Cyberspace evils make parents’ past problems seem simple

By Emily Richmond

Thursday, Nov. 2, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.

Back in the day, parents met with teachers to discuss newfangled math, team teaching, dress codes and disciplinary policies for truants.

Today, parents will gather at Greenspun Junior High School in Henderson to discuss how sexual predators troll the Internet in search of young prey. And they will learn that children no longer limit the taunting and teasing of their classmates to the playground or the school restrooms. They use a keyboard and do it online.

The focus of today's workshop, the first of its kind for the Clark County School District, is MySpace.com. That Internet Web site is, for children and adults alike, the new telephone party line, chain letter, bulletin board and Friday night hangout rolled into one. At the least, it allows its members to post personal profiles online and to exchange messages with other users. But intentionally or unwittingly, its members have opened windows and doors into their lives, and strangers are coming in.

MySpace officials know they are the target of growing criticism, even lawsuits, because of how exposed their young users have become to strangers.

Hemanshu Nigam, a former federal prosecutor who is now the chief security officer for MySpace.com, said the company has taken aggressive steps to keep younger users off-line, block pornography and hate speech, and prevent "cyber-bullying." But the ultimate authority - and responsibility - rests in the home, not MySpace's corporate headquarters, Nigam said.

We spoke to Nigam on Wednesday.

Q: Instances of "cyber-bullying" have been reported in Clark County schools. How can MySpace address the problem?

A: We take cyber-bullying extremely seriously. We want people to respect each other when using our site. We take action, going so far as to delete a profile (online membership) if we find out someone has been engaging in cyber-bullying. We recently released a guide, in partnership with the National Association of School Boards and the National Association of Independent Schools, that tells teachers about MySpace, its features, safety issues and how to deal with situations like cyber-bullying. Teachers often know when there's an incident in their classrooms. Now digital incidents are coming to their attention as well.

What steps has MySpace taken to limit content?

In the physical world, how do we stop a minor from going into a store to buy pornography? We consider the same scenario online. We try to make sure that we have implemented the right technology and the right process and the right people in order to prevent inappropriate content.

But when a person walks into a store, there's usually a physical barrier such as a countertop separating customers from pornography, and a sales clerk asks for proof of age, providing another level of security. How can you duplicate those safety measures online?

We take a multifaceted approach. Just like cities in the physical world, we have rules. You cannot post nudity, hate speech, obscenity, violence or gang-related materials. Every image that comes through our site is reviewed by a human being. The image gets fingerprinted so the next time it comes through, our system can recognize it. Then we identify who is trying to upload the image to our site. We take action against that profile owner for trying to violate our member rules. We have search engines that troll the site 24 hours a day, seven days a week, looking for key words and indicators that tell us there may be a violation of our rules or that a user may be younger than the site's minimum age, 14. We're deleting about 30,000 profiles per week for not being of age for our site.

MySpace has been tied to a number of criminal investigations. How is the company responding?

We have set up a hot line for law enforcement specifically. In three rings or less, that phone call has to be answered by a live person inside of MySpace who has been trained to work with law enforcement. For example, law enforcement may tell us, "We have a potential runaway situation, they may be using MySpace. Can you help us track down this individual so we can bring them home safely?" Or the question may be, "I need some information you may have. Where do I fax my subpoena?" We wrote a law enforcement guide that lays out what kind of data we keep, how you can legally gain access to it, and how you can build your digital trail. We also train law enforcement on how to set up an account and conduct undercover operations. We've already trained over 1,000 officers.

From the corporate side, there's little your company can do to stop a 13-year-old from using his older brother's password to log on to MySpace and look around. How much of the responsibility and oversight rests with parents?

Parents play an absolutely critical role. Let's say you have a 15- or 16-year-old who is about to learn how to drive. Most parents would teach them. They'd talk about safety, stopping at stop signs, using the turn signals, looking both ways, all of those kinds of things. Most parents don't know how a car operates under the hood. But they're definitely willing to teach safety and driving. It's the same thing with the Internet. Oftentimes parents say, "I don't understand how this Internet stuff works. It's so confusing - there are so many things going on." That translates to, "I can't teach safety." But that's absolutely not true. Parents have to understand that many of the lessons they teach in the physical world are very relevant online.

What control can a parent exert over a child's MySpace page?

If you're a parent, and your 13-year-old has a MySpace page, contact us so we can delete it. Or you can say, "My 15-year-old has a MySpace page and frankly, I'm not comfortable with it. He has other things he should be doing." Let us know, we'll also take it down. Ultimately, as a parent, you should be determining what rules apply in your house. That's true in the physical world, and for us it's also true in the digital world.