AG says ISTTF ‘creates false sense of security’

Attorney General Henry McMaster “has withdrawn from a group studying the problem of Internet predators on social-networking sites after a report downplayed threats that children face online,” CarolinaLive.com reports. It says McMaster withdrew, presumably from the group of attorneys general that formed the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, because the ISTTF report’s findings “create a ‘false sense of security on the issue of child Internet safety’.” The report, “Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies,” can be downloaded from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s site. One of the criticisms voiced by the attorneys general in this interview in the Wall Street Journal is that the research cited by the ISTTF report is dated. In fact, the Research Advisory Board pulled together all online-safety research published through this past year, when the ISTTF report was being written. If data is not in there, especially the information on criminal activity the attorneys general are calling for, it’s data that the research community is waiting for law enforcement people to make available. Let’s hope the attorneys general will help fill in whatever gaps in the research they’re referring to.