The FBI Just Seized Backpage.com

[Reefa]

The website has previously been the subject of numerous lawsuits and a Congressional investigation for its alleged role in facilitating child sex trafficking.

On Friday, visitors to backpage.com, a website for classified ads, were greeted with a message notifying them that the site had been seized by several US federal agencies, including the FBI, Postal Inspection Service, and IRS Criminal Investigation Division.

 

The note also said the investigation was being aided by the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, as well as US attorney general offices in Arizona and California. The notice was posted to the site several hours after the Arizona home of its co-founder, Michael Lacey, was raided.

 

Although Backpage hosted listings for everything from apartments to escorts, a California Department of Justice report found that more than 90 percent of its $135 million in revenue was derived from adult ads. This has made the site the subject of litigation for years, although problems for the site intensified in 2016 when a Senate subcommittee launched an investigation into the site’s role in child sex-trafficking.

 

According to the Washington Post, the subcommittee report found that Backpage had modified ads to remove references to children while allowing the ads to remain on the site. Backpage denied its role in child prostitution and said it reported all such instances to law enforcement authorities when they were found.

 

In 2016, the Dallas office of Backpage was raided and its CEO Carl Ferrer was arrested on charges of pimping a minor. The charges against Ferrer were eventually dismissed on the grounds that web publishers cannot be held responsible for content published by third parties on their website under the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

 

In January 2017, the Supreme Court refused to revive a lawsuit filed by three women that claimed the site was used to facilitate their forced prostitution. Shortly thereafter, however, the company pulled all of its adult ads in response to the findings from the Senate subcommittee and called the move unconstitutional censorship by the government.

 

Last month, the US Congress passed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. This bill undermines the Communications Decency Act by holding web publishers accountable for what people say and do on their platforms, ostensibly in the name of fighting human trafficking. The bill was widely condemned by sex workers, who said the bill destroyed the distinction between consensual sex work and human trafficking, as well as free speech activists, who said the bill crushed freedom of expression on the internet.

 

FOSTA is still awaiting a signature from President Trump, although a number of sites, including a Furry dating site and the Craigslist personals section, shut down their pages proactively. It is unclear what new developments prompted the raid of Lacey’s home and the seizure of backpage.com, although its possible that passage of FOSTA has emboldened law enforcement officers to take action against the site.

 

Motherboard contacted the US Department of Justice for more information and will update this post when we hear back.

 

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[WALLONN7]

Very good news!!! 

[flitox]

so using the same logic, the FED should be seized & closed cuz people are using dollars to buy sexual relationship from minors but drugs also.

[straycat19]

Backpage, the classifieds website that stood accused of hosting prostitution ads, was “seized” by federal authorities on Friday.

Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division and other agencies said there would be further information provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, no further details have yet been released.

 

The shuttering of the website comes after years of legal maneuvering. Three corporate officers of Backpage were arrested on charges of “pimping” brought by California authorities in 2016. But just months later, those criminal charges were dismissed. In January 2017, the company announced it was removing all “adult content” from the site—and vowed to wage a First Amendment fight.

Now, it appears the federal and state authorities have shut down the site.

 

A pop-up box over the traditional listings for Backpage announces “backpage.com and affiliated websites have been seized,” complete with the logos of the FBI, the DOJ, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and others. Also named on the site were the California and Texas attorneys general.

 

The box promises additional information would be provided by 6 p.m. on Friday. However, no further details were released—and federal authorities told multiple news outlets over the weekend that a judge had kept parts of the ongoing case against the company sealed.

 

An attorney for Backpage could not be reached for comment by Forensic Magazine on Monday.

 

Backpage has been the target of several law enforcement agencies and anti-sex-trafficking groups, who have accused the site of being a nexus of illegal activity—particularly underage prostitution. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said in a court filing several years ago that, of the 10,000 reports of child sex trafficking the agency receives every year, a “disturbingly high proportion” originate with Backpage.

 

A new piece of legislation that has yet to be signed by President Donald Trump has nonetheless been cheered by critics of online classifieds sites. The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017, popularly known as FOSTA, was passed by the House of Representatives on Feb. 27. That bill, known as the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017, or SESTA, in the Senate, updates the Communications Decency Act. Even though it has not yet been signed into law, it has prompted Craigslist, another major site to host personals, to take its personals offline.

 

“Any tool or service can be misused,” the Craigslist leadership wrote. “We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day.”

 

The “seizure” of the Backpage site reportedly coincided with “law enforcement activity” at the Arizona home of Michael Lacey, one of the Backpage founders.

 

Politicians on both sides of the aisle cheered the move. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that the DOJ move “marks an important step forward in the fight against human trafficking.” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) tweeted that the Backpage seizure, coupled with the federal legislation, would transform the fight against prostitution.

 

“Today, Backpage was shutdown. It’s a huge step,” said Heitkamp. “Now no child will be sold for sex through this website—not in ND, the US, or around the world. Proud of the 2 yr long Senate investigation I was part of that helped lead to this point. And next week #SESTA will be signed into law.”
 

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