Why Everyone Should be Concerned By the Seizure of MyRedBook.com

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/whose-redbook-why-everyone-should-be-concerned-seizure-myredbookcom

by panarky • 12 years ago

356 110 12 years ago

panarky2• 12 years ago

This issue is more ethically ambiguous than the EFF acknowledged in their post. The EFF only links to the legal and health forums, while the FBI claims the sites "were used to facilitate prostitution" [0]:

  advertisements for prostitutes... menus of sexual services,
  hourly and nightly rates, and customer reviews of the
  prostitutes’ services.

You can see an example of an advertisement here (NSFW): https://web.archive.org/web/20130521131010/http://forum.myre...

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...

tomasien• 12 years ago

Thank you for posting this. EFF makes the site seem like purely a forum and it just wasn't - it doesn't change MY personal opinion of this matter (I am against the takedown STRONGLY) but it worries me when people with whom I agree seem to miss the mark on providing an accurate representation of the facts. I'm not suggesting it's intentionally misleading, but I think it doesn't get it exactly right.

chillingeffect• 12 years ago

I wish the EFF had stated the case as an issue of state's rights.

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

onewaystreet2• 12 years ago

MyRedBook's forums were second to its classified which were used to find and rate high-end escorts. There's no question the site was used facilitate prostitution. With that said, the site had been running since 2002. Why were they busted now?

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.

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

MyRedBook's forums were second to its classified which were used to find and rate high-end escorts.

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.

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

This issue is more ethically ambiguous than the EFF acknowledged in their post

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.

throwawaykf05• 12 years ago

I've said it before, but the EFF frequently twists the facts to push their agenda. Of course, it's not a popular opinion to have 'round these parts.

spacemanmatt8• 12 years ago

That's what they do. They are an advocacy organization. And when you say "twist" they say "place into a factual narrative."

That's what attorneys do. They build narratives. In this case, they support freedom with their narratives. Apparently it's thankless work.

rando289• 12 years ago

illegal posts

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?"

Fuxy• 12 years ago

It's is a bit troubling that the EFF didn't present the entire issue however going against sex worker really?

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?"

spacemanmatt8• 12 years ago

I don't get it, either. Since when is it the EFF's role to do anything but advocate for rights when they are abridged? I suspect someone feels butthurt they did not understand the entire story before they formed an opinion, and now blame the EFF for their butthurt.

dspillett• 12 years ago

It's is a bit troubling that the EFF didn't present the entire issue

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.

spacemanmatt8• 12 years ago

I find it a broad overreach to take down entire sites based on allegations that some members may have been using it for illegal purposes.

delinka• 12 years ago

Were these sites only (or primarily) discussion boards? Were they also used (with or without their operators' consent) to conduct illegal sex trade? 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? Too little information from EFF on this.

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?

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

Were these sites only (or primarily) discussion boards?

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...

myredbookuser7• 12 years ago

As a user of myredbook, I used the service for finding sex workers via the classifieds section, and also reading reviews written about sex workers.

mrbusr1236• 12 years ago

i can confirm that as a long time user as well

tinalumfoil• 12 years ago

Were these sites only (or primarily) discussion boards?

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...

AJ007• 12 years ago

The money laundering charge can be used to coerce the owner in to pleading guilty to whatever else they want to add to the list -- whether or not there is a case for it. Considering the age of the site, one would speculate that the owner may have said no to something the government politely asked for, and then ended up getting their insides turned out as a result.

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.

bigbugbag• 12 years ago

Were these sites only (or primarily) discussion boards? Were they also used (with or without their operators' consent) to conduct illegal sex trade?

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...

gavanwoolery2• 12 years ago

Ironically our governing powers outlaw these services, while many of them partake in them.

tadfisher• 12 years ago

Misdirected hostility? We voted for them.

justinzollars• 12 years ago

Let me translate that. "don't blame me i voted for kodos"

spacemanmatt8• 12 years ago

Have you met Texas? The only animal allowed to vote here is the gerrymander. I figure it's similar elsewhere.

gavanwoolery2• 12 years ago

I did not vote for them. All politicians are picked from a curated pool of people I would never vote for. They all tend to be wealthy, connected, and/or ivy-leaguers (none of these things are inherently bad, but they also don't play well towards the interest of the "common" man - small wonder that the middle class gets screwed). There are very few "commoners" in the higher ranks. Many are picked by the real ruling class, corporations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19gold.html?pagew...

myredbookuser7• 12 years ago

I used myredbook to connect with, and buy sexual services from, several dozen of sex workers. I'm also a regular HN reader, and this is a throwaway account created just for this thread. AMA (ask me anything).

It asked by an HN moderator, I can provide proof.

woah• 12 years ago

Do you feel that MyRedBook was in any way harmful to the well-being of the sex workers? If not, was it contributing to the moral decay of western civilization?

mrbusr1236• 12 years ago

no. Sex workers are losing business instead. myredbook was the place for them to advertise. they built client network mostly through redbook. If there are negative sides for workers, it'd be them being reviewed as a slacker and losing clients.

i think independent workers are in worse situation to bring clients and have to be dependent on pimps

chris_mahan2• 12 years ago

Prostitution, despite being the oldest profession, seems to not have had a negative impact on the development of western civilization. Western civilization seems to be doing just fine.

myredbookuser7• 12 years ago

I think my red book safer. I personally behaved myself more because I didn't want to get robbed, or shamed in public.

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.

arfliw• 12 years ago

1. no, it helped them.

2. yes, it facilitated prostitution.

panarky2• 12 years ago

Can you explain how you used the redbook site? Did you find sex workers through paid ads or classifieds? Did you rely on reviews of other customers?

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!

myredbookuser7• 12 years ago

I would typically find escorts at the last minute, so I can't speak for what it's like to plan ahead. I'd first search the classifieds for women offering incall (I go to their place, usually a hotel) in San Francisco. Next, I scroll through the ads, only reading ads that have reviews & pictures, looking for the right escort at the right price. When I find an ad the looms promising, I double check the reviews to make sure they aren't horrible, and I also use Google to search for fake images. If everything looks good, I try to contact the escort to book an appointment.

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!

AlyssaRowan• 12 years ago

Would a site hosted in a country outside the FBI's jurisdiction help? What if it were a Tor hidden service? Do you know how to use Tor or Tails? Do you believe your peers do? (Obviously, I'm not in a position to do that myself; I'm asking in the general case.)

myredbookuser7• 12 years ago

I've used Tor before. If buysex.onion was a quality site, I'd consider using it. I'm not aware of an escort site that is only Tor accessible, and I've never looked for one.

dobbsbob• 12 years ago

My first online paid job was writing fake reviews by the hundreds on that and similar sites like TER (the escort review) years ago. Every review site for sex work is rigged I'm sure I wasn't the only one hired to do it. Feds lately have targeted banks for dealing with sex workers for unknown reasons, like when banks dropped porn valley actress's accounts. Who knows why they decided now to takedown the site and not backpages or TER, and dozens more clones of myredbook.

Most are independent sex workers, you can spot the micros run by gangsters (brosan) that are trafficking women pretty easily.

myredbookuser7• 12 years ago

It doesn't surprise me that many reviews were fake.

mrbusr1236• 12 years ago

there are no sex slaves, underage girls in myredbook. True, there are pimps and prostitutes from overseas, but no foul plays here.

NoPiece• 12 years ago

These underage sex slaves were pimped on myredbook:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/21/south-san-francisco...

mrbusr1236• 12 years ago

users have always been alerted if there is any foul plays regarding how these workers are treayed and reported any foul plays(robbery, violence, theft, etc.)

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.

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

there are no sex slaves, underage girls in myredbook.

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/...

http://www.wired.com/2009/02/pimping

objclxt3• 12 years ago

Can you prove that? Was RedBook, for example, asking for proof of identity and age from those offering their services? How do you know that, say, some of those from overseas were not having to pay back large "fees" to their pimps for being brought into the country?

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.

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

Can you prove that?

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.

myredbookuser7• 12 years ago

There were many, many ads on myredbook posed by a person with no reviews, and the pictures in the ad were not the sex worker providing the service. It wouldn't be hard to sell someone on hooking up with a fictional 18 year old, then delivering a 17 year old who clearly isn't the person from the ad. Personally I avoided these ads, but only because I learned through trial and error that meeting sex workers with reviews was usually a better value.

harrystone• 12 years ago

"Today we also lost extensive online forums for a community of sex workers to keep each other safe, screen clients, and blacklist predators."

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.

chris_mahan2• 12 years ago

It's ok. The next version of the internet won't be using DNS anyway.

JorgeJetson5• 12 years ago

I see much of the argument here is about "facilitating prostitution," that such facilitation would trump free speech protections, both constitutionally and in other laws. But the opposite is true, as highlighted by the EFF, third parties, who are not involved in the illegal activity have a right to discuss that activity and do not take responsibility for the actions or postings of others. With respect to the Internet, there is a federal law, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which states that Web service providers cannot be "treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider".

objclxt3• 12 years ago

third parties, who are not involved in the illegal activity have a right to discuss that activity

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.

JorgeJetson5• 12 years ago

Actually, advertisements were free. They made money on enhanced reviews of providers and clients. In other words, one could, for a fee, dig deeper into reading comments between and about users of myredbook.

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.

Dylan16807• 12 years ago

That might be true in theory but tell it to torrent sites, shut down without ever touching a single bit of pirated data.

jmspring• 12 years ago

My read is the move was more about the money laundering than either "protecting the children" or "facilitating prostitution".

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.

stray8• 12 years ago

The money laundering was the moving of funds to savings accounts, and other accounts in his name or business name. It's money laundering because the proceeds were allegedly derived from an illegal act. But not what people typically think of money laundering.

myredbookutoo• 12 years ago

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I have been using myredbook and reading HN regurarly too.

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.

jqm• 12 years ago

"Coercion, battery, human trafficking -- .....these are what most people are concerned about."

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.

makomk• 12 years ago

Very much so. In particular, anti-trafficking groups are strongly opposed to any solution to trafficking that doesn't involve making life harder and more dangerous for sex workers and label anyone who actually listens to the workers "pimps", as though respecting those women was somehow equivalent to forcing them to have sex.

yeukhon2• 12 years ago

EFF has always supported freedom of association and free speech, no matter who is doing the talking.

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.

TazeTSchnitzel• 12 years ago

Free speech isn't necessarily unlimited. It is often defined to exclude hate speech, for example.

yeukhon2• 12 years ago

I am sorry, but that's not how I would interpret their statement. They make it very clear "no matter who is talking."

iopq• 12 years ago

If you define it that way, then there is an unlimited potential to extend illegal speech to everything.

Shut down the poker sites because they facilitate illegal online gambling. Shut down the bitcoin sites because they facilitate money laundering. Etc.

quotemstr• 12 years ago

The right to free speech is meaningless if it encompasses only the speech with which we already agree. Unless speech represents an imminent danger to society, restricting it is wrong and an abridgment of fundamental western values. This principle applies to hate speech, bomb-making instructions, and reviews of prostitutes. Distastefulness and moral indignation are not legitimate grounds for restricting speech.

prewett2• 12 years ago

I am going to have to disagree with everything but your first sentence. Free speech is more about what kind of society we want to create. I don't want to live in the kind of society where hate speech is unrestricted or where instructions on how to make bombs to destroy people's lives and/or property are unrestricted.

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.

rosser2• 12 years ago

Free speech is for speech you don't like, or it's for no speech at all.

EDIT: No, that doesn't allow incitement to violence, though in the US it does allow hate speech that isn't incitement.

pessimizer3• 12 years ago

The US version of 'free speech' doesn't allow incitement to immanent violence, but it certainly allows for advocating violence.

spacemanmatt8• 12 years ago

This sentence worries me the most. [deletia]

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.

chatmasta• 12 years ago

This is a move in the opposite direction of where the government should be going. Sites like Myredbook, Backpage, Rubmaps (and at one time even craigslist) are Hydratic. [1] like Hydra, when you take down one, two will appear in its place. Has the FBI not learned by now that it does not have jurisdiction over the entire internet? New sites can pop up in any non-FBI jurisdiction or on Tor, and there isn't shit the FBI can do.

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.

deciplex• 12 years ago

"The FBI" doesn't give a fresh shit about any of those things, because the FBI doesn't give a fresh shit about the lot of prostitutes nor victims of human trafficking. Someone in the FBI just made a headline that will help them get their next promotion, though.

Also, I'm not sure about your new word. At first, I thought you meant the sites are hydrostatic somehow.

onewaystreet2• 12 years ago

MyRedBook had been operating for more than a decade. It's highly unlikely that the FBI just became aware of them in the last year. Something changed the FBI's position.

prostoalex• 12 years ago

Exactly, and if you're FBI, trying to bust prostitution and trafficking, what better tool is out there than a Web site that conveniently spells out contact details for those involved in such a trade. Open to anybody so that screenshots with timestamps can be taken and attached to the case when it's ready to be passed on to the prosecution.

Something must've changed, we're not getting the whole story here.

the_ancient2• 12 years ago

Yea MyRedBook probably stop paying off the right agents/government officials.....

Or Pissed off a competitor with connections.

psykovsky• 12 years ago

http://www.krcrtv.com/news/FBI-shuts-alleged-child-prostitut...

dat title...

tomphoolery• 12 years ago

traffickers are likely angry,

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.

FedRegister• 12 years ago

Prostitution 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.

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.

totoroisalive• 12 years ago

Glad to read it was only the domain, It makes me sad the awful methods of protecting the sensitive data of these kind of sites.

wtracy• 12 years ago

The article states that servers were siezed as well.

taylor_fitz• 12 years ago

I believe their servers were in the Cayman Islands.

sytelus• 12 years ago

I'm wondering how this same argument would pan out if this was a website for the "community" of drug dealers or child abusers to allow discussions of their "problems" and protect their anonymity.

spacemanmatt8• 12 years ago

Good question. Catholics, care to weigh in on sites taken down?

spacemanmatt8• 12 years ago

I just checked. All the major drug dealers' sites are up.

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?

Igglyboo• 12 years ago

Does anyone find it weird that they left the google analytics scripts on the seized pages? Or is it possibly more sinister in that they're seizing the analytic data as well.

JorgeJetson5• 12 years ago

There are many similarities between the old laws prohibiting homosexuality and laws prohibiting prostitution. both concern sexual behavior that are seen, by some, as sexual deviance. Men are more likely than women to be concerned with homosexuality. Whereas women are more likely than men to be concerned with 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.

Why Everyone Should be Concerned By the Seizure of MyRedBook.com

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