One of the great unsung benefits of free,
easy-to-use digital classifieds has been facilitating the sex
trade. Advertising online make things safer for sex workers, who no
longer have to take to the streets to find clients, make snap
judgements about them, and then often get in their vehicles. And as
the Internet and smartphones have made it easier to find, screen,
and arrange meetings with clients, an increasing number of sex
workers have been able to go freelance, absent traditional pimps,
escort services, and the like.
While the violence and exploitation of pimps
may be overstated in popular media, there’s no denying that
autonomy confers many advantages to sex workers. Namely, no one’s
taking a cut of your money, telling you whom to sleep with, or
setting your hours. For those who are in exploitative or violent
situations, surely the possibility of working autonomously—which
certainly wasn’t always a possibility for previous generations of
sex workers, who may have faced working for a pimp or not working
at all—can help provide motivation to flee.
Giving sex workers more autonomy helps combat violence
and sex trafficking. Naturally, the FBI is trying shut down tools
that help foster this autonomy.
Recently
the FBI went after MyRedBook, a popular San Francisco-area
website used by sexual service providers (and seekers) of all
sorts. By almost all accounts, it was a space that not only
connected sex workers with clients but also served as a sort of
community forum, one which enabled sex workers to vet clients, warn
about predators, and offer advice to one another. The website’s
shutdown—visit MyRedBook.com and you’ll see only the seals of the
FBI, Department of Justice, and Internal Revenue Service—has
produced ample outrage from
sex workers, who see it not only as a financial hit but also a
strike against their safety.
“But to police and those who fight human trafficking, the
closure of such businesses sends a tough message and should be
celebrated,”
according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The websites, they say, can easily facilitate the victimization
of women and children forced or coerced into sex by domineering
pimps.“The behavior remains illegal,” said Alameda County Deputy
District Attorney Casey Bates, who heads the office’s human
exploitation and trafficking unit. “There’s danger associated with
prostitution. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the reality of it. When
people say it’s a victimless crime, that’s not true.”
People like Bates have to know that shutting down web forums
where sex workers advertise isn’t going to actually stop people
from buying or selling sex. But they sell this shit in the language
of heroes, speaking to all the women and children they’re helping.
They are liars.
Shutting down websites like MyRedBook leads to more
women relying on “domineering pimps.” Shutting down websites like
MyRedBook increases the amount of danger associated with
prostitution. There’s no reason there needs to be a victim in
consensual sexual encounters, but criminalizing prostitution and
driving it deeper underground is what winds up leading to victims.
Either the people who spew this kind of rhetoric are very cruel or
very stupid, and my bet is on about equal amounts both.
As Maggie McNeill stressed in a recent interview with Reason TV,
decriminalizing prostitution is really about harm reduction.
That is the bottom line. The FBI and countless local law
enforcement agencies across the country are actively encouraging
sexual exploitation, trafficking, and violence against women with
their current policies and tactics. There is “danger
associated with prostitution,” and it comes from people like the
Alameda County Deputy District Attorney and his ilk.
But the FBI shutdown of MyRedBook.com has implications beyond
the sex trade. “Regardless of what you think of prostitution,
taking a website before a conviction for any crime should make
people extremely uncomfortable,”
writes Lucy Steigerwald at Rare.
The federal seizure of My Red Book is not unique. The last
several years have seen controversy over FBI and Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) domain name taking. DHS’s actions tended to
be over copyright violation allegations.… My Red Book was partially taken under the 1970 Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) as well as other
forfeiture legislation. RICO began as a reasonable-sounding way to
bring down mobsters who use legitimate businesses as fronts for
their illicit dealings. The government decided it needed a way to
take assets from these people, so that that profits couldn’t simply
be hidden behind legal enterprises.But during the 1980s, when the drug war hysteria peaked,
loosening of civil asset forfeiture standards increased the ability
of government to take cash, cars, or even homes and businesses
belonging to individuals suspected of drug crime. No conviction, no
charges even necessary.
Most of the FBI’s
takings from My Red Book include things like $5 million
and the owners’ cars, but part of the taking includes the entire
site and domain name itself. Purging websites from the Internet
under racketeering laws is “a wide and rocky road towards
censorship which needs to be challenged,” Steigerwald writes.
A website is speech, like anything analog. Shutting one down
without due process is nothing more than censorship.Just because the federal government wants to shield our eyes
from prostitution doesn’t mean we should let it—and certainly not
at the cost of our First Amendment rights.
Nadia Kayyali, an activist
with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the FBI’s
seizure of MyRedBook is both “part of a disturbing trend of
targeting sex workers” as well as “an attack on the rights to free
speech and free association exercised by a diverse group of people,
many of whom have nothing to do with the alleged crimes.”
When the government goes after “sex trafficking”, somehow
everybody becomes a little less free.
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1oAJ0tt
via IFTTT