Background on Backpage.com and Sex Trafficking.

1. Stop Enabling
Sex Traffickers
Act of 2017
Cyber Report
Backgrounder
Part 1: Trafficking and Backpage.com

3. 7,621 HUMAN TRAFFICKING CASES IN US
(2016)
77%
Involved Sex
Trafficking
•Victims
•83.9% Women
•31.6% Children
•80.7% Non-
Immigrant
•CA, TX and FL
•33.3% of all cases
Source - https://humantraffickinghotline.org/states

4. I Am Jane Doe
February 2017
Zeroing in on what one victims’
advocate calls the public square for
a modern-day form of slavery, Mary
Mazzio’s eye-opening documentary
reveals that the buying and selling
of tweens and teens, long
recognized as a plight in some
developing nations, is also very
much a domestic problem.
-- Hollywood Reporter

5. “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher
or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider“.
SECTION 230, COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT

6. THE POLICY BEHIND
CDA SECTION 230
• The Congress finds the following: (1) The rapidly developing
array of Internet and other interactive computer services
available to individual Americans represent an
extraordinary advance in the availability of educational and
informational resources to our citizens. . . .
• (3)The Internet and other interactive computer services
offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse,
unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad
avenues for intellectual activity.
• (b)It is the policy of the United States—(1)to promote the
continued development of the Internet and other
interactive computer services and other interactive media;
• (2)to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that
presently exists for the Internet and other interactive
computer services, unfettered by Federal or State
regulation;

7. GETTING AROUND SECTION 230
Not Interactive Computer
System
Distributor Liability
Moderator
Super-User Liability
Promissory Estoppel
Partial Responsibility for
Content Development
Site Marketing
or Text Claim,
Failure to Warn *
Design Site to Require
Illegal Content
Federal IP Claim
Federal Criminal
Conspiracy Prosecution
* On Appeal

8. Jane Doe v.
Backpages.com, LLC,
Case No.1:14-cv-
13870-RGS (D. Mass.
May 15, 2015)
Congress has made the
determination that the balance
between suppression of trafficking
and freedom of expression should be
struck in favor of the latter in so far
as the Internet is concerned. Putting
aside the moral judgment that one
might pass on Backpage’s business
practices, this court has no choice but
to adhere to the law that Congress
has seen fit to enact.
Decision affirmed by First Circuit (2016), cert.
denied by Supreme Court (2016).

9. J.S. v Village Voice Media Holdings,
LLC (Wash. Sept. 3, 2015)
• Court Rejects CDA 230 Defense
• The allegations “if proved true, would show that
Backpage did more than simply maintain
neutral policies prohibiting or limiting certain
content.” The thrust of the allegations was that
Backpage’s website and content guidelines
were not simply neutral policies prohibiting or
limiting certain content but were instead
“specifically designed … so that pimps can
continue to use Backpage.com to traffic in
sex.”

10. October 2016
• Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer Arrested
• Charged with Pimping by California
• Complaint Dismissed Under CDA 230
• Cal AG Refiles as Money Laundering and Pimping
Case

11. January 2017:
Senate Investigations
Subcommittee Report
• Backpage knowingly covered up evidence of criminal
activity by systematically editing its so-called adult ads.
• Backpage knows that it facilitates prostitution and even
child sex trafficking.
• 93 percent of Backpage’s ad revenue in 2011 stemmed
from its adult section.
• Of all the child sex trafficking reports submitted by
members of the public to the CyberTipline, more than
seventy-one percent (71%) relate to Backpage ads.”
(National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
• Backpage shuts down “adult” ads in response, but ads
migrate to other portions of the site.

12. July 2017: New
Revelations
• “A contractor for the controversial
classifieds website Backpage.com
has been aggressively soliciting
and creating sex-related ads,
despite Backpage’s repeated
insistence that it had no role in the
content of ads posted on its site,
according to a trove of newly
discovered documents.”
• Backpage Philippine contractor
lured adult advertisers, even
creating ads for them.
Link: http://wapo.st/2sJpAwf?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.d7fafab56961

13. July 13: Rep. Wagner Calls for
Criminal Investigation of
Backpage
We write to urge the U.S. Department
of Justice to immediately investigate
Backpage.com and bring the website
to justice under 18 U.S. Code § 1591
for knowingly advertising and
financially benefiting from
participation in sex trafficking.