Similar buy cialis sale to RA, JIA is an autoimmune condition, which means it's buy prozac without prescription caused by your child's immune system mistakenly attacking their joints. vibramycin for order While AML primarily affects the bone marrow and blood cells, clomid prescription only a small percentage of individuals with AML develop CNS sale discount cialis involvement. They then send the sample to a laboratory for metronidazole gel for sale a series of tests, which can help indicate whether a aldactone without prescription nodule is cancerous or benign. The counselor relies on the buy flovent person to use the sand as a tool for their arcoxia for sale healing and empowers them to find solutions to their problems. without zyprexa get prescription discount Typically, infections occur when people with compromised immune systems or bentyl without prescription underlying lung conditions come into contact with contaminated water, soil, cheapest pyrantel pamoate or food. However, a recent study has shown that blood approved toradol pharmacy glucose levels peak in the luteal phase (just before the period).

I’ve been waiting until I read something intelligent about it before commenting further on the widely publicized story that 90,000 registered sex offenders had been removed from Myspace, mentioned last week on this blog. The Connecticut Attorney General took this big number as proof of what he’s been claiming all along, that social networking sites are a new form of danger to children and need to be regulated and controlled to keep bad people away from unsuspecting, innocent children. The AG’s enthusiasm for trumpeting this statistic is part of a vicious and anti-scientific campaign to discredit the Internet Safety Technical Task Force report (see here and here and here for my earlier comments about this task force and its report). He doesn’t like the facts, so responds by denying them and then erecting a distracting sideshow.

Now danah boyd has done the math and made a few other important observations too. On the math front first: given the number of Myspace members, the density of sex offenders on Myspace is not high; in fact, it’s significantly lower than it is in the general public.

An observation that will surely excite an “even one is too many” response from Blumenthal and his fellow AGs, as though every registered sex offender is pedophile with a record of raping children. Hardly; you can wind up on the sex offender registry for all kinds of reasons, including plea deals in he-said-she-said rape cases involving two college students. (See Chapter 7 of Excellence Without a Soul for the long, sad story of one such case.)

But the most important observation is that mental model of danger is all wrong. It would do far more good to focus on vulnerable children and their Internet behavior than to try to purge the Internet of possible predators. There is a pretty good profile of what kinds of kids get into trouble, and it’s not the sexually innocent 11-year-old children of vigilant parents in suburban America. It’s older and sexually aware kids, kids with troubles, often family troubles, kids who crave affection and attention and explore liaisons in search of something that’s missing in their lives. The sad thing about the AGs’ ranting about Myspace pedophiles is that it distracts attention from the place where child endangerment could actually be addressed — with the children.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 7th, 2009 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Privacy, Social computing, Surveillance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.