President Bush has signed the KIDS (Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators) Act into law. The bill is S. 431.
The bill provides for the following requirements, according to an official White House statement:
sex offenders to provide Internet identifiers, including e-mail addresses, to State sex offender registries; and tasks the Justice Department to establish and maintain a system that allows social networking websites to compare Internet identifiers of its users with those provided to the National Sex Offender Registry;
You can read the bill text here.
Additionally, the President also signed into law today the PROTECT (Providing Resources, Officers, and Technology To Eradicate Cyber Threats to Our Children) act. That bill is S. 1738. You can read the bill text here.
It requires “the Department of Justice to create and implement a National Strategy for Child Exploitation, Prevention, and Interdiction; statutorily establishes the existing Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force Program; and makes other amendments to Federal child pornography laws,” according to an official White House statement.
Congress in Your Pocket
S E N A T U S 
The Keep the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators (KIDS) Act passed by the legislature is a great 1st step in protecting kids but it is no substitute for parents taking firm and proactive steps to protect their own children. The KIDS act is only going to be as effective as the perverts who may or may not follow its rules. These predators, these twisted law breakers, will simply assume new private identities. We know this because most likely they used fake identities BEFORE they were arrested. Don’t think the government can protect our children – We have to do it ourselves.
I installed Spector Pro from Spectorsoft.com after seeing their Editors’ Choice review in PC Magazine. Within a day I started seeing bad stuff. As a parent of two teenagers I was simply amazed by what I saw. My son was doing things (visiting sick sites) I didn’t even think he was capable of and my daughter was constantly being stalked on MySpace. I immediately used Spector to block risky site categories (like Adult), restrict when they both could go online (vs. just doing their homework) and I blocked some of the rude (boys, girls and maybe adult men) who she was chatting with. Monitoring rocks. I see every chat, every search they do, every email, websites they visit and even screen shots. It’s not big brother or a trust issue to me. These are good kids but I saw what they were doing online. This is vital protection for our most important assets – our children.
The Keep the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators (KIDS) Act passed by the legislature is a great step in the continuing confiscation of constitutional rights from those in no position to defend themselves. Its retroactive registration requirements and the like impose draconian restrictions upon many whose one crime committed long ago will never be repeated and does nothing to proactively develop new means of finding still hidden predators on social networks and elsewhere.
I don’t want serial rapists set free among the kids on Facebook or My Space. However, I don’t want to continue to pile new penalties retroactively upon those who’ve paid for their offenses. Too bad that Congress didn’t avoid the grandstand and try to figure out a fair way to distinguish among the various classes of individuals who are forever lumped together as “sex offenders” — but that’s not easy nor politically safe. However, right is rarely easy or safe.