Why Everyone Should be Concerned By the Seizure of MyRedBook.com
eff.org
eff.org
advertisements for prostitutes... menus of sexual services,
hourly and nightly rates, and customer reviews of the
prostitutes’ services.
I'm not arguing for or against sex work, just illustrating that this takedown is not a clear-cut case of censoring a vulnerable community's non-commercial political speech.
Is the EFF saying the FBI should have targeted specific illegal posts instead of taking down legal material as well? I support the EFF in their important work, but they're more credible and effective when they tell the whole story, including the complicated part.
[0] http://www.fbi.gov/news/news_blog/operators-of-myredbook.com...
From Wikipedia:
The regulation of prostitution in the United States is not among the enumerated powers of the federal government. Under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, it is therefore exclusively the domain of the states to permit, prohibit, or otherwise regulate commercial sex, except insofar as Congress may regulate it as part of interstate commerce with laws like the Mann Act.
Furthermore, that site is also legal in parts of Nevada where prostitution is legal.
I don't see how the federal government has jurisdiction in this matter. The Mann act is for interstate commerce. Perhaps this applies, but I think a real lawyer could share their related experience.
10th Amendment, btw: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people
The website is pretty clearly operating across state lines. If the website is based in California (just made that up), runs on servers in Texas, and it allows users in Michigan to solicit sex from users in Florida, it's pretty clearly engaging in interstate commerce.
Even if the website limited users to just one state, the federal government could still potentially regulate it under the interstate commerce clause provided the intrastate commerce substantially affects interstate commerce.
-Note: the site by itself doesn't have to have a substantial effect. It just has to be part of a potential substantial cumulative effect--that is to say, hundreds of intrastate sex advertisement websites would, together, have a substantial cumulative effect on interstate commerce, so congress would be justified in banning all sex advertising websites, even if individually they don't engage in interstate commerce.
Edit: This comment assumes that the website was in fact facilitating prostitution. This may or may not be the case, I have no idea.
A web site has to police the addresses of user base for user to user interactions? Are their examples where ebay, amazon, or similar service has to proactively police its user or suffer criminal charges for user to user interactions?
Therefore, the assumption is that the website was engaged in facilitating prostitution. The website may not have been engaged in facilitating prostitution, I have no idea.
There are likely plenty of arguments to be made here (the website is just a meeting place for users, it doesn't promote prostitution etc...)--that the federal government doesn't have the power to regulate a website facilitating prostitution is not one of them.
The above is really where I got the impression you were talking mainly about user to user interaction. Forum software would allow for "users in Michigan to solicit sex from users in Florida" so the statement seemed too inclusive.
Under the assumption they are facilitating what you said lines up with my understanding.
Anyone who runs a forum has to consider their liability for their users posting illegal content, from child porn down to less serious things.
I have not heard of the case where the prosecutor claimed the service provider was reasonably unaware of the illegal content and pressed charges. The cases I have read concern inaction after awareness.
a) use of interstate mail and communications for illegal activity
b) the illegal activity is specifically a violation of the California code prohibiting prostitution: facilitation of prostitution.
So the federal indictment is completely dependent upon the criminal violation of a state law. However, myredbook, or its owners, have never been indictment, let alone convicted, by the State of California. This is after more than a decade of operation.
Furthermore there is a federal law stating that web site owners / operators do not take any legal responsibility for the content provided by others. It does not matter if the web site owners charge or not charge these other parties for using the site.
This seems to be a really really bad legal case. At minimum the feds are presuming that the owners of my redbook would be convicted of a state crime, if the state would just prosecute them. As we all know, the American legal system presumes innocence until being convicted in a court of law.
So legally the feds don't seem to really have a case. All they seem to be doing is hassling the owners of myredbook with the intent of shutting the web site down.
So this totally appears to be someone in the justice department driving a moral or religious agenda and not really a legal one.
Good point, it is times like this that I miss GrokLaw for dependable in-depth analysis.
After reading this code it appears that the owners of myredbook need not be actually the people convicted of the illegal acts which are illegal by California state law. The owners of myredbook only need to facilitate the illegal acts of others. Since some posters / advertisers on myredbook have been convicted of prostitution this is likely the basis of using the California state prostitution laws in the myredbook owners federal indictment.
Furthermore, since the owners of myredbook used an interstate means, the Internet, and transferred funds between banks, maybe, in different states. This would be the other basis necessary to violate the above referenced federal law.
So it looks like the myredbook owners may be in pretty big trouble.
Why is that so clear?
It's fairly easy to create an infrastructure that directs users to servers solely in their state. Prostitution is a fairly local affair.
And even if they tried, there is no way to prevent users from just across the line in Alabama from searching for prostitutes in a bigger city in Georgia (geolocation based on IP address is not always that accurate).
But let's say the site could someone manage to ensure that no interstate commerce was going on between users--there is still interstate commerce happening because the company is operating across state lines by paying for all those servers/generating add revenue from all the users.
Furthermore, did you read the rest of my comment? None of the above really matters because a bunch of sites engaging in intrastate commerce can still have a substantial cumulative effect on interstate commerce.
Example classified: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RHLakOo...
Almost all ads explicitly listed the sex acts offered. People on there weren't even being discreet about it.
From glancing through the listing (on archive.org) I would suggest that "high-end" is inappropriate. It seems to include "high-end" escorts, but by no means be limited to them.
Unless, not being involved in any aspect of that trade, I just have a really wrong idea of what "high-end escort" means and the term includes those offering $50 no-condom oral sex.
[]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/10/emperors-club-all-a...?
LORELAI: Seventy-five thousand dollars. Seventy-five thousand dollars. Oh my God, that’s like 150 pairs of Jimmy Choos.
RICHARD: What are Jimmy Choos?
LORELAI: Shoes.
RICHARD: 150 pairs, that’s it?
LORELAI: Dad, they’re Jimmy Choos.
RICHARD: For seventy-five thousand dollars, you should be able to buy at least three or four hundred pairs of shoes.
LORELAI: Not Jimmy Choos.
RICHARD: But that’s ridiculous. You are not going to spend seventy-five thousand dollars on Jimmy Choos when you could buy four hundred pairs of less prestigious but I’m sure equally stylish shoes. You will shop around first. Is that clear?
LORELAI: Yes, sir.
The EFF post is so distorted that I have trouble figuring out if the EFF is just intentionally twisting the facts to piggy-back on a high visibility case (which seems horrendously ill-considered, even from a strategic point) or if they are just so negligent in reviewing the facts that they've gotten used by others.
There's real issues that this case could serve as a focal point for discussing -- particularly about the prohibition of prostitution and whether criminalization and the enforcement that goes along with it is a net positive or negative for society.
But its clearly not anything like a bust of a noncommercial education, legal resource, and health information site that happens to cater to sex workers being shut down because the government isn't happy with the client base or subject matter.
That's what attorneys do. They build narratives. In this case, they support freedom with their narratives. Apparently it's thankless work.
I like the EFF, but I've stopped putting any kind of credibility into their different blog posts and articles.
It is illegal for certain people to post certain things at certain locations on the internet. Posts aren't inherently illegal and I think you are missing the nuance more than the eff is.
> Is the EFF saying the FBI should have targeted specific illegal posts instead of taking down legal material as well?
What kind of question is that. It's like "Are you really saying that if someone put graffiti on your house, the FBI should paint over each letter instead of simply using a bulldozer?"
What the FBI and other 3 letter agencies don't have anything more important to do like solving murders and other cases where people actually got hurt.
I personally think prostitution should be legal anyway like the late George Calin put it "Selling is legal fucking is legal so why isn't selling fucking legal?"
Never assume any group is not doing this. Everyone makes more effort to present the facts that support their case/cause than they do those against/neutral. The EFF are better about not denying the truths they don't like than many similarly vocal groups, but don't expect them to tell you the facts that don't support their position.
> What the FBI and other 3 letter agencies don't have anything more important to do
They can't chose the laws that they concentrate on, really. The "don't you have something more important to do officer" argument (as often sung by petty criminals) is bunkum. They enact the law, all of it, and the reason they are chasing the people committing lesser offences (in the offender's eyes at least) is because people are committing lesser offences.
> "Selling is legal fucking is legal so why isn't selling fucking legal?"
This is probably the answer to a certain extent: legalise it, regulate it to try protect both the workers and the punters, and potentially tax it to cover the cost of that regulation.
Though the legalisation argument as it is usually presented is rather simplistic, and the effects it would have on major crime (for example people trafficking) seems vastly over-stated IMO.
The FBI needs to accept that shutting down these sites is not a sustainable option. Instead, it should cultivate the sites that are in US jurisdiction, and allow them to operate, so that the FBI can use them to monitor illicit activity.
Prositution is a victimless crime. Human trafficking is not. Unfortunately, without legalizing and regulating prostitution worldwide, it's impossible to disambiguate between an autonomous sex worker and a human trafficking victim. But sites like these can really help with that disambiguation.
The FBI should be working toward this disambiguation. It should be filtering out the sex workers from the human trafficking victims, because the latter are the only actual victims in this business.
The FBI needs to realize that sites like these are an asset to the fight against human trafficking, because they facilitate monitoring and analyzing the market. Shutting down these sites will not even make a dent in the demand for prositution. It will simply drive that demand elsewhere, to underground sites or ones outside of FBI jurisdiction.
This is a loss for human trafficking victims. By pushing this business further underground, the FBI loses some monitoring and detection ability, traffickers are likely angry, and victims lose the benefit of client accountability on sites like Myredbook. This shutdown will not affect the supply of, or demand for, human trafficking victims. It will only worsen their situation and further hide it from authorities.
But hey, the FBI gets some nice PR pieces about their latest big bust! Yeah! Go team! Such a formidable cyber security force!
[1] I invented the word "Hydratic," but it should totally become a thing.
Also, I'm not sure about your new word. At first, I thought you meant the sites are hydrostatic somehow.
Something must've changed, we're not getting the whole story here.
Or Pissed off a competitor with connections.
I really don't think shutting down a single website is going to make human traffickers angry. They can just keep doing business as usual, "the old-fashioned way". This is more of a loss for human trafficking customers than the victims.
>The FBI should be working toward this disambiguation. It should be filtering out the sex workers from the human trafficking victims, because the latter are the only actual victims in this business.
Have you ever considered that the opponents of legalized prostitution want it this way? They want prostitution to be conflated with human trafficking, rape, and violence against women because nobody is for those things. They want to be able to use that as their major emotional argument to circumnavigate logic and reason so people react based on emotion, not reason.
I think outlawing prostitution is the stupidest thing ever. Coercion, battery, human trafficking -- these are all crimes themselves and these are what most people are concerned about. It's a waste of time and effort. Removing a site like this will achieve nothing except perhaps endanger some of the sex workers -- think about it. Clients (for there will be clients, no doubt -- does anyone think one advertisment site makes a difference?) can behave in worse ways cos the forums are gone.
Maybe this is what people __claim to be most concerned about. But I would venture to guess more often than not, the real concerns are based on moral prudery, religious dogma, and stogid ideas of what a family !must be.
It asked by an HN moderator, I can provide proof.
i think independent workers are in worse situation to bring clients and have to be dependent on pimps
Regarding the decline of western civilization, people have always been horny, and some people need to pay for lovin' in order to address their horniness. I'm not convinced that paying for sex is related to moral decay. Morality itself is kind of a tricky subject.
2. yes, it facilitated prostitution.
If you had a bad experience or if the services weren't as described, did you use redbook to resolve the dispute?
Have you hired sexual services the old-fashioned way, at a brothel, massage parlor, or by picking up someone on the street? If so, how would you compare to the redbook experience?
Was there any indication that the sex workers you met were trafficked, or that they were 100% independent?
Did you participate in redbook discussions on health, legal or political matters, or were you primarily interested in finding suitable partners?
Thanks for posting here, and for answering questions!
I never wrote reviews on myredbook.
When I visited Australia a few years ago, I visited a legal brothel. All of my of purchases for sexual services were started online. Purchasing sex in Australia was pretty interesting, but I that was the novelty of the legality of the purchase.
I am pretty sure most sex workers were independent, but I have no way of verifying this.
I did not participate in discussions on myredbook.
You are welcome!
Most are independent sex workers, you can spot the micros run by gangsters (brosan) that are trafficking women pretty easily.
The site was used by many local agencies to help with busts, etc.
Personally, I am against the takedown. The laws around consenting adults engaging in private transactions should be legalized. My understanding is that the site did have measures in place to help with the underage aspect, but that is from reading more balanced news accounts.
What you're missing here is that they don't have a right to make money off of it. RedBook weren't just facilitating the discussion of illegal activity, they were making money out of the advertisements on the site. They were directly involved in the illegal activity.
The owners of myredbook were still a third party in these comments and did remove postings that could encourage child prostitution, robberies, or other serious violent crimes.
I'll agree that seizure of a discussion forum is truly a big problem. Simply seizing one because someone disagrees with the topics under discussion is a big problem. Not informing the operator of illegal activity before seizing is potentially dirty (e.g. if the operator is not participating in or encouraging the illegal activity.) Seizure of anything without due process of law is unacceptable and must be rectified.
But doing something illegal (regardless of whether it should be), having been brought before a court, having failed to defend oneself or overturn the law, and having property seized ... well, that's how it should work.
So how did this particular case go exactly?
No, a substantial part of the site was the ads [1], dominated (numerically) by the "escorts" section [2], in which the listings [3] appear to sometimes be fairly direct offers of sex for money [4] (note the same is also true, to some extent, of the other sections) even from just the index pages (the actual individual ads often don't appear to be archived, and I don't really feel like spending time digging through the links to examine the examples that are.)
I don't think arguing that the people arguing the site didn't know or intend it was being used to facilitate prostitution is credible given the publicly-available evidence.
[1] archive [NSFW] https://web.archive.org/web/20130423181042/http://classified...
[2] archive, San Francisco (most significant region) example [NSFW] https://web.archive.org/web/20130516182620/http://classified...
[3] archive, [NSFW] https://web.archive.org/web/20121227140137/http://classified...
[4] often using code terms/acronyms, but ones which, to avoid confusing the uninitiated, the forums have a glossary (posted by "redbook", not users); archive [NSFW] https://web.archive.org/web/20130424045028/http://forum.myre...
As many pointed out above, no. The majority of the forums looks to be advertisements for prostitution [0].
> Were they also used (with or without their operators' consent) to conduct illegal sex trade?
According to the FBI, "the website hosted advertisements for prostitutes, complete with explicit photos, lewd physical descriptions, menus of sexual services, hourly and nightly rates, and customer reviews of the prostitutes’ services" and the owner "engaged in more than twenty monetary transactions to launder the profits derived from the facilitation of prostitution" [1]. They are now looking to forfeit $5 million of those profits.
> If such activities were indeed happening without a site operators knowledge or consent, did law enforcement reach out to these operators in an attempt to curtail this activity?
While I couldn't find a source directly saying weather they did or did not, I would imagine it to be very difficult to collect enough evidence to go through with the forfeiture and trial while the future defendant knows they are being investigated.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130319123304/http://forum.myre...
[1] http://www.fbi.gov/sanfrancisco/press-releases/2014/californ...
The EFF certainly could have done a better job on this one. I'm not familiar with the site, but this seems to be a very different situation than Craigslist ran in to.
The sites had classifieds[1] for "adult services" and discussion boards[2]. The facilitation of prostitution has probably to do with the ads[3] and the related paid services[4], the operator knew and made money out of it.
The part of the forum mentioned in the eff post[5] has some usefulness (this one is even funny[6], as the reviews which ensure more safety for both customers and workers, similar to what silk road did for drugs.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130423181042/http://classified...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20130423175831/http://forum.myre...
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20130522010311/http://forum.myre...
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20130425190047/http://forum.myre...
[5] https://web.archive.org/web/20130724003117/http://forum.myre...
[6]: https://web.archive.org/web/20130508075213/http://forum.myre...
I'm hopelessly cynical at this point in my life, so I'm not surprised at all that our government sees that as facilitating prostitution.
In both cases what drives the classification as illegality is icky-ness. A heterosexual male cannot imagine having sex with another man - it is just icky for him. Similar, a woman wanting a monogamous relationship, with romance, sees prostitution as disgusting and just plain icky.
Most women cannot understand why any woman would become a prostitute. So they imagine that there must be some awful reason: human trafficking, dominance by a male (pimp), etc. For some prostitutes this is the case, but there are a vast number of women who practice prostitution and it is not.
For these women selling sex is not icky - they explain it as being uplifting since it provides a high level of financial security. They actually find it difficult to understand why other women take issue with it. Their sexuality may be different. I understand that bisexual women have a more male like sex drive and I bet there are higher percentage of bisexuals in prostitution than in the general population. Also lesbians may be over represented in prostitution - the dildo just has a guy attached to it that pays the rent.
So I propose here that the laws against prostitution are driven by perceived icky-ness (a form of sexual bigotry) as the laws against homosexuality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19gold.html?pagew...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/21/south-san-francisco...
i havent seen any ads exploiting them at all. most of times, workers are at least 5-6 years older if not 10+ years than advertisement.
I can fully believe there are a number of sex workers who found RedBook truly useful, and provided an extra layer of safety and security. What I can't believe is that for a line of work that is inherently illegal there were not at least some people who had abusive relationships with people coercing or even forcing them into it. You seem to be suggesting not a single woman (or man!) who used RedBook was being exploited, even a small minority. I think you're being naive.
the culture in myredbook is to treat them well and be alerted with foul plays at all times. myredbook is innovative in that sense, because it made a lot of people's lives both clients and provider easier and safer conducting business
users know whats best to protect themselves. youre naive to think if users can go for foul plays and manipulate these presumably exploited sex workers thru websites like redbook. users know there are pigs whos watching all the time ...
I also can't believe that for most lines of work that are entirely legal. That's a very high bar.
That does not appear to be accurate. Here are some news stories from 2009 to this year about arrests and convictions related to underage prostitution -- often with additional elements of slavery -- all linked to myredbook.com
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/apr/30/california-man-s...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/21/south-san-francisco...
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/05/26/man-accused-of-pim...
http://southsanfrancisco.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/...
Say I buy some cocaine from a man on the street. The guy I'm buying it from might be the nicest guy in the world, but that doesn't necessarily negate the fact that the process of getting the cocaine to him may have required some exploitation, slavery, and even murder.
My point is not to argue against sex work: on the contrary, I think it should be legalized. My point is you, as a Redbook user, are convinced "no foul plays" were going on, but how do you know that? Right now you have nothing to back up what you're saying apart from good faith.
Given that convictions of people for trafficking underage prostitutes through redbook have already occurred, the opposite of what is claimed in the grandparent post has already been proven in a court of law.
Well, unless he means "are not" in the strictly current sense, where the fact that the only thing on myredbook.com is the seizure notice proves, fairly conclusively, the claim made (which is, however, then a rather meaningless claim.)
EDIT (all below):
> My point is not to argue against sex work: on the contrary, I think it should be legalized. My point is you, as a Redbook user, are convinced "no foul plays" were going on, but how do you know that?
Indeed, I'd say that one of the clearest harms of the criminalization of prostitution is that it makes it much harder to protect against the grave abuses (like coercion and underage prostitution) because the kind of steps you'd need to take to weed them out are things that anyone involved in an already-illegal trade would refuse to cooperate with because it would increase their vulnerability even if they weren't involved in the grave abuses. Rather than being a tool to fight trafficking, the general criminalization of prostitution promotes trafficking.
You probably just meant the drugs sold by cartels. I mean, just the non-American cartels. I mean, the ones selling drugs we have made illegal here. No, not those, I mean dangerous drugs. That kill/maim users. No, I'm not talking about alcohol or tobacco or thalidomide. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. Right?
This sentence worries me the most. Anyone means, including those we believe are threat to society (mass killing killer for example). Also those who make racist remarks intentionally to embarrass others in public.
Shut down the poker sites because they facilitate illegal online gambling. Shut down the bitcoin sites because they facilitate money laundering. Etc.
You mentioned moral indignation, which is a pretty strong, and rare, kind of reaction. I assume you are not talking about the reaction of religious people when a rule is broken, but that spontaneous combination of disgust, revulsion, and outrage that comes when something egregiously violates basic decency. I don't want to live in a society that is so weak-willed that it can't even stand up for its own values and say "this is wrong!"
I think your right to free speech ends somewhere around the place where my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness begins.
I don't really want to live in a society where intimacy is so distorted that society accepts buying and selling the most intimate act as totally acceptable. You can't buy and sell intimacy (sexual or otherwise). True intimacy is rare and a little fragile, and is something I hope that society feels is worth taking a stand to protect.
I think your right to free speech ends somewhere around the place where my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness begins.
As long as my pursuit of happiness doesn't involve acts that you dislike, right? "You're free - to act as we tell you"
Regarding your comment on intimacy (by which I mean relational intimacy, not a euphemism for sex), all I can say is, there are some things that money can't buy, nor can be valued in money. Trust is one of them. True friendship is another. If you think that intimacy must be priceable or marketable to have a value, I submit that perhaps you have not experienced what I am talking about.
And unfortunately, without a long comment, I don't know how to explain my opinion that prostitution devalues intimacy. I will say that there are many people who feel that sex is more about relational intimacy than just a physical act or pleasure, although they may be a minority here (and quite possibly in the U.S. culture at large).
People can find moral indignation at anything. People from certain countries find women with uncovered heads truly indignant. It might have a difference from merely disliking, but in the end, it's just as subjective and meaningless.
Quoting Eminem, which is something I don't think I've ever done before, You find me offensive; I find you offensive for findin' me offensive.
And I'm not making a rhetorical point when I say attitudes like yours, who consider themselves superior to others and therefore worthy of deciding how others should live their lives, absolutely disgusting. Does that mean your opinions should be banned, as causes of moral indignation?
If you think that intimacy must be priceable or marketable to have a value
I don't see how you can possibly read that from my comment.
And unfortunately, without a long comment, I don't know how to explain my opinion that prostitution devalues intimacy.
How can see how prostitution devalues intimacy for the participants. But you're going to have to explain to me how does prostitution happening to other people devalues your intimacy.
And guess what: prostitution is still happening, even while illegal.
I will say that there are many people who feel that sex is more about relational intimacy than just a physical act or pleasure
Sex is just a physical act. Lobsters have sex. What your sexual activities are about is for you to decide. Just stop trying to impose your views on others. Because you won't accomplish it, you'll just hurt a lot of people and make sexual traffickers very happy.
Free speech is great because social consequences not government laws keep it check. Free speech is not about what kind of society we want to create. It is about not going to jail for your opinions, regardless of what kind of society someone else wants to create.
EDIT: No, that doesn't allow incitement to violence, though in the US it does allow hate speech that isn't incitement.
Amazing, after the most naive and historically inaccurate characterization of the EFF's defense of freedom(s), you're worried? NOT SURPRISING.
PS: Felons are already prohibited from associating, and racist remarks intended to embarrass is a perfect example of protected speech. Just don't confuse legal defense with social acceptability. The public isn't as exacting as the law.