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

Having Learned Absolutely Nothing From The Failures Of FOSTA, Senators Graham & Blumenthal Prep FOSTA 2.0

from the guys,-seriously? dept

Just as some in Congress are finally realizing that perhaps all of the moralizing around the need for FOSTA missed the fact that it actually put more people at risk, Senators Richard Blumenthal (an original sponsor of what became FOSTA) and Lindsey Graham are preparing for FOSTA 2.0 instead. This is coming a few months after Graham's big grandstanding "but think of the children online" hearing that was basically a few hours of clueless moral panic about things that insecure adults were absolutely positive the kids were getting up to on their phones.

The latest reporting on the planned "let's break Section 230 a bit more" bill from Graham and Blumenthal is that they'll create a new FOSTA-like exemption from Section 230 protections for any internet company found to have hosted "child sex abuse material" (the industry's new favorite acronym: CSAM). From what I've heard in talking to people on the Hill, a "commission" would be formed that would set forth "best practices" for preventing CSAM on their platforms, and if an internet company wanted to "earn" its CDA 230 protections, it would need to show that it complied with the commission's recommendations. Also, "certifying" that you comply, but not actually complying, could lead to criminal charges.

Of course, what this misses is that basically all major internet companies already have systems in place to deal with this stuff -- mostly in working with NCMEC, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. But, Congress loves nothing better than an issue it doesn't understand but can grandstand over. A few months back, the NY Times ran a highly misleading article about CSAM, using the data around all of the vast amount of reporting that internet platforms did to NCMEC about the CSAM they found and dealt with... and using that to suggest the platforms themselves were to blame for the issue.

Child sexual abuse is a very real and very serious issue. But, as with "sex trafficking" and FOSTA last year, blaming the tech companies for it seems really misguided. That NY Times article did exactly that -- using the numbers reported to NCMEC as evidence that the problem was growing (rather than as evidence that tech companies were doing a better job finding, blocking and reporting this stuff). Indeed, if you actually read down into the details, what the article is really demonstrating is the failure of the federal government and the Justice Department in tackling the very real criminal issues related to CSAM.

But what good Senator can grandstand about their own failures to fund the DOJ's efforts, when it's much more fun and headline-grabbing to send letters to 36 major internet companies demanding to know what they do to stop CSAM, which is now being used as the basis for this new law.

Again, these Senators could be funding the DOJ to tackle the problem. They could be helping NCMEC better deal with its own issues. But, instead, they're going to attack the group of companies who have been overwhelmingly proactive in helping to fight CSAM. And, in the process, they're going to end up poking another bunch of holes in Section 230, which (if FOSTA is any evidence) is likely to have the exact opposite impact of what the Senators insist will actually happen.

Filed Under: cda 230, csam, fosta, lindsey graham, richard blumenthal, section 230, sesta

New Bill Introduced To Study Impact Of SESTA/FOSTA On Sex Workers

from the good-to-see dept

A few months back, we were pleasantly surprised to see Rep. Ro Khanna announce plans to introduce a bill that would study the impact of FOSTA on sex workers. Earlier this week, he came through, introducing the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act, which he's introducing with Rep. Barbara Lee in the House. On the Senate side, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden have introduced the companion bill. You can read the bill here. It would task Health & Human Services with studying the impact of FOSTA on sex workers, in coordination with the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health.

The bill is quite clear in laying out the concerns these elected officials have about the overall impact of FOSTA:

“There has been a host of anecdotal reporting from sex workers and community health organizations that following the enactment of SESTA/FOSTA, sex workers have faced greater threats of physical and sexual violence, as they are increasingly pushed off on-line platforms and onto the streets to seek clients. Despite these reports, no national study has been conducted to assess the impacts of SESTA/FOSTA on sex workers,” said Rep. Ro Khanna. “Sex workers have relied on such internet platforms to screen clients and negotiate boundaries for consensual, transactional sex services, including condom use and other harm reduction strategies. While SESTA/FOSTA was intended to curb online sex trafficking, by banning the “promotion of prostitution,” a host of internet platforms relied on by sex workers have shut down. My bill would mandate the first national study investigating how the shutdown of websites in connection with SESTA/FOSTA impact the health and safety of people who rely on consensual, transactional sex. I’m proud to partner with Rep. Lee, Senator Warren and the many advocates on this critical issue.”

“For far too long, SESTA/FOSTA has demonized and harmed sex workers,” said Rep. Lee. “Instead of preventing sex trafficking, SESTA/FOSTA made it harder for sex workers to access critical health and safety resources. We need the full picture – that’s why I’m proud to work with Rep. Khanna and Senators Warren and Wyden on this legislation to study the full effects of SESTA/FOSTA. It’s imperative we ensure that everyone has the full picture when making reproductive health decisions.”

“As lawmakers, we are responsible for examining unintended consequences of all legislation, and that includes any impact SESTA-FOSTA may have had on the ability of sex workers to protect themselves from physical or financial abuse,” said Senator Warren. “I’m glad to be working with Representatives Khanna and Lee, and Senator Wyden to do just that with the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act.”

“Last year I warned that forcing websites to take down any mention of sex work would remove agency from sex workers and put them at great risk of violence and abuse, all while making it harder to catch sex traffickers and aid victims of human trafficking. So far, initial reports from cities across the country show that violence against sex workers is rising dramatically and there’s little evidence that this law is helping victims. Representatives Khanna, Lee and Senator Warren are taking the common-sense position that HHS should study the impacts of SESTA-FOSTA on the most vulnerable members of society, so that Congress can make informed policy decisions, rather than chasing knee-jerk responses,” said Senator Wyden.

As some are noting, this study could be a first step to repealing FOSTA-SESTA (though the law is still being challenged in the courts as well).

The bill already has a bunch of co-sponsors -- though I'll note that there are no Republican cosponsors, so the bill at this point is not bipartisan. Also of note, one of the cosponsors (as far as I can tell, the only one where this is true), Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, was also a cosponsor of FOSTA. Still, Senator Warren did vote for SESTA in the Senate, so it's good to see her appear to recognize that may have been a mistake. It's still not clear if this bill will go anywhere, but just the fact that some in Congress are recognizing that FOSTA may have put more people in danger (even as it was pitched as a way of "protecting" victims) is at least a good start.

Filed Under: barbara lee, elizabeth warren, fosta, health, ro khanna, ron wyden, sesta, sex workers, study

DOJ Using The FOSTA Playbook To Attack Encryption

from the watch-out dept

For years now, the various DOJ folks pushing to break encryption have whined and complained that the tech industry won't even consider having an adult conversation about encryption. This, of course, has never been true. Indeed, in just the past few weeks we've highlighted two separate examples of attempts to bring together law enforcement folks and technology/cryptography experts to see if there are legitimate ways to move the conversation forward. That first one came up with an interesting and useful framework for judging any conversation about "lawful access" to encrypted communications, while the second demonstrated just how much various tech companies have been doing over the years -- in particular in helping law enforcement deal with the issue of child abuse.

And what do they get for all that? First, a horrific article in the NY Times that accurately highlights the awfulness of child sexual abuse online... but oddly frames the efforts that various tech companies have put into helping law enforcement as... evidence of not caring about the problem. And, of course, suggests that encryption is part of the problem:

After years of uneven monitoring of the material, several major tech companies, including Facebook and Google, stepped up surveillance of their platforms. In interviews, executives with some companies pointed to the voluntary monitoring and the spike in reports as indications of their commitment to addressing the problem.

But police records and emails, as well as interviews with nearly three dozen local, state and federal law enforcement officials, show that some tech companies still fall short. It can take weeks or months for them to respond to questions from the authorities, if they respond at all. Sometimes they respond only to say they have no records, even for reports they initiated.

And when tech companies cooperate fully, encryption and anonymization can create digital hiding places for perpetrators. Facebook announced in March plans to encrypt Messenger, which last year was responsible for nearly 12 million of the 18.4 million worldwide reports of child sexual abuse material, according to people familiar with the reports. Reports to the authorities typically contain more than one image, and last year encompassed the record 45 million photos and videos, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

This is following the FOSTA/SESTA game plan. Highlight legitimately horrific examples of horrible things that people have done (in FOSTA's case, sex trafficking; here child porn). Then, follow it up by blaming the internet platforms and technology even if those platforms have actively helped law enforcement over and over again. Encryption is repeatedly suggested as truly evil.

Increasingly, criminals are using advanced technologies like encryption to stay ahead of the police.

"Advanced technologies"? And then:

Offenders can cover their tracks by connecting to virtual private networks, which mask their locations; deploying encryption techniques, which can hide their messages and make their hard drives impenetrable; and posting on the dark web, which is inaccessible to conventional browsers.

And again:

Tips included tutorials on how to encrypt and share material without being detected by the authorities.

Yes, encryption can be used to hide bad stuff. No doubt about it. However, it also protects the privacy and security of everyone else as well. There are real tradeoffs here to be discussed -- and we shouldn't forget that one element in that discussion is that law enforcement does have other tools to track down and find those involved in child porn. That encryption blocks some evidence does not mean there are not other ways for them to collect evidence -- as we've seen in many other cases.

But, given that Attorney General William Barr has been on an anti-encryption kick lately, as has FBI Director Chris Wray, it shouldn't be a huge surprise that they've teamed up for a DOJ "symposium" more or less building on the NY Times article (for which the DOJ appears to have been a major source), in which there appears to be an an entirely one-sided lineup of speakers to discuss the scary sounding:

Lawless Spaces: Warrant-Proof Encryption and Its Impact On Child Exploitation Cases

Barr is speaking, as is Wray. So is Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who also spent the summer trashing encryption. There are also two foreign speakers. There's Peter Dutton, the Home Affairs Minister from Australia, who lead that country's efforts to backdoor encryption with a bunch of ridiculously misleading claims about how companies that offer encryption should be blamed for anyone using it for illegal activity. Then there's the UK's Home Secretary, Priti Patel, who we had just mentioned earlier this week for her statements that encryption "empowers criminals."

There does not appear to be a single cryptographer on the program. There does not appear to be a single technologist on the program. There does not appear to be anyone who can provide even the slightest counterweight to the idea that encryption is just a tool for criminals. Contrast this to the sessions we talked about at the opening of this piece. The Carnegie Endowment and Stanford each actually invited people from a variety of different viewpoints and made sure to have actual experts involved. The DOJ is not doing that. This is pure theater as part of a public relations campaign to undermine the encryption that keeps us all safe.

Yes, you can point out very real and horrifying examples of people abusing just about any technology. But in a sane world, you then start looking at the actual size of the problem, the actual risks, the alternative approaches, and the costs and benefits associated with all of them. Not a single person on the DOJ's list of speakers seems equipped to do that. Given that we've quoted each and every one of them right here on Techdirt staking out an extreme anti-encryption standpoint over and over again, suggests that, unlike the tech industry, which has held and participated in various discussions, the DOJ just wants to set up scare mongering stories in the press before pushing for legislation that will destroy encryption and put us all at risk. For our safety.

As you'll recall, AG Barr himself had ominously warned that if the tech industry didn't "engage" then eventually there would be some sort of "incident" to "galvanize public opinion" against encryption:

Obviously, the Department would like to engage with the private sector in exploring solutions that will provide lawful access. While we remain open to a cooperative approach, the time to achieve that may be limited. Key countries, including important allies, have been moving toward legislative and regulatory solutions. I think it is prudent to anticipate that a major incident may well occur at any time that will galvanize public opinion on these issues.

Well, the industry was willing to engage and explain the costs of undermining encryption. But rather than understand that, it now looks like Barr is working overtime to manufacture that "major incident" to galvanize public opinion against their own security. It's a shame the NY Times decided to help.

Filed Under: child porn, chris wray, doj, encryption, fosta, going dark, moral panic, peter dutton, priti patel, william barr
Companies: facebook, google, ny times

DC Circuit Hears Oral Argument In The Constitutional Challenge Of FOSTA

from the cautious-optimism dept

It is impossible to read the tea leaves at an oral argument and come away with any dependable prediction of how the judges will rule. But at the oral argument last Friday at the DC Circuit it appeared that the judges at least understood what they needed to in order to rule in the plaintiffs' favor and revive their Constitutional challenge of FOSTA.

Which does not mean they necessarily agreed with the plaintiffs' argument for why the law is unconstitutional. But they don't have to right now. The only question before them was whether the plaintiffs have the standing needed to make that case.

The district court originally ruled that they did not. In its decision it basically said, "You've not been hurt, and, based on this particular way of reading the statute, you are not going to be hurt." At the hearing last week the DOJ continued to push this sort of reading, which would find the plaintiffs' activities to be beyond the statute's reach.

But, as the panel pointed out, the DOJ's reading of the statute was not the only possible reading of it. The court considered how so many others had read it, noting the changes Reddit had made and, in particular, how Craigslist had responded, which, the court recognized, also bore directly on one of the plaintiff's cited injuries. This plaintiff, Eric Koszyk, a masseuse, had been advertising without incident on Craigslist for 12 years. It was only after FOSTA was passed that this outlet disappeared as Craigslist deleted the sections he had used to advertise, with the statement that it hoped it could someday bring those now-deleted sections back. Surely this widespread reaction to FOSTA's passage is indicative of it presenting an actual risk of liability, the panel pressed. But the DOJ argued that such a conclusion was speculative. Furthermore, when Craigslist said it hoped it could someday bring its sections back, the DOJ argued, it was not a dig at FOSTA but merely an expression of the wish that someday Craigslist could be assured that its site wouldn't be abused.

Of course, given that every site is prone to abuse, which is why we have Section 230 in the first place, the DOJ's read of that comment is as suspect as its overly benign reading of FOSTA. But even if it were correct, on either front, it might not matter. As Judge Katsas observed, the question for the court to consider at this stage was whether the way the plaintiffs read the statute, prompting the fear of liability for its activities, is unreasonable. And at this stage, as Judge Griffith reminded, the case law told the court that it needed to "tread lightly." In other words, it was the government's burden to show that the plaintiffs' read of the statute was unreasonable, and it did not seem like the panel was convinced it had met it.

Especially not when, as Judge Katsas also noted, the DOJ would not be the only authority interpreting the statute. It's all well and good, the court seemed to say, that the DOJ said it would only enforce the statute in the limited way it represented to the court, but FOSTA is also going to be enforced in state courts in civil litigation and by state authorities who may well have their own read of the statute. The DOJ could not bind anyone involved with adjudicating those actions to read the statute the way it did.

It's also questionable whether the DOJ itself feels limited to a benign interpretation of FOSTA. At one point Judge Rogers stated a belief that there was never a suggestion that sex worker advocates would be prosecuted, to which the plaintiffs pointed out several ways the DOJ had already threatened to.

Much of the discussion ultimately hinged on the significance of the statutory language referencing the prostitution "of another person," and whether the "of another person" bit truly limited the scope of the statute. The court also spent time analyzing what the term "facilitating" meant, but no consensus was ever reached. Not only is there the general semantic question of whether the word "facilitating" can really be read as "aiding and abetting," but there is also the substantive question of what kind of behavior this "facilitating" language could still target. If there is a website where people teach sex workers how to use PayPal, thus buttressing their own agency and making them less likely to be exploited by pimps, is that still "facilitating" prostitution?

Also, one of the problems with FOSTA is that it makes a mess of mens rea by being unclear about how much knowledge a website can have about how users use their systems. Judge Katsas pointed out that a site like Backpage might not actually have knowledge of individual transactions, yet that's the sort of site the law ostensibly was intended to target. And if it could target Backpage even with this sort of attenuated knowledge of user activity, then whom else could it reach, and how would the plaintiffs not potentially fall within its sights? Judge Rogers commented that FOSTA would seem to catch anyone who simply wanted to make these unlawful acts safer.

Overall, though, the biggest takeaway from the hearing is that it is itself striking that three appellate judges and a very able DOJ lawyer could not come to a firm and shared conclusion about how the statute should be read. When some of the most capable legal minds in the country cannot come to such a consensus it is not a hallmark of a well-written or effective statute. It may in fact instead be evidence that it indeed poses a significant threat of constitutional injury that parties like the plaintiffs have standing to complain of, since no one can assure them that it doesn't.

Filed Under: dc circuit, fosta, harms, section 230, standing

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

Rep. Ro Khanna To Introduce Bill To Study Impact Of FOSTA On Sex Workers

from the well,-look-at-that dept

FOSTA was sold to Congress and the public as a way to "protect women," who (we were told) were being sex trafficked because of a "loophole" in the law. As we warned over and over again at the time, FOSTA would actually put women at even greater risk, and that has been supported by nearly all of the evidence we've seen to date. Beyond the fact that the number of women who are actually victims of sex trafficking has been greatly exaggerated or completely made up to the point of ridiculousness, so far there have been multiple reports showing that the actual impact of FOSTA was to increase sex trafficking by putting sex workers at much greater risk, driving them into the greedy arms of traffickers who promise protection. This has resulted in more women dead and even police admitting that the law has made it more difficult for them to catch traffickers.

That's pretty much exactly what many of us predicted before the law was passed, but Congress likes to pass laws and then forget about ever bothering to check whether or not the law did what it promised. So it's interesting to note that Rep. Ro Khanna is apparently planning to introduce a bill to study the actual impact of FOSTA, specifically on sex workers. This was buried in an article about Kate D'Adamo, a lobbyist representing the interests of sex workers on Capitol Hill.

“She is one of the most vocal and effective advocates on this issue,” said Rep. Ro Khanna of California’s Silicon Valley, who plans to introduce the bill in the next several weeks to study SESTA-FOSTA’s impacts after being approached by D’Adamo and her fellow activists.

“She’s really, I think, driving the conversation about the humanity of sex workers and the vulnerability of sex workers,” he said.

The measure, which has yet to be finalized, would call on the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health to study the fallout of SESTA-FOSTA.

[....]

The extent to which SESTA-FOSTA succeeded in its stated goal of shutting down sex traffickers is unclear, but Khanna said anecdotes have flooded in that the measure has forced sex workers to walk strolls to meet clients, causing “more violence, more harm to the public.”

“It was a wrong vote,” said Khanna, who was one of just 12 Democrats to oppose SESTA-FOSTA. “We need to now study it and understand the consequences, which I don’t think Congress fully considered. I can’t see any reason for opposing the collection of data.

The article notes that, even as many in the public now support decriminalizing sex work, most politicians are scared of even revisiting FOSTA, afraid that it will be spun that they're interested in decrminalizing sex work -- even as FOSTA has often resulted in more sex workers on the streets in their districts.

In his meeting with D’Adamo, the aide explained that since SESTA-FOSTA passed, there’s been an uptick of sex work on the district’s streets, leading to more 911 calls from constituents. “That’s not to say that the Congress member wouldn’t vote in favor of this on the floor,” he explained. “The people in our district are just very religious. Because of the taboo behind sex work, the Congress member doesn’t want to scare away supporters.”

What really gets me about all of this is: where are all the vocal supporters of FOSTA who insisted it was necessary to protect women? Where are they now that so far the evidence suggests it's put more women at risk? Why have they all gone silent? Why aren't they vocally supporting Khanna's effort to study the impact of the law? It's almost as if (as we noted) this was never actually about protecting women at all.

Filed Under: congress, fosta, impact, intermediary liability, ro khanna, section 230, sex workers

Section 230 Keeps The Internet Open For Innovation

from the keep-in-that-way dept

Sex-trafficking victims in California are suing Salesforce, claiming the company helped the now-defunct website Backpage, a classified ads website, in enabling prostitution. Whatever your view on the harm to the plaintiffs, this suit could hurt American innovation. By holding Salesforce accountable for the actions of its customer, the suit opens the door for other innovators to be held responsible when users post illegal content – a dangerous precedent in today’s internet era.

The question of who is responsible for online content is a difficult issue. Intermediary liability protection is the common-sense idea that internet platforms are not responsible for content posted by users. Enshrined in Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, this law allowed American companies to be the innovators of the internet. In fact, the internet as we know it functions because of Section 230. Without Section 230, any site hosting user-generated content would have to screen every submission to avoid lawsuits.

On a practical basis, doing this in real time would be impossible due to the sheer amount of content created: Twitter alone hosts 350,000 tweets per minute; 200 billion tweets per year. Similarly, YouTube would be liable for any of the content its 1.9 billion monthly users might upload. If any single user post could lead to legal action against the social media platform, that platform would shut down.

Today's internet experience would be virtually impossible.

And so Section 230, the cornerstone of today’s innovative internet, was considered inviolable – until 2018, when Congress was approached by groups representing victims of sex trafficking (and quietly backed by Hollywood studios, the hotel industry and others who saw the chance to weaken online competitors that were taking their customers and disrupting their businesses). While some groups advocating for sex-trafficking victims opposed it, many of these proponents pushed FOSTA/SESTA into law, which allows trial lawyers to sue social media sites that “facilitate” sex trafficking – and, although undoubtedly well-intentioned, the bill takes aim at Section 230.

Though (oddly), the Salesforce lawsuit doesn't invoke FOSTA/SESTA, the law's hastily written language was so broad and vague it could potentially impose liability to any website with a comments section. And immediately, internet services began pulling down popular forums featuring consumer-generated content. Other websites eliminated sections or imposed broad filters. Congress made the internet experience less rich for users and more difficult for entrepreneurs, all while doing very little to protect actual victims of sex trafficking.

For all the damage done to free speech online, FOSTA/SESTA has had little upside. Backpage was seized by the FBI before the bill was signed into law, proving that FOSTA/SESTA was not necessary to take down wrongdoers. More, FOSTA/SESTA forced sex traffickers underground, making it harder for authorities to identify and rescue victims.

Fortunately, our nation knows how to choose freedom over fear and innovation over regulation. Consider the successful SOPA/PIPA protests of 2012, which pushed back against overbroad copyright laws that would have crushed the burgeoning digital economy. Thanks to the protests, websites with user-generated content continue to flourish today.

Section 230 is the legal foundation of the internet – not a shield for criminal liability. But it remains an important protection to encourage entrepreneurs and innovators to start internet businesses. We can't allow misguided rulemaking and ruinous litigation to discourage that. We must keep the internet open for innovation.

Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,200 consumer technology companies, and a New York Times best-selling author. He is the author of the new book, Ninja Future: Secrets to Success in the New World of Innovation. His views are his own.

Filed Under: cda 230, fosta, innovation, open internet, section 230
Companies: backpage, salesforce

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

Twenty-one States Inadvertently Tell The DC Circuit That The Plaintiffs Challenging FOSTA Have A Case

from the with-amici-like-these dept

The constitutional challenge to FOSTA chugs on. A few weeks ago the DOJ filed its opposition brief to defend FOSTA, and then last week several amicus briefs were filed intending to support the government's side. But in reading the one filed by twenty-one state attorneys general, it seems that's not what it did.

The important thing to remember about this appeal is that the question before the appeals court isn't really about the constitutionality of FOSTA itself. What's being appealed is the case having been dismissed for lack of standing by the plaintiffs. The district court never directly ruled on the constitutionality of the law; it only ruled that these plaintiffs had no right to complain about it to the courts. According to the district court these plaintiffs weren't being hurt, or likely to be hurt, by FOSTA, and so it dismissed their case. What the parties are fighting about now is whether this assessment by the district court was right.

For the plaintiffs it makes sense to keep pressing the constitutional issue because shining a light on the unconstitutionality of the law illuminates the injury the unconstitutionality has already caused and will continue to cause. But the defense has a different and much simpler job. All the DOJ has to do to defend FOSTA is say is, "The district court was right. These people were not hurt by FOSTA and will not be hurt by FOSTA, so keep this case dismissed." If the appeals court agrees that there has been no injury, and that there is unlikely to be any injury, then the case remains dismissed and this constitutional challenge goes away.

And so that's what the DOJ's brief basically does: parrot the district court's decision that there is nothing to see here. The DOJ spent its pages arguing that there has been no injury, nor is there the likelihood of any injury, because FOSTA could not possibly empower prosecutors to reach the plaintiffs.

As the district court correctly concluded, plaintiffs’ conduct is not “proscribed by [the] statute,” and plaintiffs face no “credible threat of prosecution thereunder.” [DOJ brief p. 10]

It's an unfortunate position for the government to take, but it's not an irrational litigation strategy. The only thing the DOJ needs to do here is assure the court that the plaintiffs have nothing to worry about.

But that's exactly what the amicus brief by the twenty-one state attorney generals does not do. Although it is intended to support the DOJ's defense of the statute, rather than supporting the DOJ's argument that the plaintiffs' complaints are much ado about nothing, their brief instead reads as a bright flashing neon sign warning the court that there is plenty of reason for them to be worried. Because, in contrast to the DOJ's arguments about what FOSTA does not do, this brief reads as a paean to everything FOSTA is going to let the states do, including to people just like the plaintiffs.

First, it reminds the court just how much FOSTA empowers states like them.

FOSTA makes explicit that: (1) federal law no longer can be said to provide legal protection for websites that unlawfully facilitate sex trafficking; and (2) States may now pursue state-law prosecutions based on conduct that would also violate FOSTA. 47 U.S.C. § 230(e)(5). [I]f a State criminalizes the same conduct FOSTA criminalizes, the State need not wait for the Department of Justice to prosecute traffickers operating in the State; the State’s prosecutors may do so themselves. FOSTA also authorizes a state attorney general, on behalf of the residents of his or her State, to initiate civil actions against those who violate 18 U.S.C. § 1591 (“Sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud, or coercion”) if there is “reason to believe” that an interest of the State’s residents has been or is threatened or adversely affected by the violators. [state AG brief p. 9-10]

It also tells the court just how keen they are to be so empowered. Although the brief is only 10 pages, more than five of them are devoted to a gushing inventory of all these states' policy agendas against sex trafficking. [state AG brief p. 3-9]

It further implies that the only reason there have not been more prosecutions predicated on FOSTA to date is because the states first need to pass some laws to enable these prosecutions, and that takes some time.

Bills to accomplish this are currently pending before the Texas Legislature. Tex. H.B. 15, 86th Leg., R.S. (2019) and Tex. S.B. 20, 86th Leg., R.S. (2019). [state AG brief fn. 3]

In other words, this brief undermines all the arguments that the unconstitutional effects of FOSTA are hypothetical by instead essentially pointing out to the court that they just haven't accrued yet. FOSTA empowers states to act, they are keen to act, and they just need a little more time until they will be able to act.

Which perhaps wouldn't be so much of a problem if states were carefully focused on actual instances of sex trafficking. But the amici themselves are proof that such restraint is unlikely.

In particular, note that one of the states on the brief is Florida. Now think back to just a few months ago when Florida prosecutors stole attention away from the Super Bowl with their announcement that they had broken up a "sex trafficking" operation in Palm Beach… which then turned out not to be a sex-trafficking operation after all.

It was sex work prosecutors had discovered, sure, but at least three of the plaintiffs challenging FOSTA are advocates for sex workers, in no small part because they believe that advocating for sex workers helps keep them safe and out of the clutches of sex traffickers. They sued because they are worried about how the vague language of FOSTA can be used against their advocacy.

A big part of the DOJ's argument is that no one could possibly misconstrue their speech on sex work with the speech relating to sex trafficking and end up using FOSTA to target them.

[Plaintiffs'] activity is wholly outside of FOSTA’s ambit. It is not proscribed by § 2421A, which prohibits owning, managing, or operating an interactive computer service with the intent to promote or facilitate specific instances of illegal prostitution. Nor is it prohibited by § 1591, the pre-existing federal criminal prohibition on sex trafficking. And because FOSTA amended Section 230 immunity only to permit civil claims under § 1595 “if the conduct underlying the claim constitutes a violation of section 1591,” and State criminal prosecutions “if the conduct underlying the charge would constitute a violation of section 1591” or § 2421A, see 47 U.S.C. § 230(e)(5), plaintiffs do not face a reasonable fear of prosecution as a result of those amendments, either. [DOJ brief p. 15-16]

Yet here before the court is an amicus who not long ago got sex work and sex trafficking very badly mixed up. And here it is announcing to the court how excited it is that FOSTA has given them the power to get them mixed up in a way that will affect even more people, including those situated exactly like the plaintiffs.

The DOJ wants the court to believe that any injury the plaintiffs complain about is entirely speculative.

To the extent plaintiffs are concerned that a State or private litigant might attempt to bring a lawsuit against them in the future notwithstanding the text of FOSTA, that concern cannot provide plaintiffs with standing to sue the federal government here. […T]hat fear is entirely conjectural, and “require[s] guesswork as to how independent decisionmakers will exercise their judgment.” [DOJ brief p. 29-30]

But thanks to amici, we know exactly how these independent decision makers will exercise their judgment: badly. Thus, despite the DOJ's best efforts to convince the court of the plaintiffs' lack of standing, the state AG's amicus brief has done the exact opposite.

In a way the amicus brief is just like FOSTA itself: not understanding the job that needed to be done but rushing in with legal guns blazing anyway. And just like FOSTA, this ill-tailored legal response has caused all sorts of collateral damage that just makes the problem to be solved worse.

Filed Under: cda 230, fosta, section 230, standing, state attorneys general