DOJ Finally Uses FOSTA, Over Two Years Later... To Shut Down A Site Used By Sex Workers

from the worth-it? dept

For years leading up to the passage of FOSTA, we were told that Congress had to pass the law as quickly as possible because so many women were "at risk" due to trafficking. And when asked for evidence of this, people would point to Backpage, even though the site had shut down its "adult" section under pressure from Congress a year earlier. Of course, the actual stats that were provided turned out to be fake and Backpage was seized before the law was even passed. The charges against the founders did not include sex trafficking charges. Also, as the details have come out about Backpage, it's become evident that rather than facilitating sex trafficking, the company was actively working with law enforcement to find and arrest sex traffickers. However, where they started to push back on law enforcement was when law enforcement wanted to go after non-trafficked sex workers.

However, with all of the moral panic around the need to pass FOSTA, we highlighted earlier this year that two years had gone by and the DOJ had not used the law a single time to go after any "sex trafficking" site. Instead, as we predicted, the law was being used in nuisance lawsuits, such as mailing list provider MailChimp and CRM provider Salesforce because Backpage had used those services.

Finally, last week, however, the DOJ made use of FOSTA in shutting down a website and arresting its operator. A site called CityXGuide.com (and some other sites that it ran -- including one with a name similar to Backpage) were seized, and the guy who ran it, Wilhan Martono, was arrested in California. From the details provided, it does look like Martono saw an opportunity to jump into the market vacated by Backpage, and the charges claim that he brought in $21 million doing so.

The original indictment was done in early June, but it was only just unsealed with Martono's arrest and the seizure of the various websites. It does seem clear that Martono sought to be the source for advertising sex work, but the DOJ conveniently mashes together sex work and sex trafficking, because that's the kind of thing law enforcement likes to do.

Indeed, the immediate reaction to this appears to be that plenty of non-trafficked sex workers, who previously had relied on Backpage to remain safe and now relied on Martono's sites, are again put in danger. The Hacking/Hustling collective -- a group of sex workers who came together to advocate around issues such as FOSTA -- put out a press release calling out what a stupid, counterproductive move this is:

“When we are re-envisioning public safety, this is a perfect example of why we can’t exempt human trafficking. Instead of resources going to real investigations or victim support, you have six agencies spending time and resources reading ads and looking for the word ‘blow job’” said Lorelei Lee, a collective member of Hacking//Hustling.

I was going to link to another website that has a blog advocating for sex workers' rights that explained in great detail how this puts sex workers at danger, but honestly, under a broad interpretation of FOSTA, linking to that website might violate the law. That's because after reading the blog post, I saw that there was a link to a "find escorts" site associated with the blog, and while I think I should be able to link to such a blog post, with its cogent explanation for why this DOJ action puts women at risk... merely linking to it would put me at risk under a broad reading of FOSTA (a stupid, unconstitutional reading, but, alas, these are some of the chilling effects created by the law).

Either way, it's difficult to see how this does anything to stop actual sex trafficking. Indeed, again, it's likely to put victims at even greater risk -- while also putting sex workers at greater risk. Studies have shown that when these sites go down, more women are put at risk. Even worse, as noted, Backpage actually helped law enforcement track down and arrest traffickers. But by making everything else such sites do illegal, it appears that (obviously) Martono avoided helping law enforcement at all (the indictment suggests he ignored various subpoenas).

Again, this is exactly as tons of people predicted. When these ads were appearing on places like Craigslist and Backpage, those companies worked closely with law enforcement to go after actual traffickers, and get them arrested. But now, with things like FOSTA, rather than do that, law enforcement can just... take down the best source to find and track down traffickers, pushing them to sites that are less and less likely to help law enforcement? How does that make sense. Indeed, we've covered a number of law enforcement officials saying that the shutdown of Backpage has made it more difficult to find actual traffickers.

And, if you want any more evidence of that: note that nowhere with this announcement is there anything about arresting any actual traffickers. I have a request in to the DOJ asking if they or any law enforcement have arrested any actual traffickers who used these sites -- but at the time of publishing they have not responded. The indictment claims -- somewhat salaciously -- that the sites seized were used to identify "numerous victims of child sex trafficking," including a "13-year-old Jane Doe." Obviously, it's horrific to find out about that Jane Doe or any victim of sex trafficking, but it does seem odd that there is no mention of any arrests of the traffickers.

Because... wouldn't arresting actual traffickers be the goal here?

Either way, this story is getting buzz on Twitter from two communities: sex workers who are pissed off and angry that they're now losing business and the ability to operate safely... and... believers in the ridiculous Q anon nonsense conspiracy theory, who believe that everything going on in the world is a plot to cover up child sex trafficking. To them, this is evidence that the big promised crackdown on sex trafficking rings has begun. Of course, the lack of any actual arrests for actual sex trafficking kinda suggests that's not the goal here.

Still, this whole thing allowed FOSTA co-author Senator Rob Portman to take a victory lap. Someone should ask him why he's celebrating putting women at risk -- or at least ask him where the arrests are for actual sex trafficking.

Filed Under: doj, fosta, section 230, sex trafficking, sex workers, wilhan martono
Companies: backpage, cityxguide

Texas Appeals Court Brushes Off Section 230 In Allowing Lawsuit Over Sex Trafficking Against Facebook To Continue

from the it-continues-because-it-continues dept

Earlier this year, we mentioned, in passing, personal injury lawyer Annie McAdams' weird crusade against internet companies and Section 230. The lawyer -- who bragged to the NY Times about how she found out her favorite restaurant's secret margarita mix by suing them and using the discovery process to get the recipe -- has been suing a bunch of internet companies trying to argue that we can ignore Section 230 if you argue that the sites were "negligent" in how they were designed. In a case filed in Texas against Facebook (and others) arguing that three teenagers were recruited by sex traffickers via Facebook and that Facebook is to blame for that, the lower court judge ruled last year that he wouldn't dismiss on Section 230 grounds. I wish I could explain to you his reasoning, but the ruling is basically "well, one side says 230 bars this suit, and the other says it doesn't, and I've concluded it doesn't bar the lawsuit." That's literally about the entire analysis:

In reviewing the statute and the cases cited by the parties, the Court concludes that the Plaintiffs have plead causes of action that would not be barred by the immunity granted under the Act.

Why? I could not tell you. Judge Steven Kirkland provides no real basis.

Either way, Facebook appealed, and the appeals court has upheld the lower court ruling with even less analysis. The only mention of Section 230 is to say that that was Facebook's reason for asking for dismissal. The court takes three paragraphs to describe the history of the case, and this is the entire analysis:

Facebook has not established that it is entitled to mandamus relief. Accordingly, we deny Facebook’s petitions for writ of mandamus.

Why? Who the hell knows. Texas courts are weird, man.

At least one judge on the panel, Justice Tracy Christopher, issued a dissent from the majority opinion. The dissent is also pretty short and sweet, and basically says "um, seems like 230 applies here, so, yeah."

I respectfully dissent from these denials of mandamus and I urge the Texas Supreme Court to review these cases. Federal law grants Facebook immunity from suits such as these. See 47 U.S.C. § 230. Because Facebook has immunity, these suits have no basis in law, and dismissal under Texas Rule of Procedure 91a is proper.

The Real Parties in Interest urge our court to adopt a construction of Section 230 that has been adopted by only a few courts. The vast majority of the courts reviewing this law have adopted the arguments made by Facebook. The artful pleading by the Real Parties in Interest should not prevail over the statute.

Also, just to be clear, since some may ask, and since this is a case about sex trafficking: FOSTA does not apply here because (1) the actions at issue happened prior to FOSTA becoming law, and (2) (as only the dissent notes), FOSTA does not apply to civil actions in state court. Still, what a weird set of rulings, that seem to go against nearly all Section 230 case law... and with basically no analysis as to why at all.

Filed Under: annie mcadams, cda 230, intermediary liability, negligence, product liability, section 230, sex trafficking, texas, vexatious lawsuits
Companies: facebook

AOC Supports Full Repeal Of FOSTA

from the good-for-her dept

Late last year, a bill was introduced to study the impact of FOSTA. This is important, as all of the evidence to date suggests that it has failed by every possible measure. There is no indication that it has helped to decrease sex trafficking -- in fact the indications are that it has enabled more sex trafficking. Indeed, law enforcement has directly admitted that the law has actually made it more difficult to track down traffickers. And, of course, there's tremendous evidence that it has had a real human cost in putting (non-trafficked) sex workers at significant risk.

As more in Congress realize this, it's been good to see some calling for a careful study into the impact. And now Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been the first (as far as I can tell) to come right out and say the law should be totally repealed, specifically calling out the harm that it has done to sex workers. It's great to see politicians realizing that all the lame rhetoric that was pushed out in favor of the law was bullshit.

Of course, because AOC is such a polarizing figure in these insanely partisan times, the usual crew of AOC haters have immediately started spewing absolute idiocy online claiming -- falsely -- that she supports sex trafficking. It was this kind of bogus rhetoric that helped get this damaging law passed in the first place. But, since Republicans love to try to mock everything AOC says, we get silly statements like this from Rep. Pete Olson saying that she wants to "re-open the floodgates of human trafficking" and pointing to "64 human traffickers busted" in Fort Bend (in his district). While it is true that local officials arrested 64 people in a sting operation, and told the press it was for trafficking, few details have been provided. In most similar announcements, later research often found that the operations had little to do with trafficking, and were just standard sex work. Either way, if FOSTA was supposed to stop such "trafficking," it seems like Olson is flat out admitting that it didn't work here.

And, of course, Senator Josh Hawley -- who you may recall, has decided that he alone should make all UI decisions for the internet -- has ridiculously claimed that this is AOC "supporting big tech and sex trafficking" when it's literally neither of those things. The idea that partisan idiots are jumping on this just because of who is suggesting it is perhaps not surprising, but still disappointing.

Even if you disagree with AOC on other things, it's a good thing that she recognizes what a failure FOSTA has been and how it's put lives in jeopardy. Repealing FOSTA is the right move and kudos to AOC for being the first Congressional Rep to come out and advocate for it.

Filed Under: alexandria ocasio-cortez, aoc, fosta, intermediary liability, josh hawley, pete olson, repeal, section 230, sex trafficking

Civil FOSTA Suits Start Showing Up In Court; Prove That FOSTA Supporters Were 100% Wrong About Who Would Be Targeted

from the who-would-have-guessed dept

During the run up to the passage of FOSTA, we were told two key things: (1) the law was absolutely necessary to stop sex trafficking websites like Backpage, and (2) that there was no way that the law would be abused to go after perfectly innocent websites. It's pretty easy to show that both of these claims turned out to be utter bullshit. The first one was especially easy, seeing as the Feds seized the site and arrested its founders a week before FOSTA became law. The second has taken somewhat longer to show, in part because for a long while no one actually seemed to be making use of FOSTA. For a law that we were told was absolutely necessary and that any delay in passing it would mean lives put at risk, it has been notable just how few actual lawsuits have been filed under FOSTA in the 18 months or so since it became law. State attorneys general, who pushed strongly for it, claiming they needed this hole in Section 230 to go after bad actor websites have still never used the law. Not once.

However, a few civil suits have just started to show up, as highlighted in a guest post at Eric Goldman's blog by FOSTA expert Alex Yelderman. She first points to two nearly identical lawsuits filed in state courts (one in Washington, one in California) against Craigslist and a bunch of hotels. Craigslist has sought to remove both to federal court as of early December. Both cases push, as Yelderman notes, "radical theories of liability" aimed at Craigslist. They also target activities that happened prior to FOSTA becoming law (as you may recall, Craigslist shut down its "erotic services" section all the way back in 2010, and then shut down all dating after FOSTA became law, noting that the liability risk was just too much).

That hasn't stopped the company from getting sued under the law, though, with it claiming that just the mere fact that Craigslist had such a section a decade ago proves that it was engaged in sex trafficking under FOSTA. As Yelderman points out, the fact that FOSTA is apparently retroactive and can reach back to such things, will almost certainly be found unconstitutional. As you may recall, even the DOJ told Congress this part was unconstitutional.

Even beyond that aspect, though, the claims in the lawsuit are crazy. They assume that FOSTA removed the requirement for knowledge on the part of intermediaries like Craigslist, even though supporters of the law insisted that wasn't the case. Indeed, a key part of the DOJ's defense of FOSTA in the Woodhull case that challenged the law (and which the district court rejected), was that FOSTA made no such change. As Yelderman explains:

The plaintiffs do not allege that craigslist knew anything about them specifically being trafficked — in fact, they count themselves among “thousands of victims” — but rather claim that the website was aware “that its erotic services section was well known to commercial sex customers throughout the United States as a place to easily locate victims for [SIC] as commodities, unpunished, anonymous, sexual abuse of children” and that once craigslist had been put “on notice of the human sex trafficking” (“from numerous sources, including but not limited to; lawsuits, government action, public outcry, news media, victims, activities and employee observation”), its ongoing operation “amounted to a venture with sex traffickers to efficiently market victims such as [the] Plaintiff.” (emphasis added)

This is a radical theory of liability, and raises the question: did FOSTA’s definition of “participation in a venture,” codified in 18 U.S.C. § 1591(e)(4), eliminate the requirement that federal trafficking defendants (including, now, intermediaries) have actual knowledge of trafficking? The government in Woodhull assured that court that “FOSTA changed nothing about Section 1591’s scienter standard,” and that a plaintiff “cannot credibly fear criminal or civil liability [if] it has no specific knowledge about the content of any of the material it obtains” or “be prosecuted under FOSTA [if] it has no knowledge about any individual webpage nor criminal intent.” (Defendants’ reply and supplement at 7, 8, emphasis added)). But even if craigslist ends up prevailing, the fact that the cases were filed at all sounds the alarm on FOSTA’s reach, and shows the Woodhull plaintiffs’ fear to be entirely reasonable

The other case that Yelderman highlights deserves even more scrutiny. It was filed against Mailchimp back in November, and I had meant to write it up at the time, but did not get the chance. It was filed by the same lawyer who has been filing a bunch of similar cases, including the nonsense cases against Salesforce, because Backpage used Salesforce. The lawyer behind those cases, Annie McAdams, even got herself quite a profile in the NY Times, where she meets the NY Times reporter at "her favorite Tex-Mex joint in Houston" and proceeds to brag that "she had acquired the restaurant’s secret margarita recipe in legal discovery when she sued the place for serving a man too much alcohol."

Bragging about abusing the law and the courts for personal gain in a NY Times profile says something about you. For what it's worth, McAdams' Twitter account currently has exactly two tweets (it's possible she's deleted others), with the first one being her getting angry at me for referring to her lawsuits as "nuisance suits." Quite a person there.

Either way, the claims against Mailchimp are absolutely the kinds of things we all warned would happen when FOSTA was being debated, and which FOSTA supporters insisted would never happen. The crux of the lawsuit is that when a Backpage clone, called YesBackpage, tried to startup after Backpage was seized, the site used Mailchimp for emails, and thus that makes it liable under FOSTA.

YesBackpage used Mail Chimp technology to enable efficient and targeted communication between itself and sex traffickers.

MailChimp was thereby an active party in the process of soliciting and fulfilling acts of sex trafficking.

MailChimp’s integrated communications software was used together to track postings of illegal advertisements, encourage greater use of these advertisements by traffickers, and effectively promote sex trafficking on an unprecedented scale.

MailChimp was the key technology used to unify the various digital components of the sex trafficking transaction, including the use of email to increase more advertising, more consumption of those ads, and thereby facilitate more sex trafficking.

Even if this lawsuit gets tossed out (as it should), the theory behind it is scary and worrisome. As Yelderman writes:

This case alleges that MailChimp — a marketing platform — “made available its marketing resources and expertise” to a Backpage copycat website and that “MailChimp’s marketing relationship with YesBackpage makes it responsible for its natural consequences — the sex trafficking of Jane Doe.” (Doe v. MailChimp complaint at 12). This view of “natural consequences” is breathtaking. Once MailChimp became “[a]rmed with knowledge of activity occurring through YesBackpage,” any services performed for the website would presumably constitute “participation in a [sex trafficking] venture.” There is no limiting factor in sight.

When sex trafficking is somehow construed as the “natural consequence” of a virtually any action, virtually no person or entity is safe from the threat of liability.

These are the kinds of things many of us worried about (and warned Congress about) in the run-up to SESTA/FOSTA, and we were told we were crazy. Yet, looking at the actual lawsuits filed under FOSTA seems to prove we were 100% correct.

What's even more troubling, through, is that they also show just how wrong the district court judge in the Woodhull case was to dismiss that case. The judge dismissed that case insisting that FOSTA included clear language that barred such widespread interpretations:

... plaintiffs ignore key textual indications that make clear that FOSTA targets specific acts of illegal prostitution not the abstract topic of prostitution or sex work.

That's certainly not how the lawyers who filed the lawsuits above see it. At the very least, one hopes that the DC Appeals court recognizes this in deciding the Woodhull appeal. If not, then hopefully one of these or related cases makes its way up to an appeals court and gets FOSTA itself tossed for any of the variety of problems the law has created for speech online.

Filed Under: cda 230, fosta, intermediary liability, section 230, sex trafficking
Companies: backpage, craigslist, facebook, mailchimp, salesforce

Feds Investigating Next Round Of Sites Accused Of Facilitating Sex Trafficking

from the whac-a-mole dept

The Wall Street Journal has a report about how both the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department are investigating three "massage and escort" sites accused of taking up where Backpage left off (that link is likely paywalled, but here's a Gizmodo summary of the same article). The article is interesting in that it explores how these three sites -- Rubmaps, Eros, and EroticMonkey -- are believed to be connected with one guy, David Azzato, who "was convicted in France in 2011 of profiting from prostitution through a European network of escort-ad sites." Azzato denies having anything to do with the sites, though the article highlights some evidence that at least suggests otherwise.

Either way, a few things struck me about the article. The first is the general futility of shutting down one or another such sites, because people move elsewhere:

“All three of those websites benefited substantially from the seizure of Backpage,” said Rob Spectre, ChildSafe.ai’s founder and chief executive.

In the article, it becomes quite clear that whoever is behind these sites -- whether it's Azzato or someone else entirely -- has zero interest in working with the US government to prevent trafficking. Contrast that with the recent reports that Backpage seemed to bend over backwards to work with the feds to prevent sex trafficking on the site. It raises a big question about what the actual goal is here.

Of course, part of the issue is the same one that comes up over and over again in these discussions: consensual sex work is not the same thing as sex trafficking. It's absolutely true that there can be overlap, but so much of this fight seems to break down along those lines. That was the point at which various reports suggest that Backpage's execs tried to draw the line. They were happy to help the feds stop actual traffickers -- but when some in the DOJ wanted to use Backpage to go after everyday consensual sex work, the execs said no.

And note that the Wall Street Journal piece seems to freely shift back and forth between prostitution and sex trafficking as if they're identical. That makes it difficult to have a serious conversation about the goals and tactics being used here. Generally speaking, people seem to use the language of sex trafficking to push for the attacks on these sites, but when it comes down to details, they're really just focused on prostitution.

A separate issue in the article is that it hints that the feds might go after American companies who provide services to the three sites in question (all of whom are based outside of the US):

It is true that website domains registered abroad may be outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law enforcement. But officials can request information from their U.S.-based technology providers and can seize those accounts through a court order, which could interrupt the websites’ operations. U.S. officials can also seek to prosecute individuals who own or run sites they allege are breaking U.S. laws.

Rubmaps, EroticMonkey and Eros all use San Francisco-based Cloudflare Inc., a web infrastructure and security company, according to domain records. Cloudflare didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Again, this seems like a pretty messed up way of going about all of this. Cloudflare is just providing some basic infrastructure and security services. If the feds think it makes sense to go after that company because some of its customers had illegal activities occurring on their websites, that opens up a whole bunch of serious questions about how deep the liability levels are supposed to go.

Filed Under: david azzato, dhs, doj, escorts, fosta, prostitution, sex trafficking
Companies: cloudflare

New Government Documents Reveal That Backpage Was Actively Helping Law Enforcement Track Down Traffickers

from the oh,-look-at-that dept

For many years, we've pointed out that for all the salacious stories and claims about how Backpage.com was somehow supporting and facilitating sex trafficking, the site was actually an amazing tool for finding, arresting, and convicting sex traffickers. Earlier this year, we wrote about a very detailed piece in Wired that highlighted just how far Backpage went in helping law enforcement stop sex trafficking:

On October 18, Backpage announced on its blog that it had retained Hemanshu Nigam, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in sex crimes and child abuse, to develop a “holistic” safety program. Nigam sat on the board of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and had done similar work for Myspace. In the months that followed, Nigam and his new clients met repeatedly with representatives from anti-trafficking organizations. They discussed changes to Backpage’s site architecture, moderation practices, and content policies. The organizations suggested, for instance, that users should be prevented from employing search terms such as “incest” or “Lolita,” since these might “indicate illegal activity.” Backpage moderators, meanwhile, should be on the lookout for “ads written from masculine perspective,” particularly if they employed the euphemism “new in town,” which “is often used by pimps who shuttle children to locations where they do not know anyone and cannot get help.”

By late January 2011, Backpage had implemented many of the recommendations: It had banned photographs with nudity, drawn up a list of “inappropriate terms,” beefed up its vetting process, and begun referring “ads containing possible minors” directly to Allen’s staff. Ferrer also worked closely with the authorities. According to a Justice Department memo from 2012, “unlike virtually every other website that is used for prostitution and sex trafficking, Backpage is remarkably responsive to law enforcement requests and often takes proactive steps to assist in investigations.” A later memo noted that “even Ernie Allen believed that Backpage was genuinely trying to rid its site of juvenile sex trafficking.”

Where things got more heated was when law enforcement wanted to go after Backpage for consensual sex, rather than trafficking. But, because it was convenient, politicians, law enforcement, and the media kept up the charade that Backpage and its founders were deliberately supporting sex trafficking. However, as a new article at Reason by Elizabeth Nolan Brown makes clear, the government knew all along that Backpage was one of its best partners in stopping sex trafficking. Some new documents have come out as part of the ongoing lawsuit against Backpage and its founders by the feds that kind of undermine the entire narrative about Backpage.

The memo—subject: "Backpage.com Investigation"—reveals that six years before Backpage leaders were indicted on federal criminal charges, prosecutors had already begun building a "child sex trafficking" case against the company. But this case was hampered by the fact that Backpage kept trying to help stop sex trafficking.

"Information provided to us by (FBI Agent Steve) Vienneau and other members of the Innocence Lost Task Force confirm that, unlike virtually every other website that is used for prostitution and sex trafficking, Backpage is remarkably responsive to law enforcement requests and often takes proactive steps to assist in investigations," wrote Catherine Crisham and Aravind Swaminathan, both assistant U.S. attorneys for the Western District of Washington, in the April 3 memo to Jenny Durkan, now mayor of Seattle and then head federal prosecutor for the district. Vienneau told prosecutors that "on many occasions," Backpage staff proactively sent him "advertisements that appear to contain pictures of juveniles" and that the company was "very cooperative at removing these advertisements at law enforcement's request."

"Even without a subpoena, in exigent circumstances such as a child rescue situation, Backpage will provide the maximum information and assistance permitted under the law," wrote Crisham and Swaminathan.

You might notice that one of those quotes above was included in that Wired piece I quoted earlier. However, as Nolan Brown notes, these and another memo were "accidentally" revealed to Backpage's defense lawyers, but then the judge sealed them and ruled them off-limits for the defense, despite their exculpatory nature.

Backpage lawyers in the criminal case have been barred from using the memos as part of their clients' defense. The previous judge handling the case (who recused himself) agreed with the prosecution that the memos, which had been filed under seal in the Western District of Washington, must remain sealed and that the defense must destroy its copies.

At an August 19 hearing, Judge Susan M. Brnovich ruled that they will stay that way. But Brnovich denied the state's request to sanction defendants over quotes from the memos appearing in the June Wired story.

At the hearing, lawyers for defendants had pointed out that there were months when the memos were not under seal and that many people had viewed or had access to them both before and during that time. In issuing her order, Brnovich agreed that the memos had "clearly been distributed to many people," including "other people that the government was working with," and said any suggestion Backpage defendants or lawyers had supplied the memos to Wired was pure "speculation.

As Reason points out, multiple attempts to pull together trafficking charges against Backpage fell down as investigators realized that Backpage was actually on their side on these things, and there was no evidence of Backpage actually supporting trafficking.

Over the next year, their office would undertake a large investigation into Backpage's internal processes and potential criminality.

This included a "preliminary review of more than 100,000 documents," subpoena responses "from more than a dozen entities and individuals," interviews with around a dozen witnesses, and "extended grand jury testimony from an additional six witnesses," mainly Backpage employees. Still, it failed to produce "the kind of smoking gun admissions which we had hoped would propel this investigation to indictment," wrote Swaminathan and another assistant U.S. attorney, John T. McNeil, in a January 2013 memo.

[....]

"At the outset of this investigation, it was anticipated that we would find evidence of candid discussions among [Backpage] principals about the use of the site for juvenile prostitution which could be used as admissions of criminal conduct," wrote McNeil and Swaminathan in their 2013 update. "It was also anticipated that we would find numerous instances where Backpage learned that at site user was a juvenile prostitute and Backpage callously continued to post advertisements for her. To date, the investigation has revealed neither."

They recommended that bringing criminal charges would be unwise.

This seems notable, and seems to explain why it took so long for the feds to move against Backpage. Remember, that despite all the rhetoric around Section 230, federal criminal laws are exempt from 230, and if the feds actually had evidence of Backpage engaging in sex trafficking, the DOJ could have taken the site down at any time.

The Reason article goes into great detail, often contrasting public statements about Backpage with what was happening behind the scenes, while also showing how those who had decided, unequivocally, that Backpage was evil, would twist any step it made to stop sex trafficking as evidence that it was facilitating sex trafficking.

Since the time when the memos were first drafted, officials have figured out ways to frame any positive parts of Backpage operations into legal liabilities and points of public horror. The meetings with NCMEC and the efforts to help police? Proof that Backpage knew of the problem. Preventing explicit offers of sex for money? The Senate said that was just Backpage wanting to "conceal the true nature" of ads. Filtering out open-to-interpretation words? Banning underage ads? Same, said the senators. Their report portrayed the fact that Backpage used moderation at all as some sort of seedy ploy.

Requiring card payments for adult ads—as NAAG suggested, since cards can be traced—was spun as a deliberate effort to profit off exploitation. Accepting bitcoin after Dart threatened card companies? Evidence of subterfuge. Accepting checks after the Dart harassment? That let prosecutors tie specific ad buys to real identities and transactions, thus helping them fulfill a previously-lacking element necessary for money laundering charges.

In effect, everything the company did to enhance protection and legality was twisted into evidence of criminality and moral failure. And, for years, folks have promoted these topsy-turvy explanations.

Yet, as the memos show over and over again, the feds who were investigating Backpage simply could not make a case against the company, since it was so eager to help to stop sex trafficking.

In 2012, Crisham and Swaminathan seemed impressed by how cooperative Backpage was with police and other members of law enforcement. Backpage data offer "a goldmine of information for investigators," they noted. In general, staff would respond to subpoenas within the same day; "with respect to any child exploitation investigation, Backpage often provides records within the hour." Staff regularly provided "live testimony at trial to authenticate the evidence against defendants who have utilized Backpage," and the company held seminars for law enforcement on how to best work with Backpage staff and records.

"Witnesses have consistently testified that Backpage was making substantial efforts to prevent criminal conduct on its site, that it was coordinating efforts with law enforcement agencies and NCMEC [the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children], and that it was conducting its businesses in accordance with legal advice," wrote Swaminathan and McNeil in 2013. Furthermore, they noted, their investigation failed "to uncover compelling evidence of criminal intent or a pattern or reckless conduct regarding minors." In fact, it "revealed a strong economic incentive for Backpage to rid its site of juvenile prostitution."

Ultimately, it was their assessment that "Backpage genuinely wanted to get child prostitution off of its site."

It seems fairly ridiculous that Backpage is now prevented from using this evidence in court, but at the very least, the court of public opinion deserves to see what was really happening.

Filed Under: cooperation, intermediary liability, section 230, sex trafficking
Companies: backpage

Inside Story On The War On Backpage Raises All Sorts Of Legal Questions

from the well-isn't-that-interesting dept

Recently Wired had a pretty amazing cover article on the inside story on the DOJ's legal war against Backpage that is superbly well-written and quite interesting. Wired found the perfect reporter for this in Christine Biederman, who was once a staff reporter at one of the many alt weeklies owned by Michael Lacey and James Larkin -- the two owners of Backpage who are still facing federal charges over the site -- as well as a former assistant US attorney at the DOJ. Biederman understands all of the issues here deeply and does a great job laying them all out. I highly recommend you set aside some time to read the whole article, which gives a great backgrounder on Lacey and Larkin, how they built up an alt-weekly empire, only to see it fizzle, while then building out Backpage as a massive success -- and who now face criminal charges that raise all sorts of legal questions.

For this post, however, I did want to focus on some of the legal issues. We've discussed Backpage a lot over the years, including questioning whether what it did was truly illegal. No one denies that the site was absolutely used for some fairly horrible things -- including sex trafficking. The questions, though, surround whether or not that's Backpage's responsibility -- and whether or not in shutting down the site, law enforcement actually shut down a useful tool in tracking down actual traffickers, making the trafficking problem worse. Biederman's piece also shows some of the moral panic around FOSTA, and raises questions about just how big the sex trafficking issue truly is and whether or not the government is abusing the civil asset forfeiture process to make it impossible for Lacey and Larkin to mount a defense. These are all topics that we've long covered on Techdirt.

Let's start, though, with the legal attacks on the site, which began not with Backpage, but with a moral panic about the advertising on Craigslist -- which was eventually pressured into shutting down its adult ads section (after FOSTA passed, Craigslist went even further and shut down its entire Personals section). Cook County, Illinois Sheriff Thomas Dart sued Craigslist in 2009, in a case that was tossed out just months later thanks to Section 230 of the CDA (Dart later was one of the most aggressive in going after Backpage). He's quoted in the Wired article making no sense at all:

In early 2009, Thomas Dart, the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, sued Craigslist for facilitating prostitution. “Missing children, runaways, abused women, and women trafficked in from foreign countries are routinely forced to have sex with strangers because they’re being pimped on Craigslist,” he said. “I could make arrests off Craigslist 24 hours a day, but to what end? I’m trying to go up the ladder.”

But suing Craigslist (or Backpage) is not "going up the ladder" at all. It's burying the ladder and everything around it. Both Craigslist and Backpage were active in helping law enforcement track down actual sex traffickers who were using their site. Shutting down the platforms has only served to make it more difficult for law enforcement to track down traffickers, because they're now much harder to find. At the same time, the evidence shows that shutting down these sites has also resulted in an increase in murdered women.

The article also details how far Backpage went to actually be responsive to law enforcement's concerns and to help stop sex trafficking on the site:

On October 18, Backpage announced on its blog that it had retained Hemanshu Nigam, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in sex crimes and child abuse, to develop a “holistic” safety program. Nigam sat on the board of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and had done similar work for Myspace. In the months that followed, Nigam and his new clients met repeatedly with representatives from anti-trafficking organizations. They discussed changes to Backpage’s site architecture, moderation practices, and content policies. The organizations suggested, for instance, that users should be prevented from employing search terms such as “incest” or “Lolita,” since these might “indicate illegal activity.” Backpage moderators, meanwhile, should be on the lookout for “ads written from masculine perspective,” particularly if they employed the euphemism “new in town,” which “is often used by pimps who shuttle children to locations where they do not know anyone and cannot get help.”

By late January 2011, Backpage had implemented many of the recommendations: It had banned photographs with nudity, drawn up a list of “inappropriate terms,” beefed up its vetting process, and begun referring “ads containing possible minors” directly to Allen’s staff. Ferrer also worked closely with the authorities. According to a Justice Department memo from 2012, “unlike virtually every other website that is used for prostitution and sex trafficking, Backpage is remarkably responsive to law enforcement requests and often takes proactive steps to assist in investigations.” A later memo noted that “even Ernie Allen believed that Backpage was genuinely trying to rid its site of juvenile sex trafficking.”

However, as the article details, the more Backpage did, the more law enforcement demanded of them -- often pulling the exact same trick that many have pulled, conflating consensual sex work with sex trafficking.

And that actually turns out to be a big issue. Many people wondered why the feds "took so long" to go after Backpage, and it turns out that a big part of the reason is that there wasn't enough evidence of actual sex trafficking (a federal crime, which is not protected by Section 230) -- just prostitution, which is not a federal crime.

State Attorneys General weren’t the only prosecutors itching to get in on the action. The Feds were too, but they had a problem: They couldn’t identify a viable crime. Prostitution wasn’t a federal offense, and they didn’t seem to think they could make sex-trafficking charges stick. Back in 2011, the Justice Department had quietly opened a grand jury investigation into Backpage in Washington state; according to an internal memo, prosecutors interviewed more than a dozen witnesses and subpoenaed more than 100,000 documents but ultimately decided that “a successful criminal prosecution of Backpage is unlikely.” They thought about trying to make a case under the Travel Act but, as they noted, that theory “had never been litigated in a similar context.”

Instead... they went with another approach that we've talked about here a lot: civil asset forfeiture:

So they formulated another potential plan of attack. “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.

The government first tested this theory against a few smaller sites.

In June 2014 the Justice Department put this plan into action. It seized myRedBook and demanded that the site’s owner, Eric “Red” Omuro, forfeit $5 million in cash and property. The following summer, the Department of Homeland Security launched a similar raid against “the nation’s largest online male-escort service,” Rentboy, and its owner, Jeffrey Hurant.

At the time, we noted that these cases raised significant legal questions, because they seemed to go against Supreme Court precedent regarding the seizure of expressive materials. However, with the feds taking all their assets and threatening huge jail terms, you'll never guess what happened next:

Both men pleaded guilty to violations of the Travel Act in exchange for lighter sentences and lesser fines. The forfeiture approach seemed to be working.

So, even though these cases "raise all kinds of thorny constitutional questions," those questions never have a chance to get answered:

The asset freezes raise all kinds of thorny constitutional questions. Generally speaking, federal prosecutors are permitted to freeze a defendant’s assets based on probable cause alone, even before the defendant has a chance to challenge the government’s case in court. But regular forfeiture rules do not apply in cases involving forums for speech—newspapers, films, books, magazines, websites. The US Supreme Court has decreed that when the government seizes these expressive materials, or the proceeds derived from them, it must immediately hold an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the seizure is valid.

And that's also the approach the feds have taken against Backpage. But on steroids. The feds have designed it so that it has Larkin and Lacey fighting the case on two fronts: the asset seizures in one court, and the criminal charges in another:

But the Backpage defendants have a problem: So far, they can’t get a court to hear their claims. Since last summer, the Justice Department appears to have been playing a clever shell game. They’ve brought cases against the Backpage defendants in two federal districts—civil seizures in Los Angeles, criminal matters in Phoenix—and they’re making the defendants spend what money they have left chasing Uncle Sam from place to place. So far, judges in both districts have agreed with the government’s suggestion that they should defer to each other, effectively denying the defendants a forum to challenge the asset freezes. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hear arguments in the case in July.

As a lawyer in the article notes, this appears to be the DOJ doing "an end run around the First Amendment."

Even if you think Larkin and Lacey are awful people (and the article is not at all sympathetic in its portrayal of the two men), if the First Amendment and due process matter to you, the details here also matter significantly.

Indeed, the article notes that using the Travel Act in combination with civil seizures and forfeiture seems to be an end run around Section 230:

Even if Fosta-Sesta is one day ruled unconstitutional, as many legal scholars expect, government officials have shown that they’re willing to subvert Section 230 in other ways. If Lacey and Larkin lose—if the asset seizures stand and the Travel Act charges stick—prosecutors will have a valuable new weapon to wield against Silicon Valley.

This entire approach has been a dangerous disaster. And, again, that applies even if you hate Backpage, Larkin, Lacey and everything they stand for. There are really serious due process and free speech issues here -- not to mention all of the evidence that taking down the site has put more people at risk and was based almost entirely on made up stats.

The article is quite clear that Backpage did some sketchy stuff -- but it also was pretty clear that it tried to stop sex trafficking and the legal attack on them is highly questionable on a variety of levels. It's easy to write off Backpage as a "bad actor" -- it may well be that. But the most difficult (and often most important) cases, often involve bad actors. And those situations set precedents for everyone else -- and after reading Biederman's article, I'm more concerned than before about the nature of the DOJ's prosecution.

Filed Under: asset seizure, free speech, intermediary liability, james larkin, michael lacey, prostitution, section 230, sex trafficking
Companies: backpage

The Human Cost Of FOSTA

from the wasn't-it-supposed-to-save-lives dept

As you'll recall in the run up to passing FOSTA last year, supporters of the bill -- backed in secret by Hollywood lobbyists whose sole goal was to create liability for internet companies and force them to install filters -- kept insisting that it was all about "protecting women." There was an infamously misleading Public Service Announcement that supporters of the bill put together, staring into the camera and talking grimly about how necessary it was to amend Section 230 to save women. It starred a bunch of famous actors, including Amy Schumer, Tony Shalhoub, Josh Charles, Seth Meyers, and others.

Of course, since FOSTA passed, it has yet to be used against any website. Indeed, the website that everyone kept holding up as proof for why FOSTA was needed, Backpage, was actually shut down a week before FOSTA became law under existing laws.

And yet, FOSTA has created tremendous real world damage. A bunch of sites and individuals have been silenced out of fear that it might be used against them, creating massive chilling effects -- including chilling effects on advocacy and information providing groups who try to help sex trafficking victims, but who now may violate FOSTA in continuing to do that work.

Lura Chaberlian has now published a deep dive into how FOSTA is a "hostile law" with "a human cost" for Fordham Law School. The quick summary of the paper is that FOSTA hasn't done anything to help sex trafficking victims, but has created real harms for many women, especially those engaged in consensual sex work.

According to the 485 members of Congress who supported the law and the numerous celebrities who appeared in public service announcements evangelizing it, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 20176 (“FOSTA”) was going to save people. FOSTA enjoyed a glowing narrative as a panacea for sexual corruption in the United States: it would reduce deaths, prevent rapes, and gut the marketplace for abusive sexual activity. Pimps would no longer be able to so readily sell a woman’s body, and children would be safe from predation. These results were as good as guaranteed because a significant amount of sex trafficking occurs online. FOSTA would make it a crime for websites to continue allowing malefactors to advertise for this abhorrent behavior on their platforms. With trafficking off the internet, the sex industry would shrivel. The right parties would be held responsible. No one would get hurt.

Within one month of FOSTA’s enactment, thirteen sex workers were reported missing, and two were dead from suicide. Sex workers operating independently faced a tremendous and immediate uptick in unwanted solicitation from individuals offering or demanding to traffic them. Numerous others were raped, assaulted, and rendered homeless or unable to feed their children. These egregious acts of violence and economic devastation are directly attributable to FOSTA’s enactment. Meanwhile, law enforcement professionals have complained that their investigations into sex-trafficking cases have been “blinded”—they no longer have advertisements to subpoena, digital records to produce for prosecutors, and leads that can bring them to live crime scenes full of evidence, like hotel rooms. This blindness is not for lack of anything to see: one report suggests that online sex trafficking is as prevalent as ever.

Just to be clear, in the actual report, in just those two paragraphs, there are 17 footnotes to articles detailing every statement made (the full paper has 330 such footnoted citations). This is a huge collection of evidence around the very real harms of FOSTA. As the paper notes, rather than saving lies FOSTA is "a law with a body count" attached to it:

FOSTA directly endangers individuals who perform commercial sexual services by driving these transactions away from the relative protection of the internet and back onto the street. Traditionally, solicitation of a sex worker’s services took place during an in-person encounter that also functioned as an advertisement for business: a brothel or, more recently, the street. Street work is more dangerous than indoor work and can even be lethal. Rape and assault are prevalent and seen as inevitable, and workers are at risk of violence from clients and law enforcement alike. As the internet became a ubiquitous utility, sex workers were able to move the negotiation and solicitation stages of their business to online forums that did not demand physical presence. Sex workers gained the means to create an electronic record of client communications, screen potential clients, and communicate with one another about dangerous clients, safe spaces, and other industry-specific health and safety tips. The shift online revolutionized the industry, imbuing sex work with a previously nonexistent level of safety and decreasing the need for third parties as security or advertisement intermediaries. The effect was striking: a 2017 study found that “from 2002 to 2010, when Craigslist’s erotic-services site was active and solicitation moved indoors, the female homicide rate fell by seventeen percent.”

Incredibly, the paper highlights how FOSTA is likely to create more sex trafficking since sex workers may feel pressured to have pimps for protection, which they didn't need previously.

FOSTA confines commercial sex to its most dangerous model. Since FOSTA’s enactment, sex workers have reported an increase in communication from “pimps” claiming that their services are necessary. Although some sex workers work with third parties voluntarily, others may feel pressured into a situation that could easily become sex trafficking, meaning that FOSTA could actually facilitate sex trafficking by forcing consensual sex workers into coercive situations. Further, the workers most endangered by street-based sex work tend to be from marginalized communities. Women of color are disproportionately arrested and prosecuted for prostitution-related offenses, and forcing sex work into the street will only increase these arrests. In addition to scrubbing advertisements for consensual sex from online forums, FOSTA threatens access to secondary online resources used for protection and verification.284 None of these consequences has a valid relationship to FOSTA’s purported aim.

So, despite that dramatic PSA above, so far FOSTA has:

• Not helped take down Backpage (existing laws did that)
• Led to widespread internet censorship, including information designed to help sex trafficking victims
• Put sex workers in much greater risk, leading to multiple deaths and disappearances
• Facilitated more sex trafficking by pushing sex workers into the waiting arms of traffickers for "protection"
• Not shown any actual decrease is sex trafficking or sex trafficking advertisements.

So, maybe, someone should be asking Amy Schumer, Tony Shalhoub, Josh Charles, Seth Meyers, and those others how they feel about this law that they were instrumental in getting passed. Or, better yet, someone should be asking whoever it was who put them up to be spokespersons for this terrible and unconstitutional law.

Filed Under: cda 230, fosta, safety, sex trafficking

Salesforce Sued For Sex Trafficking... Because Backpage Used Salesforce's CRM

from the oh-come-on-now dept

In the latest insane lawsuit regarding the internet and sex trafficking, a group of women who were tragic victims of sex trafficking have decided not to sue those responsible for trafficking them... but online customer relationship management (CRM) provider Salesforce.com. What? Huh? Why? You might ask? Well, apparently it's because everyone's favorite sex trafficking bogeyman, Backpage.com, used Salesforce.com for its CRM. Yup.

While most of the reports on this don't show the lawsuit, CNBC thankfully posted a copy (though it's locked up in Scribd, so we can't embed our own version, unfortunately). The lawsuit makes a bunch of leaps to argue that Salesforce is somehow magically responsible for people doing illegal things on Backpage. The levels of separation between the criminal actions and the liability here are simply ridiculous. Much of the lawsuit tries to suggest that because Salesforce is good at its job in customizing its offerings to its customers, that's proof that it's magically responsible for sex trafficking:

In public, including on Twitter, Salesforce boasted about fighting human trafficking using its data tools.

But behind closed doors, Salesforce’s data tools were actually providing the backbone of Backpage’s exponential growth.

Salesforce didn’t just provide Backpage with a customer-ready version of its data and marketing tools. Salesforce designed and implemented a heavily customized enterprise database tailored for Backpage’s operations, both locally and internationally.

With Salesforce’s guidance, Backpage was able to use Salesforce’s tools to market to new “users”—that is, pimps, johns, and traffickers—on three continents.

Backpage could also use Salesforce’s custom tools to remarket to those pimps, johns, and traffickers who had been underusing its trafficking services.

It is inconceivable that the technologies used world-round to manage customer and marketing databases would be put to the immoral and illegal purposes engineered by Backpage and Salesforce.

It should not be our tax dollars, charities, and churches that carry the burden of the catastrophic harms and losses to sex trafficking survivors. That responsibility should fall to companies like Salesforce, that have facilitated and profited from sex trafficking.

Incredibly -- and obnoxiously -- the complaint uses Salesforce's own efforts to help in the fight against sex trafficking against the company. It highlights some of Salesforce's promotional efforts, concerning the fight against sex trafficking, such as this tweet:

And uses that as proof of "knowledge" by Salesforce:

Salesforce knew the scourge of sex trafficking because it sought publicity for trying to stop it. But at the same time, this publicly traded company was, in actuality, among the vilest of rogue companies, concerned only with their bottom line.

The entire assumption underlying the lawsuit is this: that Backpage was only used for illegal sex trafficking and that using CRM can help you increase your "sales," and thus Salesforce is responsible for Backpage increasing sex trafficking. That... is quite the twisted logic there.

The lawsuit was filed in California state court, rather than in federal court, under California state laws -- so there's no direct reference to FOSTA as far as I can tell. However, FOSTA casts its looming shadow over this case. Normally, I imagine that Salesforce would make a straight CDA 230 argument here that it's not responsible for the actions of its users (in this case, Backpage). But, FOSTA potentially takes that away. I say potentially, because based on my reading of the final version of FOSTA, (which is now CDA 230(e)(5)), for a civil lawsuit, FOSTA only exempts cases brought under federal sex trafficking law, and not state laws (for criminal complaints, FOSTA exempts some state sex trafficking charges). So, as plead, I'm not sure if FOSTA even directly applies -- meaning potentially Salesforce could perhaps try to claim that it's still protected by CDA 230 and the FOSTA additions don't help the plaintiffs, but... who knows? Now that we've got this new untested law, I guess we'll find out.

On the whole, though, what a preposterously silly lawsuit. Sex trafficking is a truly horrible thing, and while the complaint filed trots out a bunch of debunked and exaggerated stats about just how big a problem sex trafficking is, the real focus should be on those actually responsible. Going after the CRM provider of a website that traffickers may have used, feels like yet another example of what we've called a Steve Dallas lawsuit after the 1986 Bloom County strip in which lawyer Steve Dallas explains that after getting beaten up by Sean Penn for trying to take a paparazzi photo, he decides not to sue any of the obvious parties, but rather go after the camera manufacturer -- because that's who has the money (click through for the full comic):

Filed Under: california, cda 230, crm, fosta, intermediary liability, no good deed, section 230, sex trafficking
Companies: backpage, salesforce

Key Supporter Of FOSTA, Cindy McCain, Misidentifies 'Different Ethnicity' Child; Claims Credit For Stopping Sex Trafficking That Wasn't

from the see-something,-shut-up dept

In the wake of 9/11, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) in New York City hired an ad agency, Korey Kay & Partners, to come up with a "creative exercise" in dealing with the post-9/11 world. They came up with slogan "If you see something, say something" and plastered it all over subways. Incredibly, the MTA trademarked the term (despite its lack of "use in commerce") and later licensed it to DHS (insanely, the MTA has been known to threaten others for using the slogan). However, despite now sounding like common wisdom, the program has been an utter disaster that has not stopped a single terrorist, but has created massive hassles for innocent people, and law enforcement who have to deal with busybodies freaking out about "weird stuff."

Take, for example: Cindy McCain. The wife to the late Senator John McCain, recently decided she had seen something and had to say something. Specifically, as she herself claims, she was at an airport and saw a woman with a child of a "different ethnicity." And, rather than thinking "how nice" or "maybe I shouldn't be racist," she thought "I must go tell the police." Specifically,as she told an Arizona radio station:

“I came in from a trip I’d been on and I spotted—it looked odd—it was a woman of a different ethnicity than the child, this little toddler she had, and something didn’t click with me,” McCain said in the radio interview. “I went over to the police and told them what I saw, and they went over and questioned her, and, by God, she was trafficking that kid.”

By God, no she wasn't. The police did go check it out, and whatever McCain thinks happened... did not.

Phoenix police said Wednesday that while officers did respond to the Jan. 30 call, at McCain’s request, they were able to determine “there was no evidence of criminal conduct or child endangerment.”

McCain is now trying to brush away the criticism by insisting she was just seeing something and saying something:

Of course, there's more backstory here and it's kind of important. Over the last few years, McCain has been really heavily focused on playing up the exaggerated moral panic around sex trafficking. As we've discussed many times, sex trafficking is a real issue, but a very small one. The numbers around it are massively exaggerated or distorted, leading to crazy moral panics, and a desire by the police and the press to rush to talk about breaking up sex trafficking rings that don't seem to actually exist.

A more cynical person than I might point out that Cindy McCain's focus on "sex trafficking" seemed to coincide with her focus on Backpage, and a desire to extract some level of revenge from that company's owners, who also, for a time, owned the Phoenix New Times, which published a series of unflattering articles about Cindy McCain (and John McCain).

But, even leaving that aside, in the run up to the debate over FOSTA, multiple people told me that more sane and reasonable versions of the bill were well positioned to move forward until Cindy McCain got involved. Prior to that, there had been real, serious discussions, understanding the problems with the FOSTA/SESTA approach, and an attempt to create a more reasonable policy to deal with (what little) sex trafficking that actually happens online. However, then Cindy McCain "got involved" and basically everyone was told that the awful approach found in FOSTA was what would be in the law.

Of course, since then, we've highlighted how FOSTA has failed miserably. Just as many of us had predicted, it has resulted in widespread censorship, many closed services, an increase in online sex ads, and more womens' lives at risk.

And Cindy McCain "seeing something" and "saying something" and then taking credit for stopping trafficking, when she was really just hassling a diverse family. Maybe we should stop listening to Cindy McCain on this particular topic.

Filed Under: cindy mccain, fosta, moral panic, see something say something, sex trafficking