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Tuesday, September 5, 2006
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COLUMBUS - An Ohio legislative panel yesterday rubber-stamped an unprecedented process that would allow sex offenders to be publicly identified and tracked even if they've never been charged with a crime.
No one in attendance voiced opposition to rules submitted by Attorney General Jim Petro's office to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, consisting of members of the Ohio House and Senate.
The committee's decision not to interfere with the rules puts Ohio in a position to become the first state to test a "civil registry."
The concept was offered by Roman Catholic bishops as an alternative to opening a one-time window for the filing of civil lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse that occurred as long as 35 years ago.
A recently enacted law allows county prosecutors, the state attorney general, or, as a last resort, alleged victims to ask judges to civilly declare someone to be a sex offender even when there has been no criminal verdict or successful lawsuit.
The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio's so-called Megan's Law.
The person's name, address, and photograph would be placed on a new Internet database and the person would be subjected to the same registration and community notification requirements and restrictions on where he could live.
A civilly declared offender, however, could petition the court to have the person's name removed from the new list after six years if there have been no new problems and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again.
11:15:43 AM 
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State of Ohio Establishes "Pre-Crime" Registry. I*Love*Green*Olives writes to tell us the Toledo Blade is reporting that State officials have rubber-stamped a "civil-registry" that would allow accused sex offenders to be tracked with the sex offender registry even if they have never been convicted of a crime. From the article: "A recently enacted law allows county prosecutors, the state attorney general, or, as a last resort, alleged victims to ask judges to civilly declare someone to be a sex offender even when there has been no criminal verdict or successful lawsuit. The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio's so-called Megan's Law." [Slashdot: Your Rights Online]
11:10:47 AM
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California Passes Wi-Fi Guidance Law. MrNonchalant writes, "California's legislature has passed a law requiring Wi-Fi device manufacturers to include warnings about security. From the article: 'From 1 October 2007, manufacturers must place warning labels on all equipment capable of receiving Wi-Fi signals, according to the new state law. These can take the form of box stickers, special notification in setup software, notification during the router setup, or through automatic securing of the connection. One warning sticker must be positioned so that it must be removed by a consumer before the product can be used.'" [Slashdot: Your Rights Online]
10:19:38 AM
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Google Inc., which refused in the past year to hand over user search data to U.S. authorities fighting children's access to pornography, said yesterday that it was complying with a Brazilian court's orders to turn over data that could help identify users accused of taking part in online communities that encourage racism, pedophilia and homophobia.
The difference, it says, is scale and purpose.
The Justice Department wanted Google's entire search index, billions of pages and two months' worth of queries, for a broad civil case. Brazil, by contrast, is looking for information in specific cases involving Google's social networking site, Orkut.
"What they're asking for is not billions of pages," said Nicole Wong, Google associate general counsel. "In most cases, it's relatively discrete -- small and narrow."
10:17:19 AM
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NYPD Launches Third Phase Of Data Warehouse Project. The New York City Police Department is about to start work on the third phase of a massive data-warehouse project that is creating a single repository for most of the city's crime records and crime data. [Computerworld Data Mining News]
Editor: I just hope that unlike the feds they have some mandate to actually try confirm the data and make sure that the data is accurate.
10:03:00 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Paul Hardwick.
Last update: 10/1/06; 4:19:27 AM.
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