By Chris Williams for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
Citing federal privacy laws, MySpace said the attorneys general
who made the demand had not followed proper legal process. Security
chief Hemanshu Nigam told AP: "We're truly
disheartened that the attorney generals chose to send out a
letter...when there was an existing legal process that could have
been followed."
In the letter on Monday, North Carolina, Connecticut, Georgia,
Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania asked
MySpace to provide information about registered sex offenders who
use the site.
MySpace's legal department said a letter won't cut it, and under
the Electronic Communications Privacy Act the attorney generals
need to pony up with subpoenas, court orders, or search warrants if
they want data.
Nigam said a recent trawl meant MySpace had "removed every
registered sex offender that we identified out of our more than 175
million profiles". In December, it hired Sentinel Tech Holding to
track its sex offender users, after a run of bad press over
incidents involving the site.
"Everybody needs to get together and delete online predators,"
Nigam said. "The attorneys general's concerns and our concerns are
exactly the same."
© The Register
2007
