ALBANY - Governor David Paterson Wednesday signed legislation designed to protect children who access social networking sites from convicted sex offenders.

Under New York State’s Sex Offender Registration Act, the Division of Criminal Justice Services maintains a computer registry of the names and addresses of convicted sex offenders, and that information is made available to the public. Sex offenders remain free to create screen names and access social networking sites used by children, and our laws do not effectively prevent that use.

The Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP) seeks to address that problem by requiring convicted sex offenders to register their Internet screen names with the Sex Offender Registry; allowing social networking web sites to obtain those screen names in order to prohibit those account holders from accessing web sites on which they could contact children; and mandating that dangerous convicted sex offenders who are serving a term of probation, conditional discharge or parole be prohibited from using the Internet to contact children.