“Moving forward,” they wrote, the Justice Department should “take a hard look at bringing this case as a civil forfeiture case,” with its “lower standard of proof.” In this scenario, the government would seize a website operator’s assets and property, then force them to prove they weren’t implicated in criminal activity.
Another rabbit hole worth a stroll into is the Garland, Texas "ISIS" shooting in 2015. By "ISIS" we mean "FBI orchestrated, which we know because an undercover was waiting in the parking lot for the shooters to get there and had been texting them before they even set foot in Texas."
For some strange reason, a judicial appointee to the ND Texas Fed District Court took it upon herself, immediately, on her first case the day after she was sworn in, to dismiss the security guard who got shot's lawsuit against the FBI/DOJ and James Comey specifically.
You can read a glowing hagiography about her being a good Republican diversity hire in the Dallas Morning News, or you can read stories about that opinion (checking notes...) nowhere outside of one D.C. blog.
Doesn't matter though. The web property was taken down, and safer-ish sex work suffered a set back. Sex trafficking is the new "terrorism" whereby the government or other organizations can allege it, and the targeted entity is pretty much SOL.
To add to this, "sex trafficking" to most people means "sex slavery," but if you look at the definition it's a broad term that includes things like helping a prostitute immigrate illegally. And then law enforcement takes things a step further, often referring to any form of prostitution as "sex trafficking" because they know that if they simply call it prostitution, most people won't see the big problem.
It's gotten to the point where I'm skeptical of any news stories I read where authorities are claiming "sex trafficking." It's simply astounding how many of those, if you follow-up on them, end up being simple prostitution cases in the end, with the supposed victims being charged by authorities for engaging in prostitution.
The Robert Kraft case is a good recent example. Authorities made a big announcement of saying Kraft and other men were involved in a sex trafficking ring, and the media uncritically spread their claims. If you look at online comments from the time, most people assume that Kraft and others were taking advantage of unwilling sex slaves. But months later the charges against the men were dropped, and the only people that ended up being punished were the women themselves, for prostitution. Authorities have a habit of making a big deceitful announcement that they're saving these women, then when the public and media attention goes elsewhere, the women are the ones the authorities end up punishing.
"But anti-prostitution activists like Hughes often use “sexual exploitation” to include any kind of prostitution or sex work—in fact, Hughes insists in her article that "trafficking occurs even if the woman consents.” "
2 weeks ago, it became a felony in Texas to pay for sex. Unlike most of the other batshit laws passed in Texas this year, this one had wide bipartisan support.
As a gay man, while this is just anecdotal, it seems to me that the dynamics of gay prostitution are very different from most straight prostitution. I used to think it quite sad to hear about gay men paying for sex. I mean, these days, it is extremely easy for gay men to find other gay men to have sex with, for free, as long as you're willing to have sex with guys who generally look like you do.
Then I had some friends who had escorted at some point, and they explained the dynamic. Quite simply, many of the "johns" were older, and they basically wanted a hot, younger guy to have sex with them (of course there were other types, for example closeted men).
None of the guys I knew who escorted ever felt coerced into doing it, beyond the fact that they needed money, and to them it was an easy way to get money.
Of course, I'm sure there are guys who did feel pressured into doing it, and sex trafficking does occur.
But there are still many, perfectly consenting adults who pay for sex as part of "the world's oldest profession". We should stop this moral panic and focus laws to help actual victims of sex trafficking.
Just for the record, all the specifics you've listed with regard to gay prostitution also apply to heterosexual prostitution, to my best understanding.
That is to say, much of the clientele are older men who just want a hot, younger woman to have sex with them. There are also other types.
Some female escorts do not feel coerced, while another significant percentage certainly do. I would imagine that's the same on both front as well.
While I totally recognize that male prostitutes are perhaps more likely to be able to resist physical aggression, and therefore have a bit more agency (which I think may have been the point you were leading toward), I think the moral panic crosses all borders, and I agree that once (if) we take that out of the equation, the rest of the conversation becomes much easier.
Strongly agree with the sentiment of your post. I'm curious how you came about the information that they were the #1 source of trafficking tips. That seems like the government killing a golden goose (not that that is surprising in any way).
Also, once you drive the good people out of business, not only whatever is left over much worse, but it attracts the people who are outright sociopaths and want to push the boundaries just because they like to see people burn. Since the demand doesn't go away, it just goes underground. If tomorrow all legitimate painkillers were outlawed, drug trafficking would become a much worse problem with a lot more deaths.
One of those "other organizations" is the NCMEC, which was established by[1] and heavily funded by[2] the U.S. Congress.
NCMEC has consistently tried to impede the implementation of end-to-end encryption. Even before the Apple/iCloud debacle, the NCMEC pushed tech companies to prohibit users under 18 from using end-to-end encryption:[3]
> On February 20, 2020, NCMEC released an open letter to the technology industry outlining five Principles to Safeguard Children in End-to-End Encrypted Environments.
> - Do not implement end-to-end encrypted communications for accounts where a user has indicated they are under 18 years old.
Restricting children from secure communications is an especially user-hostile way to advocate against child abuse.
I’m surprised they actually got the mistrial. Prosecutorial misconduct is one of the fundamental problems facing this country…it transcends many issues dear to the left and the right.
Backpage shut down its adult services section back in January 2017. The defendants may have gotten a mistrial eventually, but they've lost years of their lives.
Can someone eli5 why is this a mistrial instead of acquit? If the prosecutor prosecuted on the wrong charge and the judge agrees on that it's the wrong charge, the defendants should get acquitted?
If anyone is unfamiliar with the case, this is a textbook example of government overreach and lying to the public. There is little reason to believe any of the claims against backpage are true.
One of the main people responsible for this is Kamala Harris.
It is sad as far as I can tell the main reason you are getting downvoted is because you mentioned the name of the top prosecutor who unjustly arrested the Backpage founders on trumped up charges.
Is there a non-emotional or moralistic argument for why prostitution should be illegal? What is actually the harm, and is it worse than the black market for illegal sex work?
There is at least one such argument: prostitution as a crime of danger. I try to articulate it below.
Prostitution by itself is not wrong, but the social dynamics around it put the prostitutes in a weak position, in which they are at high risk of abuse and exploitation. Under this interpretation, prohibiting prostitution harms the few prostitutes which would mot be abused and their clients, but benefits the majority of prostitutes who would be abused and is overall positive for society.
The logical structure of the argument is sound. As a society, we regularly accept to forbid behavior that is not necessarily harmful, but has an very high risk to be, and a limited social value if allowed. Gun laws, speed limits, age of consent laws follow this principle. [Aside: the social benefits of gun ownership are valued more in the US than in Europe, therefore gun laws are more permissive]
There are however at least three problems with this argument:
1. It supports punishing pimps and clients, not the prostitutes themselves. This is in fact the approach chisn by e.g. France and Sweden, but not by the US.
1. It assumes that a substantial proportion of prostitutes are exploited or abused and that there are no alternative policies to prevent this.
3. It ignores second order effects. It assumes that forbidding prostitution will eliminate it and doesn’t consider the additional risk of harm resulting from pushing prostitution to the black market.
Seems like all the risks you just associated with not-prohibiting prostitution would also apply to farming. Given its deplorable history in the US vis-a-vis slavery, it seems to be we can’t possibly risk more individuals being exploited in such a manner. Granted I’d concede that farming has substantial benefits, but frankly so does sex to those who cannot obtain it socially. Arguably the need for sex is tantamount to the need for food itself.
> 3. It ignores second order effects. It assumes that forbidding prostitution will eliminate it and doesn’t consider the additional risk of harm resulting from pushing prostitution to the black market.
At it's heart this is an argument of pragmatism, but it is never checked to see if it actually works.
Like many prohibitions, the negative unintended consequences are worse than than the original problem they purport, but entirely fail to fix.
Wiki lists some, with sources for further reading. Most prominent non-emotional argument seems to be that legalizing increases demand, meanwhile many would remain illegal nevertheless - so the related crimes' prevalence would increase.
Health and safety requirements. If testing and contact tracing isn't properly done it can be a problem, but as you said is it worse than black market conditions with zero oversight and safety stands? Probably not. The real risk is a lack of health insurance, retirement benefits, and taxable wage by allowing the black market conditions to exist. From a problematic standpoint is the "hostile work environment" claims if sex workers become legitimate.
Not that I buy into the argument but that it helps to create more human trafficking and the involuntary part of the trade has a better hiding behind the legal one.
It seems that some people do, in fact, sell consent. I know for the right price I'd sell my consent. And I don't buy into the premise that prostitution cannot exist if we want to reduce objectification.
If only the judge in Ross Ulbricht's case had as much principle and courage. It's another case where the prosecution focused on talking up sensationalist rumors during the trial, rumors that they had no intention of proving.
Which rumors are you referring to? People often say that about the "murder for hire" scheme, in the mistaken belief that Ulbricht wasn't actually charged for that. He was: the murder scheme was an explicit predicate of the conspiracy charge. They did in fact charge him for it. It's right there in the indictment.
Yes, but they left out explicit murder-for-hire charges in the indictment for that trial. They filed a separate indictment with those charges in a different state which they dropped after the first trial ended.
It's not exactly the same but I see a pattern of using an accusation to influence a trial without intending to prove it.
I think you’re conflating ‘the trial’ with ‘sentencing’ - all the stuff about him trying to hire a hitman was brought up at sentencing (I thought), not during the trial. Under US law almost anything can be brought up as a mitigating or aggravating circumstance at sentencing - whether such facts would be admissible at trial is irrelevant as the rules of evidence do not apply to sentencing.
Edit: added the “I thought” - my recollection was the charges related to the hitman-hiring were dropped. I may be misremembering.
Readit News
Recommended reading: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-backpage-vicious-battle-f...
There was an excellent thread on this by @AshleyLatke on Twitter, but they have made their entire timeline private, so I can't link it.
Twitter thread maybe here (walkthrough of Wired article): https://web.archive.org/web/20210809020635/https://threadrea...
“Moving forward,” they wrote, the Justice Department should “take a hard look at bringing this case as a civil forfeiture case,” with its “lower standard of proof.” In this scenario, the government would seize a website operator’s assets and property, then force them to prove they weren’t implicated in criminal activity.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard that...
The SEC would probably open their own investigation into me.
For some strange reason, a judicial appointee to the ND Texas Fed District Court took it upon herself, immediately, on her first case the day after she was sworn in, to dismiss the security guard who got shot's lawsuit against the FBI/DOJ and James Comey specifically.
You can read a glowing hagiography about her being a good Republican diversity hire in the Dallas Morning News, or you can read stories about that opinion (checking notes...) nowhere outside of one D.C. blog.
It's gotten to the point where I'm skeptical of any news stories I read where authorities are claiming "sex trafficking." It's simply astounding how many of those, if you follow-up on them, end up being simple prostitution cases in the end, with the supposed victims being charged by authorities for engaging in prostitution.
The Robert Kraft case is a good recent example. Authorities made a big announcement of saying Kraft and other men were involved in a sex trafficking ring, and the media uncritically spread their claims. If you look at online comments from the time, most people assume that Kraft and others were taking advantage of unwilling sex slaves. But months later the charges against the men were dropped, and the only people that ended up being punished were the women themselves, for prostitution. Authorities have a habit of making a big deceitful announcement that they're saving these women, then when the public and media attention goes elsewhere, the women are the ones the authorities end up punishing.
https://newrepublic.com/article/123302/human-trafficking-has...
As a gay man, while this is just anecdotal, it seems to me that the dynamics of gay prostitution are very different from most straight prostitution. I used to think it quite sad to hear about gay men paying for sex. I mean, these days, it is extremely easy for gay men to find other gay men to have sex with, for free, as long as you're willing to have sex with guys who generally look like you do.
Then I had some friends who had escorted at some point, and they explained the dynamic. Quite simply, many of the "johns" were older, and they basically wanted a hot, younger guy to have sex with them (of course there were other types, for example closeted men).
None of the guys I knew who escorted ever felt coerced into doing it, beyond the fact that they needed money, and to them it was an easy way to get money.
Of course, I'm sure there are guys who did feel pressured into doing it, and sex trafficking does occur.
But there are still many, perfectly consenting adults who pay for sex as part of "the world's oldest profession". We should stop this moral panic and focus laws to help actual victims of sex trafficking.
That is to say, much of the clientele are older men who just want a hot, younger woman to have sex with them. There are also other types.
Some female escorts do not feel coerced, while another significant percentage certainly do. I would imagine that's the same on both front as well.
While I totally recognize that male prostitutes are perhaps more likely to be able to resist physical aggression, and therefore have a bit more agency (which I think may have been the point you were leading toward), I think the moral panic crosses all borders, and I agree that once (if) we take that out of the equation, the rest of the conversation becomes much easier.
I believe the bp owner got into a pissing match with the AZ DA and eventually lost. Many people who hide behind the US government are scumbags.
Fuck FOSTA/SESTA too.
NCMEC has consistently tried to impede the implementation of end-to-end encryption. Even before the Apple/iCloud debacle, the NCMEC pushed tech companies to prohibit users under 18 from using end-to-end encryption:[3]
> On February 20, 2020, NCMEC released an open letter to the technology industry outlining five Principles to Safeguard Children in End-to-End Encrypted Environments.
> - Do not implement end-to-end encrypted communications for accounts where a user has indicated they are under 18 years old.
Restricting children from secure communications is an especially user-hostile way to advocate against child abuse.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20121029010231/http://www.missin...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_Children%27s_Assistanc...
[3] https://www.missingkids.org/e2ee
The backpage attack tracks with every other government action that uses law enforcement for moralizing.
Dead Comment
One of the main people responsible for this is Kamala Harris.
Source: https://reason.com/2019/08/26/secret-memos-show-the-governme...
Dead Comment
Prostitution by itself is not wrong, but the social dynamics around it put the prostitutes in a weak position, in which they are at high risk of abuse and exploitation. Under this interpretation, prohibiting prostitution harms the few prostitutes which would mot be abused and their clients, but benefits the majority of prostitutes who would be abused and is overall positive for society.
The logical structure of the argument is sound. As a society, we regularly accept to forbid behavior that is not necessarily harmful, but has an very high risk to be, and a limited social value if allowed. Gun laws, speed limits, age of consent laws follow this principle. [Aside: the social benefits of gun ownership are valued more in the US than in Europe, therefore gun laws are more permissive]
There are however at least three problems with this argument:
1. It supports punishing pimps and clients, not the prostitutes themselves. This is in fact the approach chisn by e.g. France and Sweden, but not by the US.
1. It assumes that a substantial proportion of prostitutes are exploited or abused and that there are no alternative policies to prevent this.
3. It ignores second order effects. It assumes that forbidding prostitution will eliminate it and doesn’t consider the additional risk of harm resulting from pushing prostitution to the black market.
At it's heart this is an argument of pragmatism, but it is never checked to see if it actually works.
Like many prohibitions, the negative unintended consequences are worse than than the original problem they purport, but entirely fail to fix.
Deleted Comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_law#Views_of_proh...
It's not exactly the same but I see a pattern of using an accusation to influence a trial without intending to prove it.
Edit: added the “I thought” - my recollection was the charges related to the hitman-hiring were dropped. I may be misremembering.