In the last month, Massachusetts has put its sex offender registry on the internet, giving the public easy and open access to the names and addresses of all sex offenders in the state. While putting the registry online would do little to deter crime, it violates the rights of people who have committed serious crimes but have also served their time.

The online registry violates people’s basic right to privacy. Level 3 offenders are certainly not Massachusetts’ most upstanding citizens, but once released, they share the same rights as the rest of us. Putting their names online exposes their identities and crimes to the entire world, exposing them to threats and harassment.

Indeed, according to The Boston Globe, there have been reports of these offenders getting harassed or losing their jobs because the employers, neighbors and anyone else can view their names so easily.

Megan’s Law, which requires released sex offenders to register with the state, has undoubtedly reassured many residents, who can go to their local police stations and look up the status of offenders living nearby. But by putting the registry online, where anyone and everyone can easily access it, the states are going too far. Giving the public such easy access to the registry means all kinds of people will view these names, not just women or parents concerned with their or their children’s well-being.

While sex offenders are branded online for the rest of their lives, murderers released from prison can start an entirely new life. They can move to another state and free themselves from the burden of their criminal label. Such crimes are similar in their severity, but the law allows convicted murderers to turn their lives around but convicted sex offenders to carry their crime with them always.

To protect the safety of Massachusetts’ residents, the state could provide some information on these sex offenders. Instead of posting the names and addresses of these offenders, an unfair violation of their privacy, the state should instead put the number of criminals living in a certain town or within a certain zip code. This way, concerned residents can still see the number of offenders living in their community, but the offenders’ names and addresses would not be posted on a medium as widely used and easily accessible as the internet.

The online registry unfairly extends sex offenders’ sentences. While making them accessible through a police station can help many people concerned with safety in their community, putting names and addresses online, where they can be viewed by anyone who knows how to point and click, is a cruel and unusual punishment.