Can law enforcement agencies tame the Wild West of the Web?

That's the goal of a group of state attorneys general, who today with MySpace announced a joint task force and new efforts by the site to better protect children from online predators and educate parents about the risks of social networking sites.

The initiatives, unveiled this morning at a press conference in New York, mark the culmination of two years of talks between attorneys general and MySpace regarding privacy concerns, which have grown sharply in prominence as social networking sites have boomed.

While the social Web has developed at lightening speed, law enforcement has been unable to keep up, Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann said.

"We are not there yet; we have much work to do in defining the parameters of the Internet," Dann said. "This is a great first step toward protecting children and ending the era of the Wild West of the Internet."

During the conference, the attorneys general, along with MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam, announced a set of principles that they hope will lead to an industry standard for protecting children online.

Additionally, the site will work with the attorneys general to form the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, aimed at developing and improving technical safeguards such as secure identity verification.

The task force will include identity-authentication experts, nonprofit groups, academic leaders and other technology companies, the groups said.

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MySpace and the attorneys general also announced a series of technical safeguards to help protect kids online.

The site will now make private the default profile settings for all members under the age of 18, so that adults whom they do not know in the physical world will not be able to find them.

The move extends MySpace's current policy for 14- and 15-year-old members.

In addition, MySpace said it would develop an e-mail registry for parents to block their children from accessing the site.

MySpace also redoubled its pledge to screen every image and video uploaded by users, and to review the content of all Groups pages. It also said it would delete the profiles of any registered sex offenders who sign up on the site.

The attorneys general praised the site for its cooperation with law enforcement agencies and called on other social networking sites to follow MySpace's lead.

"The Internet is moving so quickly [that] industry gets ahead of law enforcement," Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett said. "Today we're catching up ... Today's agreement makes it harder for adults to sexually solicit children online."

Attempts at identity authentication

The attorneys general also said they are working with MySpace and other groups to develop industry-standard technologies for age and identity authentication.

However, the viability of those technologies continues to be a source of disagreement between law enforcement and industry.

For instance, the attorneys general said MySpace has consistently taken the stance that no identity-authentication method had yet proved reliable enough to implement.

"If we can put a man on the moon, we can do age and identity authentication," said Connecticut Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, who will co-chair the task force with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper.

"We are not papering over or concealing our differences," Blumenthal said. "This process of discussion has been difficult, daunting, but extraordinarily educational."

Nigam shrugged off the significance of the disagreement, insisting that both MySpace and law enforcement groups have the same goal of protecting children. He said MySpace's efforts will better verify member ages to prevent anyone under 14 from creating a profile, and help ensure that adult cyber-predators cannot pose as teenagers.

The attorneys general also called on Facebook and other social networks to work with law enforcement to adopt similar measures as those enacted by MySpace, which include a 24-hour hotline to report online predatory behavior.

While the group mentioned Facebook's work with the New York Attorney General's office on the issue, the attorneys general said that MySpace's extensive cooperation sets it apart from other social networks.

Facebook, meanwhile, defended its own efforts in working with law enforcement on protecting children.

"Facebook has always created an inhospitable environment for predators by limiting access to users' personal information based on real-world social connections," Facebook Director of Global Communications Brandee Barker wrote an e-mail to InternetNews.com. "We have led the way in our partnership with the New York Attorney General and continue our involvement with the attorneys general of all states and other law enforcement agencies to keep children safe from those who would do them harm."

"We are happy to work further with the states to develop and deploy strategies to protect kids online," Barker said.

Neither the attorneys general nor MySpace representatives made mention today of specific cases involving children targeted on the site. MySpace recently made national news over the suicide of Meghan Meier, a 13-year-old Missouri girl who hanged herself in 2006 after her relationship went sour with "Josh," a 16-year-old boy she met on the site.

As it turned out, "Josh" was not a real person. Investigators have implicated Lori Drew, Meghan's neighbor and the mother of a former friend, in the creation of the bogus profile and using it to harass Meghan. However, they have struggled to find laws under which Drew can be charged.

The improvements to MySpace's algorithm promised today could better prohibit people like Drew from creating bogus profiles, while also preventing Meier and other underage children from signing up.

The attorneys general at today's press conference spoke on behalf of their colleagues in 49 states and the District of Columbia. They said that the Texas Attorney General is not endorsing the principles or the task force.

A spokesman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot declined to comment on today's announcement.