SESTA claims to be about stopping sex trafficking. In fact, the name of the full bill is Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (or SESTA for short).
Many insiders said all along this bill was about getting Backpage so when the 93 indictments came to fruition everyone was shocked that not a single one was for sex trafficking.
In fact, what they nailed Backpage on was knowingly facilitating prostitution by running ads for sexual services and using foreign banks to hide revenues.
Turns out the writers of the bill just used “sex trafficking” to get lawmakers on board because who wants to be the congressman or senator that didn’t sign on to support stopping sex trafficking.
The seven people charged in the federal indictment are accused of trying to sanitize ads by removing photos and words that were indicative of prostitution and then publishing a revised version of the notices.
3 Responses
These charges are not based on SESTA.
The California charges from 2016 were dismissed based on federal free speech issues. These are federal criminal charges the government thinks they can prove without the benefits of SESTA.
To me this case is proving just how real and tangible the Internet has become in our everyday lives. The Mann Act has survived since 1910 and it isn’t going away with the implementation of SESTA and neither is sex-trafficking.
This is ridiculous. The government is using SESTA to do whatever they want and ruin sex workers livelihood and kill the adult industry. Typical of what happens when Republicans are in the oval office and controlling Congress and the Senate.
Just read through all 61 pages of indictment, WOW!!!
This is the same stuff Eric Omuro (MyRedbook) pleaded guilty to.
This investigation goes back to 2008 with a decade of back and forth between Backpage and various enforcement agencies and NCMEC. Page 54/61 starts forfeiture lists of ten properties and 25 bank accounts plus 35 specific domains.
Two things stand out as red flags for the industry as a whole. First is the NCMEC dance including international age verification efforts. Second is the banking timelines in the indictment. This isn’t over and SESTA is going to give a lot of lawyers sleepless nights.