DC - International Megan's Law passed by U.S. House of Representatives

Congressman Chris Smith

Original Article

05/20/2014

By Brendan McGrath

A local congressman is pushing a bill that would bring Megan’s Law, which has led to the creation of registries for child sex offenders across the country, onto the world stage.
- Not everybody on the online sex offender registries (hit-lists) are child sex offenders!

The International Megan’s Law, sponsored by Congressman Chris Smith (R-4th Dist.), was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives today.

The bill is named after Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old from Hamilton who was killed by a repeat sex offender living nearby her house 20 years ago.

“Sex offenders around the world are now able to cross borders and oceans easily to carry out their horrible designs against children under the cloak of anonymity and then disappear before a child is able or willing to reveal the crime,” Smith said today.

Smith has introduced versions of this bill multiple times over the past few years, including in 2010 when it passed the House, but it has never made it through the Senate.

This bill, H.R. 4573, was introduced two weeks ago and was passed unanimously by the House Foreign Affairs Committee before being passed by the House today.

The legislation is not just intended to prevent U.S. offenders from hurting children overseas, Smith said, but also to establish a reciprocal relationship.

“The International Megan’s Law would establish the model needed for the U.S. to persuade other countries to take action to stop both child sex tourism within their borders and protect children in the United States and elsewhere,” Smith said today.

Megan Kanka’s parents, Richard and Maureen, called the proposed law a “step in the right direction.”

“We must not only show the world that we will not tolerate these perverted acts in the United States but internationally also,” the Kankas said in a statement.

If the bill is passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Barack Obama, it would provide a legal framework for the Angel Watch Center, which is currently a one-person operation in the federal Immigration and Citizenship Enforcement agency that notifies destination countries of intended travel by offenders with a serious registered sex offense against a child, Smith’s release said.

“The stories of the victims are tragic — ruined childhoods, devastated families, lifetimes of memories of assaults and sometimes worse,” Smith said.

The bill also would work to establish better lines of communication to effectively share information about the travel of child sex offenders between federal agencies, the release said.

The Government Accountability Office issued a report in 2010 that said that in fiscal year 2008 at least 4,500 passports were issued to registered sex offenders by the U.S., the release said.

International Megan's Law moves through Congress

Richard and Maureen Kanka

Original Article

05/11/2014

By Cristina Rojas

The International Megan’s Law cleared a major hurdle Friday when the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously passed it.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th Dist.) has worked to pass the bill, which would expand the system of registering and tracking sex offenders to the international community, since 2008, when he first introduced the legislation. It was previously approved by the House in 2010.

It bears the name of Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old from Hamilton who, in 1994, was kidnapped, raped and killed by a repeat sex offender living nearby.

Under the bill, the United States would notify countries where registered sex offenders were seeking to travel. Those countries, in turn, would be asked to inform the U.S. when sex offenders travel to the U.S.

“The goals of this legislation do not stop at protecting children overseas from U.S. predators,” Smith said in a statement. “Sex offenders around the world are now able to cross borders and oceans to carry out their nefarious activity under the cloak of anonymity and disappear before a child is able or willing to reveal the crime.”

“The International Megan’s Law would establish the model needed for the U.S. to persuade other countries to take action to stop child sex tourism originating within their borders and threatening children in the United States and elsewhere,” Smith continued. “The goal is reciprocal notice.”

Smith said the International Megan’s Law would work in conjunction with anti-human trafficking laws, which Smith wrote and steered through Congress in 2000.

The bill is expected to be brought before the full House in the near future.

Sex Offender Intimidation & Extortion

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DC - DHS Official: US Not ‘Routinely’ Notified When Sex Offenders Enter the Country

Original Article

04/04/2014

By Melanie Hunter

(CNSNews.com) - A Homeland Security Department official testified Friday before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security that U.S. authorities are not “routinely” notified when foreign sex offenders enter the United States.

“We can receive information on foreign criminal records, and in fact the NCB (National Central Bureau) is the vehicle through which 190 countries can communicate, and there are … registered sex offenders, but routinely, that information actually would not come unless there’s a specific case or a specific law enforcement inquiry,” Alan Bersin, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary of International Affairs and Chief Diplomatic Officer, told the subcommittee.

The hearing was called to examine the issue of passport security in light of the recent revelation that two Iranians boarded missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 using stolen passports.

Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) asked whether INTERPOL would be alerted if a sex offender from Germany, for instance, flew into the U.S.

“If somebody in Germany who was a sex offender … got on an aircraft and was flying into the United States, would they be sharing that kind of information through INTERPOL with us – not just talking about terrorism, but other kinds of threats to security here in the United States? Just so I understand sir how the information sharing works through the organization,” Miller asked.

Shawn Bray, director of INTERPOL Washington, said “that type of information can be received from Germany” and other countries.

“We routinely receive information regarding traveling sex offenders, generally registered sex offenders in many of the countries that have a registry for that, but certainly from countries that may be just simply notifying us that a sex offender from their country is traveling,” Bray said.

That information is then relayed to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials “so a determination can be made as to admissibility in the United States.”

“There’s information regarding criminals, terrorists, modus and operandi that are transmitted on a daily basis,” Bray added.

According to Bersin, however, “when a German gets on an airplane to the United States, CBP knows that he’s coming, but the German authorities don’t know that he’s coming, and unless that German sex offender or murderer— unless that record is in the FBI database, we have no routine insight into what is in the criminal data records of other countries.”

“That’s the issue that— Mr. Bray is entirely right— that if there’s a specific case or specific inquiry, NCB would receive that information, but the point is it’s not a routine data exchange, because we don’t have routine access to German criminal records anymore than they have routine access – unless there’s a case – to our criminal records,” Bersin added.

Why Rape Is Sincerely Hilarious

UK - Even the innocent should worry about sex offender apps

Original Article

03/26/2014

By Sharif Mowlabocus

The average citizen may not feel that they have anything to fear from the rise of apps that promise to identify sex offenders in their area but they are part of a worrying trend that should act as a warning about what happens when personal data is flattened out and sliced up into apparently user-friendly services.

Sex-offender-locator apps proudly boast that they can help users find sex offenders in their local area. But they aren’t, of course, actually detecting anything. US federal law mandates that every state must collect information on convicted sex offenders and make it available to the public online. Sex offender locator apps take this freely available data and repurpose it.

After loading the app on your phone, you are presented with a map of your surrounding area and an icon, such as the commonly used blue dot, to show your own position. As you move around your neighbourhood, the app tracks your movements and the blue dot moves accordingly. At the same time other dots or pins also appear on the screen. These are most often coloured red and indicate the address of a registered sex offender. Clicking on a pin opens a profile containing an image of the sex offender, some personal data such as their age, sex, ethnicity, date of birth and address, and a list of convictions together with the date of those convictions.

At first sight these applications seem helpful. Many parents would want to know if there was a sex offender living next door for understandable reasons. And since SORNA mandates that local police forces should notify communities when sex offenders convicted of more serious crimes move into their neighbourhood they aren’t necessarily providing much more information than users would receive without an app.

There is a crucial difference though. As well as informing residents, SORNA also mandates that crime prevention teams work with local communities to explain how to keep children safe, how to talk to them about stranger danger and sexual abuse and how to deal with having an offender living in the local vicinity.

It is this contextualisation that is notably absent from the sex offender identification apps that are currently available. It is always good to know who we are living next to but without further resources such knowledge becomes at best meaningless and, at worst, the root of paranoia and fear.

The mapping illusion

Reoffending rates for sex offenders are far lower than many other crimes but these apps don’t give you that information. They might provide you with a sex offender’s last known address but fail to tell you that an alarmingly high percentage of convicted sex offenders have no fixed abode.

And it’s important to note that even though SORNA is a national law, different states have drastically different rules for which crimes will land you on the sex offender register. Few would argue that a violent child rapist should be included but in some states, you can end up on the register for having consensual sex in a public place or even urinating in an alleyway.

Then there is the mapping of sex offenders. Maps are amazing things. They tell us where things are – most of the time, when they work. Google Maps is only as accurate as the last time it was updated. The same can be said for these applications.

Worse still, the SORNA mandated databases are, frankly, a mess. There is no funding to implement SORNA and as a result, the information contained in them is often out of date and sometimes incorrect.

The mapping techniques employed by sex offender apps are therefore doubly illusory. The live tracking of our own movements by these apps belies the inaccuracies of the databases and suggests that what we are seeing is up to date, perhaps even being provided in real time, when in fact it isn’t.

Mapping us all

You may not feel concerned about this. You may think that sex offenders deserve what they get. But the prospects of people being affected in the same way, even if they’ve never committed a crime, are on the horizon.

In the UK, for example, discussions are ongoing about making patient records and data held by the NHS available to third parties. It has not yet been decided how these third parties will use this data but already companies have been found to be offering mapping services based on the information.

You may have been depressed in your teenage years. You may have even contemplated suicide. You may now be living a healthy, happy life and have long forgotten those anxious adolescent years. But if you reported it, if you sought help or advice from the NHS, then that record is still there.

And when data becomes compressed by third parties, when it gets flattened out into one single data stream, your present and your past collide with potentially huge ramifications for your future.

When it comes to personal data – of any kind – we not only need to consider what it will be used for but how that data will be represented, and what such representation might mean for us and others.

International travel - All RSOs banned from Canada and Mexico at request of US?

The following was sent to us via the contact form and posted with the users permission.

By MT:
Apparently the US government is expanding its ex-post facto punishment scope by advising other countries to not accept US citizens that have ever been RSOs. From what I've read, even after being removed from registry, this does not fix the problem.

I was just refused entry into Mexico despite having been there at least a dozen times in the last 10 years. Nearly two decades ago I plead Alford to “possession of a visual depiction of a minor under the age of 16″, which at that time in my state was the lowest level felony and for which I received a couple years of probation. As it turns out, the girl was over 16 – and a stripper at a local strip club, but I’d already taken the plea once we found this out. I completed probation and haven’t been in any trouble at all since then.

I was very recently (2014) traveling with my family including my in-laws, my mom, my wife, and daughter. When the plane arrived and before anyone got off the plane, they announced over the speaker that I needed to get off the plane first. I was escorted off and taken to a room an interviewed by about 5 gentlemen – all taking notes. Three of them had camera phones. The lead guy (who was the only one that spoke) asked if I’d ever had trouble with the law. I told him that he must know that already or I wouldn’t be there. I told them of my conviction, that it was nearly two decades ago, and that there was no physical contact with the alleged victim. The lead guy wrote this all down and faxed it back to Mexico City. Within 10 minutes it was determined that I would not be allowed to stay in the country.

This was highly embarrassing. Here I have my in-laws and my mom. We spent about $15,000 just on hotel. They were all allowed to stay in the country, but I was put on the next plane back to the US 40 minutes later (which was the same plane I flew in on). In retrospect from what I’ve read elsewhere, I was very lucky I didn’t sit in the airport for days.

Upon realizing I was there with my family, the lead immigration guy at my destination was very sympathetic. I feel that were it were up to him personally, I would have been able to stay. He told me that “the US State Department had contacted Mexico City and told them that I was coming” – Those are the exact words he used. He showed me the paper he received from his Mexico City office, but it was in spanish, so I couldn’t read it. There was one line that said something like “sexual” that he pointed at. I did not see a photo with it though these guys probably took 5 photos of me while I was there. These guys were very nice and professional and treated me well.

When I returned to the US, I went through US Customs and went through the usual extended screening BS that all RSOs get to enjoy. The US Customs agent said that “in the past few months”, that this was happening every single day multiple times and that “something must be going on.”

I told my family to go ahead and enjoy the vacation since it was paid for but this sucks for me. If they came back with me, it would be even worse for me since I’d have the guilt of that on top of all the money lost. At first I thought this was politically motivated as punishment for being outspoken and donating to the wrong candidates, but reading this here, obviously there are other forces at work. I am going to look into other (legal) avenues to get permission to enter the country if possible. Again, I’ve been to Mexico a dozen times in the past decade – and I’d been to this particular city three times. I do feel that the US is trying to create a defacto prison from which we cannot escape.

I read somewhere else online today that there was a law signed by the president of Mexico December 3 barring all RSOs from entering the country but wasn’t able to find any other verification of that.

From what I've found online, there is as of now a COMPLETE and TOTAL lockout of travel to either Canada or Mexico for US RSOs - even if you have family living there - and this is a culmination of the "International Tracking of Sex Offenders Working Group" (PDF)

It is amazing to me that there is ZERO information on this being made available to RSOs.

See Also:

• International Travel – Mexico
• GAO - Sharing More Information Will Enable Federal Agencies to Improve Notifications of Sex Offenders' International Travel