FEDERAL PAROLEES RESTRICTED FROM VIEWING INTERNET : FEAR OF CRIME NETWORK EXISTS.Byline: Seth Schiesel The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times So you think guns, drugs and alcohol are dangerous? Have you looked at the Internet lately? The U.S. Parole Commission has, and it was so disturbed by the amount of information about child sex rings, recipes for explosives and plans for hate crimes that last month, without holding any public hearings, it approved restrictions on the use of computers by certain federal parolees. Offenders on federal parole already are barred from owning a firearm, drinking to excess, hanging out in places where illegal drugs are common or consorting with known criminals without permission. And now some of them may be barred from using the Internet. By authorizing new prohibitions for parolees in cyberspace Coined by William Gibson in his 1984 novel "Neuromancer," it is a futuristic computer network that people use by plugging their minds into it! The term now refers to the Internet or to the online or digital world in general. See Internet and virtual reality. Contrast with meatspace. , the commission became the first parole board pa`role´ board` n. 1. A group of individuals with authority to determine whether a prisoner will be granted parole from a particular prison. , ahead of any state parole board, to try to allay al·lay tr.v. al·layed, al·lay·ing, al·lays 1. To reduce the intensity of; relieve: allay back pains. See Synonyms at relieve. 2. the mounting public unease about the intersection of criminals and the information highway. The prohibitions address the growing national concern that criminals, particularly sex criminals, are using the Internet to gather information for criminal purposes and to hook up with other criminals. Recently, a convicted pedophile pedophile Forensic psychiatry A person with pedophilia; there are an estimated 500,000 pedophiles in the world. See Child prostitution, Megan's law, Pedophilia. who was still behind the walls of a Minnesota state prison used the Internet to compile a database containing the names and addresses of thousands of children who could be potential targets of sex crimes. The new restrictions, which parole officers can put into use as they see fit immediately, will range from prohibiting offenders from owning a computer to installing monitoring equipment on their computers that will keep tabs on where they roam on line. Some federal officials are dubious about whether probation officers really will be able to keep any of their charges off the Internet. But the commission approved the new rules anyway, because, as Edward F. Reilly Jr., the commission's chairman, put it, ``We cannot ignore the possibility that such offenders may be tempted to use computer services Data processing (timesharing, batch processing), software development and consulting services. See service bureau, SaaS and ASP. to repeat their crimes.'' Although parole essentially was abolished as an element of federal sentencing in 1987 and was replaced with ``supervised release,'' which is administered by judges instead of the parole commission, there are still about 12,000 federal convicts on parole. And the commission estimates that some of those parolees are sitting in front of computers devising their next crimes. Michael J. Gaines, one of the three U.S. parole commissioners and a former chairman of the Arkansas parole board, said that the commission is most concerned about offenders ``with histories involving either pedophilia pedophilia, psychosexual disorder in which there is a preference for sexual activity with prepubertal children. Pedophiles are almost always males. The children are more often of the opposite sex (about twice as often) and are typically 13 years or age or younger; or hate crime activity, the illegal use of explosives, those kinds of things.'' And, he added, ``our staff is estimating perhaps 100 or so offenders may fit the condition.'' A spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, Jenni Gainsborough, said the new restrictions probably could withstand any legal challenge, since parole boards have the authority to restrict their convicted charges in ways that would be unconstitutional on First Amendment and due process grounds otherwise. But, ``it's a fallacy that the Internet allows you to do illegal things that you couldn't otherwise do,'' she said. ``There's nothing you can get off the Internet that you can't get in the local library.'' The parole commission begs to differ. Although Gaines said he could not conceive that the commission would prohibit a parolee pa·rol·ee n. One who is released on parole. Noun 1. parolee - someone released on probation or on parole probationer from frequenting libraries or that it would install a constant wiretap wiretap n. using an electronic device to listen in on telephone lines, which is illegal unless allowed by court order based upon a showing by law enforcement of "probable cause" to believe the communications are part of criminal activities. on a parolee's voice telephone line, he said that the information on the Internet was qualitatively different. ``We monitored the Internet to see just what type of information was out there,'' Gaines said. ``In some of the newsgroups This is a list of newsgroups that are significant for their popularity or their position in Usenet history. As of October 2002, there are about 100,000 Usenet newsgroups, of which approximately a fifth are active. where you can find photographs of sexual conduct involving children, there's also quite a bit of text. I recall seeing things Seeing Things may refer to:
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