Technological progress often facilitates human gains. But it also can facilitate new opportunities for crime. And when sexual predators use the Internet to con kids, society must take effective measures to counter a rising technological menace.

The General Assembly tried to do just that two years ago by passing the Internet Predator Act at the urging of S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster, who rightly warned: "These predators are out there right now, searching for their next victim, with time and opportunity on their side."

Thanks to that timely legislation, law-enforcement officials have the authority to conduct "sting" operations to identify, apprehend and incarcerate predators before they strike.

As recently reported in The Post and Courier, three men in this state already have pleaded guilty to breaking the law, and a Charleston man is facing trial on charges of criminal solicitation of a minor and attempted criminal sexual conduct with a minor in the second degree. Authorities say the accused attempted, through online "chats," to entice someone he thought was a 14-year-old child into sexual relations.

But there was no child. The person with whom the accused "chatted" online was an undercover police officer.

The law makes it a felony to stalk or lure anyone "reasonably believed" to be under the age of 18. Physical contact isn't required for a conviction. Neither is computer-message contact with an actual minor. The case has the potential of being the first legal challenge to the state's Internet Predator law. Similar laws in other states have passed legal tests.

Certainly this law passes the common-sense test by authorizing the use of "stings" against online sexual predators so the police can, as Mr. McMaster has aptly put it, "catch them before they catch the child."