SUPPORT JOURNALISM. Become a patron athttp://www.patreon.com/TimcastMy Second Channel - https://www.youtube.com/timcastnewsThe US government has seized Backpage.com and the reason why so far is unknown. Though many are speculating that it has to do with accusations made about the company over the past several years involving prostitution and trafficking.For now the indictments are sealed but regardless of a trial, conviction, or proof of wrongdoing the US government has seized backpage.Make sure to subscribe for more travel, news, opinion, and documentary with Tim Pool everyday.Amazon Prime 30 day free trial - http://amzn.to/2sgiDqRMY GEARGoPro Karma - http://amzn.to/2qw10m4GoPro 6 - http://amzn.to/2CEK0z1DJI Mavic Drone - http://amzn.to/2lX9qgTZagg 12 AMP portable battery - http://amzn.to/2lXB6SxTASCAM Lavalier mic - http://amzn.to/2AwoIhI Canon HD XF 105 Camera - http://amzn.to/2m6v1o3Canon 5D MK III Camera - http://amzn.to/2CvFnnm360 Camera (VR) - http://amzn.to/2AxKu4RFOLLOW MEInstagram - http://instagram.com/TimcastTwitter - http://twitter.com/TimcastMinds - http://Minds.com/TimcastFacebook - http://facebook.com/TimcastnewsBitcoin Wallet: 13ha54MW2hYUS3q1jJhFyWdpNfdfMWtmhZSEND STUFF HERETim Pool330 Washington Street - PMB 517Hoboken, NJ 07030Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
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We're starting to see what, to me, looks like a terrifying image of the future.
How they're going to shut down free speech, how they're going to shut down entire websites, and justify doing so.
Recently, two bills were passed, FOSTA and SESTA.
The goal of these bills is to help the government fight online sex trafficking and prostitution.
And that sounds pretty noble, right?
However, almost immediately after the passage of these bills, several different portions of different websites were shut down.
For instance, Reddit took down several subreddits, and Craigslist, the largest online classifieds ads in the US, took down their entire personal section.
Now we've seen it taken one step further.
The U.S.
government has actually seized a website.
Backpage.com, the second largest classifieds in the U.S., was seized by the U.S.
government.
When we look at how the media is reporting this, it actually worries me.
the way they're framing the narrative, the way they're justifying taking down entire websites,
all under the guise of protecting children.
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First, let's talk about what is Backpage.
Backpage was a classified advertising website launched in 2004.
It offered classified listings for a wide variety of products and services, including automotive, job listings, and real estate.
In 2011, Backpage was the second largest classified ad listing service on the internet in the United States after Craigslist.
This is an archived version, and basically, this is what it looked like.
You know, you'd pick your city, and it functioned very similarly to Craigslist.
This is what Backpage looked like for Brooklyn, and as you can see, there's jobs, there's community, buy-sell-trade, dating, adult, automotive, musician, services.
And under adult, you can see escorts, body rubs, strippers and strip clubs, dom and fetish, TS, male escorts, phone and websites, adult jobs.
When you go to Backpage.com now, this is what you see.
You can sort of see part of the website, but there's an image overlaid on top that says, Backpage.com and affiliate websites have been seized as part of an enforcement action by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S.
Postal Inspection Service, and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division.
with analytical assistance from the Joint Regional Intelligence Center.
I've already talked about FOSTA and SESTA in the past, but why it's so important that we all pay attention to this is that these bills would allow criminal liability to be placed upon the owners of companies based on what their users do, so long as it is construed to be facilitating sex trafficking and prostitution.
So again, it sounds pretty noble, but there's a big problem here because on all websites there is the capacity for someone to use code words to sell whatever they want.
And that means even if the owners of the company that facilitate this comment section or classifieds or even Twitter or Facebook, even if they don't know about it, they can still be held criminally liable.
Now personally, I find this next bit troubling.
From CNBC, sex ads website back page seized by US authorities.
Law enforcement agencies have seized the sex marketplace website Backpage.com as part of an enforcement action by the FBI.
A Phoenix FBI official said there was law enforcement activity on Friday at the Sedona, Arizona home of Michael Lacey, one of the founders of Backpage.
The Supreme Court in January 2017 refused to consider reviving a lawsuit alleging the site facilitated prostitution, but the site has since then faced lawsuits alleging child sex trafficking.
The reason that I wanted to explain what Backpage was before showing you the news story is that CNBC has referred to it as a sex ad or sex marketplace website.
But as you've already seen, it was just a classifieds website.
The second biggest in the US.
And they absolutely did have a section for adult work, but it is disingenuous to label the entire website as a sex ad marketplace or something to that effect.
The original reporting came from Reuters.
Same title, sex ads website Backpage shut down by US authorities.
From Fox News, Backpage.com, website known for sex-related classified ads reportedly seized by FBI.
Think about what the average person will think when they see that title.
They're going to assume this site was actually complicit in facilitating sex trafficking and prostitution.
The New York Times does a better job of explaining exactly what this is.
US seizes Backpage.com, a site accused of enabling prostitution.
Federal authorities have taken down Backpage.com, a major classified advertising website that has been repeatedly accused of enabling prostitution and sex trafficking of minors.
Backpage has been under increasing pressure in recent years.
In part because it featured ads that included what child advocates said were code words for underage girls, including Amber Alert.
In January 2017, the site shuttered its adult services listings section under mounting criticism from law enforcement groups and senators, but many of the adult listings were simply rerouted to sections of the site dedicated to dating.
This is the important point.
And it's exactly why FOSTA and SESTA are dangerous.
When Backpage got rid of its adult section, users simply moved to different parts of the website and used code words.
That's how the New York Times described it, that people were accusing users of using code words.
In which case, any website can be susceptible to this kind of practice.
And because we have just empowered the government to go after companies to hold them criminally liable for what their users are doing, I firmly believe this will have negative impacts on the rest of the internet, and we've already seen that happen.
If you go to craigslist.org and go to their personal section, you will be greeted with this message.
U.S.
Congress just passed H.R.
1865-FOSTA, seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties, users, misuse online personals unlawfully.
Any tool or service can be misused.
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 someday.
To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through Craigslist, we wish you every happiness.
So we don't know necessarily what Backpage did.
The charges against their founders are sealed indictments.
From AZCentral, Backpage founder charged by feds after human trafficking investigation.
A founder of the New Times tabloid has been charged in Phoenix in the apparent culmination of a federal human trafficking investigation.
Authorities had spent months probing Weather Backpage, the online classified advertising website he co-founded, served as a willing participant in the online sale of sex, including with underage girls.
An attorney for Michael Lacey, Larry Kazan, told the Arizona Republic at the federal courthouse in Phoenix on Friday afternoon that his client had been charged.
Kazan said he did not know how many counts Lacey faced because the 93-count indictment was sealed.
The courtroom was closed to the public and it was not immediately clear what charges are included in the indictment.
We don't know what this man is being charged with.
We know that already the headlines from all of these different news companies are calling it a human trafficking investigation.
They're saying it was a sex marketplace.
They're saying they're accused of trafficking.
It worries me that we don't know what they're charged with, we haven't seen the evidence, and already these people are being, well, dragged through the court of public opinion.
It's really easy to justify seizing the second largest classified website when you say the founders were involved in child sex trafficking.
That scares most people.
But it's particularly worrisome when you realize that the average person will just agree with it.
They'll say, hey man, if the feds found evidence, good.
Get rid of these people, they're bad.
These kinds of rulings, these kinds of stories can negatively impact Anyone.
The government can simply say, we believe your site has been involved in this kind of activity, and then you're going to get run through the court of public opinion.
You'll have no support.
Who the hell would want to defend Backpage.com when they've been accused of such atrocities?
From Melissa Gira Grant, a CBS News story, since edited and or removed, says the Backpage charges in still-sealed complaint are not about child exploitation.
The Justice Department has seized the popular classified ads website Backpage.com over the sex trafficking ads on its website.
It unsealed charges Friday evening against seven people who run the site, although it's not clear how many have been arrested.
CBS News' Paula Reid reports, the indictment contains 93 counts of several different crimes, including money laundering and running a website to facilitate prostitution.
The federal government was able to seize the website because it was allegedly being used to facilitate crime.
The government has used this approach in the past with other sex trafficking websites and online pharmacies.
There are 17 victims named in these documents, adults and children who were forced into sex trafficking.
The charges are not about child exploitation, though.
The Justice Department was able to charge them on other crimes.
I want to stress, if at any point, in any way, Backpage and its employees or its founders were involved in these crimes, Then it's absolutely good.
It's a great thing that the government was able to shut them down and they didn't need these new bills to do it.
They were able to shut down the site because they were accusing them of other crimes.
But keep in mind, this is a story claiming the indictments are not about child exploitation.
Although many of the news articles are sort of painting it to seem that way.
I'm particularly worried about a future where the news media gets the story wrong, inadvertently or on purpose defames someone, poisons their public image, and so that person's not going to get a fair trial.
I'm particularly worried about sealed indictments and speculation based on that.
I'm particularly worried about the government shutting down large websites and accusing its founders of being involved in what its users were doing.
This is all going to have a huge negative impact on the internet.
It already has.
Like I showed you, Craigslist personals are down.
Several other websites and even sections of Reddit have been shut down.
It is possible we will see harsh filtering of certain posts and videos on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube because these massive platforms don't want to be held criminally liable.
But, as much as I am personally worried about all these things, not everyone sees it that way.
And I always want to stress that this very well may be true.
We don't know what's going on yet.
What I'm really trying to say is we should be cautious about claims from the government.
We should be cautious about anyone making any claims without evidence.
Others are actually happy so far.
On Facebook, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children posted an image of Backpage being seized with this message.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children just learned that Backpage.com was seized by the FBI, IRS, and the U.S.
Postal Inspection Service with analytical assistance from the Joint Regional Intelligence Center.
This is another step in the years-long fight against the exploitation of child victims who were bought and sold for sex on Backpage.com.
NCMEC is waiting alongside the rest of the world to see what will come next.
We stand by the victims and their families as they process the news and continue to fight for justice against those who profited from the abuse.
Certainly the issue is not black and white, but I personally tend to fall on the side of individual liberty and less government power.
In which case, I am alarmed when I see the government shut down a website before there have been convictions.
If the US government wants to claim the founders were involved in certain activities, even after the adult section was shut down over a year ago, then perhaps it would make more sense to convict them first, to prove in a court of law that they were involved in criminal activity in some way, before shutting down a major website used by many people.
So I don't know exactly what will happen, and I, as per usual, don't know what the right answer is.
All I can really say is that it concerns me, and I think it should concern all of us.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
Am I wrong?
Is this a good thing?
I know some people, the last time I made a video about this, some people said it actually was a good thing because we do want to fight sex trafficking, and we do want to empower the government to take harder stances and actually go after those who would engage in sex trafficking.
And I think that is a good thing.
Personally, yes.
I think all of us would agree with that.
But is it possible these powers will be used to violate free speech, shut down websites that haven't been proven to do anything wrong?
