[Infowarrior] - Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown

[Richard Forno]

(Dunno how I missed this one....--rf)

January 14, 2009
Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown
By BRAD STONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/technology/internet/14cyberweb.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print

The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all.

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the  
problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that  
there really is not a significant problem.

The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as  
reinforced by depictions in the news media like NBC’s “To Catch a  
Predator” series. One attorney general was quick to criticize the  
group’s report.

The panel, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, was charged with  
examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks  
like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were  
using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report concluded that the problem of bullying among children,  
both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the  
sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

“This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad  
neighborhoods on the Internet,” said John Cardillo, chief executive of  
Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex offender database and was  
part of the task force. “Social networks are very much like real-world  
communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for  
the right reasons.”

The 278-page report, released Tuesday, was the result of a year of  
meetings between dozens of academics, experts in childhood safety and  
executives of 30 companies, including Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and Facebook.

The task force, led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at  
Harvard University, looked at scientific data on online sexual  
predators and found that children and teenagers were unlikely to be  
propositioned by adults online. In the cases that do exist, the report  
said, teenagers are typically willing participants and are already at  
risk because of poor home environments, substance abuse or other  
problems.

Not everyone was happy with the conclusions. Richard Blumenthal, the  
Connecticut attorney general, who has forcefully pursued the issue and  
helped to create the task force, said he disagreed with the report.  
Mr. Blumenthal said it “downplayed the predator threat,” relied on  
outdated research and failed to provide a specific plan for improving  
the safety of social networking.

“Children are solicited every day online,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “Some  
fall prey, and the results are tragic. That harsh reality defies the  
statistical academic research underlying the report.”

In what social networks may view as something of an exoneration after  
years of pressure from law enforcement, the report said sites like  
MySpace and Facebook “do not appear to have increased the overall risk  
of solicitation.”

Attorneys general like Mr. Blumenthal and Roy Cooper of North Carolina  
publicly accused the social networks of facilitating the activities of  
pedophiles and pushed them to adopt measures to protect their youngest  
users. Citing studies that showed tens of thousands of convicted sex  
offenders were using MySpace, they pressured the networks to purge  
those people from their membership databases.

The attorneys general also charged the task force with evaluating  
technologies that might play a role in enhancing safety for children  
online. An advisory board composed of academic computer scientists and  
forensics experts was created within the task force to look at  
technologies and ask companies in the industry to submit their child- 
protection systems.

Among the systems the technology board looked at included age  
verification technologies that try to authenticate the identities and  
ages of children and prevent adults from contacting them. But the  
board concluded that such systems “do not appear to offer substantial  
help in protecting minors from sexual solicitation.”

One problem is that it is difficult to verify the ages and identities  
of children because they do not have driver’s licenses or insurance.