But it's for the sake of the children...

It seems there are some glitches in at least one of the Megan's Law databases.

Martha Cory is a church leader, the mother of two young boys, and has never been in trouble with the law. But if you believe the state Department of Justice, a convicted pedophile is living in her home.

Sometimes, there's such a thing as being too compassionate. However, that's probably not what's happening in this case.

Cory learned through the neighborhood grapevine that her home was listed as the address for Robert Jennison — a convicted child molester who was committed to a mental hospital. She believes he gave authorities a bogus address that authorities never checked out.

A lot of problems have shown up in this database because it was rushed into existence. Why the rush? Well, the legislation calling for it was written by an assembly member facing a tough re-election campaign. But that's note the official reason.

Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said the DOJ spent four years trying to put the information online. There was no sense in waiting any longer, he said, especially with public safety at issue. "We thought the sooner we could get it on the Internet, the better."

Another example of trade-offs. People focus on the benefits of having the Megan's Law database online – better protection against sexual offenders, and neglect the downside – more ways to ruin peoples' days, weeks, months, or years when someone puts them in the database by accident.

It appears that mistakes are corrected promptly, but there is still that window of time when a name is on the list when copies can be backed up anywhere on the web. And many people on the list have applied to be exempted from listing, but their names are still up until the paperwork has been reviewed. If an exemption is granted, the name comes down. In the mean time, data can be saved, backed-up, and mirrored.

Some fraction of the people whose names disappear from the list deserve to lose the stigma of being listed. Reasonable people can differ as to which ones deserve it, but I think we can all agree that some people on that list don't deserve to be. If their name is listed anyway, they lose a great deal of privacy, and may suffer an unfair loss of reputation.