Google Donating $11.5M To Fight Modern Slavery

walterbyrd writes "Google announced today that it will donate $11.5M to groups dedicated to ending modern day slavery. 'In what is believed to be the largest-ever corporate grant devoted to the advocacy, intervention and rescue of people being held, forced to work or provide sex against their will, Google said it chose organizations with proven records in combating slavery.'"

Comments

Chinese Political Prisoners too?

[djl4570]

Will this include Chinese political prisoners who are forced to work as defacto slaves?

Re:Chinese Political Prisoners too?

[GameboyRMH]

Also, what about US prisoners working call centers in private prisons for being caught with weed under tighter anti-drug laws put in place by a prison shareholder?

Legalize it.

[Hatta]

Make prostitution legal and well regulated. You'll decrease the demand for sex slaves. Anyone who claims to care about sex slavery and doesn't advocate the legalization of prostitution is simply not serious.

Re:Legalize it.

[PPH]

Do you want to legalize child prostitution and child porn, too?

No. I want enforcement to concentrate on these areas.

Leave the over 18 y.o. strippers alone when they give customers hand jobs in the private booths. The Seattle vice cops are standing in line to sign up for undercover duty. Which entails taking a couple of grand of petty cash (taxpayers money) and buy lap dances until someone fondles their junk. Tough work, but somebody has to do it.

If adult prostitution was legal, every hooker (of age) would gladly turn in the names of the pimps running kids. After all, they are the competition.

Re:Legalize it.

[TheCarp]

Ok, so legalize prostitution and sever ties between the now legal sex trade and the illegal sex trade.

There is plenty of money to be made in selling alcohol to minors, how many legitimate places are willing to risk their prized liquor licenses over it? They may make mistakes, employees may make exceptions for friends and other shit, but.... outside of those minor incidents, nobody does it as a matter of course. Nobody has a back room for kids to go buy liquor at.

Now, I know the drug markets more than the flesh but... the paralells are easy to see.

The average drug dealer is just a user who needed a way to afford his habbit. No matter how honest of a businessman, no matter whether he denies sales to kids, or advices customers when their habbits seem to be going out of control (all things i have seen from real dealers), he still has to worry about being robbed, threatened, or blackmailed. There is no real separation between him and abusive predators.

There is just no excuse for submerging these people into the criminal underground and leaving them with no reasonable legal recourse to protect themselves from dangerous predators. Thats what it really comes down to. When you make it illegal, you lump all people doing it together, you force them into the same boat as the abusive people. This helps the abusive hide, and gives them victims.

A legal prostitute has no reason to not report illegal activities, in fact, she has every reason to do it. Do you want her on your side, or do you want her to be just another victim? Thats the real question.

Do you want to give abusive criminals an ocean to hide in? Or would you want to shrink his world, and leave him fewer places to hide?

Because in the end, the basic transaction of sex for money, no matter how you feel about it, has no victim. It is nearly invisible, and it is impossible to stop. Why fight it, when its not really the actual problem?

Re:Hum.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it's nothing compared to what's needed, but if others company would follow Google's lead it wouldn't be just 11 million in the anti-slavery pot. In South-America the so called modern day slavery is so prevalent in rural areas specially in sugar cane farms and the governments of those countries are pretty much looking the other way. In Brazil it isn't rare to see politicians running private farms in which the workhorse is basically slavery powered.

I don't really understand this kind of behaviour you seem to so proudly practice. Every single time a company donates X to help cause Y some imbecile has to say "big deal, X isn't nothing compared to what Y needs". Breaking news to you, Sherlock, no single person or company will ever solve such complicated problems by themselves.

Re:Hum.

[ByOhTek]

I don't think Google intends to fight it all on their own, their entire revenue stream would probably have trouble coping with that.

I think it is more a matter of 'their fair share'.

Re:Easy to do

[rainmouse]

Delist every high-fashion apparel producer from Google Search, that will put a big dent in it.

I used to live in an extremely bad area in Glasgow / Scotland where drugs and prostitution were everywhere. Over the road from me was a homeless hostel and round the back of my apartment block was a methadone clinic and prostitutes stood on street corners for blocks in every direction. I've seen dealers injecting heroin into girls who looked around 12 years old before sending these kids out into the streets to pay for it while the police turned a blind eye (they had some kind of experimental tolerance policy in place between 9 pm till 3 am). Trust me, there are many worse things these children can be forced to do rather than making trainers or iPads for a living. Apparently human trafficking can be just as horrific as drug addict child prostitution and if Google pledges to charities that can actually help prevent some of this stuff then I say good for them.

this is not a silver bullet. amsterdam proves it

[decora]

a lot of criminal gangs infiltrated the 'well regulated' prostitution industry in holland.
when an illiegal immigrant is brought to holland illegally by gangsters and forced to work in a brothel, the 'regulators' are not going to accomplish much to save her.

as we see in the US financial system, 'regulated industries' are not always well regulated. regulators are frequently corrupt and/or incompetent. and they have conflicts of interest.

Re:Easy to do

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Google isn't powerful enough to end US state and Federal prison systems.
https://www.google.com/search?q=us+prison+slave+labor

Re:They have their work cut out...

[jeti]

If all US prisoners deserve their fate, americans must be very bad people indeed. The incarceration rate in the US is ten times as high as in Europe.

Re:Easy to do

[ravenshrike]

Which happens primarily because it's illegal and not taxed, and thus monitored, like every other profession.