RAMSEY FALLOUT: The arrest of John Mark Karr in the 1996 murder case of JonBenet Ramsey will renew calls for legislators, law enforcement and database/technology firms to do more to identify and track down purported pedophiles. Karr reportedly faced five counts of possession of child pornography in California in April 2001, didn’t appear for a court date, and later ended up in Thailand.
“Of the 550,000 registered sex offenders nationally, the whereabouts of about 100,000 are currently unknown,” claims America’s Most Wanted, the TV show launched by victims advocate John Walsh. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (named after Walsh’s son, Adam, who was abducted and killed 25 years ago) was signed into law by President Bush last month. It initiates a national registry of sex offenders, as well as a DNA database of convicted molesters and funding for tracking by global positioning technology.
CABLE ABLE?: Expect some blowback at Louisville-based Cable Labs for the leak of a research report on the possible need for big bucks investment by cable companies to compete with telecom companies like Verizon that are deploying fiber to the home for advanced services. Elements of the 60-page report, dated July 31, were on the front page of The Wall Street Journal today, with technology officers from Time Warner and Comcast quoted as downplaying the report’s speculation. CableLabs is a non-profit consortium backed by the cable industry to help research new technologies and set technical standards.
PRYING EYES: Websites such www.dontdelete.com and www.SEOSleuth.com are popping up to archive and analyze the 20 million Interet queries of 685,000 AOL users that were mistakenly released online. Some users have been identified thorugh search strings. The Washington Post talked to one such person in Colorado.
“JoAnn Whitman, a 55-year-old retired grocery store worker from Grand Junction, Colo., accidentally typed an order confirmation from Bed, Bath & Beyond into the AOL search engine on May 3,” the paper reported. “The entry included her name and address.”
“They say, ‘Oh, we’ll protect it, but it’s not secure,’ Whitman told the paper when contacted about the breach. “I don’t think that it’s anybody else’s business.”
