May 25th, 2005
Disturbing New Service Provides Sex Offender Alerts via SMS Text Messaging
Last week I wrote about a new service that lets you receive Amber Alerts on your cell phone. The premise sounded good, but I was also scared that the messages would be going on day and night as parents used the alert system to fight bitter custody battles. I have to say that to date I have not received a single message, and the further research I did on this showed that if you specify one or two zip codes, the number of message will only be about one or two a month. Which is also good to know for the poor kids involved.
Today however there’s a new SMS text service from, SCAN USA that covers sex offenders who move to a new address, and frankly is totally offensive - from the company’s business model to the fact that I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with an “alert.” This info is available online for any one who wants to know more about their neighbors, but why tie it to cell phone messaging, except for the chance to make a buck off the message? The other key problem is that only one quarter of all sex offender register their addresses with the Police, which will not only leave out 75% , it also penalizes the ones who do register, which in turn can make that number drop even further. In a nutshell: The data is bad and the company sending it doesn’t care one bit.
“Critics worry that the alarms may provide a false sense of security, since the databases depend on the willingness of sex offenders to check in with police. About 132,000 offenders — a fourth of all such sex offenders nationwide — fail to follow state registration laws, according to an October 2004 survey by the advocacy group Parents for Megan’s Law. Laura Ahearn, the group’s executive director, said she is outraged that a for-profit company is directing people to information that has been found to be unreliable.
“Why are they doing this? Because they want to benefit financially, not because they want to protect society,” Ahearn said. “You can’t just be injecting yourself without having some level of responsibility for the information you put out there.” Krauss said it’s not his company’s responsibility to verify any of the information, or warn subscribers about what’s missing from the databases. “This is a garbage-in, garbage-out process. All we can do is use the data that’s there,” he said.
“SCAN USA sends the alerts to the public for free. SBC Communications agreed to pay the company $300,000, plus 15 cents a year for each SBC customer who subscribes, beyond the initial two million who sign up, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Accountants have expressed concern about the financial state of SCAN USA’s parent company, Sharp Holding Corp., which is deeply in debt, and whose stock trades for less than a dollar on the highly speculative over-the-counter market. Last year, the company lost $2.4 million, with $900,000 of that loss attributed to SCAN USA.
“Other critics said the service will feed people’s paranoia. Source: Yahoo News
Daniel says:
>>quote>/quote
May 25th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
Daniel says:
(Damn blog software that can’t properly encode an entered comment.)
“I have to say that to date I have not received a single message, and the further research I did on this showed that if you specify one or two zip codes, the number of message will only be about one or two a month. Which is also good to know for the poor kids involved.”
This isn’t a sign of the number of kids taken. It just means that the incidents didn’t meet the stringent requirements to be classified as an Amber Alert. Police Departments do have some latitude but the general feeling is that if they use it the public will become desensitized to it, just like our color-coded Terror Alert system. Who even really pays attention to that anymore?
- Daniel
May 25th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
Skul says:
The only problem with this, is that you MAY be tagged as a sex offender if you’re caught “mooning”. A slilly but common behaviuor of some folks. In the state of Texas, exposure of the anus(mooning) or genetilia is considered a sexual crime. I’m not exactly a fan of “mooning”, but I have a hard time equating it to sexual perversion. My spell-checker pooped out.
May 26th, 2005 at 1:49 am
Rick says:
Another problem would be if you lived near a prison. If you were to check for sex offenders in say 18472, you would find a whole bunch. Why? There is a state prison there, and a maximum federal prison on the way. If you are near your county jail you would also get false hits. Yeah, there are sex offenders there, but would you actually meet them? No. You have to filter out the data much better to make it useful. Also, like Skul said, the “sex crimes” label is way too vague and covers too many areas to really be helpful.
May 26th, 2005 at 6:30 am
Alice says:
I agree. The data needs to be correct and it needs to explain more. How can mooning and and child molestation be in the same grouping?
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