Human Trafficking Legislation versus Big Tech Companies

By Leziga Barikor

            On Aug. 1 of 2017, the U.S. Congress Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) sponsored the bill Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act or SESTA, and fellow Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) who is a former sex crimes prosecutor is another major cosponsor to the bill along with John McCain (R-Arizona).

            SESTA is one of the multiple bills Congress has considered to combat the crime of human trafficking. The National Criminal Justice Reference Service defines human trafficking as the acquisition, transportation, holding or maintenance of persons of any age by illegal means; such as kidnapping, deception, brute force or fraudulence; for exploitation. And although human trafficking victims come from every demographic background, they are all similar in having a shared state of being in desperate social positions or coming from marginalized groups.

            The SESTA is targeted at amending the Communications Act of 1934 section 230 remove the blanket immunity it gives to interactive computer services from Federal and State criminal and civil prosecution specifically in the area of sex trafficking. The bill also specifically targets the newer portion of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 that it claims, “Was never intended to provide legal protection to websites that facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims.”

            The bill has faced opposition by lobbyist from many big tech companies such as such as Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, up until most recently. Although all those major tech companies were lobbying mostly in the defense of a possibly lesser known website, Backpage.com.

            Backpage started selling classified non-adult listings in 2004, but after Craigslist shut down its adult-services in 2010 Backpage was in the wings and saw numbers of adult ads drastically increase. In the St. Paul-Minneapolis area alone, more than 20,000 escort ads appeared on the Backpage.com in the year 2016 leading officials to believe that trafficked children in the area are being missed.

            In an in-depth small sample study of human trafficking victims published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, out of 25 patients who were victims of minor human trafficking 92 percent of them were sold via the use of Internet websites. Most of those sales went through Backpage.com at 56 percent, followed by Facebook.com at 16 percent and lastly online dating sites which they counted with Facebook.com as venue where 20 percent of minors in this study were sold. Studies further cited in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence stated that Backpage.com is the top site for traffickers to solicit clients, and “Awareness of Backpage.com as a venue for sex trafficking has increased for both victims and those tasked with identifying involved youth.”

            The role of Backpage.com in the trafficking of youth has been met with many failed litigation attempts from the families of those affected and anti-trafficking groups suing on their behalf. There was a point in time where 73 percent of all minor trafficking reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children involved Backpage.com. But despite the many lawsuits, the CDA Section 230 has protected Backpage from being held criminally or civily liable.

            The big tech companies have approached the Backpage CDA immunity by claiming a change in that legislation would do more to harm internet freedoms and the Frist Amendment than it would help aid the problem of human trafficking. In a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, lobbyist for big tech stated that Section 230 protects online intermediaries from the chilling effect of potential lawsuits and encourages accountability.

Professor Eric Goldman from Santa Clara University School of Law was called to testify to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. He testified stating, “However, I am concerned that SESTA is not the right solution to stop sex trafficking. Specifically, SESTA will counterproductively lead to more socially harmful content and more online sex trafficking promotions.”

Goldman continued to defend CDA Section 230 as being the model through which Internet website providers were able to have success and grow into the digital universe now in existence. He said by freeing liability from whatever website moderators miss, the CDA Section 230 allowed Internet free speech to exist and it continually protects services such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, eBay etc. who all rely upon third party content providers.

            Those in favor of changing the CDA have spoken out strongly against Google for taking a lobbying position against the bill. Patrick Trueman, the president of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said, “Google lobbyist are bombarding members of Congress with emails against passage of the only legislation that will dramatically decrease sex trafficking of girls, boys, and adults online. This is a case of Big Tech caring more about its bottom line than the victims of serial rape for profit.”

            But as documents came to light proving that Backpage.com profited and intentionally worked with advertisement moderators to help mask the code words that would tip off Federal authorities about child trafficking on their website, big tech companies have started to abandon the case for CDA section 230. This has caused Congress woman McCaskill to feel even more confident about the passing of SESTA.

            “We’re going to keep that drumbeat going until we have the full set of legal tools we need to hold companies like Backpage accountable and ensure justice for its victims,” McCaskill said to States News Service. The bipartisan bill has now received support from companies such as Oracle, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Home Depot, Hewlett Packard and IBM as well as more supporting senators.

            The Senators Portman and McCaskill’s bipartisan attempts to put an end to Backpage.com’s legal immunity still have yet to come to pass. Although their report entitled, “Backpage.com’s Knowing Facilitation of Online Sex Trafficking” found the damaging evidence of how the company covered up crimes for profit, there still has not been a successful suit from victims of Backpage.

            The damaging report did little to quell the support of Google since coming out in early 2017. The groups Internet Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, the R Street Institute, the Software and Information Industry Association and the Center for Democracy and Technology all received continual funding from Google as they opposed the SESTA amendment.

            In a statement to Communications News, Inc, a senior aide to Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) said that the technology industry thinks incorrectly that any change to the CDA would open up the legal opposition to internet free speech.

            Madelyn Plain, a 22-year-old advocate for human trafficking from Des Moines, Iowa said that the issue of human trafficking is widespread and very common all over the state of Iowa. Plain said that Congress is working on changing the definition of human trafficking so it is not limited to requiring transportation of persons. One common instance of human trafficking, is that a student may be trafficked from their home and sold for sex without actually being transported to a new location. By changing the definition of human trafficking, those victims could be better accommodated.

            According to the University of Northern Iowa Chapter President of International Justice Mission Michelle Powers, the average age of a person trafficked in America is 11 to 14 years old. Traffickers who may also be known as pimps, reach out to minors specifically because the demographic is the most vulnerable to exploitation.

            There are many organizations or programs in existence that seek to combat the issue of human trafficking. Iowa native, Ashton Kutcher along with his now ex-wife Demi Moore, founded Thorn to target the issue of child sex trafficking online. The organization seeks to use technology to help law enforcement tackle the vast online issue of child trafficking and child pornography. Google is named among one of its sponsors.

            Although the opposition from Google and other big technology companies has dissipated, their role in slowing down and even putting a stop to legislation in the past created to fight the Backpage and web based human trafficking issues remains. It is yet to be seen if bills that were shut down in part due to lobbying efforts from Google associates will be re-written and see another chance to be passed in legislation.
            As for the internet freedoms Backpage represented, the big tech companies that consumers depend on for third party content like YouTube and Twitter may have to see ramifications for willful wrong doing. Backpage made a consorted effort to profit from it’s adult classified ads and hide the minors being advertised from authorities. Website that are not in the same category of selling escort ads, but still may be used for that purpose should not face any higher recourse if their system proves that they did everything in their power to prevent the abuse of their website. 
            Plain said websites like Facebook have good reporting systems for suspicious pages or pages that viewers fear might be engaged in human trafficking. The vast market on the internet for underaged children is being fought on many fronts legislatively and through non-profit work according to Plain.