Fraud in Internet Dating Prompting Regulation

anaesthetica writes "According to the Washington Post, an increasing tide of fraud in internet dating is prompting lawyers and lawmakers to examine possible regulations and consumer protections. Wire fraud scamming, plane ticket ripoffs, fraud perpetrated to fund trysts, fake "date bait" messages -- these are just a few of the issues the courts are beginning to deal with. Dating websites were immunized from lawsuits over false statements by the recent Communications Decency Act. Other attempts to regulate internet dating, such as the 2005 'mail-order bride' legislation, are already being challenged in court, but an increasing number of states are sponsoring their own legislation."

Comments

blah blah election year nothing to see here!

[plasmacutter]

existing anti-sexual assault, anti-fraud, anti- laws more than cover this.

this is yet another potential grand stand style red herring politicians can use to distract you from real issues.

I hope I saved you a lot of time you would have spent inquiring further into this.

IMBRA was a MAJOR fuck-up

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

As mentioned in the summary - the first attempt at legislation along these lines is being challenged in court because it was, well, absolutely idiotic and probably completely unconstitutional.

The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 has the following requirements
on websites that bring American men and foreign women together:

1. Gather mandatory background information and documents on the American client's past criminal history.
   
2. Provide the man's background information to any woman who has correspondence with an American through their site.
   
3. Check the National Sex Offender public registry and state public registry for each U.S client.
   
4. Secure a signed, written consent from the lady before releasing her contact information to the American client interested in her.
   
5. Provide her a brochure (created by our government) to explain her U.S. rights to her.
   

Some of those requirements are reasonable - but (1) and (2) are absolutely nuts. Simply chatting with, or even sending a simple note to, a woman means that a guy has to give out way more information than he would ever give out to a woman he just met in a bar or other similar 'dating' situation.

The background information includes things like details of part marriages, names and ages of any children, his current address and full name, etc. The kind of information that fraudsters and identity thieves would just love to get their hands on.

Furthermore, there is no recriprocation - the woman are under no obligation to provide any verifiable information at all to the men.

The law goes so far as to try to impose itself on all 'international' dating websites, even if the ownership is 100% non-American and are hosted outside of the US. The enforcement mechanism is to deny marriage visas to any woman who admits to meeting her American husband or husband-to-be through a website that has not officially adopted the rules and been certified by some sort of quasi-governmental certification authority.

Unfortunately, it really doesn't help all the honest Joes out there that most of the websites that discuss the IMBRA are laden with misogyny, using terms like "feminazi" that are really self-labels for the writers as probably not being fit to marry a woman - American or otherwise.

Immigration is mostly an example of the same

[ianscot]

rather than issues like balancing the budget, fixing levees, or fixing the immigration problems we have.

Immigration sticks out as the crossover from your list. Pretty clearly the Repubs were trying to pony up immigration reform as this year's Gay Marriage Amendment: the social wedge issue that would continue to let them play Nixon's "southern strategy" this time around. The "illegal immigration should be a felony" thing was all about that. The grenade went off in their hands a bit, and now they're back to the gay marriage thing as a fallback position.

My Southern Baptist relatives down in Oklahoma would vote for any politician who passed legislation about some sort of "fraud" involving white girls being misled by black men. Seriously. All you have to do is throw them a bone like that, and they're motivated. Politicians know it, just take a look at their Senator Coburn. It's spooky.

Re:Libertarianism

[HungWeiLo]

I'm sure someone will call you on your bluff sooner or later, so it might as well be me.

As a Hong Kong native, I have enjoyed multitudes of social services, including free health care, free public schools (K-12, although you buy your own cheap textbooks), the best public transportation system in the world, parents with unspeakably generous government pension benefits, you name it.

Here's the grand slam - My Father-in-law got a all-expense-paid 14-day trip to Europe as a 20-year-anniversary present from his employer - the Hong Kong government; Imagine something like that in the States.

All this happened during the colonial administration, and is still going on today without too many drastic changes under Chinese administration (well, except they've actually scaled down the government employee benefits, if you can believe it).

So Hong Kong is hardly a shiny example of a libertarian paradise. It can provide social services despite the low taxes it levies (15% flat tax last I remember) because it is flush with money from being one of the great financial centers in Asia.