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FBI Seizes Backpage.com, a Site Criticized For Sex-Related Ads (reuters.com)
The FBI has reportedly seized the sex marketplace website Backpage.com, according to a posting on its website on Friday. "The posting said the U.S. Justice Department would provide more information at 6 p.m. EDT," reports Reuters. "It said U.S. attorneys in Arizona and California, as well as the Justice Department's section on child exploitation and obscenity and the California and Texas attorneys general had supported the work in shutting down the website." From the report: Lawmakers and enforcement officials have been working to crack down on the site, the second largest classified ad service in the country after Craigslist that is used primarily to sell sex. The U.S. Senate passed legislation last month making it easier for state prosecutors and sex-trafficking victims to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to keep sex trafficking and other exploitative materials off their platforms. The Supreme Court in January 2017 refused to consider reviving a lawsuit against backpage.com filed by three young women alleging the site facilitated their forced prostitution. But the site has since then faced a slew of other lawsuits alleging child sex trafficking. According to AZCentral, local FBI officials have confirmed "law enforcement activity" Friday morning at the Sedona-area home of Michael Lacey, a co-founder of Backpage.com. The raid comes amid what appears to be a shut-down of the website.
It's called Puritan authoritarianism. Long ingrained in US culture, coming from both religion (R) and secular (D) do-gooders.
Frankly, the US would have been a better place if the Mayflower had hit rocks and turned the zealots it was carrying into fish food. Canada was settled by the British and French for profit instead of by Puritan refugees, and it's a much more tolerant place than the US.
It doesn't make the "shopping" portion harder because LE is lying through it's teeth about there being child sex trafficking on Backpage. The reality is there were a few 16-17 year olds, voluntarily engaged-- even when nobody else is involved in any way, they're still labeled as 'trafficked', pretending to be over 18. In cases where police suspected that was the case, Backpage was very cooperative in helping to locate the individual, so this actually makes those 'children' less likely to be tracked down as the market is forced farther underground where no such cooperation will be forthcoming. It should make you uneasy at every level, not only because of the obscene overreach, but because absolutely no one is made safer by this, and a lot of people are made less safe.
That was the 60s and 70s in Canada.
The US sent kids to "youth centers" (basically like prisons) for minor crimes like mocking school officials less than 10 years ago. Judges responsible were eventually jailed, but don't think that such atrocities are only a Canadian thing...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...