Because Congress Apparently Has NOTHING AT ALL IMPORTANT To Work On, It Introduced TWO MORE Section 230 Bills Yesterday

from the don't-you-people-have-work-to-do? dept

If you were in a coma for the past 12 months, just came out of it, and had to figure out what had happened in the last year or so solely based on new bills introduced in Congress, you would likely come to the conclusion that Section 230 was the world's greatest priority and the biggest, most pressing issue in the entire freaking universe. I've completely lost track of how many new bills have been introduced this year -- in the midst of a pandemic -- that try to undermine and destroy the open internet enabled by Section 230 of the CDA. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Last week we had Lindsey Graham and his garbage Online Content Policy Modernization Act. Josh Hawley, the lying demagogue, has probably introduced half a dozen bills aimed at undermining Section 230, including one a few weeks ago. On Tuesday of this week we had Senators Manchin and Cornyn introduce their despicable and dangerous See Something, Say Something Act.

And then, on Wednesday, we got two more truly awful anti-230 bills. What's going on over there on Capitol Hill? If you introduce 12 bills to destroy the internet do you get a 13th one free?

First up, we had Reps. Sylvia Garcia and Ann Wagner introduce the House companion to the Senate's EARN IT Act. We've spent months detailing how this bill is a two-fer: it's dangerous for both encryption and Section 230. And yet, it now has bipartisan support in both the Senate and the House. Garcia seems so proud of being a part of this nonsense that she didn't put the press release on her own website (though she did have time to put up a press release for a bill to rename a post office).

Ann Wagner, you may recall, is the force behind the previous disastrous anti-230 bill, FOSTA, who has spent the years since passing that bill just flat out lying about what the bill did. She claims it's been a huge success, and yet it has yet to be used successfully, has been shown to put women's lives in danger, and has made it more difficult for law enforcement to find actual sex traffickers.

But, not surprisingly, Wagner is touting her "success" with that terrible legislation in introducing this new garbage:

“I’m proud to join with my colleague Rep. Sylvia Garcia in introducing the EARN IT Act, critical legislation that will hold accountable bad actors that facilitate child sexual abuse material,” said Congresswoman Wagner. "This bill is the natural follow-up to FOSTA, my Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, which amended section 230 to hold accountable websites that facilitate sex trafficking. As I have said many times, I believe that if exploitation is a crime offline, it should also be a crime online, and I’m delighted to continue working with survivors, advocates, law enforcement, and industry to protect children from online sexual exploitation.”

Yes, she keeps saying that "if it's a crime offline, it should be a crime online" and it always has been. This bill, like her last bill, changed literally nothing about what was a "crime." What it did was blame service providers for non-crimes, and made them less willing to host perfectly legal content. And, again, her bill has harmed survivors and made it more difficult for law enforcement, meaning it has done the opposite of protecting children from online sexual exploitation.

And the EARN IT Act, as we've discussed, will again make things worse. This version of EARN IT is even worse than the Senate version, which included a narrow (and most likely useless) attempt to say that it couldn't be used to ban encryption. This version of the bill narrows that limitation, meaning encryption would be even more at risk.

And that was for the horrific bill we already knew about.

Next up to the plate is Senator John Kennedy with the ridiculously named Don't Push My Buttons Act. As you may have guessed, it's pushed all of my buttons for wasting my time in needing to respond to absolute wingnut batshittery in the form of you-can't-actually-be-serious legislation. There have been so many dumb anti-230 bills that it's hard to rank which one's worse than the next, but this one is... just bad. Basically, this would take Section 230 away from any site that tracks any information on its users, or presents an algorithmically generated feed for its users. But, it would not apply if the users of those sites "knowingly and intentionally elect to receive" the algorithmically generated feed. And so sites that want to do that will just put it in their terms of service and make people agree to it and... what good does that do for anyone?

And what does this even have to do with Section 230 anyway? If you don't like algorithmically generated feeds, it would seem that (1) you're going to have a 1st Amendment issue to overcome at some point and (2) there are other tools in the toolbox and (3) it's totally unrelated to the questions about Section 230. This is just "old man yells at cloud... and writes weird legislation."

Kennedy is trying to get this bill attached as an amendment to Graham's wacky bill that's about to be marked up, and it's just open season for crazy ideas on an issue that should not be a priority at this moment when people are literally dying by the thousands every damn day due to a pandemic that Congress seems to have decided to ignore.

Does this shit ever end?

Filed Under: ann wagner, congress, earn it, house, john kennedy, push my buttons, section 230, senate, sylvia garcia

Bill Barr Applauds FOSTA Sponsor's Clone Of Senate's Encryption-Breaking 'Lawful Access' Bill

from the DO-NOT-CONGRATULATE dept

I guess those "rule of law" folks don't care if a law is any good or will do what it intends to do without causing significant collateral damage. All they care about is that it's a law and, as a law, everyone should just subject themselves to it with a minimum of complaining.

The Attorney General is one of those "rule of law" people. Sure, he works for an administration that doesn't seem to care much about laws, propriety, or basic competence, but he's the nation's top cop, so laws and rules it is.

Bill Barr wants holes in encryption. He wants them so badly he's making up new words. "Warrant-proof encryption" isn't any different than regular encryption. It only becomes "warrant-proof" when the DOJ and FBI are talking about it, as though it was some new algorithm that only scrambles communications and data when the presence of a warrant is detected.

Far too many people in Washington think encryption is only valuable to criminals. Bills are in the works to compel encryption-breaking/backdooring. Some even handcuff these demands to Section 230 immunity -- a 2-for-1 special on shoveled shit straight from the federal government to Americans' favorite platforms and services.

Given how much the AG loves broad, abusive laws, it's no surprise he's going on the record to congratulate the author of another terrible law on her newest terrible piece of legislation.

Today, Attorney General William P. Barr issued the following statement on the introduction of a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would give law enforcement access to encrypted data with court approval in order to protect user privacy. The legislation was introduced by Representative Ann Wagner.

“I applaud Representative Wagner for introducing this critical lawful access legislation. Although strong encryption is vital, we cannot allow the tech industry to use encryption that blinds law enforcement and prevents it from thwarting or investigating serious crimes and national security threats, including terrorist plots, cyberattacks, and sexual exploitation."

Yes, let's applaud Rep. Ann Wagner. (Let's not.) Wagner was the sponsor behind FOSTA, the anti-sex worker law (d/b/a anti-sex trafficking legislation) that has been instrumental in roughly zero prosecutions -- the same prosecutions bill sponsors like Wagner claimed would be impossible without this new law.

That wasn't Wagner's only bogus claim. She also claimed the passage of FOSTA resulted in the immediate disappearance of 90% of "sex trafficking ads." This claim was proven false by fact checkers. The vast majority of the ads that vanished did so when Backpage shut down its adult ads prior to FOSTA's passage and prior to the DOJ's prosecution of the site's owners.

So, when Barr applauds Wagner, he's applauding someone who'll say almost anything to justify harmful legislation. This is the kind of person Barr admires because Bill Barr does the same thing, even though he's not writing new bills personally.

Here's some more of the "anything" Barr will say to applaud bad bill-making. Wagner's new thing is a clone of the Senate's "Lawful Access to Encrypted Data" bill. As you can guess by reading the bill's clunky title, it's another attempt to sacrifice encryption on the altar of law enforcement convenience, ensuring cops don't have to work too hard to collect evidence.

As we all are painfully aware, law enforcement agencies -- despite being around for more than 150 years -- have yet to solve a single crime. So it's imperative we give them access to gigabytes of communications and data so they can finally get around to putting a few criminals behind bars. That being said, here's what's being said by Barr in support of this bill. I have no idea what most of this has to do with anything, but it's full of things that sound bad.

The danger is particularly great for children, especially during this time of coronavirus restrictions when children are spending more time online. Survivors of child sexual abuse and their families have pleaded with technology companies to do more to prevent predators from exploiting their platforms to harm children. Unfortunately, these companies have not done enough, which is why this legislation is needed.

Well then. And I thought this administration was going to save kids from child predators by sending them to COVID-infested schools ASAP. But somehow this is the tech companies' fault, since they offer security to all users, even though a small percentage of users engage in criminal acts.

Barr finishes up his applause for Wagner and her LAED knockoff with what can only be a deliberate misreading of the issues at stake.

Privacy and public safety are not mutually exclusive. I am confident that the tech industry can design strong encryption that allows for lawful access by law enforcement. Encryption should keep us safe, not provide a safe haven for predators and terrorists.

The issue isn't privacy. The Constitution may help ensure privacy by limiting the government's intrusion into our lives and homes, but what's really at stake here is security. And security -- of devices and files and communications -- is directly related to public safety. You can't claim to be a champion of public safety when you're willing to make it easier for malicious hackers to gain access to email accounts, personal messages, smartphones, hard drives, computers, social media accounts, and everything else encryption shields from outsiders.

An encryption hole handcrafted for cops is a hole anyone else can use once it's discovered. A backdoor built into hardware or software isn't only going to be exploited by law enforcement. If the assistance is compelled, companies won't be able to patch security issues -- not if the flaw exists to serve the government. Tech companies in Australia -- where compelled technical assistance is already law -- are seeing their customer bases shrink as people look for options that aren't deliberately broken. The same thing will happen here in the US if bills like this become law.

Bill Barr is willing to sacrifice your security. And he won't be giving you anything in return. We won't be safer. We'll be more vulnerable than we've ever been. And Rep. Wagner wants to help him screw you over, just like she did to countless Americans with FOSTA.

Filed Under: ann wagner, backdoors, doj, encryption, fbi, fosta, laed, section 230, william barr

The Utter Failure Of FOSTA: More Lives At Risk... And Sex Ads Have Increased, Not Decreased

from the pushing-things-further-underground... dept

Once again, as we predicted, FOSTA -- a law ostensibly passed to stop sex trafficking -- has been a total disaster. Passed based on totally inaccurate moral panics, it has resulted in online censorship and highly questionable lawsuits. But, worst of all, despite all the rhetoric about how it was necessary to save the lives of young girls, it has actually put them at much greater risk, and increased the amount of sex trafficking, while decreasing the ability of police to track down and arrest actual traffickers.

As this was all becoming clear a few months back, the legislators who pushed FOSTA tried to completely rewrite history to claim it was a success. Chief among them was the original sponsor of FOSTA, Rep. Ann Wagner, who announced that FOSTA was responsible for "shutting down nearly 90% of the online sex trafficking business and ads." This was wrong on multiple levels. That number was based on the shutdown of Backpage, which happened before FOSTA was law and had nothing to do with FOSTA. Even worse, an investigation into that 90% number by the Washington Post showed that even it was not true. At that time, the research showed that, while there was a brief plunge in sex ads after Backpage was seized (again, separate from FOSTA), the volume was coming back up to about the same level.

And, now, a new report by software company Marinus Analytics has found that online sex ads are showing up at an even higher rate than before FOSTA became law.

According to Pittsburgh-based software company Marinus Analytics, there were about 146,000 online sex ads posted per day in the U.S. on leading escort websites from mid-September to mid-October—and the company expects the total for this month to be even higher.

In contrast, there were about 133,000 such ads posted on Backpage in the month before its shutdown, Marinus Analytics found.

Instead of backing away amid the government crackdown on sex trafficking, some escort websites are doubling down on their business model and see the Backpage shutdown as an opportunity to expand, said Emily Kennedy, Marinus Analytics' president and co-founder.

"They're really competing with each other for that spot now and so we're seeing frequent activity at this point," she said, adding that as long as the business remains lucrative, "people are going to figure out a way to advertise it."

Of course, unlike Backpage -- which regularly cooperated with law enforcement to help -- these new sites obviously have zero incentive at all to cooperate with law enforcement who are trying to track down actual traffickers. Because, thanks to FOSTA, these sites now need to try to stay away from any attention from law enforcement.

So, to recap, this law designed to stop sex trafficking by criminalizing sites that host ads around prostitution has:

• Not stopped those ads (indeed, they've increased)
• Enabled greater censorship of the internet.
• Enabled wasteful and dangerous lawsuits against internet companies.
• Made it more difficult for law enforcement to track down and arrest actual traffickers.
• Put many, many people in grave risk of injury and death.

So, where are all the supporters of FOSTA now that basically everything that we critics predicted has come true?

Filed Under: ads, ann wagner, fosta, sex trafficking

'Missing, Sex Trafficked' Children Neither Missing, Nor Victims Of Sex Trafficking

from the moral-panics-are-the-worst dept

For quite some time we've highlighted the horrible laws being pushed by aggressively misrepresenting the size of the problem of sex trafficking -- and especially sex trafficking of children. This is not to say that it never happens. Nor is it to suggest that the crime of sex trafficking, especially of minors, is not horrific and hugely problematic. But we shouldn't overreact to false information. A year ago, we looked at some of the numbers being presented in favor of passing FOSTA, and found they were almost entirely bullshit. This included Rep. Ann Wagner's (who is the leading pusher of bad laws around "sex trafficking") claim child sex trafficking alone was a $9.5 billion industry. As we noted, this number came from a bizarre nonsensical extrapolation of a very misleading and confused report by ICE that covered issues of smuggling (not just sex trafficking). Other stats -- such as the supposed number of kids "lured" into sex trafficking -- showed even more extrapolation, while police were finding very, very few actual cases of this happening.

But, the narrative has been set and the media makes it into reality, even if... it's not. Take this headline from the NY Post from last week, claiming "123 missing children found in Michigan during sex trafficking operation":

Wow. That would be a pretty astoundingly successful police operation, and certainly gives weight to the idea that so many kids are lured into sex trafficking rings and then disappear and go missing. Except... details matter. And deep in the NY Post story they actually admit that out of the 123 missing kids only three were "identified as possible sex trafficking victims." So, uh, why does the headline suggest that all 123 kids are sex trafficking victims when it's not clear if any are, and clear that the vast majority are not?

And then there's this: only four of the kids were actually missing.

What's more, all but four of the "missing children" were not actually missing. In the remaining cases, minors were listed in a police database as missing but had since been found or returned home on their own. "Many were (homeschooled)," Lt. Michael Shaw told The Detroit News. "Some were runaways as well."

Indeed, if you look at the report, it notes that all of the kids outside of those four "were found safe with their parents or guardians."

So, remember, the headline screamed that 123 missing children were found in a sex trafficking "operation." Now it seems that most of them were "found" at home with their parents, and only three of them might have been victims of sex trafficking. These seem like important details, especially when you have election officials like Rep. Ann Wagner pushing a vast surveillance bill on the basis of the problem of sex trafficking. Pushing bogus information like over a hundred missing kids being engaged in sex trafficking only helps build that narrative -- one that appears to actually be much, much more limited than the media or lying politicians will let you know about.

Filed Under: ann wagner, exaggeration, fosta, moral panic, police, sex trafficking, surveillan

Washington Post Gives 'Three Pinocchios' To Rep. Ann Wagner For Falsely Claiming FOSTA Stopped 90% Of Sex Trafficking Ads

from the not-how-it-works dept

Back in July we were flabbergasted to see a stunningly misleading and dishonest video put out by the the House Judiciary Committee trying to claim that FOSTA had been a huge success in stopping sex trafficking. There is literally no evidence to suggest this, while there's plenty of evidence to show the harm that has been created by FOSTA. One of the claims in the video came from Rep. Ann Wagner, who was the original sponsor of FOSTA and has been a leading voice in stoking the exaggerated and misleading moral panic around sex trafficking (which is a real problem, but very, very limited compared to what many -- including Wagner -- have said about it). Wagner's latest trick has been to try to massively expand the PATRIOT Act for spying on Americans by again freaking everyone out about sex trafficking.

As we noted back in July, in the video, Wagner tries to imply that FOSTA helped kill off 90% of sex trafficking. She worded it awkwardly so that it clearly implies 90% of sex trafficking went away due to FOSTA, but it could also be read to just say that 90% of sex trafficking ads went away. As we pointed out at the time, this was clearly not true either way. While Backpage contained many ads, it stopped with those ads a year and a half before FOSTA was law, and was taken down by the feds before FOSTA was signed. So there was literally no way that FOSTA could be in any way credited for a drop in ads coming from Backpage.

I missed it, but a few weeks later, the Washington Post set its fact checker on these specific claims, and did an even more thorough analysis, even asking Wagner's office for details. And those details make Wagner look even worse, leading the Washington Post to give her the full three Pinocchios in their final ruling on the accuracy of her claim. Specifically, Wagner's office argued that a DARPA analysis saw a "weekly global ad volume dropped 87 percent from January to April." But, as the WaPo article notes (and as we did as well) the vast majority of that was from the takedown of Backpage, which was not due to FOSTA.

But, from there things get even worse. The Washington Post asked DARPA for what happened after April and found... things are not at all what the House Judiciary Committee and Wagner were claiming. Indeed, while there was an initial decline due to Backpage shutting down (again, not due to FOSTA), it quickly went back up after April -- conveniently ignored by Wagner and the HJC. Why contaminate the narrative with facts:

Worldwide ads had a daily average of about 105,000 when FOSTA-SESTA passed on March 21 and had dropped 28 percent by the time Backpage was closed on April 5. It then plunged another 75 percent and reached a low of 19,456 on April 17, for a total decline of about 82 percent.

But on the day the Judiciary Committee posted the video, sex-trade ads were back at about 50 percent of the daily volume before the law had passed; as of Aug. 11, they were at almost 75 percent....

“The volume of ads dropped dramatically after the shutdown of Backpage but has been climbing since,” said Chris Dickson, director of research engineering at Uncharted. “There is now a volume approaching what we observed before.”

So, once again it appears that Wagner and the HJC like to completely make up stories for grandstanding political purposes. They over-hyped the size of sex trafficking to pass this bad law, and then they massively over-hyped the impact of the law, ignoring (1) that the impact they took credit for had nothing to do with the law, and (2) ignoring that the data didn't actually support what they claimed.

So why the hell is anyway still listening to Rep. Ann Wagner and her use of "sex trafficking" to try to pass new laws?

Filed Under: advertising, ann wagner, fosta, grandstanding, house judiciary committee, lies, sex trafficking

Legislators Pushing A Patriot Act, But For Human Trafficking In The Wake Of FOSTA

from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept

When you're looking to expand the government's power, any crisis will do. Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, legislators told us the terrorists hated us for our freedom. Then they rushed through the Patriot Act, demonstrating how much our own government hates us for our freedoms.

In the name of national security, the government was allowed to engage in warrantless searches (and warrantless wiretapping) as the Fourth Amendment was sacrificed to make way for secure skies and secure borders. More of the same is on tap at the federal level, thanks to another "crisis" -- one mostly manufactured by a number of government officials who want to expand their power in the name of all the trafficked children in the world.

Sex trafficking is the name of the game -- even if the game board seems mostly devoid of players. A number of grandstanders have taken shots at big online services, playing shoot the message board since it's easier to serve Craigslist, Backpage, or whoever than track down actual traffickers.

One of these grandstanders is Rep. Ann Wagner. Wagner has been leading the charge to destroy Section 230 immunity under the pretense of hunting down sex traffickers. Sex traffickers will go on trafficking. They'll just be harder to find. Meanwhile, the web gets worse for everyone as websites become less willing to provide platforms for third-party content.

Wagner has made outrageous claims and pushed hard for outrageous legislation. She was one of the leading forces behind FOSTA. But she's not done yet. As Elizabeth Nolan Brown points out in her excellent article for Reason, Wagner's new bill is another Patriot Act -- but with "human trafficking" standing in for "worldwide terrorism."

Wagner's bill (H.R. 6729)—the deceptively named the "Empowering Financial Institutions to Fight Human Trafficking Act" of 2018—is the latest in a long line of assaults on civil liberties disguised as attacks on the biggest crime panic of the decade, sex trafficking. Wagner alone brought us the SAVE Act in 2015 and FOSTA in 2018, both of which take aim at online anonymity, web publishing, social media, sex workers, and free speech under the guise of saving children from "modern slavery."

Specifically, H.R. 6729 would allow financial institutions, federal regulatory bodies, nonprofit organizations, and law enforcement to share customer bank records between them without running afoul of rules regarding consumer privacy and without opening themselves up to lawsuits. Ostensibly, this would be done "in order to better identify and report potential human trafficking or money laundering activities."

Wagner will strip immunity from websites and serve up immunity to banks. This plan to end sex trafficking isn't being carried out in good faith. Distorted facts, distorted stats, and a whole bunch of made up data is par for the course. So, it makes sense the banks won't have to operate in good faith either.

But these entities need not demonstrate that the "sharing was made on a good faith basis," according to the current text of the bill.

This sounds like legislative encouragement for fishing expeditions -- both by law enforcement and by financial institutions. The Patriot Act's expansion of government power already lowered the bar for law enforcement, allowing it to obtain records without subpoenas or judicial review. This bill expands the Patriot Act's confines past the War on Terror to sweep up anything that could conceivably be imagined as related to human trafficking.

The government has already abused the Patriot Act to investigate strip clubs, as Nolan Brown points out. Dropping the national security pretense will allow government agencies to dig into thousands or millions of additional financial transactions. Anything that looks like overreach will be excused by concern for the children or the supposed wiliness of sex traffickers.

Filed Under: ann wagner, civil liberties, fosta, human trafficking, patriot act, privacy, sex trafficking, surveillance

House Judiciary Committee Falsely Claims Credit For Stopping 90% Of All Sex Trafficking Because Of FOSTA

from the where-did-they-pull-that-stat-from dept

For no clear reason at all, the Republicans* on the House Judiciary Committee released a video on YouTube earlier this week praising themselves for stopping online sex trafficking via FOSTA/SESTA. It's... quite something.

The video makes a number of blatantly false claims from various members of the House Judiciary, but let's focus mainly on the claims of Ann Wagner, whose original bill kicked off the process that became FOSTA/SESTA. She's been spreading moral panic nonsense about sex trafficking and the internet for ages, so it's no surprise that she continues to do so. But, at one point in the video she states:

"We have shut down nearly 90% of the online sex trafficking business and ads."

She kind of swallows that last "and ads" bit so you could miss it, but either way it's utter and complete nonsense. I looked all over for any evidence of the claim that 90% of online sex trafficking has been stopped and there doesn't appear to be an iota of support for that. The only stat I could find that is possibly being twisted to make this argument is that when Backpage was seized earlier this year -- notably before FOSTA/SESTA was signed into law -- a Reuters report claimed that 90% of Backpage's ads were for "adult ads."

But, that in no way translates to Wagner's nutty claim for a whole long list of reasons:

1. Backpage was not the entire online market for sex trafficking ads (amusingly, Wagner admits this earlier in the same video, in which she falsely claims that there were "hundreds and hundreds of websites selling our children with impunity" < -- narrator: "there were not, in fact, hundreds and hundreds of websites doing so, and they were not doing it with impunity."
2. Many of the adult ads on Backpage were not for sex trafficking at all
3. Backpage stopped hosting adult ads a year and a half ago in January of 2017, over a year before SESTA/FOSTA became law and over a year before the site was seized by the feds.
4. And, again, Backpage was seized before SESTA/FOSTA was even signed into law.

So, where, exactly is Wagner getting this stat of having shut down 90% of online sex trafficking and ads because of FOSTA/SESTA?

There's other nonsense in the video as well. Wagner's other whopper was:

"If it's a crime offline, by golly, it's a crime online!"

Uh, yes. But that's always been the case. FOSTA/SESTA didn't change that. All it did was create a series of new crimes for third party tools and services used by not just sex traffickers, but sex workers. Sex trafficking was already illegal and this bill did absolutely nothing to change that. It is simply wrong to imply that FOSTA/SESTA suddenly made something illegal online that had been legal online before but illegal offline. It's not true.

Then there's Mimi Walters' who brought the amendment that combined FOSTA and SESTA, making both bills worse. Her credibility on this whole thing is already suspect, given that after the feds took down Backpage, she took credit for it falsely saying it was because of FOSTA/SESTA even though that bill was not law yet. But, here she is in the video spewing more nonsense:

"This legislation will now make it illegal to sell people online and give those survivors the opportunity to seek justice."

Except it was always illegal to sell people online (and offline!) and nothing in FOSTA/SESTA changed that. All it did was create a new crime in which tools and services used by traffickers could also be found to be criminal in addition to the people who were doing the actual selling of people (while also making it harder for law enforcement to find those people -- but we'll get there). She continues:

"Websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking are no longer immune from legal action."

Except they were never immune from legal action. Facilitating sex trafficking is a federal crime and nothing in CDA 230 contained immunity for federal crimes. It really makes you wonder why the primary "authors" of the bill seem to feel so hard pressed to flat out lie about what their own bill does. Why would they do that?

The video also has Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte with more of his nonsense as well.

"The provisions of this law are already making the internet safer."

[Citation needed] Amusingly, right after Goodlatte says that, the video in an effort to support this claim flips to a news report about the shutdown of Backpage... which (and I know I'm repeating myself here) was taken down without the helps of FOSTA/SESTA since it wasn't even signed into law.

Also, the evidence to date leans heavily against the claim that it has made the internet safer. Indeed, already we've seen reports about sex workers being killed and pimps being empowered now that sex workers can't use sites like Backpage to screen clients. And a big study has highlighted how a lack of such services likely leads to a massive uptick in murder of women (not just sex workers, but women in general). And, lest we forget, police departments themselves are now complaining that they can no longer find sex traffickers thanks to the law.

Notice that the video addresses none of those effects (all of which were widely predicted). It just insists that the internet is safer. This is legislative fantasyland.

Of course, there's another oddity here. Why the hell is the House Judiciary Committee Republicans suddenly putting out such a video? The bill has already passed and it's already doing lots of damage. So why is Congress spending taxpayer money on a professionally edited video talking up a bunch of nonsense? Perhaps, as many have suggested, a key part of FOSTA/SESTA was always about grandstanding about how these politicians are "tough on sex trafficking" even if that's not accurate at all. And now that we're heading towards election season, I guess they have to milk that grandstanding bullshit for all its worth. Go spend your constituents hard-earned tax money by lying to them! What a job!

Of course, another reason for all of this may be the recent lawsuit claiming that FOSTA/SESTA is unconstitutional. While we've written about it already, the stories of some of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit tell the real story of how FOSTA/SESTA is harming people. Among those suing are a national alliance of Asian massage stores, who note that, thanks to FOSTA/SESTA their completely legitimate businesses are now being blocked from advertising, because some falsely assume that any Asian massage stores must be engaged in the sex trade.

...many Internet sites and review platforms flatly refuse content from or about Asian massage providers, DiBenedetto indicated. “Since it’s assumed we’re in the sex trade because we have Asian women offering Asian massage, platforms that used to run our ads and carry our reviews all the time now want nothing to do with us.”

The loss of those online outlets is devastating to providers of Asian massage services, said DiBenedetto. “They are unfairly cutting our stores off from the consumers we need to attract in order to stay viable. The business model of the typical Asian massage store requires a continual inflow of new customers. That inflow is heavily disrupted by us being profiled.”

DiBenedetto said Asian massage studio owners and masseuses now, “go to work every morning wondering if today will be the day their livelihoods vanish because all the doors have been slammed in their faces. This is so demoralizing, not to mention dehumanizing.”

So, to summarize, the House Judiciary Committee appears to be spending taxpayer money on a video celebrating a law that doesn't do what they claim it does, taking credit for a site takedown that wasn't because of the law, making up stats that have no basis in reality, ignoring the fact that their law has put many lives in real danger while making it more difficult for law enforcement to do their job, not to mention harming small business owners at the same time.

And people wonder why Congress' approval rating is so low.

* Our standard practice is not to name the party of politicians unless that's central to the story. In this case, the video is literally coming from a YouTube account that is apparently run by the Republicans on the House Judiciary. And this is not a "Republican v. Democrat" thing, because the Democrats on the Committee also supported FOSTA/SESTA. It was bipartisan nonsense, so if you happen to support the blue team or the red team, stupid generalizing comments about one party or the other will just make you look silly and tribal, rather than insightful or intelligent.

Filed Under: ann wagner, bob goodlatte, fosta, grandstanding, mimi walters, sesta, sex trafficking

Congressperson's Sex Trafficking Bill Looks To Carve Holes In Section 230 Immunity

from the first-they-came-for-the-worst-of-the-worst... dept

Law prof Eric Goldman -- who's covered numerous internet-related cases over the years -- is sounding the alarm about a draft bill [PDF] circulating Congress which could do some very serious damage to the internet itself. The bill aims to undercut Section 230 protections in the name of preventing sex trafficking.

The draft bill is called the “No Immunity for Sex Traffickers Online Act of 2017.” It’s authored by Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.). The bill would amend Section 230 in two main ways:

1) it would add a new statement to Section 230’s purpose: “to ensure vigorous enforcement against providers and users of interactive computer services of Federal and State criminal and civil law relating to sexual exploitation of children or sex trafficking of children, including through the availability of a civil remedy for victims of sex trafficking of children”

2) it would exclude the following claims from Section 230’s immunity:

– “any State criminal statute relating to sexual exploitation of children or sex trafficking of children” from the immunity

– 18 USC 1595, which has a civil remedy for sex trafficking

– “any other Federal or State law (to the extent such law does not impose criminal penalties) relating to sexual exploitation of children or sex trafficking of children”

As Goldman points out, Wagner's bill is clearly aimed at Backpage. If it ever makes its way into law, it will arrive far too late to wield it against Backpage and its owners, but it could be used to initiate prosecutions against other site owners for content posted by their users.

Maybe Rep. Wagner was just waiting for a like-minded legislator to come along and help push some bad ideas towards the president's desk. The recent arrival of former California attorney general Kamala Harris (a newly-elected Senator) should ensure lousy, internet-damaging bills aren't limited to the House. It's a chance to make earlier complaints become debilitating statutes. Goldman notes the bill not only duplicates Rep. Wagner's previous human trafficking law (which was passed), but echoes a "Let's Blame Backpage!" letter sent to Congress back in 2013.

[I]n 2013, 47 state AGs (including California’s then-AG and now-Senator Kamala Harris) sent a letter to Congress complaining that Section 230 prevented them from squashing Backpage and requesting that Congress amend Section 230 to exclude all “federal *and state* crimes.” Congress never responded to the letter–until now. Consistent with the AGs’ request, Rep. Wagner’s bill would open up Section 230 to state crimes, but only if the crimes relate “to sexual exploitation of children or sex trafficking of children”–a smaller universe than the AGs’ request to open up *all* state crimes.

The same idea -- a "narrow" exception to Section 230 immunity -- has been floated as a way to tackle the revenge porn problem. It's almost always easier to locate and serve/prosecute site owners than it is to go after those actually violating laws. The problem for most prosecutors (and plaintiffs) is they're prevented from doing so by Section 230 immunity. This is the way it should be. The target of prosecution/litigation should be the person causing the harm or breaking the law, not the person(s) easier to locate and punish.

What proposals like this do -- if they become law -- is create small fractures in Section 230 protections. These will eventually become actual holes as prosecutors, politicians, and courts carve out more and more exceptions as the activity they're trying to prevent moves to other platforms either to escape scrutiny or because site owners and service providers are unwilling to host anything that might see them being held responsible for users' content.

The strict liability rule might run into First Amendment concerns, but we won’t know that until the court challenge. As we know, if there’s not a single home for them, online prostitution ads migrate into other topics. So any classified ad or message board service–even those that are completely free–would need to prescreen most/all user postings to screen out the possibly-small percentage of those postings that violate the new law. The overall cost imposition on publishers, and associated chilling effect, attributable to the law would be huge.

The most serious problem Goldman sees -- and his reason for even bothering to discuss a draft bill -- is this is the sort of thing that could actually pass in the current political climate. The California AG who engaged in a personal vendetta against Backpage is now a US senator. The author of this bill is a Republican sitting in a Republican-controlled house. The bill targets child sex trafficking, which is of course the worst kind of sex trafficking. And who's going to stand up in the House or Senate and claim they're against preventing the trafficking of children for sex? Clearly no one wants to take that public stance, even if they know the bill would do harm to the First Amendment while having almost no effect on eliminating sex trafficking.

Then there's the internet service providers themselves. As Goldman notes, they weren't exactly rallying around Backpage as politicians and prosecutors used it for a punching bag and a useful analogue for everything that's wrong with the internet.

[I]t’s unclear that the major Internet companies will oppose the bill. They’ve frequently stayed on the sidelines during Backpage’s battles, content to let Backpage carry the water for everyone. With Backpage out of the industry, they no longer get the free ride. This draft bill will force a decision: acquiesce or fight. I don’t know what they will choose.

Small exceptions become huge problems. Mission creep, combined with most politicians' innate ability to make bad things even worse, means this proposed exception to Section 230 protections won't stay narrow and limited for long. Fortunately, the bill's a long way off from a president's signature. But the opposition to legislative ideas like this needs to remain loud and constant.

Filed Under: ann wagner, intermediary liability, kamala harris, moral panic, section 230, sex trafficking
Companies: backpage