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Tech Bros Bought Sex Trafficking Victims Using Amazon and Microsoft Work Emails (newsweek.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Newsweek's National Politics Correspondent reports on "a horny nest of prostitution 'hobbyists' at tech giants Microsoft, Amazon and other firms in Seattle," citing "hundreds" of emails "fired off by employees at major tech companies hoping to hook up with trafficked Asian women" between 2014 and 2016, "67 sent from Microsoft, 63 sent from Amazon email accounts and dozens more sent from some of Seattle's premier tech companies and others based elsewhere but with offices in Seattle, including T-Mobile and Oracle, as well as many local, smaller tech firms." Many of the emails came from a sting operation against online prostitution review boards, and were obtained through a public records request to the King County Prosecutor's Office.
"They were on their work accounts because Seattle pimps routinely asked first-time sex-buyers to prove they were not cops by sending an employee email or badge," reports Newsweek, criticizing "the widespread and often nonchalant attitude toward buying sex from trafficked women, a process made shockingly more efficient by internet technology... A study commissioned by the Department of Justice found that Seattle has the fastest-growing sex industry in the United States, more than doubling in size between 2005 and 2012. That boom correlates neatly with the boom of the tech sector there... Some of these men spent $30,000 to $50,000 a year, according to authorities." A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women in brothels. The director of research for a national anti-trafficking group cites the time Uber analyzed ride-sharing data and reported a correlation between high-crime neighborhoods and frequent Uber trips -- including people paying for prostitutes. "They made a map using their ride-share data, like it was a funny thing they could do with their data. It was done so flippantly."
"They were on their work accounts because Seattle pimps routinely asked first-time sex-buyers to prove they were not cops by sending an employee email or badge," reports Newsweek, criticizing "the widespread and often nonchalant attitude toward buying sex from trafficked women, a process made shockingly more efficient by internet technology... A study commissioned by the Department of Justice found that Seattle has the fastest-growing sex industry in the United States, more than doubling in size between 2005 and 2012. That boom correlates neatly with the boom of the tech sector there... Some of these men spent $30,000 to $50,000 a year, according to authorities." A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women in brothels. The director of research for a national anti-trafficking group cites the time Uber analyzed ride-sharing data and reported a correlation between high-crime neighborhoods and frequent Uber trips -- including people paying for prostitutes. "They made a map using their ride-share data, like it was a funny thing they could do with their data. It was done so flippantly."
Not to mention, you could tax it. Just make it a job like an artist or a performer.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
So where's the news here?
What's next? NFL and NBA players don't have to pay for sex?
Amaaazzzinnng!
I wonder if they knew these were sex trafficking victims or thought they were willing prostitutes?
I just have a hard time imagining being ok with paying for sex from a slave. Not that that's never happened in American history or anything..
So it seems I work with some people involved which sucks. But can we please not have sex trafficking mandatory training from HR next year? People who aren't sick fucks don't need a training video to show them how to act like humans.
It's not that there aren't people who want to work in the sex industry - there absolutely are. However, as studies repeatedly bear out, the number who want to is far below the demand; most people who work in the sex industry don't want to be there, and abusive trafficking is an inevitable consequence of this situation.
Making prostitution symmetrically illegal doesn't solve the problem. By making it illegal and aggressively policing it, yes, you cut down on part of the demand. But you also cut down on the supply. And since the ratio of clients to sex workers is far greater than 1, it's much easier to crack down on the "supply" side of the equation, thus increasing the trafficking motive. On the other hand, making it fully legal causes a boom in demand (and especially sex tourism), which usually is associated with a trafficking boom.
I'm personally a fan of the Nordic system: purchasing sex is illegal, as is pimping, but selling sex is perfectly illegal. After all, if your goal is to stamp out trafficking and protect abused women, why would you throw them in jail? The Nordic system cuts demand without cutting supply, thus heavily damaging the trafficking motive; it's been very successful. There are some things you have to be careful about, of course - for example, in the first version of the Swedish laws they had problems with landlords kicking prostitutes out, out of fear that they'd get caught up in anti-pimping / anti-brothel laws (the laws were later amended to address this). But in general it's been shown to work well. It also makes it so that prostitutes are unafraid of having to deal with the police, which means better crime reporting and an all-around better environment for them.
"I can get my own men." "Yeah, you better go check your traps."
And they probably didn't think to ask.
Seems every generation society gets on this hysterical kick about something threatening their children/womenfolk. While back it was the indians, then sometimes later the yellow peril, then later blacks, and not too long ago satanists. Now I guess its obese greasy white IT nerds. Every notice how you never or rarely heard of sex trafficking before yet starting a few years ago if you believe the stories all of a sudden every town is blanketed with hidden lairs of hundreds of chained up damsels lying in darkened smoky brothels around every corner of town in america. And of course evil men are driving this. Yeah I pretty sure there's always been some hookers here or there who were forced into it, but its pretty hard not to be skeptical when almost all these stories are big on vagueness and sensationalism and small on details and the few that are followed up you often find even the hookers don't consider themselves 'slaves'
Here's a story about prosecutors throwing people in jail for talking about prostitution by intimidating them with trumped up charges to get them to plea. Many got fired from their jobs. Others lost their friends and family and one man committed suicide. It's like how some cities resort to public shaming Johns which is such a horrific practice that even 18th century America stopped doing it. http://reason.com/archives/201...
All of these anti-trafficking organizations use Superbowl TV commercials of women and/or child being sold as slaves (which is extremely rare) but if you read what their true goal is, they want to stop all prostitution. They even consider 100% voluntary prostitution as trafficking. Amnesty International has the right solution which is to legalize prostitution so that women aren't forced into the underground where they are victimized by their Pimps and by the Police.
Can't get a man as a screaming misandrist? Make sure they can't fuck for money.
On one those 'anti-trafficking' organisations, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation* (better know by their old name of Morality in Media, they rebranded because they were a laughing stock) features a 'dirty dozen' list every year of the twelve organisations they consider most destructive to sexual morality. Amnesty International is on the last two lists because they support decriminalisation of prostitution.
They also list the American Library Association (for opposing government-mandated filtering), Amazon (for selling pornography), youtube, Comcast (for not blocking pornography by default) and HBO (for making Game of Thones, with "with copious amounts of gratuitous nudity, sex, and sexual violence.").
There's a lesson to be learned here: Sometimes organisations try to veil their real goals. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation sounds like an organisation dedicated to protecting women, superficially, and their front page supports this interpretation - boldly claiming "NCOSE has a proven track record of changing corporate and government policies that previously facilitated sexual exploitation." But dig a little deeper and you find that their definition of 'exploitation' includes not only trafficking, but consentual prostitution and even the very absolute softest titillation of pornography - they have called upon Steam to ban Mass Effect: Andromeda as too racy. Dig a bit deeper still and you find they have campaigned for schools to block gay rights websites for 'promoting the homosexual lifestyle.'
*Abbreviated NCOSE, by their own choice. Probably to avoid confusion with the NCSE, the National Center for Science Education.
You have to figure some ethic groups have always treated woman as second class objects. This is the conflict that occurs when you mix a ethnic group that doesn't value woman equally as most do in the US. You have his sort of sex slave operation because you have a lot of potential people even in places like Microsoft and Amazon who desire this.
People who expect 50% of their employees to be women should expect 80% of the johns to be them. If not, these companies are doing a good job, actually. It smells of a shakedown operation by a law firm, fishing for a case.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This incarnation of something called Newsweek is not the printed publication with actual journalism from a few decades ago. This is an internet scandal sheet and gossip rumor mill. Be wary of anything posted there. They are trading on the former publications name and your gullibility.
Well, they are, but it is like saying that if you buy an iPhone, you are buying into slavery and child labor. It is just too hard to find a complex product that doesn't involve any of these at some point.
They are just buying sex, and unfortunately, the market is dominated by trafficking. The legal system and stigma associated with prostitution doesn't give much choice.
Especially the white ones.
As soon as they are eliminated from the workplace and most other public spaces (especially government!) the world will be a better happier safer place for all
How do you know that the johns weren't "woke" candy-assed sitzpinkler SJW crybullies?
You know? The kind of "males" that sexy women laugh at?
Rose and Ashley say this is not good. I say, shuddup aredy! Victim-less, capital-ist, and the trump-verse way!
The answer is to make a law: "Everything bad is illegal."
That would end it plain and simple.
No more Harvey Weinsteins. No more sexual predators. No more prostitution, sex trafficking victims and abuse.
If the above seems like too much of a chore then we GoFundMe the ultimate BJ machine and install it in every men's room in the land. It would pay for itself in days with similar outcomes.
If we don't deal with the root cause, horniness, we'll never solve any of these problems.
*** Don't be dull.***
Many folks consider alcohol, gambling, tobacco and pornography to be bad.
I consider religion (as opposed to spirituality) to be bad.
Why is sex trafficking the employer's responsibility to fix? This is something to be addressed by policing and international diplomacy efforts. Trade tarrifs against nations that ship out sex slaves for instance.
See, this won't be stopped because those women won't fall into sex slavery if they have good paying jobs at home.
and moral.
Get the Pope, major Imams, etc all stating that the reasons for making men store their potency by not masturbating are no longer applicable, and you are free to rub one off, in the privacy of your own bedroom, as many times a day as you need to, and the problem will have mostly solved itself.
Longer term some people might need actual external stimulation, but that would cut down on a huge amount of bullshit caused by sexually repressive religious regimes.
When I think of "tech bro" I think of the ex-fratboy culture among web developers in startups, rather than an Amazon or Microsoft employee. Amazon is known for working their employees insane hours, and Microsoft's culture favors working crazy hours if you want to get ahead. Maybe the tech bros are just well-paid staffers with no time on their hands and no desire to look for long-term companionship. I'm married and have a healthy relationship, but working in IT makes me well aware that some aren't interested in a normal relationship. I don't work in a super-innovative industry so we don't have too many of the hardcore basement-dwelling stereotypical nerds that an Amazon or Microsoft might have. Personally I think the nerd stereotype is outdated in most workplaces.
What I don't think a lot of people realize is that most men need an outlet of some sort and even if prostitution is illegal they will go for it if the conditions aren't right for a long-term relationship. Think of your average late-20s wunderknd making a quarter million or more at a tech company, but working 90 or more hours a week. Do they go to the bar and pick among the golddiggers coming after that tech salary or do they take the no-strings option?
*Abbreviated NCOSE, by their own choice. Probably to avoid confusion with the NCSE, the National Center for Science Education.
The "C" is silent, and hence the acronym is pronounced "Nosey"
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Is this another "tech is a hotbed of evil women abusing misogynists" story?
I have read about this case, and the women who were involved chose to be prostitutes. On woman was renting space in her incall location to other women. This and the fact that they had chosen to come to the US, from Korea, is the basis of calling these women trafficked. Law enforcement likes the term, and the media reuses it, even when it doesn't apply. Calling these women trafficked, removes their agency, and is repugnant.
I won't use my company email account.
Nevada isn't that far.
A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women
I would like to think anyone born in this country learns compassion growing up. But this sounds like it's something that these 'men' learned to be acceptable while growing up in another country. Now I'm curious of the nationality breakdown.
They're against pornography, prostitution, and homosexuality? I'll bet they don't even know the benefit of illegal drugs. They should be more progressive like us :^)
Just a few of the things you won't be accused of if you just pay for it. Today if you try to get a date with a woman you might be publicized as some sort of sex predator/get complaints to the HR department at your workplace/etc. For many, it may not be worth dealing with.
First off, there's what, about a quarter million tech geeks in the area, mostly men, with lots of money and few prospects for finding women who will date them - that a few hundred, over a couple years, turned to prostitutes isn't an explosive revelation - it's very predictable behavior.
Second, this article makes it seem like every prostitute is someone that is a victim of human trafficking - figures are hard to come by, a fair number of prostitutes are women who choose to offer certain services in exchange for good mobey, several hundred dollars an hour in many cases.
Finally, what will we hear next - how some workers in oil fields have been know to seek the company of prostitutes as they sit in frozen mid-western oil fields making bank and having nothing to do off shift?
Reminds me of a pizza parlor in DC...
Ken
for woman to step forward because they're not already doing something that's illegal. You can argue they're the victim and don't have to fear stepping forward, but as a rule poor and exploited people don't have good experiences with authorities.
A better solution would be wide scale social safety nets like basic income combined with trade deals that demand 2nd and 3rd world countries treat their workers equal to first world nations or lose access to first world markets. Then again I've probably got a better chance of training the monkeys who fly out of my butt to police the issue than seeing that happen. Don't forget, there's lots of people who don't really care about sex traffic victims, they just want to control and contain the crime that goes with them (or worse, they've evangelical types who see them as unrepentant sinners risking the wrath of God on us all. e.g. folks like Westburo Baptists and the like).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Look, legalizing prostitution won't stop the sex slave trade. The trade is not about sex. Want to have sex with a prostitute, legally? Quick trip to Nevada. And these people do have the money. The whole point to the slave trade is the same as rape...Power. "I can do what I want with you, and all I have to do is pay the right price."
Anime perhaps?
Also, the stereotype is that Asian women are more submissive, obedient, etc...which I could see a "tech bro" being interested in.
Wonderful term. And like most modern terms tries to disguise the actors.
In this case we have a subject (the "Bros"- meaning guys who want to pay money for sex with cute girls) a verb ("trafficking"), an indirect object (pimp) and a direct object (victim, girl). Who is doing the acting here? Trying to illuminate the agency of the girls is like the old Victorian crusades- the girls were all lured into a life of prostitution by guys with long mustaches and were perfectly innocent. No. Sometimes the bed seems like a better choice than the sweatshop.
Sorry; they are whores. They are not victims. They would prefer to not spend 10hours/day working in a sweatshop back in Thailand or Vietnam so they sign up to rent out their bodies to guys with money. Most of the action in south Asia is now Chinese and Japanese guys but the local U.S. non-profits "doing good" could never get that posted on Slashdot. If the girls were really being lied to and thought they would be cleaning houses in the U.S. the first thing they would do is run to the police. They don't. The whole business may be pretty sad (poor 19 year-old girls from rural Asia; middle-aged guys from the first world who don't want to put up with nagging western women) but the girls are not passive objects being "trafficked".
And the economics? High end Caucasian college girls in the U.S. willing to work as prostitutes are in short supply and are quite expensive. Most of their clients are rich guys looking for "the girlfriend experience", 40 year-old ex-nerds and successful blue-collar entrepreneurs trying to live out the dating experience they never had with the cute cheerleader. I've know the girls; I've known the guys. Both groups are surprisingly likable.
And so are the Asian whores and the guys having sex with them. I know guys who go to Thailand twice a year and I even know something about some of the American guys who run those operations. Human needs are not pretty. But the illegal immigrant girls are no different from the Mexicans working on the construction crews in Austin; upper middle class people want cheap labor and if they have to break a few laws to get it, that's OK. After all, this is one crime the prosecutors will never prosecute.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Girl rejects nerd.
Nerd becomes rich and objectifies girl.
Girl becomes a commodity.
aren't concerned about protecting victims, they're concerned about too much sin drawing God's wrath (or they're manipulating people who believe that). The goal isn't to protect sex trafficking victims, it's to enforce their moral code so God doesn't go all 'Sodom & Gomorrah' on them. It doesn't help that the Christian god has a history of punishing the faithful for the sins of the heretic...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Setting aside all other moral/practical considerations -- which, no, does not diminish them -- this is what stood out to me:
A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women in brothels.
Seeing that, all I could think was, "oh great, now my company's going to add yet another 'hey, don't be bad' training session."
Do all these mandatory sessions actually accomplish anything? That is, aside from *wanting to believe* that they make a difference in behavior, do they actually make a measurable difference? Or is their sole purpose to provide a company with a due diligence out in case some asshole lawyer tries to blame a company for the fuck-ups of individual employees?
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women in brothels.
Let's tear this apart:
A lawyer for some of the men argues...
So it's a defense argument that their employers are to blame? Because Microsoft didn't tell them that using their money to buy hookers it's not their fault?
Based on this same logic, am I responsible to counsel the teen that cuts my grass that he shouldn't use the money to buy sex, drugs or booze, and if he does it's somehow my fault?
...to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women in brothels.
This was a sting operation, there were no women, trafficked or not, in the non-existent brothel. Sure, the "tech bros" thought they were arranging service from a prostitute, but a 'brothel'? Unless the definition of 'brothel' being used here is any place one or more prostitutes choose to work, a brothel - if you can find one - is a very high-priced and exclusive option. By this definition every motel 6 in the nation is a 'brothel'.
And let's put to rest the notion that no woman has ever freely chosen sex work, that all prostitutes are victims of trafficking - some women don't mind the work and some find it a way to earn more than other options available to them.
Prostitution is the oldest profession in civilization. It probably existed before recorded civilization.
But yeah, lets blame young tech workers for the problem. Lets blame "insensitivity". But lets ignore the politicians and the police, who set policy and can use immigration status to go after sex workers. Lets ignore capitalism, because they're all doing this for free. Lets blame news outlets for not covering this "tragedy" and making it the #1 issue in Seattle, as opposed to housing, infrastructure, law enforcement, and the residents themselves.
Lets blame tech workers again, for using data to create a prostitution map, because their "callousness" and "inappropriate" sense of humor is the "root" of the problem. Where's the community "outreach" to their new residents paying taxes to their community? Ah, well they're /s But lets keep pretending illegal immigration is not a problem, because Asian sex slaves are a moral horror, but there aren't taking White American sex slaves' livelihoods, so its not a big deal or relevant to the mechanics of the local trade.
Asians and Jews and geeks; who wants them marrying into the family?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
http://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20171228_03271840
If I'm reading this correctly, you can be covered for sex with a prostitute, but it requires you work with a psychologist before being covered for these services. It seems like a decent direction to address this rather difficult and disturbing social conflict.
--AKA "Captain Save-A-Ho."
Hope his wife is up for filling in for these women for all those corporate bukkake parties.
"The spunk must flow!"
That's so funny. First the company engages in hiring practices catering to "ageism" and kicking out the older generation, and now their younger workers are part of a tech brothel. I'm getting the impression Jeff Bezos is running a technical frat house.
Lower your standards, you pasty nerds. Be realistic.
Total and complete darkness...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I guess I've never even thought about anime or looked at it. Been busy fucking Russians and Latinas FTW! I totally don't get anime.
It may also be a west coast thing. Where I live, it's 80% Hispanic. If you see an Asian person once a week then that's very frequent. However the few times I've been to the left coast it seems to have lots more Asians.
Prostitution out west? Its been that way for centuries. Even the Indians were into it. Nerdy white boys like Asian women what's new about that?
This is all just more emasculation from liberal ideologies that need to get the hell out of Tech! Go start your Facist Pagan Matriarchy Commune elsewhere damn female egotists.
More than half of the tech employees will be from sales, marketing, or management rather than the actual technical people.
About 50% of the coffee and cocoa we buy (assuming no fair trade) are produced by slaves, including child slaves. Somehow, nobody cares about it. Why?
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
"A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women in brothels"
I can't believe this is a statement someone made. If someone doesn't have compassion for a trafficked human being, they are piece of shit, and no amount of sensitivity training is going to fix it.
I don't want to 'work on my game.' I know I'm not going to pull - but I'd rather not-pull as myself then read some slimeball guides so I can emotionally manipulate someone into sleeping with me through psychology and trickery.
http://archive.is/iUs4P
Uber's map is "a funny thing" because they were using crime to map 'real' population density. I don't think some data nerds are condoning crime by using statistics in their work and explaining what they found.
There is a string of interesting Male Feminist/Ally/Sidekicks White Knight caught in doing the worst of the worst. I wouldn't be surprised if that's again the case.
MAYBE not a drop in illegal sales.
However, the TOTAL amount sold is drastically higher (ha!), so percentage-wise there was a large drop in illegal sales. And the "illegal" sales are just avoiding taxes, not like the level of illegality that existed before.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Probably. Dead customers generally don't buy much.
ROFLMBFAO.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What did you expect?
"It's not the defendant's fault that he's a scumbag. His employer should have trained him not to be!"
Great. We can look forward to mandatory annual "How not to be a douchebag 101" training to be expanded. Guys, it isn't that difficult. Just don't be a douchebag.
You're allowed to have sex for free, you're allowed to buy stuff but you're not allowed to buy sex, logic. However, add a camera in the mix and then it's aaaaa-ok.
EAT THAT LOGIC, EAT IT.
Now I pay for sex, for mortgage and two kids. I should have kept paying just for sex.
WHEN will people learn to encrypt their correspondence?
There's really no reason for all of this kind of thing to be protected by layers of encryption. Stay safe, everyone. It matters more by the day.
If you read those guides they usually admit that their "technique" is really just asking literally hundreds of women until they find one drunk or stupid enough to sleep with them. And if they read their description of the rapes they commit, they don't even seem to enjoy it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I do sometimes read Return of Kings for entertainment, in much the same way as people once visited the circus to gawk at the freak show. They currently have an article titled "4 Common Mistakes Men Make That Lower Their Testosterone" on the front page. It's a really bizare place - articles giving advice on how to get laid and bragging of how many women the author has had (or of how many different nationalities of woman), put up alongside articles decrying the moral decay that has turned women into promiscuous sluts who cannot be trusted to show loyalty to their man and stressing how important it is
Sometimes they even come very close to recognising this double standard. As one writer for the site puts it, "When I’m in the mood for easy sex, I’ll date. I’ll approach a girl, spit my game, and bang her no later than the third date, but I’d be a fool to use that strategy to find a wife, because I know that a woman who is open to dating random men has a sexual history that my strict standards simply won’t be able to accept."
Tech companies hire for "rockstars", "superheroes", and "bar-raisers".
What did you think that was going to result in? Decent people?
Hire assholes, get assholish behavior.
As a practical matter, pot cannot become 'more available' than it was in 1970. 'Readily', having been achieved.
It already is "more available"
The thing that changes from the 70's is that not only is there more supply, but the DEMAND has increased substantially because there are always a fair amount of people that will reduce intake when something is illegal - but not only is pot legal in many places now, it's also far more socially accepted today than it was back then. People in all kinds of social circles use pot openly now, which simply was not true back in the 70's.
Buying 'in a store' is just novel
They key is not in how novel the act is, it is how convenient it is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"A lawyer for some of the men argues that Seattle's tech giants aren't conducting any training to increase employees' compassion for trafficked women in brothels."
These employees of the tech giants probably think of themselves as super-intelligent people overall because they have such high-profile jobs that rely on tech smarts. If these guys really are as smart as they want to imagine themselves, should they need training to learn compassion? Shouldn't it be obvious? What a ridiculous excuse by the lawyer.