabe jail, complete with guards, searches, lockdowns, locked doors, yard/exercise time, tight schedules, solitary confinement, guard patrols, sometimes uniforms, ID numbers instead of names ... All they need is some bars on the windows.

    • by tiberus ( 258517 )

      I don't really understand why people like this aren't kept in prison. If they have a high chance of committing another crime

      In short simply because it's wrong. Our system of justice (lets not go into it's flaws at the moment) is basically crime -> conviction -> incarceration -> parole (maybe) -> freedom. You can't lock someone up based on what they _might_ do. That's the way the system is supposed to work, criminals are supposed to rehabilitated but, most of us know (believe) it really doesn't work that way.

      If you divided "sex-offenders" into two groups 1) those with predilections to a certain behavior (sociopaths

      • The prison system is extremely flawed and corrupt, but if you were to improve it I don't see why keeping them in a special prison is a bad thing. Maybe call it something else, like a "mental health clinic". If you knew a person would exit jail and go murder someone why would you let them out of jail?
  • by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:05PM (#34850972) Homepage

    “Exclusion zones for example [are ..] facilities where children congregate for those sex offenders"

    How about just closing down the centers for the molesters full of children? Wouldn't that be easier than GPS tracking?

    Who thought facilities to supply sex offenders with victims was a good idea in the first place?

  • Sounds good but.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Entropy98 ( 1340659 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:07PM (#34851010) Homepage

    While 1000ft exclusion zones around schools, parks, playgrounds, daycares etc sound like a reasonable idea to most people I've always wondered how difficult it must be to actually go places and obey them.

    There are so many schools, etc in most populated areas how is someone supposed to get from one side of town to the next without coming within 1000ft of a schools property? Do they distribute maps? Obeying something like this would require so much effort that I doubt anyone who actually attempted it would be successful.

    The local news here once ran a story that 90% of sex offenders live within 1000ft of a bus stop. Makes a great sensationalist story, but I would bet that 90% of all people live close to a bus stop.

    Obviously some sex offenders need to be kept away from children, but other than forcing them to live in the middle of nowhere I don't see an easy solution.

    And these aren't the only people exclusion zones are applied to, they are also used against people carrying drugs or guns, of course most people completely ignore this unless they are unfortunate enough to get stopped in front of an elementary school with a little marijuana.

  • by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:08PM (#34851026) Journal
    If a person is going to have to pay for the rest of their lives with such limitations on their freedom, then why not simply execute them and be done with it? Certainly it would have to be loads cheaper than maintaining the infrastructure to manage something like this. Not that I'm saying I'm a proponent of capital punishment in general, but I really don't see the point in continuing to live among other people if one is going to be forever prohibited from functioning as a normal member of society.
    • I totally agree with you.

    • Personal freedoms are limited all the time without death;
      1. hold office.
      2 Purchase a gun.
      3. travel to certain countries.
      4. drive a vehicle.
      5. come within a certain distance of certain people
      6. associate with criminals
      7. work for financial institution
      8. obtain a security clearance
      9. etc
      All of these are things that someone 'functioning as a normal member of society' can do. Do we kill everyone who falls in these categories?

    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      Because it is security theater, not security fact. We all want to believe our kids are 100% safe, so we try to create a perception of that security through extreme acts, such as arbitrarily removing rights. About 3/4 of kids who are abused will be abused by someone they know and trust. That is why it is important for teachers, and priests, to not be known abusers. That is not necessarily enough because sexual abuse in about a quarter of the cases are evidently perpetrated by a minor. Niether of these i
  • > If the offender moves into an "exclusion zone,"

    What, like, the mall?

  • by BJ_Covert_Action ( 1499847 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:12PM (#34851088) Homepage Journal
    Well Hester Prynne's village would be proud. I am glad that they mark the exclusion zones red on the maps. They have got the Scarlet part of the stigma correct, but they are missing the letter. Let's just carve 'SO' into their foreheads so everyone can be safe from these dastardly outcasts of society....

    By the way, just so I don't repeat Orwell's mistake, this comment is not an instruction manual.
  • Can't you be classified as a sex offender in the US for things as heinous as taking a slash or having sex in a public place? Something along the lines of a sexual offence being anything that's offensive and involves genitals, rather than committing a violent sexual crime (which is most people's definition of a sex offender).

    TFA was light on any details, other than this being used on 43 out of 1100 people, but even if it's just for paedophiles I can't see them being able to step out of the house, since surel

    • What does "taking a slash" mean? Public urination? If so, then no, not even the most absurdly conservative jurisdictions would classify that as a sex offender.

      • It's considered public exposure, give or take... b/c you were pissing on a tree, somebody might have come up alongside you and saw your dong.

        And yes, it does happen.

      • Not true, I'm afraid. A very little googling show's that unfortunate fact. A charge of public urination is often accompanied by a charge of indecent exposure, which is enough to get you on the list in a lot of places... sometimes, even if the act took place before the list existed.

        This is scary stuff. Maybe not now, but in how easily its become "accepted."

      • by mldi ( 1598123 )

        What does "taking a slash" mean? Public urination? If so, then no, not even the most absurdly conservative jurisdictions would classify that as a sex offender.

        Then you'd be shocked to know that that happens. Also: piercing (like an earring) a minor without parental consult.

  • WTF (Score:4, Funny)

    by alta ( 1263 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2011 @01:18PM (#34851154) Homepage Journal

    from the summary:

    facilities where children congregate for those sex offenders

    know, I'm pretty sure this is a comma placement issue, but if not, just WOW.

    We sure are making it easy for sex offenders these days... But if that causes it to call the police, is that entrapment?

    Odd.

  • I worked for a company that was developing this technology ten years ago. Once one has the ability to track a moving target it is trivial to check it the object in in a certain area. Here are some other applications we developed.

    1. Check the a moving object was not within a certain distance of a point. Same idea as area but simpler to implement
    2. Check that two moving objects do not come withing a certain distance. Restraining orders.
    3. Check that object does not leave a certain area. Make sure disabled, il

  • ...in America, is that a man is lets a child drown and later on states that he decided it is better to be convicted of non-assistance of a person in danger than to risk to be put on such a list for touching a child during a rescue.
  • Unfortunately the majority of the people wearing the devices are likely 19yr olds that had 15-16yr old girlfriends.

Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis. It makes sense, when you don't think about it.

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