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  • Geebo 10:06 am on June 6, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Human trafficking   

    Guest Post: 36 Hours For Removal: Why does Backpage get a pass when Facebook doesn’t? 

    Guest Post: 36 Hours For Removal: Why does Backpage get a pass when Facebook doesn’t?

    (Guest post from crime blogger Trench Reynolds)

    43-year-old Jennifer Streit-Spears was recently stabbed to death. Her boyfriend and alleged killer, 45-year-old Kenneth Alan Amyx, posted a picture of her dead body on her own Facebook account. Members of Streit-Spears’ family tried to get Facebook to remove the photo off of her profile but the photo remained on her profile for 36 hours. Facebook offered the following explanation….

    “Facebook has long been a place where people share their experiences and raise awareness about important issues,” a rep told the newspaper. “Sometimes, those experiences and issues involve violence and graphic images of public interest or concern.”

    While Jennifer Streit-Spears’ murder is indeed tragic and the length of time it took to remove her photo unfortunate, Facebook was at least able to provide a somewhat reasonable explanation as to why it took them so long to remove the photo.

    Recently ABC News’ Nightline did an expose on Backpage and their CEO Carl Ferrer. In case you haven’t heard, Ferrer was called to appear before the US Congress to explains his website’s role in online prostitution and human trafficking but Ferrer refused to appear. Not only has Congress held Ferrer in contempt but they’re currently suing Backpage in order to compel them to turn over records that may show Backpage’s complicity in the sex trade.

    During their investigation of Ferrer, Nightline placed an ad on Backpage, with police assistance, that was blatantly advertising a prostitute who was underage. Here’s how it was reported by Nightline…

    Det. Lincoln posted an ad for an 18-year-old escort, adding in a line that said she had “a younger friend” who was available as well. Minutes after he posted the ad, calls and texts started streaming in. The ad was up and running.

    The ad remained up for about 36 hours, leading to dozens of phone calls, texts and even an arrest captured on “Nightline’s” cameras. The ad was only taken down after “Nightline” sent an anonymous email to Backpage’s dedicated email address for suspected child trafficking. It took eight hours to receive a response, which said to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC. The ad was taken down shortly after Backpage’s email response was sent.

    Backpage later told “Nightline” in a statement that even though they thought that the ad did not clearly advertise that a girl under 18 was involved, their moderators did take it down and they say they banned the account. They also reported the ad to NCMEC.

    So according to Backpage an 18-year-old prostitute who says that she has a younger friend isn’t advertising a girl who was under 18. Either they have no concept of the term ‘younger’ or they have abysmal math skills.

    Facebook provides a reasonable explanation as to why a murder victim’s picture stayed up for 36 hours and the media is all over it. Backpage gives what can be best described as a half-hearted excuse as to why an ad for child prostitution stays up on their website for 36 hours and barely anyone bats an eyelash.

    Granted that the child prostitute in this case was fictitious, but how many girls have been peddled on Backpage without them even taking a second look at the ad once they have their money?

    These two stories are equally egregious yet only one of them got the media attention that they both deserved. How many women and children have to be sold into sexual slavery in not just our country but most of our cities and towns before we finally decide to speak out about it? There’s been too many victims of Backpage already.

    Thanks Trench. Please also watch the following report from Nightline about Backpage’s involvement in the sex trade and the victims it has left behind.

     

  • Greg Collier 9:05 am on March 19, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Human trafficking, journalist, Kamala Harris, ,   

    Raising Awareness to Aid the Fight against Human Trafficking 

    A friend of mine, knowing that I closely follow news about human trafficking, introduced me to a new resource – a sharp journalist out of San Diego who is doing more than just following criminal cases that involve human trafficking.

    This reporter, a woman named Elizabeth Aguilera, is also looking at the trends around labor and sex trafficking – putting names and faces on the victims and, more importantly, illustrating how this isn’t just a crime that victimizes immigrants. Human trafficking is impacting kids right in our own neighborhoods, the kids we’ve seen grow from toddlers to teens before our very eyes.

    Earlier this month, Aguilera published a piece in the San Diego Union Tribune that raised awareness around a trend that, sadly, isn’t new. The headline of that story speaks volumes: “U.S. sex trafficking victims are mostly American kids.” The headline is based on the revelation in a report released by California Attorney General Kamala Harris last year that 72 percent of human trafficking victims are Americans, not foreigners. More importantly, it was also revealed that victims are now younger – typically ages 12-14, officials said.

    Statistics can be funny things. People like to twist facts and stats to meet the definitions of the point they’re trying to make at any given time. As a journalist, it would have been easy for someone like Aguilera to post the stats, find some official to talk about them and then write a simple story that might easily be overlooked.

    But Aguilera instead focused the beginning of her story around a typical teenager who found a job as a bookkeeper for a small, home-based business and instead found herself forced into a months-long ordeal of beatings and sexual slavery. Her employer – a pimp who set a $1,200 daily prostitution quota for the 17-year-old girl – is now serving 30 years in prison.

    As the owner of a classified ads business, I understand that people are being victimized through the Internet. I understand that predators use classified ads to find their victims and evade authorities. As such, I refuse to give these predators a place to lure victims into worlds of slavery. Geebo does not host personals ads where many of these encounters originate. Sadly, some of my counterparts in the industry still turn a blind-eye about the ads that are running on their sites, so long as the ads generate revenue.

    In the end, it all comes down to awareness – making our young children aware of the dangers on the Internet, making our law enforcement officials aware of the way predators use the Internet and, most importantly, making the public aware that these sorts of things are happening – not just in third-world countries, but in our own neighborhoods with our own kids.

    Trafficking cases are up across the nation – that’s the bad news. The good news is that, through education and awareness, this trend can be reversed. It must be reversed. I applaud journalists like Aguilera who work on the front lines every day to make sure that we, the people, are aware.

     

    • Marc DuMoulin 12:01 pm on March 22, 2013 Permalink

      You can also go to the International Justice Mission (IJM.org) and see the work they are doing in this field.

    • Allison Parks 11:18 pm on March 22, 2013 Permalink

      I wish they would finish the research on how the pornography industry goes hand in hand with trafficking these days, girls and women are being heavily trafficked in the porn business these days….they lure them with modeling jobs under false pretenses, isolate them and encourage drug use to keep them compliant.

    • Laurence Hudson 10:58 am on March 25, 2013 Permalink

      Profits of crime, terrorist financing, money laundering seem to be the big three in terms of building statistics, interpolating information from dozens of sources, and making arrrests. How is it that human trafficking does not have the same investigatory systems in place?

    • Derri Smith 8:14 pm on March 29, 2013 Permalink

      Good for Geebo! Great to hear that you do not carry personals.

  • Greg Collier 9:05 am on June 10, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: age-verification, , , Human trafficking, , ,   

    Judge should uphold state law to require age-verification for adults ads; Other states should follow. 

    There aren’t many business owners who might cheer for more government regulation, but I can’t help but applaud legislators in Washington state for standing up to protect their young citizens from falling into a world of human slavery and prostitution.

    The new state law, which was set to take effect last week, allows classified advertising to be criminally prosecuted for publishing sex-related ads peddling children, unless they can prove a good-faith attempt to verify the age of the advertised person. Days before it was set to take effect, Backpage filed suit against the state over the law and won a 14-day restraining order, pending a judge’s decision.

    I continue to be just appalled by the reasoning that Backpage applies when it defends its actions publicly – and I certainly hope that the judge in Washington sees past Backpage’s morally-questionable arguments about being a friend to law enforcement or human rights organizations that are working to help victims avoid the traps of human slavery.

    Also see: CNN: A lurid journey through Backpage.com

    The company argues its site is not a haven for prostitution but instead one that provides a marketplace for a legal sexual encounters between consenting adults. That may be true – just as neighborhood bars provide a place for adults of legal drinking age to drink liquor. But the owners of those bars are required to check the identification of the people who enter their businesses, especially if they have reason to believe that the customer is under the legal age. If they fail to do so, they can be criminally prosecuted – as it should be.

    The argument is the same for classifieds, whether online or a community-based publication. Backpage should be required to either check IDs or shut down that portion of its site. Otherwise, someone should go to jail the first time a child is advertised for sexual favors.

    Backpage makes a lot of money – tens of millions of dollars – through the sex ads on its site and is certainly not afraid to spend some of that money on a gang of lawyers that will argue jurisdiction and First Amendment and attack the law itself for being unconstitutional or vague. The lawyers have already issued a reminder to the judge that, just because a law has a laudable goal doesn’t make it valid.

    While I have continued to be dismayed at other judicial decisions I’ve seen in my time, I have to believe that the judge in Washington will see past the hot air that Backpage has been blowing and uphold the state’s law. The states have an obligation to protect their citizens, especially those too young to protect themselves.

    We have rules about the types of businesses that can – or cannot – be established within certain distances from schools. We have labor laws that are designed to protect children from excessive work and there are social agencies that remove children from their homes when neglect or abuse are suspected.

    And yet a company that publishes sex-ads can’t be held responsible for accepting an advertisement that clearly offers children for sale for sex?

    It’s hard to imagine that there isn’t already a law.

    Earlier Posts:
    ● Backpage.com can’t pretend to fight a war that it keeps alive
    ● Keeping the Fight Alive against Online Sex Ads

     

  • Greg Collier 4:46 pm on May 22, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Human trafficking, OLX, online prostitution, PennySaver, Recycler   

    Responsible Classifieds Sites: Yes, We Exist 

    There’s an old expression about the squeaky wheel being the one that gets the oil. It’s an an analogy that’s widely used in different scenarios – the school officials who pay attention to the trouble-maker but give no recognition to kids who pay attention in class or the boss who deals with the complainer in the office but takes little notice of the employee who meets all of his deadlines.

    In recent months, the attention on the online classifieds news business has focused pretty much on craigslist and backpage – and not in a good way. Mind you, I’m not complaining – and I’m guilty of also focusing on them – because it puts pressure on these sites to recognize the harm that they’re inflicting on society simply because they seem to turn a blind eye to human trafficking, child prostitution and other morally-objectionable crimes that flourish on their sites.

    I’ve spoken out on this time and time again and I’ve made no secret of how I feel about these sites. But what I – and the news media – have failed to do in our awareness-raising reports is to shed some light on those in the online classifieds business who are providing safe online marketplaces where prostitution – disguised as “personals” ads – are simply not allowed. Much like Geebo, sites such as recycler, pennysaverusa and olx.com, which followed Geebo’s lead and also dropped personals ads, have operated in a responsible manner. Though these sites are competitors to Geebo, I also like to think of them as allies in the fight to clean up online marketplaces and provide safe forums for people to advertise everything from job listings and car ads to real estate listings and garage sale items.

    It’s sad that the face of classifieds has taken such a dark turn. There was a day, back when newspapers dominated the industry, that these sorts of taboo activities that have become the mainstream were isolated to red-light publications and neighborhoods. Sure. it was a problem back then, too, but it was isolated. We could warn our children to stay out of those neighborhoods and away from those elements. Law enforcement officials were able to monitor the areas and enforce the laws when it was so warranted.

    Today, those sites have put these criminal activities into the mainstream, in a place where our children can easily access bad people with bad intentions without any supervision. Despite what the operators of these sites claim, their efforts to monitor are laughable.

    We should all take a lesson from the pioneer of classifieds ads – the newspapers. Mainstream family-oriented newspapers, which provided a forum for news and community on their pages, never would have allowed such ads on their pages. They were the gatekeepers that set the rules and standards for what was appropriate and what wasn’t. As an operator of an online classifieds site, I believe in following in their footsteps when it comes to serving as that gatekeeper for my own site.

    I continue to be both amazed and saddened that a handful of sites can disregard that gatekeeper role and let criminals roam freely on their sites to seek out victims. At the same time, I am proud to be part of another group of sites that have chosen to take the higher road and provide safe marketplaces.

    Today, I applaud them and encourage people to patronize them. Let them know that you appreciate what their efforts and responsible business practices.

     

  • Greg Collier 10:05 am on May 8, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ABC, , , Human trafficking, Nightline, ,   

    Backpage.com can’t pretend to fight a war that it keeps alive 

    The old expression about money being the root of all evil is no more true than it is today in the offices of Village Voice Media, parent company of backpage.com.

    By now, it’s pretty much accepted that backpage.com has become the Internet’s defacto marketplace for sex trafficking of both adults and children. Law enforcement officials know it. Prostitutes and pimps know it. And, certainly, the johns who fund this underground world, know it.

    But despite all the pressure for backpage.com to pull these ads from its site – from police and politicians to activist groups and even those in the business, like me – no one at backpage seems to be fazed. I guess an estimated $22 million in annual profit for Village Voice is enough to ease a conscience and buy a good night’s sleep.

    Still, I continue to believe that it’s a fight worth fighting and I’m encouraged that backpage.com is being kept under the spotlight for its practices. But I think what bothers me most is that the company tries to portray itself in a positive light, as a company that’s troubled by the acts of human trafficking that are being advertised on it site and is working hard to eradicate it.

    Give me a break.

    In a recent segment on ABC News Nightline, backpage.com attorney Liz McDougall actually had the nerve to suggest, when pressed to comment about the amount of money backpage.com profits from these ads, that “…this is not about money. This is about providing a tool to save children online.”

    I’m appalled at the suggestion that backpage.com – which is regularly used by law enforcement officials as a way of both learning more about the underground world of sex trafficking and targeting traffickers in sting operations – would ever be considered a tool for saving children.

    In the same Nightline interview, McDougall suggests that “if shutting down the adult category on one website was the answer to stop child exploitation, I would be all over that and I would be out front saying that’s the answer. That is not the answer.”

    My response to that is that no one is suggesting that shutting down the sex ads on backpage will bring an end to child exploitation or human rights violations. But what backpage.com is choosing not to acknowledge is the role that it plays in allowing this underground world to grow and prosper. McDougall says the site invests manpower in identifying questionable ads and refers those ads to law enforcement officials – but if it didn’t allow the ads to begin with, it wouldn’t have to monitor them. And the idea that a room full of employees manually scouring the ads, instead of a high-tech solution to identify them, is making any sort of dent in the problem is laughable.

    At Geebo, we don’t employ dozens of people to scour the site for possible acts of human trafficking or child prostitution. I pulled all of the personals ads from Geebo nearly two years ago – and my conscience and I sleep great at night.

    Related posts:
    ●Keeping the Fight Alive against Online Sex Ads
    ●As Prostitution Persists, Anti-Human Trafficking Activists Look to Root Causes
    ●Business decisions can be driven by moral values. Will Backpage step up to prove it?

     

    • Norma Ramos 7:35 pm on May 21, 2012 Permalink

      Greg Collier of Geebo provides an outstanding example of what corporate responsibility looks like. In fact, Geebo is setting the standard for the online classifieds industry.

      Mr Collier could choose to profit from the commercial sexual exploitation of human beings, but he has made a conscious decision not to. This is why in my comments at a New York City Council Hearing on Bachpage a few weeks ago, I cited Geebo as the leader in the industry. Backpage continues to make the specious claim that it is fighting trafficking when it is clear that it is making spectacular profits from the sex trade – now spreading this misery to 4 additional countries.

  • Greg Collier 1:48 pm on March 26, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Fair Girls, , Human trafficking, Johns, , , Pimps, , , ,   

    Keeping the Fight Alive against Online Sex Ads 

    I recently came across a couple of articles in the New York Times that really left me feeling disheartened, kind of frustrated and definitely sad. They both focused on human trafficking trends, specifically the use of online classifieds sites as a forum for luring, pimping and selling young girls into the sex trade.

    The first, titled “Online Sex Trade Flourishing Despite Efforts to Curb It,” left a sting in me, not just because I’ve been behind many efforts to curb the use of online ad sites for soliciting sexual encounters but more because police seem to have a “love-hate” attitude about the online sex ads.

    What can anyone possibly love about this online sex trade? Yes, it’s a sad state of society that this modern-day slavery exists, but police explain that online ads have given them a new tool to learn more about this once-underground world and “crack the code” that pimps and johns use to set-up sexual encounters. While I won’t dispute the need for police to be up-to-speed on the latest techniques and technologies, we can’t lose sight of the fact that every ad that law enforcement takes time to study is an ad for a real person trapped in this horribly violent world.

    The second article, an Op-Ed titled “Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods,” honed in on the sites that turn a blind eye on these sorts of advertisements, specifically Backpage.com, an online classifieds operation owned by Village Voice Media. For many companies, a scathing set of words in the New York Times would be devastating but the folks at Backpage are defiant and defensive about all of it. After all, they’re trying to protect their bread-and-butter.

    The AIM Group, a research firm, reports that online prostitution advertising on five U.S. web sites generated at least $3.1 million in February 2012, a jump of nearly 10 percent from February 2011. Of that, nearly 80 percent – or about $2.5 million – came from Backpage. On an annual basis, the AIM Group estimates at least $36.6 million in advertising revenue, with more than two-thirds – $26 million – generated by Backpage.

    As the owner of Geebo, an online classifieds site that doesn’t host a forum for “personals” ads, I’m not reaping the financial rewards that come from these sorts of ads – but my conscience and I are sleeping well at night. I killed the personals section on Geebo in September 2010. For some time now, I’ve been standing out on that limb all alone, asking my industry counterparts to join me in removing personals ads from their sites but instead being met with a deafening silence in response.

    Fortunately, while my industry counterparts stay silent, other groups, such as FAIR Girls, are turning up the heat on these site owners and working to raise awareness about what’s really happening on these sites. Andrea Powell, co-founder and executive director of FAIR Girls, takes exception to the idea that Backpage is being responsible, as it claims, because it says it tries to screen ads for minors and alerts law enforcement when it suspects trafficking.

    “As an advocate who also searches for missing and exploited girls, I can say honestly that it is very hard to find sex trafficked girls using the online classified ad sites,” Powell said. “Pimps hide their victims in hotels, use fake names, and make a real effort to keep us from helping their victims escape. Online classified sites like Backpage.com make it easier for pimps, not victims. It’s the new frontier of sex trafficking, and we want to see these sites shut down.”

    At the very minimum, it’s time for sites like Backpage to recognize that they’re not helping the problem but instead are making it worse, providing pimps and johns with an anonymous access to an online marketplace for sex. Certainly, I’d welcome any of my competitors in classifieds to shut down but if they want to stay in the game, I’ll just keep asking that they at least kill the area of ads where pimps and johns continue to destroy innocent lives.

     

  • Greg Collier 6:01 pm on February 5, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Human trafficking, , ,   

    Super Bowl in Indiana brings tough new human trafficking laws; Other states should take note 

    Millions of eyes have been focused on Indiana for the events leading up to Super Bowl Sunday. It’s a major event for any region, with hundreds of thousands of people coming in for the big game and all of the festivities that go with it. Unfortunately, victims of sex trafficking rings are among those who arrive in cities where big events like the Super Bowl are hosted.

    But here’s a tip of my hat to the state of Indiana for really stepping up its game to send a message to pimps and johns who might be looking to solicit sex-trafficking victims, notably the underage girls who are forced into this world of modern day slavery.

    Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, just days before the big game, signed tough human trafficking legislation into law as a way of giving law enforcement officials and prosecutors the firing power to send a message that says, quite frankly, don’t even think about it. The new law closes previous loopholes and makes it easier to prosecute those who sell children into sex slavery rings. It also reduces the burden for prosecutors to prove coercion, which previously prevented traffickers from being prosecuted if the victim wasn’t being held against her will.

    More importantly, though, is the training efforts for non-law enforcement types, such as hotel employees and cab drivers, have received. These folks now know what to look for in a possible victim – young girls dressed inappropriately for their ages who appear to be quiet and insecure and who avoid eye contact. Likewise, they were warned about girls who fit this profile checking into hotels with no luggage. And they’re taught to understand that the victims are just that: victims, not criminals. These girls need to be rescued, not arrested.

    The Washington Post last week profiled the efforts of the religious congregations that bought shares of stock in major hotel chains so that they could be heard at the hotel executive levels about the responsibilities of the hotels in this fight. Many of the training programs were the direct result of this pressure campaign.

    For some time now, I have been sounding off to anyone who will listen about the responsibilities of online sites – including classifieds sites like Geebo – in preventing these sorts of encounters. Geebo doesn’t accept or post personals ads where these young girls are often advertised for sale. And I have personally called on my industry counterparts – notably Craigslist and Backpage – to do a better job of policing their site for possible human rights crimes.

    For the most part, my pleas have fallen on the deaf ears of my competitors. I guess there’s too much money to be made by selling those ads to be worried about the safety of innocent children being traded in sex slave rings. I can only control what happens on my site – but I’m proud to be a part of a growing effort to educate and inform folks about what’s really happening on these sites and how it can be prevented.

    This law in Indiana is a big positive push forward for our efforts – and I’m hoping that other states follow Indiana’s lead and get serious about laws that send “You’re not welcome here” messages to sex-trafficking criminals.

    Los Angeles Times: Super Bowl: Backed by tougher Indiana Law, nuns target sex trade

     

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