MySpace Predator Supposedly “Caught by Code.”
Wired news found an active sex predator on MySpace. But I think their headline — that this predator was “caught by code” — is a bit misleading. This is important because it misleads about the “magic” of data matching.
Wired wrote some code to match the information in the national sex offender database — first and last name, and zip code (within 5 miles) — with profiles on MySpace. This gave them “vast numbers of false or unverifiable matches.” It took months of part time work, looking at each profile, to figure out which were actual predators still using the site for their predation. Some profiles were dormant. Some were innocent. One lead to an arrest.
I’d say it was this work — including the sting — not “code” that found that predator. The predator was not caught by code. “Vast numbers of false or unverifiable” matches were caught by code.
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I think the real irony here is that many of the people supporting this were the same ones bitching about misidentification in the felon lists during 2000 election and terrorist watch lists by similar methods.
Comment by Mr L — 10/20/2006 @ 1:05 pm
Yep..Boing! Boing! always (accurately) bitches about the simplistic and erroneous name matching system used by the TSA, but then jumps up and down to praise the exact same thing when its open source and in Wired.
Wonder if it caught any Robert Johnsons who are on predator lists.
Comment by Brian Carnell — 10/20/2006 @ 7:56 pm
[…] At the time, I blogged about this on my previous blog: Wired wrote some code to match the information in the national sex offender database — first and last name, and zip code (within 5 miles) — with profiles on MySpace. This gave them “vast numbers of false or unverifiable matches.” It took months of part time work, looking at each profile, to figure out which were actual predators still using the site for their predation. Some profiles were dormant. Some were innocent. One lead to an arrest. […]
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