“Moving forward,” they wrote, the Justice Department should “take a hard look at bringing this case as a civil forfeiture case,” with its “lower standard of proof.” In this scenario, the government would seize a website operator’s assets and property, then force them to prove they weren’t implicated in criminal activity.
Another rabbit hole worth a stroll into is the Garland, Texas "ISIS" shooting in 2015. By "ISIS" we mean "FBI orchestrated, which we know because an undercover was waiting in the parking lot for the shooters to get there and had been texting them before they even set foot in Texas."
For some strange reason, a judicial appointee to the ND Texas Fed District Court took it upon herself, immediately, on her first case the day after she was sworn in, to dismiss the security guard who got shot's lawsuit against the FBI/DOJ and James Comey specifically.
You can read a glowing hagiography about her being a good Republican diversity hire in the Dallas Morning News, or you can read stories about that opinion (checking notes...) nowhere outside of one D.C. blog.
Well, they wouldn't like to have their monopoly on terrorizing the population broken. I mean, in most countries of the world, the police and secret service are the biggest and deadliest terrorist organization there is.
If they were a country in NATO or otherwise trying to be allied with the US/UK, their police and secret service were also the FBI, CIA, MI:5/6, and SAS (Gladio).
Political trials are nothing new. See also the Haymarket Affair (1886) or Sacco and Vanzetti (1920-1927) for famous historical examples of "class justice" in the USA ; those made-up trials resulting in 5 and 2 death sentences respectively.
It's pretty much a meme across the whole western culture (books and movies) by now that power corrupts and having privileges for certain classes of people is a recipe for insurmountable injustice.
Also worth noting, when one of those shooters is (even vaguely) connected to islam, the shooting is framed instantly across mainstream media as a "ISIS attack", whereas other shooters are depicted as "loonies" / "troubled men". But they usually have more in common than the media lets us know, especially their views on women and sexuality, and more often than not solid connections to the international neo-nazi/white-supremacist movement. See also Contrapoint's "Incels" video on that topic.
I think the latter half of your last paragraph is falling prey to the same problem as the first half. The "incel" label is the same pattern by the public/media/government to label people as undesirables so you wouldn't ask questions.
The myth of neo-nazis or white-supremacists as any sort of significant group or movement is pure fiction. It should be treated as the same as conspiracy theories about elite pedophile rings meeting in pizza restaurant basements.
Doesn't matter though. The web property was taken down, and safer-ish sex work suffered a set back. Sex trafficking is the new "terrorism" whereby the government or other organizations can allege it, and the targeted entity is pretty much SOL.
To add to this, "sex trafficking" to most people means "sex slavery," but if you look at the definition it's a broad term that includes things like helping a prostitute immigrate illegally. And then law enforcement takes things a step further, often referring to any form of prostitution as "sex trafficking" because they know that if they simply call it prostitution, most people won't see the big problem.
It's gotten to the point where I'm skeptical of any news stories I read where authorities are claiming "sex trafficking." It's simply astounding how many of those, if you follow-up on them, end up being simple prostitution cases in the end, with the supposed victims being charged by authorities for engaging in prostitution.
The Robert Kraft case is a good recent example. Authorities made a big announcement of saying Kraft and other men were involved in a sex trafficking ring, and the media uncritically spread their claims. If you look at online comments from the time, most people assume that Kraft and others were taking advantage of unwilling sex slaves. But months later the charges against the men were dropped, and the only people that ended up being punished were the women themselves, for prostitution. Authorities have a habit of making a big deceitful announcement that they're saving these women, then when the public and media attention goes elsewhere, the women are the ones the authorities end up punishing.
"But anti-prostitution activists like Hughes often use “sexual exploitation” to include any kind of prostitution or sex work—in fact, Hughes insists in her article that "trafficking occurs even if the woman consents.” "
Yes, when a desperately poor person accepts a bad job, the problem is not the availability of the bad job. It's them being desperately poor. And eliminating that bad job will likely harm them more than it helps them in their effort to improve their situation.
There's some health and safety risks associated with sex work, but we have a good understanding of how to mitigate them. Shutting down the safer oprions does not do that. Sex work also come with the risk of arrest and a criminal record; which is entirely the fault of current laws and law enforcement.
Amazon warehouse work is highly destructive. In 2019, they had an 8.8% injury rate, with 90% severe enough to interfere with work duties. The working conditions at amazon warehouses have been a national scandal for years.
If they are willing to do illegal sex work out of desperation, their inability to earn that income could be far more destructive to the individual than the sex work. That's an uncomfortable truth, and avoiding it leads to a host of harmful prohibitions, whether it's on sex work, work for under minimum wage, micro-housing units that are under minimum floor space ordinances, or buildings that are over maximum density caps, etc.
2 weeks ago, it became a felony in Texas to pay for sex. Unlike most of the other batshit laws passed in Texas this year, this one had wide bipartisan support.
As a gay man, while this is just anecdotal, it seems to me that the dynamics of gay prostitution are very different from most straight prostitution. I used to think it quite sad to hear about gay men paying for sex. I mean, these days, it is extremely easy for gay men to find other gay men to have sex with, for free, as long as you're willing to have sex with guys who generally look like you do.
Then I had some friends who had escorted at some point, and they explained the dynamic. Quite simply, many of the "johns" were older, and they basically wanted a hot, younger guy to have sex with them (of course there were other types, for example closeted men).
None of the guys I knew who escorted ever felt coerced into doing it, beyond the fact that they needed money, and to them it was an easy way to get money.
Of course, I'm sure there are guys who did feel pressured into doing it, and sex trafficking does occur.
But there are still many, perfectly consenting adults who pay for sex as part of "the world's oldest profession". We should stop this moral panic and focus laws to help actual victims of sex trafficking.
Just for the record, all the specifics you've listed with regard to gay prostitution also apply to heterosexual prostitution, to my best understanding.
That is to say, much of the clientele are older men who just want a hot, younger woman to have sex with them. There are also other types.
Some female escorts do not feel coerced, while another significant percentage certainly do. I would imagine that's the same on both front as well.
While I totally recognize that male prostitutes are perhaps more likely to be able to resist physical aggression, and therefore have a bit more agency (which I think may have been the point you were leading toward), I think the moral panic crosses all borders, and I agree that once (if) we take that out of the equation, the rest of the conversation becomes much easier.
If you think that's the same as paying for sex then you need to grow up, and have a think about how you regard other people. Believing that you're entitled to sex because you spent money on a date is a super creepy attitude.
In a lot of places of the world that's literally how prostitution works. Since you aren't allowed to pay for sex, they have tea and coffee houses where people pay for very expensive drinks and other things.
Then the women "decides" whether they have sex. At least I'm not so clear on how the second part of that secret handshake works. But it's very much a concept of paying a lot for things that are not technically sex because that would be illegal.
A lot of escorts will also take perfume, jewellery or other expensive gifts instead of money.
Just a quick google search yields this:
"It came to my attention on a recent trip to China that teahouses are now becoming the new center for scandal and prostitution. In fact, teahouses have had a mix meaning in China for centuries. Dating back as far as the Tang Dynasty teahouses were places to relax, play games and take in a traditional Chinese opera show. They were also a place where the equivalent of a geisha would cater to men by accompanying them with drinks, laughter and often-touchy behavior. Although this was seen as more of a custom to enhance customer service, it also gave customers negotiating room to ask the women for other services such as sex. Brothels were very common across China during this time and teahouses happened to be an outlet where prostitutes could also be ordered."
If you go to places like Thailand, you can buy 'bargirl drinks' or similar. These are expensive drinks that entitle you to a bargirl spending some time with you. There's also a 'bargirl fine' if the bargirl decides to go out with you. These are listed items on the menu. If you think this is a thinly veiled front for prostitution you'd be right.
Strongly agree with the sentiment of your post. I'm curious how you came about the information that they were the #1 source of trafficking tips. That seems like the government killing a golden goose (not that that is surprising in any way).
"She would go on to spread misinformation about the site and its co-founders, Michael Lacey and James Larkin, and she co-filed criminal charges that were quickly dismissed but succeeded at garnering headlines and photo ops that raised her political profile. In reality, Backpage.com had become a powerful tool for law enforcement to help catch sex traffickers because of the cooperation and commitment of the site's founders to that cause, whom Harris and many other states' attorneys general had painted as villains."
They ran a child porn dark web site for two weeks:
"Playpen was a notorious darknet child pornography website that operated from August 2014 to March 2015.[1][2] The website operated through a hidden service through the Tor network which allowed users to use the website anonymously. After running the website for 6 months, the website owner Steven W. Chase was captured by the FBI. After his capture, the FBI continued to run the website for another 13 days as part of Operation Pacifier." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playpen_(website)
Australian police did the same thing with another captured site, for more than six months if I recall correctly. They actually even posted material to it themselves in status updates impersonating the admins, because the admins who set up the site had established that protocol because they believed police would never do that…
Seems reasonable to me. Limited timespan to gather information with potentially large payoff.
I don't agree with "entrapment" arguments and "faciliting spread" here. The site was already up, and the users were going to go there regardless. Running it for a week or two more is at worst marginal harm, considering it was already there for a good 6 months.
I don't think entrapment is the problem here - it's that the government is distributing child porn. It's still wrong even if the government is doing it. The ends don't justify the means.
The real tragedy is it had a massive chilling effect on other sites.
A major escort site (not BP) was ethically ran by a retired sex worker. The site sold out of fear of prosecution and the new owner is a horrible person in my opinion.
I thought the issue with backpage was that they were actively editing / editorializing prostitution ads to increase traffic. Even if they were helping the government they crossed the line from being a neutral carrier to actively aiding prostitution.
Also, once you drive the good people out of business, not only whatever is left over much worse, but it attracts the people who are outright sociopaths and want to push the boundaries just because they like to see people burn. Since the demand doesn't go away, it just goes underground. If tomorrow all legitimate painkillers were outlawed, drug trafficking would become a much worse problem with a lot more deaths.
One of those "other organizations" is the NCMEC, which was established by[1] and heavily funded by[2] the U.S. Congress.
NCMEC has consistently tried to impede the implementation of end-to-end encryption. Even before the Apple/iCloud debacle, the NCMEC pushed tech companies to prohibit users under 18 from using end-to-end encryption:[3]
> On February 20, 2020, NCMEC released an open letter to the technology industry outlining five Principles to Safeguard Children in End-to-End Encrypted Environments.
> - Do not implement end-to-end encrypted communications for accounts where a user has indicated they are under 18 years old.
Restricting children from secure communications is an especially user-hostile way to advocate against child abuse.
Given that children have attenuated rights in basically every society, restricting access to E2EE seems like an imperfect but deeply net positive way to reduce child harm. What “savory” actions for which a minor would use E2EE are you concerned are jeopardized by such a proposal?
(Particularly interested in what actions or content is jeopardized, not the ideal of privacy, which I agree is important even for minors)
Preventing children from using E2EE is not a "net positive" just as preventing adults from using E2EE is also not a "net positive". Privacy is a human right, not a right that should be made exclusive to adults. Just because children are restricted from other activities does not make it justified to restrict their rights further.
End-to-end encryption helps prevent messages from being intercepted by intermediaries, such as companies and governments. For example, an advocate (for human rights, environment, or any other cause) who is under 18 may wish to coordinate a protest or some other activity while minimizing exposure to surveillance from potential adversaries. Or in a more ordinary example, children may want to communicate with others without being profiled by advertisers or government agencies through the content of their messages. Secure communications are as valuable to children as they are to adults.
So your answers are children organizing protests and children not being targeted by advertisers. Personally unconvinced by these since neither is actually guaranteed by E2EE nor is E2EE required for either. A functioning society can (and should) protect both of those things, and a non-functioning one doesn’t need to ban E2EE to attack them.
I'll try to express my point from a different angle. If E2EE were unavailable for adults, it would probably be easier for law enforcement to investigate sexual abuse cases in which adults are the victims. But, it would also prevent adults from enjoying the security and privacy benefits of E2EE and the protection E2EE affords against having their messages intercepted (which is something advertisers, hostile governments, and other adverse intermediaries regularly do). Many adults would not trade away the ability to use E2EE in exchange for a more empowered law enforcement.
Child sex abuse may be a more severe crime than adult sex abuse, but aside from how certain crimes are sentenced, E2EE benefits children just as much as it benefits adults. Before arguing that E2EE should be unavailable for children, I would consider whether the argument holds up if E2EE were revoked for adults as well.
Prohibiting minors from using end-to-end encryption would not prevent them from using self-destructing messages, since they are completely different features. There are messaging solutions with end-to-end encryption that do not have self-destructing messages (e.g. E2EE email, Apple iMessages) and vice versa (e.g. Snapchat).
As a parent, you have the option to use parental controls to block apps with the self-destructing messages feature. However, other parents may have different parenting situations and styles that do not need this feature to be restricted from their children. Pushing for a feature to be unavailable for all children would infringe on other children's rights and their parents' rights.
Are you reviewing the messages on their devices, or package sniffing at the gateway? I don't see how E2EE has any effect on whether a device/application retains communications or not.
A separate argument is that kids experiment and do dumb stuff together with other kids. Forcing them to not be able to do so in private without bad actors collecting images seems like a pretty significant sacrifice in human rights. I get the intention, I just think it is very misguided.
Depends on your threat model. Are you more worried about a hacker breaking Instagram chat and reading messages to and from your child or some bad actor grooming them?
Yeah, this is exactly what I’m getting at. Kids aren’t getting victimized by zero days against online services. They’re getting victimized by predators having private conversations with them.
> Given that children have attenuated rights in basically every society
Just because something is true does not mean that it should be true.
> What “savory” actions for which a minor would use E2EE are you concerned are jeopardized by such a proposal?
Why does it matter whether their actions are savory or not? There are many things that reality tells us children are going to do, whether it's "savory" or not. And a lot of those things probably shouldn't be exposed to interception.
First off, who are you to tell me what I'm arguing for or against?
Second, "children" covers an EXTREMELY wide range of maturities. Some children are absolutely responsible enough to take responsibility for their actions.
Third, what on earth does that have to do with allowing anyone who feels like it to intercept their conversations?
When it's inconvenient, "children aren't capable of adult responsibility". When it's inconvenient in the other direction, "this court has decided to have you tried as an adult."
Its not clear what your statement is supposed to mean. Are you asking me to take personal responsibility for times where minors are tried as adults and we'd both see it as an injustice? Cause, I got beef with the judiciary, but I don't see how thats germane to the topic right here.
when it comes to minors there is a good principle that whatever happened shouldn't cast shadow on adult life, like for example criminal record gets sealed/etc. Absence of E2E makes for higher chances that your communications are going to be out there for the rest of your life, so whatever stupid thing you said at 16 may be a part of your unofficial background check at 30 or even 40 ...
I’m surprised they actually got the mistrial. Prosecutorial misconduct is one of the fundamental problems facing this country…it transcends many issues dear to the left and the right.
Backpage shut down its adult services section back in January 2017. The defendants may have gotten a mistrial eventually, but they've lost years of their lives.
Can someone eli5 why is this a mistrial instead of acquit? If the prosecutor prosecuted on the wrong charge and the judge agrees on that it's the wrong charge, the defendants should get acquitted?
Failure to grant a change of venue which resulted in intimidation of defenses expert witnesses (and subsequently impacted defenses ability to procure witnesses)... Disparaging the defense in the presence of the jury. Failure to sequester the jury throughout the trial. etc.
Are you suggesting the courts in this country are unfair? I’m shocked. Maybe this would have more credibility if Black marijuana users were granted such a strident public defense of bad faith police and prosecutorial actions.
Frankly, I’m a strong believer that many of the rights we as the public hold should not be granted to police officers. Presumption of innoncence? Nope…you are empowered by the state to enact violence, should we really rely on the courts, other state agents to act appropriately? Why?
Change of venue and jury sequestration are controlled by the judge, not the prosecutor, and thus definitionally cannot be prosecutorial misconduct. And it's not misconduct for a prosecutor to disparage the defense in front of the jury unless it's extreme or falls into specific categories. Generally the prosecutor's entire job is to make the jury not believe the defense's story.
If anyone is unfamiliar with the case, this is a textbook example of government overreach and lying to the public. There is little reason to believe any of the claims against backpage are true.
One of the main people responsible for this is Kamala Harris.
It is sad as far as I can tell the main reason you are getting downvoted is because you mentioned the name of the top prosecutor who unjustly arrested the Backpage founders on trumped up charges.
Is there a non-emotional or moralistic argument for why prostitution should be illegal? What is actually the harm, and is it worse than the black market for illegal sex work?
There is at least one such argument: prostitution as a crime of danger. I try to articulate it below.
Prostitution by itself is not wrong, but the social dynamics around it put the prostitutes in a weak position, in which they are at high risk of abuse and exploitation. Under this interpretation, prohibiting prostitution harms the few prostitutes which would mot be abused and their clients, but benefits the majority of prostitutes who would be abused and is overall positive for society.
The logical structure of the argument is sound. As a society, we regularly accept to forbid behavior that is not necessarily harmful, but has an very high risk to be, and a limited social value if allowed. Gun laws, speed limits, age of consent laws follow this principle. [Aside: the social benefits of gun ownership are valued more in the US than in Europe, therefore gun laws are more permissive]
There are however at least three problems with this argument:
1. It supports punishing pimps and clients, not the prostitutes themselves. This is in fact the approach chisn by e.g. France and Sweden, but not by the US.
1. It assumes that a substantial proportion of prostitutes are exploited or abused and that there are no alternative policies to prevent this.
3. It ignores second order effects. It assumes that forbidding prostitution will eliminate it and doesn’t consider the additional risk of harm resulting from pushing prostitution to the black market.
Seems like all the risks you just associated with not-prohibiting prostitution would also apply to farming. Given its deplorable history in the US vis-a-vis slavery, it seems to be we can’t possibly risk more individuals being exploited in such a manner. Granted I’d concede that farming has substantial benefits, but frankly so does sex to those who cannot obtain it socially. Arguably the need for sex is tantamount to the need for food itself.
If people cares as much about the safety of people working on farms as they pretend to care about the safety of sex workers, farms would've been banned a long time ago. There's a lot of people working a lot of hours for little money under bad circumstances on a lot of farms.
That doesn't mean all farms are bad, but many of the same dangers do exist to the workers down the chain and regulation seems to avoid having to raise prices more than protect workers.
In my opinion, political opposition of the basic concept of sex work is all about politicians' personal morals and a lot of fear mongering to convince the masses of their point of view.
For farms, the social benefits of having farms are arguably higher. Hence the government tries alternative approaches, i.e. labor laws. Admittedly, the government is not enforcing labor laws effective ly, but the reasons are beyond the scope of my answer.
> 3. It ignores second order effects. It assumes that forbidding prostitution will eliminate it and doesn’t consider the additional risk of harm resulting from pushing prostitution to the black market.
At it's heart this is an argument of pragmatism, but it is never checked to see if it actually works.
Like many prohibitions, the negative unintended consequences are worse than than the original problem they purport, but entirely fail to fix.
Wiki lists some, with sources for further reading. Most prominent non-emotional argument seems to be that legalizing increases demand, meanwhile many would remain illegal nevertheless - so the related crimes' prevalence would increase.
Health and safety requirements. If testing and contact tracing isn't properly done it can be a problem, but as you said is it worse than black market conditions with zero oversight and safety stands? Probably not. The real risk is a lack of health insurance, retirement benefits, and taxable wage by allowing the black market conditions to exist. From a problematic standpoint is the "hostile work environment" claims if sex workers become legitimate.
Not that I buy into the argument but that it helps to create more human trafficking and the involuntary part of the trade has a better hiding behind the legal one.
It seems that some people do, in fact, sell consent. I know for the right price I'd sell my consent. And I don't buy into the premise that prostitution cannot exist if we want to reduce objectification.
If only the judge in Ross Ulbricht's case had as much principle and courage. It's another case where the prosecution focused on talking up sensationalist rumors during the trial, rumors that they had no intention of proving.
Which rumors are you referring to? People often say that about the "murder for hire" scheme, in the mistaken belief that Ulbricht wasn't actually charged for that. He was: the murder scheme was an explicit predicate of the conspiracy charge. They did in fact charge him for it. It's right there in the indictment.
Yes, but they left out explicit murder-for-hire charges in the indictment for that trial. They filed a separate indictment with those charges in a different state which they dropped after the first trial ended.
It's not exactly the same but I see a pattern of using an accusation to influence a trial without intending to prove it.
I don't think that's true. I think the murder-for-hire scheme is a predicate on the conspiracy charge he was ultimately convicted for, in the main trial.
I think you’re conflating ‘the trial’ with ‘sentencing’ - all the stuff about him trying to hire a hitman was brought up at sentencing (I thought), not during the trial. Under US law almost anything can be brought up as a mitigating or aggravating circumstance at sentencing - whether such facts would be admissible at trial is irrelevant as the rules of evidence do not apply to sentencing.
Edit: added the “I thought” - my recollection was the charges related to the hitman-hiring were dropped. I may be misremembering.
Over a century ago, Emma Goldman was an organizer trying to improve the lives of working class men and women.
She wrote about the upper middle class liberal, politician-and-yellow-journalist-fueled frenzy around the "traffic in women". Funny that over a century later absolutely nothing has changed. Even the same word is used for the old moral panic - traffic.
>"Brnovich said such testimony was allowable only if it involved evidence that Backpage executives and employees knew about it," according to the Arizona Republic. The article continued:
>Similarly, Brnovich said that testimony given by Jessika Svendgard, who discussed being sold as a teen on Backpage, went beyond the legal boundaries she set in place. Brnovich said that despite her ruling that prosecutors stay away from day-in-the-life style testimony from any prostitutes or trafficking victims, the government's attorneys succeeded in getting Svendgard to discuss exactly that.
>Svendgard told jurors, at times through tears, about being sold on Backpage by a series of pimps. "I would be raped for money," she said. Brnovich said the use of that word "raises a whole new emotional response from people."
Apparently the government wasn't supposed to bring up the victim's experience. The retrial will remove this testimony and they will still be convicted for the sheer number of laws they broke.
I’m not very libertarian, and am open to criminalizing vices for policy reasons where doing so has good societal outcomes even at the expense of personal liberty. Even more importantly, I think internet platforms should be held much more accountable than they currently are for the content they host.
So I should be sympathetic to the prosecution here, and yet from the very beginning this case has seemed to be a clear cut example of a witch hunt with prosecutors engaging in bad faith tactics to try to force the defendants to plea when they haven’t committed any crime.
Libertarian here! If you don't really care if you step on a few toes to make the world better overall...
Then we should still be on the same side of this issue. I mean say we hate the idea of sex work overall, and there are real problems we can point to that it causes. So we make it illegal. Now we have two problems. It certainly won't stop prostitution. And it's the prohibition that creates the pimps, makes sex workers unable to report crimes to the police, fosters the most unsafe conditions, increases the spread of diseases, creates corruption.
It's bizarre that prostitution is illegal in an allegedly progressive, western country like the USA. From an outsiders perspective, this is comparable to burning witches.
Is there a reason for this beyond ideals from the middle ages and pearl clutching?
FYI: the States Attorneys are just playing whackamole with services that allow ads for hookers ("moral code violations".) It started with Craigslist and now Backpage.
No surprise the case is weak because the goal is to harass platforms one-by-one without solving any kind of social problem.
In the US, States Attorneys are elected, so that's the main reason for these cases.
Recommended reading: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-backpage-vicious-battle-f...
There was an excellent thread on this by @AshleyLatke on Twitter, but they have made their entire timeline private, so I can't link it.