BILL ANALYSIS
AB 179
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Date of Hearing: May 6, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Kevin De Leon, Chair
AB 179 (Portantino) - As Amended: April 29, 2009
Policy Committee: Public
SafetyVote: 7-0
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable:
SUMMARY
This bill requires the Department of Justice (DOJ) beginning
January 1, 2011, to study the feasibility and value of requiring
all persons required to register as sex offenders to provide all
e-mail addresses and instant messaging addresses to DOJ for
inclusion in the Violent Crime Information Network.
FISCAL EFFECT
Minor one-time GF costs, less than $50,000, for DOJ to perform a
feasibility study regarding an issue with which the department
is quite familiar.
COMMENTS
1)Rationale . According to the author, Internet predators target
young people in chat rooms and on sites such as MySpace.
Predators lie about their age, assume the identity of
teenagers and pretend to be friends. This bill requires DOJ to
study the feasibility and value of requiring registered sexual
offenders to register their email addresses with DOJ.
Requiring convicted offenders to register e-mail addresses and
instant messaging names provides law enforcement a tool to
employ against predators who attempt to misuse the Internet to
find potential victims.
2)In 1996, California enacted "Megan's Law," allowing the public
to access an address list of registered sex offenders. Before
2003, the public could only obtain the information on the
Megan's Law list by calling a 900 number or visiting
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designated law enforcement agencies. In 2003 DOJ put the
Megan's Law list of offenders on a public access website with
the offender's address, photo and list of offenses. For some
offenders with less serious offenses, only the ZIP code is
listed. Today anyone can peruse the website and see where
registered sex offenders are living in the community.
The author's goal is to determine whether adding offenders'
e-mail addresses to the website is cost-effective and helpful.
3)Efficacy . There is nothing that prevents a registered sex
offender from simply changing an e-mail address. Nor is there
any reason to assume that a potential offender, intent on
using an Internet site for conversing or meeting potential
victims, would register the e-mail address used for this
purpose.
Assuming a registrant changes e-mail addresses occasionally,
or uses different e-mail addresses for different purposes, all
of the e-mail addresses, and all of the changes, must be
reported to the registering law enforcement agency, which is
required to transmit this information to DOJ. Do local
governments have the personnel and capacity to obtain,
process, and transmit all of this data? Given the ease with
which a person may change an e-mail address, and considering
that many registrants have been crime-free for years, is this
bill an efficient use of law enforcement resources?
4)P rior legislation , AB 841 (Portantino, 2007-08), which was
held in this committee, required registered sex offenders to
provide local law enforcement with e-mail and instant
messaging addresses. AB 841 also:
a) required DOJ to establish and maintain a system allowing
a "commercial social networking web site,"(such as MySpace,
the sponsor of AB 841) or a third party designated by such
a Web site, to screen new users and compare the database of
registered users of that social networking web site to the
electronic mail and instant message addresses, and other
similar Internet identifiers of persons required to
register as sex offenders;
b) specified that the commercial social networking web site
or third party designated by that web site may submit its
database of registered users (using e-mail addresses) to
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DOJ to compare to DOJ's registered sex offender database in
order to identify matches as frequently as DOJ may allow,
for the purpose of identifying and removing registered sex
offenders from the social networking web site;
c) required the e-mail and instant message addresses of a
sex offender who has been granted an exclusion from listing
on the Megan's Law web site to be available to the
commercial social networking web sites;
d) created a new felony punishable by 3, 6 or 8 years in
the state prison, for any person over the age of 18 to
knowingly misrepresent his or her age with the intent to
use the Internet to attempt to commit specified sex
offenses.
AB 841 was ultimately amended to resemble AB 179, and failed
passage in the Senate.
5)Suggested Amendments . The author may wish to add a completion
date for the feasibility study.
Analysis Prepared by : Geoff Long / APPR. / (916) 319-2081