Websites That Enable Sex Trafficking

Criminal justice reform is when errors are found in our criminal justice system, and then are planned to be fixed. Everyone in a courtroom that has had to appear before a judge, has rights. Rights such as due process of law, the right to have bail, to not have your property searched or your personal items confiscated without a warrant. Every citizen in the united states has these rights, including the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. These rights help all United States citizens defend themselves against any government abuse.

Technology is what the world makes it out to be. It is not technology that controls our futures, It is the standards and the activities of our society that lead technology into what it is today. Our technology defines who we are, in saying we have needs to feel connected and accomplished. We all want to improve ourselves in some way or another, but we all seem to face unfamiliar scary changes throughout life. Technology allows us to communicate without that fear of change. We can communicate solutions to problems with technology or end up causing more problems. Technology is becoming more and more advanced to be able to solve society’s problems; but society must be willing to make changes, for these solutions to take place. We have a lot of laws in place for problems we have encountered over the years. However, as time passes more unknown or unexpected problems tend to arise in the future, causing us to have to change some of these laws.

In April 2018 a website called backpage.com was seized. It was first created in 2004 for advertising purposes. Backpage allowed people to post ads for prostitution and human trafficking. Human trafficking is when an offender forces their victim commit a sex act; such as prostitution, or pornography. Victims may agree to any sexual act, in exchange for money, drugs, shelter, food, or even what the victim believes is love. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act makes service providers on websites, legally responsible for information originating from third-party users of their service. “The passage of bills in Alabama and South Dakota in March 2018 brought the number of states with security breach notification bills to 50. States have enacted security breach notification laws that require businesses or government to notify consumers or citizens if their personal information is breached.”

A lawsuit filed against backpage.com for sex trafficking was dismissed by backpage.com. Backpage.com dismissed this lawsuit under the section 230 immunity. The Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was not created to protect websites that enable sex trafficking. So, therefore human trafficking offenders are still able contact their victims through social media, and in person. In March of 2015 a senate bill was passed, that all 7th and 8th graders in schools, will now learn about human trafficking in their health classes. This way our children were aware of these types of offenders. With the section 230 act in place, there wasn’t much anyone could do to stop sex trafficking from happening.

Sex trafficking was overlooked when the Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was first created. Our public being the victims of sex trafficking, was an unintentional consequence the law faced, when creating immunity in the section 230 act. This law needed to be reformed and further amended to stop this from happening, especially when our young children are the targets and victims. Finally, this problem started to resolve itself; when congress finally proposed a bill in august of 2017, to stop sex trafficking offenders on backpage.com, and other websites like it. Web sites that had a personal or casual encounters section on their sites, or any section on their sites that promoted sex trafficking was no longer allowed. These websites under this new stop enabling sex traffickers act of 2017, were now held accountable for any sex trafficking on their sites, ensuring all the victims of sex trafficking will now have justice.

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