Police admitting that FOSTA/SESTA made it harder to catch pimps and traffickers

Police admitting that FOSTA/SESTA made it harder to catch pimps and traffickers(techdirt.com)

59 points by sqdbps 7 years ago | 3 comments

xfitm3 7 years ago |

Backpage had a staff of ~70 people who screened adult advertisements and regularly reported suspicious activity to the police. With escort advertising now being so fragmented it just makes the job of investigators harder.

I think this bill had good intentions but was poorly implemented. ISP safe harbor provisions are really important.

Until there is case law precedent the good site operators are being cautious and shutting down. The sites you see now are likely ran by the shadier people in the industry who don’t care as much, if at all, about the law.

Source: I worked IT at a adult company for over a decade.

jstarfish 7 years ago |

That's a very slanted title.

Its not any "harder" than it used to be pre-legislation. Some cops are just whining that their favorite watering holes got drained and they cant sit around all day filing subpoenas anymore.

All this means is that if you can still find hookers online, rest assured you're two steps ahead of the police. They'll go back to tossing massage parlors in the meantime.

Nasrudith 7 years ago | |

Well it is still more work to catch them I would say that qualifies as harder. Still as easy to arrest but tracking them down and proving the case is the hard part. There are files of "known but unproven" careful crooks such as crime family heads.