In a move that will give US law enforcement agencies access to the latest sex offender information, MySpace.com and Sentinel Tech are donating their Sentinel Safe database technology to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

MySpace attacking the serious problem of child abuse

Just last month, MySpace joined forces with Sentinel Tech to build Sentinel Safe, a national, searchable, sex offender database to contain information on the estimated 600,000 registered sex offenders in the US.

The database allows Web sites and other third parties to effectively identify, remove, and block convicted sex offenders from online communities.

The Sentinel Safe database is currently being used by a dedicated MySpace safety team to proactively monitor 24/7 for convicted sex offenders in the community.

MySpace and Sentinel Tech say they are donating this technology to provide NCMEC with additional resources to assist federal, state and local law enforcement with their investigations ranging from missing child cases, Internet-facilitated crimes against children, locating registered sex offenders, and potentially identifying fugitives.

NCMEC will directly interface with law enforcement to provide them access to the database information in order to assist in their investigations.

As part of this donation, MySpace and Sentinel Tech will provide all research and development to tailor the Sentinel Safe technology to NCMEC’s unique needs in aiding law enforcement.

“Providing assistance to law enforcement with their investigations is part of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s core mission,” said Ernie Allen, NCMEC President and CEO.

“MySpace’s donation of its Sentinel Safe database will enable us to help keep the Internet safer by tracking down those who commit crimes against our children.”

It’s great to see that the information available on the Sentinel Safe database will be available to law enforcement officials investigating abuse cases. While MySpace will always be attractive to sex offenders and deviants, it is heartening to see that MySpace is no longer turning a blind eye to this problem.

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Entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 11:25 am under Security, Technology, Web2.0.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.
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