“Even if this never leads to one criminal prosecution in Maine, it should highlight the fact that there are sexual predators on the Internet that are as prevalent as our children are.”

– Assistant Attorney General Carlos Diaz, Capital News Service, June 27.

Mr. Diaz is absolutely correct.

Maine’s attorney general is trolling the records of MySpace.com, looking for registered sex offenders who may use the social networking Web site to troll for underage victims. MySpace, in this way, is like a digital playground or schoolyard, the kind of place where parents feel perverted predators could be patrolling along the periphery.

Except this search is like looking for dull needles in a massive haystack. Cross-referencing MySpace accounts with Maine’s sex offender registry can only yield offenders using their real names, highly unlikely if a sex offender is using the Web site for nefarious deeds. (Unless they are “not smart,” as one official put it.)

It could also ensnare offenders using MySpace for wholly legitimate purposes, who are freely using their real identities because their intentions are proper. Having an account, after all, is perfectly legal.

Some 7,000 of MySpace’s 175 million profiles correlate to offenders in state and federal databases. A quick search on the Web site revealed a handful of known Lewiston-Auburn offenders with profiles, including one who posted a telephone number, soliciting a date. The proverbial low-hanging fruit.

If the search can only seize the obvious, why do it? For the reason Diaz states, as known offenders using MySpace aren’t the problem – it’s those who are unknown.

Not even the most talented computer programmer can write software to catch an unidentified sexual predator. They are lurkers, the shadowy figures of parental nightmares, who have unfettered access to vulnerable teenagers through an uber-popular form of modern communication.

Stopping them starts with shining sunlight on the problem, the best disinfectant for cleaning the musty edges of an uncomfortable issue. Though efforts such as the sex offender search on MySpace will yield meager results, their value is much greater as a warning about MySpace habits for children and parents.

For its part, the operators of MySpace – Fox Interactive Media – have been responsive to their duty in monitoring their membership, and have worked closely with law enforcement. Maine’s receipt of MySpace records follows an internal examination last winter to identify registered offenders.

And even though the results are bound to be minimal, the AG’s office is right to pursue this MySpace goose chase. What it finds, after all, is important.

What it could prevent, however, is even more critical.