5 ms·

I promise you its just on to the next website... I honestly wonder if the people that work these cases get tired or disheartened by their game of whack-a-mole.

by xzel 10y ago

finid 10y ago
One would think that the govt has learnt something or two from the Prohibition and the war against drugs.
- ChrisBland 10y ago
  What they've learned is the more 'busts' they make; the more $$ they get in funding next year to buy new toys and employ more people 'fighting the good fight'.
  - yarou 10y ago
    Don't forget the massive amounts of money to be made by colluding with the "bad guys". Collect double the amount if you collude for geopolitical purposes.
  - TallGuyShort 10y ago
    I'd almost sympathize with that mindset if it wasn't for civil asset forfeiture.
- mtdewcmu 10y ago
  The primary purpose of the WoD is to provide jobs to drug cops. The DEA is aware that if drugs become legal, there will no longer be a need for a Drug Enforcement Agency.
ctvo 10y ago
Must be a real hassle trying to shut down activities between consenting adults when there's an economic reason and no moral case. See recreational drug use.
Pxtl 10y ago
It's only a matter of time until somebody manages to implement an easily-monetizable decentrialized CMS website that synchs the content across multiple nodes. There would be a lot of technical challenges like syncing accounts and managing decentralized moderation, but still - between piracy and prostitution and the like, there's a lot of money to be made hosting illegal content, and if law-enforcement crushes it where they find it then the obvious solution will be to develop a system that's impossible to shut down because it mirrors itself to new hosts trivially.
- hendersoon 10y ago
  Why bother with decentralization when you can just put it on a Tor hidden service and get complete anonymity and protection? Only problem is your users need to pay with Bitcoin, but criminals are becoming increasingly used to that, and only the pimps pay, not the johns.
  - Pxtl 10y ago
    Because Tor is too hard for clients. The web always wins. Or are Tor hidden services able to be exposed on the public internet?
    - hendersoon 10y ago
      You can actually get to them without Tor via gateways, but my expectation is that sex service providers would install a Tor app on their phones to contact the hidden service. At that point it's a matter of tapping the Onion Browser icon instead of Chrome/Safari and going to a different bookmark.
fencepost 10y ago
And most likely the next (or the one after that) will be run by someone outside the USA, either in a place where cooperation with US authorities is unlikely or where prostitution is legal and thus any extradition requests (if anything got that far) would be less likely to be honored. Heck, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the next one run out of Russia, particularly if clients had to do some form of registration to get full access. Out of all the users you might get a few interesting email addresses worth tracking long-term, and you might even get reused passwords or at least a password pattern for some of those.
- brbsix 10y ago
  That wouldn't be unheard of. There was a regional site in the SF Bay a few years back (myRedBook) registered out of Seychelles. Whole lot of good that did them though, since they still picked up their checks in the valley.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  The government went after the payment processors. I suppose someone could run such site as a side hobby project, but end of the day it's a classifieds site, and it needs to accept money from those paying for classifieds.
  - fencepost 10y ago
    You're missing my other point in there - if you have the technical skills, language skills, and particularly mostly user-generated content (so you don't have to push much content of your own anyway), how much would you figure a site like that might cost to run on an annual basis? Seems to me that it could probably disappear into just the annual marketing budget of Durex, Trojans, with almost no notice, just to present one set of people also related to the sex industry. My bigger concern is that commercial entities (with their profit-driven motive and legal exposure) wouldn't be the only ones interested in the question of "Who's illegally hiring prostitutes AND do their hiring patterns indicate anything special about their interests?" A few hosted servers or VMs, some dedicated bandwidth in a few datacenters, a few cutouts and "private investors" backing it who don't actually care about making profits, and you have a priceless intelligence source about horny people - mostly of no interest at all, but a few potentially of great interest and value. What would be the worth of a Senator or Representative with embarrassing interests? It's not like elected officials ever get caught in airport bathrooms, diapers, or sending tacky selfies on Twitter.
AndrewUnmuted 10y ago
Although the act of soliciting prostitution is illegal, what exactly is so wrong about this really? Backpage appears to have provided listings that allowed consenting adults to engage in business with one another. Perhaps they just need to stop their mole-whacking game?
- elastic_church 10y ago
  combating trafficking in the framework of existing laws. trafficking does not imply consent. yes, the existing laws are broken.
- BorisMelnik 10y ago
  underage girls, and pimps taking advantage of drug addicted women. there are tons of "legit" agencies that operate as true businesses, the majority of the backpage listings are really sketchy. NSFW Check out this escort forum online, it gives some really interesting insight into the whole debacle. as you can see, most of the girls don't really care and are even glad: http://independentgirls.com/indiboard/index.php/topic/518200-backpage-shutdown/ http://independentgirls.com/indiboard/index.php/topic/518200... "Some criminals and low-life types formerly using Backpage will now go berserk without their money and/or their drugs. Violent crime in the streets. Unbelievable."
  - cloakandswagger 10y ago
    Well, of course professional escorts are happy. Backpage was, at best, competition for them, allowing "independent contractors" to offer competing services for cheaper. At worst, it was a very popular sting site for cops, effectively scaring off customers in the area. When you're a "pro" with your own website and $600/hr price, Backpage is competition. I don't think they're happy about it because of concerns about human trafficking.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  You are not thinking of this from the state AG point of view. Some participants of law enforcement community (FBI, US Attorneys) take years to build and execute their cases. When successful, they receive commendations and continue their law enforcement careers. State AGs are more of a "shoot from the hip" (or "sue early, sue often", since we're on HN) variety, as this elected post is viewed as a stepping stone towards another elected post, backed by the track record of "making neighborhoods safer". In unrelated news, congratulations to California state AG Kamala Harris on becoming a US Senator from the state of California.
pnw_hazor 10y ago
Not as long as their are federal grants to get their hands on.
TallGuyShort 10y ago
I've played whack-a-mole. I got to keep hitting moles. I didn't particularly want to eliminate the moles - because then I'd have to stop hitting them. P.S. The "massage" page currently on Backpage seems to just be veiled prostitution that suddenly got more posts starting today. So maybe it's not even on to the next site, just elsewhere on the site.
Balgair 10y ago
Well, I mean, if they did in fact get rid of it all, then they would not have a job to do anymore and then would be laid off. So......

I promise you its just on to the next website... I honestly wonder if the people that work these cases get tired or disheartened by their game of whack-a-mole.

by xzel 10y ago

I promise you its just on to the next website... I honestly wonder if the people that work these cases get tired or disheartened by their game of whack-a-mole.

finid 10y ago

One would think that the govt has learnt something or two from the Prohibition and the war against drugs.

ChrisBland 10y ago
What they've learned is the more 'busts' they make; the more $$ they get in funding next year to buy new toys and employ more people 'fighting the good fight'.
- yarou 10y ago
  Don't forget the massive amounts of money to be made by colluding with the "bad guys". Collect double the amount if you collude for geopolitical purposes.
- TallGuyShort 10y ago
  I'd almost sympathize with that mindset if it wasn't for civil asset forfeiture.
mtdewcmu 10y ago
The primary purpose of the WoD is to provide jobs to drug cops. The DEA is aware that if drugs become legal, there will no longer be a need for a Drug Enforcement Agency.

ctvo 10y ago

Must be a real hassle trying to shut down activities between consenting adults when there's an economic reason and no moral case. See recreational drug use.

Pxtl 10y ago

It's only a matter of time until somebody manages to implement an easily-monetizable decentrialized CMS website that synchs the content across multiple nodes. There would be a lot of technical challenges like syncing accounts and managing decentralized moderation, but still - between piracy and prostitution and the like, there's a lot of money to be made hosting illegal content, and if law-enforcement crushes it where they find it then the obvious solution will be to develop a system that's impossible to shut down because it mirrors itself to new hosts trivially.

hendersoon 10y ago
Why bother with decentralization when you can just put it on a Tor hidden service and get complete anonymity and protection? Only problem is your users need to pay with Bitcoin, but criminals are becoming increasingly used to that, and only the pimps pay, not the johns.
- Pxtl 10y ago
  Because Tor is too hard for clients. The web always wins. Or are Tor hidden services able to be exposed on the public internet?
  - hendersoon 10y ago
    You can actually get to them without Tor via gateways, but my expectation is that sex service providers would install a Tor app on their phones to contact the hidden service. At that point it's a matter of tapping the Onion Browser icon instead of Chrome/Safari and going to a different bookmark.

fencepost 10y ago

And most likely the next (or the one after that) will be run by someone outside the USA, either in a place where cooperation with US authorities is unlikely or where prostitution is legal and thus any extradition requests (if anything got that far) would be less likely to be honored. Heck, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the next one run out of Russia, particularly if clients had to do some form of registration to get full access. Out of all the users you might get a few interesting email addresses worth tracking long-term, and you might even get reused passwords or at least a password pattern for some of those.

brbsix 10y ago
That wouldn't be unheard of. There was a regional site in the SF Bay a few years back (myRedBook) registered out of Seychelles. Whole lot of good that did them though, since they still picked up their checks in the valley.
prostoalex 10y ago
The government went after the payment processors. I suppose someone could run such site as a side hobby project, but end of the day it's a classifieds site, and it needs to accept money from those paying for classifieds.
- fencepost 10y ago
  You're missing my other point in there - if you have the technical skills, language skills, and particularly mostly user-generated content (so you don't have to push much content of your own anyway), how much would you figure a site like that might cost to run on an annual basis? Seems to me that it could probably disappear into just the annual marketing budget of Durex, Trojans, with almost no notice, just to present one set of people also related to the sex industry. My bigger concern is that commercial entities (with their profit-driven motive and legal exposure) wouldn't be the only ones interested in the question of "Who's illegally hiring prostitutes AND do their hiring patterns indicate anything special about their interests?" A few hosted servers or VMs, some dedicated bandwidth in a few datacenters, a few cutouts and "private investors" backing it who don't actually care about making profits, and you have a priceless intelligence source about horny people - mostly of no interest at all, but a few potentially of great interest and value. What would be the worth of a Senator or Representative with embarrassing interests? It's not like elected officials ever get caught in airport bathrooms, diapers, or sending tacky selfies on Twitter.

AndrewUnmuted 10y ago

Although the act of soliciting prostitution is illegal, what exactly is so wrong about this really? Backpage appears to have provided listings that allowed consenting adults to engage in business with one another. Perhaps they just need to stop their mole-whacking game?

elastic_church 10y ago
combating trafficking in the framework of existing laws. trafficking does not imply consent. yes, the existing laws are broken.
BorisMelnik 10y ago
underage girls, and pimps taking advantage of drug addicted women. there are tons of "legit" agencies that operate as true businesses, the majority of the backpage listings are really sketchy. NSFW Check out this escort forum online, it gives some really interesting insight into the whole debacle. as you can see, most of the girls don't really care and are even glad: http://independentgirls.com/indiboard/index.php/topic/518200-backpage-shutdown/ http://independentgirls.com/indiboard/index.php/topic/518200... "Some criminals and low-life types formerly using Backpage will now go berserk without their money and/or their drugs. Violent crime in the streets. Unbelievable."
- cloakandswagger 10y ago
  Well, of course professional escorts are happy. Backpage was, at best, competition for them, allowing "independent contractors" to offer competing services for cheaper. At worst, it was a very popular sting site for cops, effectively scaring off customers in the area. When you're a "pro" with your own website and $600/hr price, Backpage is competition. I don't think they're happy about it because of concerns about human trafficking.
prostoalex 10y ago
You are not thinking of this from the state AG point of view. Some participants of law enforcement community (FBI, US Attorneys) take years to build and execute their cases. When successful, they receive commendations and continue their law enforcement careers. State AGs are more of a "shoot from the hip" (or "sue early, sue often", since we're on HN) variety, as this elected post is viewed as a stepping stone towards another elected post, backed by the track record of "making neighborhoods safer". In unrelated news, congratulations to California state AG Kamala Harris on becoming a US Senator from the state of California.

pnw_hazor 10y ago

Not as long as their are federal grants to get their hands on.

TallGuyShort 10y ago

I've played whack-a-mole. I got to keep hitting moles. I didn't particularly want to eliminate the moles - because then I'd have to stop hitting them. P.S. The "massage" page currently on Backpage seems to just be veiled prostitution that suddenly got more posts starting today. So maybe it's not even on to the next site, just elsewhere on the site.

Balgair 10y ago

Well, I mean, if they did in fact get rid of it all, then they would not have a job to do anymore and then would be laid off. So......