程序员是如何在MySpace上找到性骚扰者的

MySpace has been waiting for new laws to be passed that would require known sex offenders to register their e-mail address in addition to the other required information. This approach seems somewhat pointless considering how many e-mail addresses most people have. I have four. I know people who have 10 or more. But who can blame MySpace for assuming that no one on the registered sex offenders list would sign up on MySpace using their real names? Still, Poulsen took a shot, and the results were astonishing.

MySpace一直在等新法规的出台来要求已知的性骚扰者在其他必需的信息后在附加注册他们的邮箱地址。这个方法看起来有些毫无意义，考虑到很多人有多个邮箱地址。我就有四个。我知道有的人有10个或者更多。但是谁能责备MySpace假设会有在注册的性骚扰名单上的人不用真实姓名注册的呢。然而，Poulsen尝试了下，结果是惊人的。

He wrote 1,000 lines of Javascript designed to compare MySpace profile names and reported zip codes with the names and zip codes listed in the U.S. Department of Justice online sex-offender database. He set up the program to search the lists for 46 U.S. states and ran the code on the MySpace database servers housing member profiles. What he came up with was disheartening: Of the 1 million profiles scanned, he found more than 700 registered sex offenders, almost 500 of whom had committed crimes against children. And at the time of his reporting the results, he had only analyzed one-third of the data generated by his program.

他写了1000行Javascript代码来将Myspace页面名字和的邮政编码和美国司法部在线的性骚扰犯数据库上的名字和邮政编码进行对比。他建立了一个程序来搜索46个美国州，然后在MySpace数据库服务器表面的成员页面跑了一段代码。出来的结果令人沮丧：每一百万个扫描过的页面，他就会发现多于700个注册性侵犯者，其中将近500个犯有侵犯儿童的罪。当他的汇报结果出来的时候，他只分析了程序生成数据的三分之一。

One of the sex offenders Poulsen uncovered had been actively compiling a list of young friends and sending the underage boys sexually explicit, private messages. He has since been arrested, although police were only able to charge him with attempted child endangerment since he never successfully made physical contact with any of the young boys he was communicating with. According to Poulsen, there were several alarming communications found on the pages of other registered sex offenders, but for every one who appeared to be indulging their predilections, eight seemed to be doing just what pretty much every other MySpace member is doing: talking about their lives, posting funny photos, reporting wedding and job promotions and blogging about their interests.

Poulsen发现的性侵犯者之一曾经积极的编制一份年轻好友的名单，并且像这些未成年男生发送性露骨的，隐私的消息。他曾经被捕过，尽管警察只能起诉他蓄意侵害儿童，但是它从来没有成功的和任何联系的男生有过生理接触。根据Poulsen的分析，在其他注册的性侵犯者的页面上发现过危险的通讯，除了每一个满足了嗜好的人士外，8个看起来正在做其他MySpace用户都在做的事：谈论他们的生活，张贴搞笑照片，报告婚礼和职务升迁和写写日志谈谈他们的兴趣。

Poulsen admits that he ended up with a bunch of false positives in the program's reported matches, which he was able to weed out by comparing the MySpace profiles to the mug shots and ages included in the sex-offender database. It's not a perfect system, but it seems to be a better plan than waiting for Congress to pass a law that would be absurdly easy to bypass in the MySpace registration process. Who has only one e-mail address these days? Can Congress enforce a single-address rule for sex offenders? It seems unlikely.

Poulsen承认他因为程序报告的一堆匹配错误而终止了，但是他能够通过对比MySpace个人页面和性侵犯者数据库里的照片和年龄来剔除这些错误的。这不是一个完美的系统，但是看起来这比等待过会通过一项荒唐的绕过MySpace注册过程的法律要好一些。这年头谁还只有一个电子邮箱地址呢？国会还要再让性侵犯者只能拥有一个地址？看起来不可能。

Poulsen's code will soon be released in open-source format so police departments can have full access to the program. MySpace has not commented on the program itself.

Poulsen的代码将会以开源的形式发布出来，这样警察部门可以完全掌管程序。MySpace对这个程序本身没有发表任何评论。