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US House Passes Bill To Penalize Websites For Sex Trafficking (trust.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Thomson Reuters Foundation News: The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to make it easier to penalize operators of websites that facilitate online sex trafficking, chipping away at a bedrock legal shield for the technology industry. The bill's passage marks one of the most concrete actions in recent years from the U.S. Congress to tighten regulation of internet firms, which have drawn heavy scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties over the past year due to an array of concerns regarding the size and influence of their platforms. The House passed the measure 388-25. It still needs to pass the U.S. Senate, where similar legislation has already gained substantial support, and then be signed by President Donald Trump before it can become law.
Several major internet companies, including Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc, had been reluctant to support any congressional effort to dent what is known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a decades-old law that protects them from liability for the activities of their users. But facing political pressure, the internet industry slowly warmed to a proposal that gained traction in the Senate last year, and eventually endorsed it after it gained sizable bipartisan support. The legislation is a result of years of law-enforcement lobbying for a crackdown on the online classified site backpage.com, which is used for sex advertising. It would make it easier for states and sex-trafficking victims to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to keep exploitative material off their platforms.
Several major internet companies, including Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc, had been reluctant to support any congressional effort to dent what is known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a decades-old law that protects them from liability for the activities of their users. But facing political pressure, the internet industry slowly warmed to a proposal that gained traction in the Senate last year, and eventually endorsed it after it gained sizable bipartisan support. The legislation is a result of years of law-enforcement lobbying for a crackdown on the online classified site backpage.com, which is used for sex advertising. It would make it easier for states and sex-trafficking victims to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to keep exploitative material off their platforms.
..how you can impose platform censorship under the name of preventing sex trafficking. Let's ignore all the rich and/or shitheads that get away with fucking kids and teens without consequence (politicians, the Catholic church, people in Hollywood, etc.) and look at what Craigslist and Backpage provide: prostitution. Is there illegal trafficking? Quite possibly, but there is also prostitution which is legal in the UK, Australia, NZ, much of Europe and a couple of counties in Nevada.
How about just legalizing prostitution, taxing/regulating it, and then go after actual sex traffickers and pedos, without compromising freedom of speech or making it much more difficult for smaller players to enter the walled gardens of content hosting, media distribution and social networks.
Sex trafficking is not a 1st Amendment issue. Backpage was using the CDA to shield itself from being prosecuted for running a underage prostitution ring.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
The Senate bill, and a similar one in the House, were inspired by the numerous court victories won by Backpage.com, an online classified ads site that hosts massive advertising for prostitution, including an unknown percentage of children being trafficked by adult pimps. Backpage has successfully cited the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from liability for posts by third parties, to evade both criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits. As attorney general of California, Harris launched a criminal case against Backpage for prostitution, and it was thrown out by a judge who cited the Communications Decency Act.
The Senate's subcommittee on investigations sparked congressional action when it found that Backpage was editing ads to remove references to underage prostitutes, but allowing the ads to remain online. Then, in July, The Washington Post revealed that Backpage was actively soliciting ads from prostitutes on other websites, and creating new ads for those prostitutes so that they could post on Backpage with just one click.
Some members of Congress called for the Justice Department to investigate Backpage for seemingly creating illegal content, not just hosting it. And some opponents of the new bill cited The Post story as evidence that Backpage could be prosecuted under the existing law, with no need to amend the law and possibly open up unforeseen areas of civil and criminal liability.
After the bill was introduced, tech lobbyists worked Capitol Hill trying to drum up opposition. Google issued a statement saying the proposed bill "would be a disaster" and "would actually hinder the fight against sex trafficking." The bill amends both the Decency Act and a federal sex-trafficking statute.
But members of the tech community worked with Senate Commerce Committee staff to tweak the language of the bill, which is scheduled for markup Wednesday. One of the keys was the definition of "participation in a venture" in the anti-sex-trafficking statute, which courts have found did not include Internet sites hosting illegal content. The proposed bill originally defined participation as "knowing conduct, by an individual or entity, by any means, that assists, supports or facilitates a violation" of sex trafficking laws.
Internet companies thought the phrase "by any means" had the potential to be broadly interpreted when analyzing a website's actions. The newly amended bill changes the definition of participation to simply "knowingly assisting, supporting, or facilitating a violation" of sex trafficking laws, Senate staff members said.
The changes to the bill also amend the standard by which state prosecutors can seek to charge or sue websites, requiring them to meet the federal standard, including the new definition above, rather than those established by state law, which can vary widely.
Michael Beckerman, president of the Internet Association, which counts Google, Twitter and Microsoft among its members, said in a statement that "Important changes made to SESTA will grant victims the ability to secure the justice they deserve, allow internet platforms to continue their work combating human trafficking, and protect good actors in the ecosystem."
Beckerman said the association was looking "forward to working with the House and Senate as SESTA moves through the legislative process to ensure that our members are able to continue their work to fight exploitation."
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and other members of the Commerce Committee welcomed the endorsement from the Internet Association. "I'm pleased we've reached an agreement," Portman said in a statement. "We've reached
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But is this going to change how anyone here votes? Either in a primary or general election? If not, there's zero reason for Congress not to support these kind of things. There are people who _will_ vote for Congresscritters who push this sort of legislation. This is part of the "tough on crime" theme that's dominated American politics for ages.
So again, if this kind of overreach isn't going to change how anyone votes it's hardly worth discussion.
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Was Backpage actually running an underage prostitution ring or were third parties running underage prostitution rings and using Backpage as a place to post ads? The rhetoric around "sex trafficking" is full of logical fallacies, anecdotal evidence, and opinions-as-facts appeal-to-emotion presentations by law enforcement officials and politicians. It is difficult to trust that what is presented is actually truthful, especially when the facts run counter to the prevailing narrative.
https://reason.com/blog/2017/0...
Partial quote: "Both law enforcement and nonprofits such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) routinely use sites like Backpage to search for teenagers reported missing. The cross-country nature of the site allows authorities to track potential victims who may move around a lot, and provides tangible evidence for prosecutors to use against their exploiters. Police also use Backpage extensively when conducting sting operations ostensibly targeting the recovery of minors. Backpage itself has, at least historically, reported suspicious ads (such as those featuring pictures of people who look underage) to NCMEC or local law enforcement."
I'm not saying that Backpage is a company run by angels, but I am definitely saying that there's so much propaganda and lies by omission out there about the Backpage prostitution situation that facts are hard to come by without scooping through truckloads of bullshit and ignoring the moralistic crusaders screaming in your ears that they're right. In any case, the people posting underage prostitution ads are the ones committing the heinous act and going after Backpage won't do a damn thing but shovel a bunch more of the prostitution ad volume onto Tor and I2P. Driving the information further underground and further from the legal reach of law enforcement will only make matters worse.
Was Backpage actually running an underage prostitution ring or were third parties running underage prostitution rings and using Backpage as a place to post ads?
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
A contractor for the controversial classifieds website Backpage.com has been aggressively soliciting and creating sex-related ads, despite Backpage's repeated insistence that it had no role in the content of ads posted on its site, according to a trove of newly discovered documents.
The documents show that Backpage hired a company in the Philippines to lure advertisers -- and customers seeking sex -- from sites run by its competitors. The spreadsheets, emails, audio files and employee manuals were revealed in an unrelated legal dispute and provided to The Washington Post.
Workers in the Philippine call center scoured the Internet for newly listed sex ads, then contacted the people who posted them and offered a free ad on Backpage.com, the documents show. The contractor's workers even created each new ad so it could be activated with one click.
Workers also created phony sex ads, offering to "Let a young babe show you the way" or "Little angel seeks daddy," adding photos of barely clad women and explicit sex patter, the documents show. The workers posted the ads on competitors' websites. Then, when a potential customer expressed interest, an email directed that person to Backpage.com, where they would find authentic ads, spreadsheets used to track the process show.
They were certainly making aggressive moves to break into the underage prostitute ad market. And when people complained they said it was 'third party content' and used the CDA as a shield
For years, Backpage executives have adamantly denied claims made by members of Congress, state attorneys general, law enforcement and sex-abuse victims that the site has facilitated prostitution and child sex trafficking. Backpage argues it is a passive carrier of "third-party content" and has no control of sex-related ads posted by pimps, prostitutes and even organized trafficking rings. The company contends it removes clearly illegal ads and refers violators to the police.
The discovery could be a turning point in the years-long campaign by anti-human trafficking groups, and Congress, to persuade Backpage to stop hosting prostitution ads, which many teenage girls have claimed were used to sell them for sexual exploitation. Lawsuits and criminal prosecutions of Backpage in the United States have nearly all failed because Backpage cites in its defense the federal Communications Decency Act, which grants immunity to websites that merely host or screen content posted by others.
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I for one think it's great that sex workers have a strong advocate and role model as First Lady.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nothing you quoted in that reply says anything about "running an underage prostitution ring" so that claim remains unfounded. The only uses of the word "underage" are in your own text and the text you quoted from my question. Referencing youth is not the same thing as "underage." If you don't believe me, see the search results for yourself and start clicking those "report" buttons.
Those are very good points. We should expect to see many "think of the children" demands. tied to any such laws.
Nothing you quoted in that reply says anything about "running an underage prostitution ring" so that claim remains unfounded.
Ok how about "they made aggressive moves to break into the underage prostitute ad market". Are happy with that wording?
As far as the underage thing consider
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the majority of child sex trafficking cases referred to NCMEC involve ads on Backpage. Backpage says that it blocks about a million ads per month, mostly suspected of child sex trafficking or prostitution. Of those, they report around 400 ads a month to NCMEC which in turn notify law enforcement. Content submitted to Backpage is surveyed by an automated scan for terms related to prostitution. At least one member of a team of over 100 people also oversees each entry before it is posted.
Backpage has had continued issues with credit card processors, who were under pressure from law enforcement to cease working with companies that allegedly allow or encourage illegal prostitution. In 2015 Backpage lost all credit card processing agreements, leaving Bitcoin as the remaining option for paid ads.
In an amicus curiae brief, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says the efforts of Backpage are inadequate and their reporting lacked in several areas. They say Backpage does not report all ads that have been flagged as being underage, does not report when someone tries to advertise children under 18 years of age, and does not respond to requests of parents to have ads of their trafficked children removed. They also say Backpage "encourage[s] dissemination of child sex trafficking content on its website". They say Backpage is much slower in removing ads that advertise children than ads placed by authorities aimed at trapping traffickers, guides traffickers in creating false pages for underage children, instructs traffickers and buyers on how to pay anonymously, and makes it easier to make adult posts than other posts. They said "To all intents and purposes, Backpage has instituted no effective procedures to prevent child sex trafficking ads from being created on its site." They say that they do not use obvious techniques to identify traffickers, such as using the same phone number, email address or credit card of a known trafficker, or reusing the same picture of known victim of human trafficking.
They were clearly turning a blind eye to people advertising underage prostitutes, rather like Pirate Bay did to people posting torrents that violate copyright.
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If you look at the site: they turn a blind eye to prostitution hosted at www.backpage.com. Picking and choosing which prostitutes are under-age, lying about their age, or are undercover police is a burden for any website which would be a legal nightmare to undertake. There are many others that have carefully turned a blind eye to such traffic: Craigslist used to do so, and withdrew from the business after a notable murder of a prostitute found on craigslist. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for more details.
I see nothing to substantiate that claim either. Trying to get market share for prostitution ads is not the same thing as trying to get market share for underage prostitution ads. Also, look at the thing you quoted: a team of "over 100 people" have to review each entry before it's posted for a website that receives so many posts that "about a million ads per month" are blocked. Scrutinizing ad wording is a subjective task and they've got a staff in the hundreds on a website that's receiving posts in the millions per month. None of what's in that Wikipedia article quote is a surprise with that kind of context. They remove fake law enforcement ads faster than they remove ads advertising "children?" (Note: teenagers are not children as in "pedophilia" so there's already some seriously loaded wording by describing underage post-pubescent adolescents this way.) Why is this a surprising thing to anyone? The poster for "jailbait" prostitutes only needs to convey "I'm REALLY young, yo" in a coded way and as one code-word is grey-listed a hundred more euphemisms can be created to replace them, whereas the law enforcement official making shit up will be using up-to-date well-known code words that are on the list of phrases that raise red flags. If Backpage is using data analysis akin to spam email scoring to assist in moderation and they don't know who is and isn't law enforcement, doesn't it make perfect sense that LE posts get red-flagged sooner?
As for TPB, they don't turn a blind eye to torrents that violate copyright. TPB outright doesn't give a damn about copyright. That's kind of their schtick.
Probably because "children" implies something very different from "teens" and is an implicit logical fallacy of appeal to emotion. Hmm, I wonder why someone would want to have a discussion where the facts are clearly stated instead of implied...how odd...wait, no, that's how rational discussion works.
What about this?
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
A contractor for the controversial classifieds website Backpage.com has been aggressively soliciting and creating sex-related ads, despite Backpage's repeated insistence that it had no role in the content of ads posted on its site, according to a trove of newly discovered documents.
The documents show that Backpage hired a company in the Philippines to lure advertisers -- and customers seeking sex -- from sites run by its competitors. The spreadsheets, emails, audio files and employee manuals were revealed in an unrelated legal dispute and provided to The Washington Post.
Workers in the Philippine call center scoured the Internet for newly listed sex ads, then contacted the people who posted them and offered a free ad on Backpage.com, the documents show. The contractor's workers even created each new ad so it could be activated with one click.
Workers also created phony sex ads, offering to "Let a young babe show you the way" or "Little angel seeks daddy," adding photos of barely clad women and explicit sex patter, the documents show. The workers posted the ads on competitors' websites. Then, when a potential customer expressed interest, an email directed that person to Backpage.com, where they would find authentic ads, spreadsheets used to track the process show.
If they really were making a good faith effort to remove ads but didn't have enough people that would be one thing. Actively soliciting ads is quite another.
Now you'll say 'well soliciting sex ads isn't illegal'. However what they're accused of is worse than that
An investigation by a Senate subcommittee revealed earlier this year found that Backpage was editing ads to remove language indicating underage girls were available, rather than removing the ads. "Backpage has been righteously indignant throughout our investigation," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a subcommittee member, "about how we were infringing on their constitutional rights, because they were a mere passthrough." She noted, however, that Backpage was not only changing ads but also was also guiding posters in how to conceal their true intentions.
"But that's nothing compared to this" new information, McCaskill said after The Post described the data. "This is about as far from passive as you can get. This is soliciting. This is, really, trickery. .â.â. So I hope this opens the floodgates of liability for Backpage. Nobody deserves it more."
And it's not just online sex ads either - Backpage executives were accused of pimping and money laundering and involvement in the prostitution and death of a minor -
"This is the commercialization of this crime against children," said Yiota Souras, the center's general counsel. "And it's what businesses do -- they grow internationally; they have marketing plans to beat the competition and offer incentives to get more clients; they seek legal protections for their business interests. This is a traditional business model, but here the transaction too often is selling children for sex online."
In January, Backpage's top officials appeared before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Chief executive Carl Ferrer, co-founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin and general counsel McDougall all invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves and declined to answer any questions.
Ferrer, Lacey and Larkin are facing criminal charges in California for pimping and money laundering, though a court there threw out similar pimping charges last year. And among eight civil suits filed against Backpage this year is a wrongful-death action in Chicago by the mother of 16-year-old
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Are you saying it's morally ok to have sex with a 16 year old when your on holidays in Alabama but not ok when your on holidays in Colorado?
Your appeal to authority makes no logical sense on this issue.
Because in many jurisdictions there is no legal distinction between the teenager who has sex with their girlfriend* just one year younger than themselves and the thirty-year-old who rapes a toddler. This is something of an injustice.
*Funnily enough it's less likely to prosecute the other way around.
Are you saying it's morally ok to have sex with a 16 year old when your on holidays in Alabama but not ok when your on holidays in Colorado?
Your appeal to authority makes no logical sense on this issue.
Or Italy or most of Europe where it's 14. And what if they are legally 18 but still child sized? Like 4'8", 80 lbs? Isn't it just as bad as a pedophile?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
as it happens, yeah, I do.
It's illegal because society deems it to be wrong. Sure, it's an arbitrary cut off but it's very clearly stated and extremely easy to remember.
Being attracted to a woman capable of bearing a child is biologically programmed. Choosing whether to fuck her is a conscious choice.
a company whose whole business model was ads for underage hookers
That's just hyperbole.
At which point Congress passed SESTA which stops people doing that.
Unfortunately it stops a lot of other things too. It's a shitty law, badly written, ill thought out and should not have been fucking passed.
See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... as a simple example.
Target sex traffickers and people fucking children but do so in a proportionate and sensible way. SESTA is not the answer.
Morally the issue is if that person can really consent. So age isn't as important as their mental state/capacity.
I'd feel worse if I thought that person hadn't been given proper sex education, for example. Or if they had some kind of mental illness / disability. Age isn't really relevant, even if they are over what the local age of consent is that doesn't affect the moral factors.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Careful; the age of consent in most places in Europe is 14-16 if you are that age too; if you're older, (typically older than 20) then it pops up to 18...(and quite right too).
As much as I wish sex traffickers would be thrown into a volcano...SLOWLY, I more worry about the tinkering with the Constitution. The minute they start placing restrictions on something, they will come back to take more and more and more. Most of the crap on the web, I don't care for, but, I just ignore it. Sex trafficking is a sick perverted thing and needs to be stopped, but this isn't the way to do it.
Ouch. Hal is clearly an idiot with an agenda. His name is an anagram for "Harlot Rep", so I think he has some unresolved sexual issues.
It is clear that Backpage knowingly facilitated prostitution by seeking out advertisers and helping them with their ads. It's likely that they turned a blind eye to underage prostitution, but it's unclear if they didn't want to do the job of policing for legal or moral reasons or if they just wanted the extra revenue.
BTW, while the age of consent is lower in much of the world, in most of those places the age of consent for prostitution is significantly higher, usually 18, I believe. This is a reasonable compromise between the reality of sexual relations and protection of adolescents. This has nothing to do with the issue here, just wanted to clarify.