Misguided Senators Propose Plan To Make It Harder For Law Enforcement To Track Down Human Trafficking Online
from the you're-doing-it-wrong dept
We've been covering the bizarre (mostly publicity-motivated) attacks on the Village Voice's Backpage.com site for a while. Those efforts have been ramping up, and every day I seem to get press releases from some ridiculous group that is apparently coordinating this misguided and dangerous attack. It appears that some of the silly publicity stunt is working, with Senators Richard Blumenthal, Mark Kirk, John Cornyn, Sheldon Whitehouse and Marco Rubio all supporting a "resolution" demanding Backpage take down its "adult entertainment" section. We've seen this battle before. Craigslist went through the same ridiculous moral panic a few years ago. And all it did was drive all of this traffic elsewhere -- with a lot of it settling on Backpage. Of course, that effort was led by then Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, before he became a Senator -- so it's no surprise that he's involved in this pointeless effort as well.Here's the thing: we already know how this game plays out. You can browbeat these companies into shutting off this part of their forums against their own will, and many of them will cave. And you'll celebrate victory, but as you do that, everyone will be rapidly exploring alternatives, which most will move to pretty quickly. In other words, such a crackdown won't do a damn thing to stop people from actually being exploited. Even worse, in pressuring that content to scatter, it becomes much more difficult for law enforcement to track down and arrest the real criminals who are abusing the system. But nothing in getting Backpage to turn off this section actually helps to stop such trafficking/prostitution. It just makes life that much more difficult for law enforcement, since they now need to do a lot more work to track down the people abusing these laws. I fail to see how that's a positive result, as the government has insisted.
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Filed Under: backpage, publicity stunt, richard blumenthal
Companies: craigslist, village voice
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I agree...but also disgree
I am never for internet censorship, but as humans that want to help other humans what should we do?
Is the fault with us? Should we not be doing more to discourage this kind of activity? Or are we not able to and therefore only able to try and shut down the avenues of exploitation.
I am not by any measure an expert, but even given my conflicts, I want exploitation of women stopped and the means and ways should be shut down.
I am glad you opened this dialog as I hope to see in the comments solutions.
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Re: I agree...but also disgree
In the time and resources it took to put this bullshit together, how many more arrests of traffickers could be made? How much new technology could be utilized to find these people and get them off the street?
The question you have to ask yourself is: what is the motivation behind this action? The only true answer is "noteriety", which works to the detriment of any actual solution to the problem....
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Re: Re: I agree...but also disgree
So I am not smart enough to find a way to do both.
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Re: Re: Re: I agree...but also disgree
The key to criminal investigation is getting out there and talking to people without appearing to be police (no, you can't use this phase for evidence). Eventually they send you to someone who is planning to do something illegal (you must wait for them to do this on their own, promoting the activity is bad). Then you tip off the cops on the local beat and have them show up with arrest warrants granted on the reasonable suspicion collected by the under cover guy (stuff which won't be used at evidence).
That or you just quietly bust a minor player for screwing around with another illegal activity, hand them a wire and tell them how they can walk away from this a free citizen.
All warrants in these schemes comes from freely volunteered information. No evidence is collected without a warrant. Any innocent that is wrongly targeted won't end up doing something illegal at the behest of the agents.
You can adapt these techniques to the Internet fairly easily, you just have to back it up with local enforcers for the final bust.
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/free-babysitting-how-would-be-child-sex-abus ers-use-craigslist-and-how-they-get-caught.ars
Rather than try and force them to darker spots, where it is harder to find them, stop grandstanding to make the work that much harder.
I have no fear of this type of police work. It is well targeted, and seems to work. Its a damn sight better than if we sweep it under the rug we can pretend it doesn't exist anymore and get reelected.
Imagine cooperating with CL to run posts through a system using machine learning that knows what the keywords are, and then presents good hits to LEO's. The LEO makes contact and if your innocent nothing happens because your not a creep, if your a predator you take the bait and go down.
Instead these idiots make it so LEO's have to try and figure out what site they moved to this week, monitor several different places where the law might not let them get IP addresses and other useful information. But won't someone think of the children? Yeah the greatest threat to children is the people who use that battlecry.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: I agree...but also disgree
If law enforcement simply used the publication as a sourcebook for arrests, how long before the bad guys would figure it out and move to a more secure venue? The difference is that the publication can accomplish the same thing with the flick of the switch. Almost all of law enforcement is whack-a-mole. Drugs, robbery, burglary, gang activity, etc.- law enforce squeezes in one place and it largely moves to another.
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Re: I agree...but also disgree
If you're not willing to do BOTH of these then you don't really care whether the activity is stopped, you just want it hidden from your view so that you can't see it or so you can convince yourself it doesn't happen when you can't see it.
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Re: I agree...but also disgree
The debate is whether shutting down, or removing it from a website will stop the behavior. The answer is "No". It doesn't. As Mike's said, it spreads it around and pushes it further underground.
Stopping this behavior is going to require hard-on-the-ground police work. It's not easy, and generally needs to be done on a case by case basis. With luck, the Feds can stop a large amount at a time.
You can help the problem, by notifying the authorities when you see behavior like this. If you see a post that's suggesting illegal behavior, tell the POLICE, not the SITE OWNER. The police can stop the person and the behavior. The site owner can only stop the expression of that behavior on their site, while the behavior continues unabated.
If you agree that shutting down the site doesn't stop the behavior, then this should be a non-issue. It makes the only thing that DOES stop it (the aforementioned hard police-work) even harder.
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Re: I agree...but also disgree
The problem of human trafficking is easily solved thru the laws of supply and demand.
Remove the social stigmas around sex, legalize prostitution, and those who force women into prostitution will find they have no market, the payoff of the illegal trafficking would not be worth the price they would get.
Pfft, easy.
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Re: I agree...but also disgree
Now, if you have the technical knowledge to find out where the people advertising on the site are, or you have some other way to contribute positively, then by all means try to make law enforcement's job easier. But the situation is not as simple as "doing something is better than doing nothing".
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Re: I agree...but also disgree- but what about victims of rape and domestic violence?
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Re: Re: I agree...but also disgree- but what about victims of rape and domestic violence?
We also need to engage in a massive amount of education, because there are still, despite decades of efforts, imbeciles walking around out there who spout nonsense like "...she shouldn't have dressed like that" and "...she shouldn't have gone there" and "...she has sex all the time" and "...she shouldn't have been alone with X" and so on -- all of which blame the victim, along with a side order of sexist shaming for (GASP!) actually being a woman.
And that's not all. "Prison rape" is a punchline to many, but it's not a joke: it's an epidemic. But our society -- which imprisons far more people per capita than any other -- apparently figures that whatever happens to someone in prison is just fine: rape, beatings, doesn't matter. And then we wonder why people don't come out all magically reformed and better, and you know, just pick up where they left off.
These (and more) would be useful places to apply our resources, financial and personnel and otherwise. But it won't happen. See comment in another thread earlier today for why. No, instead, women and men will continue to be raped in large numbers, perpetrators will pretty much get away with it, and the FBI will keep creating its very own terror plots in an expensive circle jerk...instead of actually solving actual crimes.
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Re: Re: Re: I agree...but also disgree- but what about victims of rape and domestic violence?
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Re: I agree...but also disgree
No, we're supposed to expect that law enforcement actually does its job and uses that evidence to go arrest the people actually responsible for breaking the law.
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Re: I agree...but also disgree
There is a frequent "we must do something!" pattern in many areas (including security, which is usually where I see it). It's damned hard to convince people that sometimes the most rational course of action is to do nothing. Marcus Ranum lists this as #6 on his list of The Six Dumbest Ideas in Security (brilliant rant, required reading for EVERYONE who works in the field) and neatly encapsulates the failure to stop making this mistake in An Utter Flop when he says:
Information security's response to bitter failure, in any area of endeavour, is to try the same thing that didn't work - only harder.
For example, there are still miserably stupid people on this planet who think that anti-virus software works (for a useful value of "works") despite decades of overwhelmingly convincing proof that it doesn't. (Of course, they're assisted in this belief by companies who want to sell them worthless, expensive snake-oil.)
The same principle applies in politics, economics, and other fields as well. In this case: clearly, going into a moral panic and targeting Craigslist has had precisely zero effect on the problem. Now politicians are going to try the same thing that didn't work -- only harder. How do you think that'll work out?
(Another contemporary example: enforced austerity measures in Spain are driving the country's economy into the ground. Quickly. The response? More austerity. Brilliant.)
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Politicians need to realise that there are already far too many laws for them all to be enforced. They need to get on with the hard, boring unglamorous work of rationalising the law. But none of that is anywhere near as much fun as grandstanding, is it?
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Re: Re: I agree...but also disgree
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Out of sight
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Whackamole again?
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Now a much better situation would be to identify the criminal offerings on Craiglist/Backpages and the likes and work with the company and service providers to track and arrest the ones behind than blocking the adult section. Let the sex workers have their channel and do proper investigation. You know, do what the police should be doing instead of some security theater/show with little to no real benefits to the society.
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Re:
What's scary is that you seem to WANT to sweep child porn and child prostitution under the rug, making it easier for people to get away with it. You're sick. Get help.
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Agreed
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/mel brooks
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No taxes paid.
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Re:
Same with legalizing marihuana (growing and selling), you can put rules on quality control, you can put sales tax on them, and you can check up on the people who smoke a lot. Aside from the sales tax thing, it also removes the forbidden fruit aspect, so people won't lust after it so much (would change quite a few hollywood movies as well). And it removes the gateway function of marihuana. No streetdealers saying: "hey, wanna try some coke, first time's free."
Sadly, in my country (The Netherlands) we are going the reverse route. Next year, foreigners will not be able to get weed in coffeeshops, not even in Amsterdam. Which will increase streetdealers, and thus more chances of people getting hurt through bad quality, and gateway drugs.
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Seems like the cure is worse than the cause Mike.
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Re:
Shifting the advertising and distribution networks around makes intelligence gathering harder and does nothing to address the core of the problem.
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Actually, it does. The business is money driven, and that money comes from customers found via advertising. Remove the income, and suddenly there is less demand for new workers, which helps to address the core issue.
Prostitution, pimping, and "human trafficing" is a 100% money driven business. Anything that makes it hard for them to make money addresses at least part of the issue, and removes something that is unacceptable to most of society from public view. That in itself makes it harder for them to make money, makes them have to do more overt things to get new customers, makes them take bigger risks to make money, and makes them easier to pick off.
How many girls do you think the cops can bust a day without breaking the system?
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Re: Re: Re:
How does busting girls help? You're making the desperate people more desperate by adding more costs to them. That's not a good incentive to stop.
Adding costs to their customers might help, but I'm a little indifferent to what consenting adults do. I don't condone it, I just accept that the world can be an ugly place and people do what they must to survive.
Surveilling these ads seems like a good way to gather intelligence on those trafficking in children. I think driving the market further underground just makes it harder to help the real victims.
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