Tag: trafficking

Earn it

October 18th, 2022 · · Articles No comments - Tags:

A guest post by Zee Xaymaca

The SWERFS are at it again, folks. 2022 has brought the latest in the onslaught against online privacy and sex workers’ rights. By now we know the drill; an innocuously named bill with heinous content is pushed through by the anti-sex work lobby under the guise of trafficking prevention. This season’s flavor of government overreach is back to a classic: interactive internet services and concerns about child welfare, in particular fears about “child pornography” or child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) . Enter the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2022 or the EARN IT Act of 2022.

If the term ‘Interactive Technologies’ has you scratching your head a bit, that was intentional. The definition of these services is distressingly broad. What they are talking about is the Internet. An interactive technology is any technology that allows multiple people to connect to a single server. This includes both private and public communications; from web searches to messaging platforms. Any system that allows access to the Internet Even in libraries.

The EARN-IT Act sets the internet up as the domain of a new National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention. This Commission forms the crux of the bill. The EARN-IT Act provides for the creation of a 19-person commission that is expected to prescribe best practices for Interactive Internet Technologies in curtailing dissemination of CSAM. The commission consists of “(i) The Attorney General or his or her representative. (ii) The Secretary of Homeland Security or his or her representative. (iii) The Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission or his or her representative. 
The remaining 16 positions on the Commission are filled by various senate leaders and together must include persons with law enforcement experience, have prosecutorial experience, have experience with internet technologies and lived experience with trafficking, among other criteria.”

Conspicuously missing from this line-up are ‘people who have experience navigating the provision of online sexual products and services’, legal or otherwise. One may be inclined to think that sex workers’ wealth of experience in navigating the internet discreetly and safely would be a hot commodity in the bid to balance the right to privacy enshrined in the constitution and the mandate to root out abuse in online spaces… But I digress.

Armed with a broad mandate and broader reach, the EARN-IT act prescribes some changes off the bat in the form of amendments to previously passed legislation. This is where the mechanisms of the commission become clear. The legislation includes 14 mandates and several additional revisions to prior legislation, and some so troubling they bear explication here.

The commission is tasked with coordinating voluntary initiatives offered among and to providers of interactive computer services relating to identifying, categorizing, and reporting online child sexual exploitation. For sex workers and related communities this is chilling. This means that the commission is allowed to coordinate with our service providers to hand over our online activity to the federal government. Increased surveillance has yet to yield results in curtailing sexual abuse material. However it has proven chillingly effective as a means of policing the actions of private citizens acting within their rights. The onerous website verification standards arising from anti-trafficking legislation is a concrete example of the harm done by crusaders making unsubstantiated claims of widespread trafficking that demands this particular response.  While there is no evidence that requiring sex workers to provide national ID before working online has any effect on the trafficking it is aimed at, it is clear that it squeezes vulnerable sex workers, (POC, undocumented, disabled or otherwise unable to meet excessive requirements) out of the market. This essentially forced disclosure makes advertising online a precarious balance between maintaining anonymity which is necessary for legal and physical safety, and access to their income stream. This is an authorization for a massive data drag net, arguably to find evidence of child sexual abuse. Yet, there are no prescriptions for what to do with the rest of that non-evidence material. It does not address the matter of privacy for those surveilled nor the victims they claim to search for.

In addition to a public-private sector partnership, the commission is allowed to deputize non-profits. “NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)  may provide hash values or similar technical identifiers associated with visual depictions provided in a CyberTipline report or submission to the child victim identification program… to a non-profit entity for the sole and exclusive purpose of preventing and curtailing the online sexual exploitation of children.” Put in simple terms, submissions to the cyber sexual abuse tipline, a federal database, will be made available to nonprofits that are looking to ‘curtail trafficking’. 

The glaring issue here is that these “tips” do not need to be substantiated before individuals have their information and sexual material distributed to non-profits that have no clear regulations as to how the organizations operate or utilize them. However, the question still lingers, “Is distributing identifying information and documentation about victims at the most vulnerable times of their lives to non-government interested parties the best we can do to protect them?” It is especially troubling since the dissemination of this information to non-profits gives little guidance as to operational standards for organizations that would be involved.

The call for “training content moderators”–without any assurance that such training would not be alarmist, transphobic, misogynist, xenophobic and racist–conjures images of the censorship we already experience on social media with regard to erotic or sexual content. We do, after all, live in a country that does not even provide comprehensive sexuality education to young people in schools. There is a strong push to de-eroticize internet spaces that is bolstered by this additional set of policing measures. Since it is evident in current censorship practices, it is safe to assume that these measures will further marginalize persons with low access to public discourse. 

Sex workers are sure to be caught in the drag net of the search for child sexual abuse. Our information will be made available to the federal government and organizations we may never have even heard of. Our content will be judged and shared by persons whose access we did not consent to. Finally, our content, especially content by Black persons and POC, will be weaponized by these government and private/nonprofit sector agencies to further the victim narrative of sex work and its conflation with trafficking.

These provisions are troubling even without the USA’s lurch toward puritanical conservatism. The collaboration between online platforms and the federal government is a looming threat to the “free expression” that once seemed to resonate with US ideals. There is no clear provision for how this information is used or held and by whom. The more information the government has on sex workers, the bigger targets we become and the more susceptible we are to legislative anti-sex work crusades. Make no mistake, sex workers just happen to be among the most profoundly affected by policies like SESTA/FOSTA and EARN-IT, but it concerns all of us. Our data is being weaponized against us in a plan for our erasure if we are considered a “security risk” or even just “different”.

Currently, the best practices in targeting and handling ‘evidence’ of CSAM and trafficking are intended to be suggestions. However, that is cold comfort, seeing as though long held rights and freedoms are being taken away at a rapid rate. The establishment of this commission heralds binding legal measures. Sex workers have warned everyone of the implications of such sweeping regulations. Sex workers have been the example of the uneven hand of censorship that targets those who are already marginalized. Society must take heed.

Resources:

S.3538 – EARN IT Act of 2022, full legislative history is located here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3538/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22earn+it+act%22%2C%22earn%22%2C%22it%22%2C%22act%22%5D%7D&r=3&s=1

A downloadable PDF of S.3538

Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act that defines “interactive technologies”: http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:230%20edition:prelim)

Who will be harmed by this “Sex Trafficking” Legislation?

March 24th, 2018 · · Articles No comments - Tags: ,

On Wednesday March 21, 2018, the US Senate passed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, the counterpart to the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act that passed the House last month. The legislation is now headed to Trump for signature.

While the titles of the bills would lead the general public to believe that this legislation is to protect “victims of sex trafficking,” the intent is to shutter “websites that promote and facilitate prostitution.” Section § 2421A of the house bill, for example, states that “Whoever uses or operates a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce or attempts to do so with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person shall be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both.” An aggravated offense in regards to any entity that “promotes or facilitates the prostitution of 5 or more persons” is tied to 25 years imprisonment. This legislation intends to target online venues where sex workers are thought to advertise.

A couple of weeks ago in a conversation with several advocates for the rights of sex workers, it was noted that we still do not know how this legislation will be implemented and that is even more worrisome. While it is true that not all is known, based on all the history of the implementation of criminalizing legislation pertaining to “sex trafficking” and anything relating to sex work, the following pattern emerges.

  1. Law enforcement efforts to implement this legislation will focus on people of color, specifically African Americans, routing them into jails and prisons. Low income women of color will face the harsh penalties associated with “facilitating” prostitution. To read more about how this has happened before, pick up a copy of Invisible No More by Andrea Ritchie.
  2. Transgender people, specifically transgender women of color, will be targeted with law enforcement efforts. The spaces where transgender people of color congregate online for any reason will be policed and in some situations transgender women will be misgendered as men in order to facilitate their arrest and demonization. This is already happening, as per observations made by Monica Jones, about the closing of sites since the passage of the legislation.
  3. These new laws will be used to police and surveil immigrants, leading to their deportation under the guise of ending sex trafficking.

The work for us now as advocates for the rights of sex workers and for the rights of trans people and other communities targeted by law enforcement, is to bring our knowledge of how racism, xenophobia and transphobia fuels the implementation of this kind of legislation. And to be ready to support those who almost certainly will be harmed. People of color, trans people, immigrants, young people and sex workers of color.

Monica Jones Speaking Tour

November 19th, 2016 · · News Archive, Policy Updates No comments - Tags: , ,

Human rights advocate Monica Jones will be traveling to the NYC area for meetings and events associated with the visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking. Ms Jones will be speaking to her experience as transgender leader who was arrested by a misguided anti-trafficking initiative called Project ROSE and about the campaign she lead to raise awareness of the rights violations perpetrated by police, social workers and services providers in the name of ending “sex trafficking.” Her work on these issues sparked global awareness of the rights violations experienced by transgender women of color in the United States as a result of anti-trafficking policies. During her campaign she was joined by leading advocates such as Janet Mock, Laverne Cox and many others. A video of Monica and Laverne Cox at an event at the Herberger Theater Center organized the ACLU and sex worker rights organizations in defense of Ms Jones is available here.

Ms Jones is available for speaking engagements the NY/DC/PA area December 5 to 14, 2016. She is a dynamic speaker who has presented on transgender rights, HIV/AIDS, feminism, sex work, social work, and the law at events during the Commission on the Status of Women in NY, the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, International AIDS Conferences in Melbourne, Australia and Durban, South Africa, and the Association of Women in Development in Brazil. Ms Jones is the recipient of the SPARK! Authentic Life Award in 2015, was honored as one of the Trans 100 in 2015 and received the Diversity Advisory Committee of Phoenix College Award in 2012. Ms Jones is the founder of The Outlaw Project, an organization based on the principles of intersectionality to prioritize the leadership of people of color, transgender women, gender non-binary people and migrants for sex worker rights. She has presented at universities across the United States introducing students of all levels to key issues relating to transgender experience, rights, sex worker rights, workers rights, gender justice, the law and social work. Ms Jones may be contacted by email at monica6022006@gmail and by text/voice to (602) 483-9772.

monicajones2016speakingtour

US Sex Workers Respond to Visa & Mastercard Dumping Backpage

July 3rd, 2015 · · Press Release No comments - Tags: , , ,

Sex workers and people in the sex trade are once again facing the brunt of misguided anti-trafficking efforts. Sex workers and people profiled as such face arrest and incarceration all in the name of “ending trafficking” and now low income people are being denied access to a place where they could advertise. Miss Andrie has written an excellent piece on the situation at Backpage, concluding that, “Like many ostensible anti-trafficking efforts, this will do very little to actually affect human trafficking. It will, however, impact free speech, and serve to make many sex workers’ lives more difficult.” Organizations across the United States, including BPPP, have united to publicize the issues in the following press release.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Derek J. Demeri| Atlantic City, NJ | 973.356.4456 | jdemeri20@gmail.com Lindsay Roth | Philadelphia, PA | 443.370.7626 | lindsay@swopusa.org

SEX WORKERS, TRAFFICKING VICTIMS MORE VULNERABLE AS VISA, MASTERCARD CUT TIES TO BACKPAGE.COM

Sex workers and advocates are denouncing a move by Visa and Mastercard to discontinue processing credit card transactions for Adult Services ads on BackPage.com. “This policy effectively disenfranchises thousands of sex workers across the country who do not have access to any other means of online-advertising,” said Lindsay Roth, Board Chair of the Sex Workers Outreach Project. “Those who may have worked independently prior to the policy change may now have to rely on third parties, including traffickers, in order to meet their needs.” “

Risk to violence is multiplied for workers who belong to other marginalized groups,” Derek Demeri of the New Jersey Red Umbrella Alliance said. “This will especially impact women of color, queer youth, transgender women and immigrants who will no longer have access to web-based safety tools like client screening.” Demeri and other advocates report that multiple communities were deeply affected after last year’s closure of MyRedBook.com, a site where sex workers and their customers met and reviewed each other. Advocates say that like MyRedBook, BackPage.com enables people to work independently, reduces their dependence and vulnerability, and allows them to share harm reduction information online. Pushing these workers even further into the shadows cuts them off from social services and makes them more vulnerable to violence and coercion. “These efforts are misguided and will cause significantly more harm to those in the sex trade, including trafficked individuals,” said Kristen DiAngelo, a trafficking survivor who recently co-authored a study in Sacramento that showed 18% of street-based prostitutes interviewed in the last nine months had returned to the streets after the closure of MyRedBook.com.

Many are concerned about the root of the changes that are occurring in the name of “ending trafficking.” “It’s alarming when bank and credit institutions can decide how money obtained legally can be used based on their ideas of morality,” Monica Jones, a national transgender and sex worker activist in Phoenix remarked. Penelope Saunders, the coordinator of the Best Practices Policy Project, shares Ms Jones’ concern. “The general public has been mislead into believing that cracking down on civil liberties is a way of ‘saving’ women from trafficking,” she said, “but once people look more closely at what these so-called anti-trafficking restrictions actually do, they are appalled by the real consequences to low income people and the rights violations that ensue.”

Viable solutions to address human rights violations are well known in the social service sector, but often receive much less media fanfare than hyped stories of sexual exploitation. “If there is a genuine desire to end human trafficking,” Kate D’Adamo of the Sex Workers Project in New York states, ”Then there needs to be a focus on key factors that increase vulnerability to trafficking: access to public services, youth homelessness, and additional employment opportunities.” Opponents of the decision are circulating a sign-on letter amongst sex workers and supporters, in which they ask Visa and MasterCard to “Appeal to reason…” and reconsider their move to stop allowing transactions for Adult Services on BackPage.com. ###