What so few people realize about the NSA spying debates is that the issues will extend into everything.
This private company is building a mass surveillance database to track people. They're scraping and archiving what used to be considered anonymous postings. Their current goal is to go after sex trafficking, but they could easily expand into spying on people for any reason.
They're not the government, so I think they have a strong right to do this, but don't let cause of "the children" confuse the issue. This is a new kind of spying, unlike anything that has existed in the history of American society.
Just imagine how much crime we could stop if local police had full access email, phone, and social networking data. There's no question that we could save thousands of children per year. You would have to be a monster or a terrorist not to consent to having your data searched.
They're not the government, so I think they have a strong right to do this
Personally I agree, but only on the basis that they appear to be only archiving publicly accessible information and the old mantra of "what you post online, stays online".
Just imagine how much crime we could stop if local police had full access email, phone, and social networking data.
Or if everyone's lives were already controlled to the extent that they're essentially living in jail already... that seems like the ultimate result of a gradual increase in pervasive surveillance: people will become so used to, unable to oppose, and scared at the possibility of even thoughtcrime that they'll have no choice but to complacently conform, not unlike Orwell's 1984.
> This is a new kind of spying, unlike anything that has existed in the history of American society.
I think it's a bit disingenuous to call this "a new kind of spying" all of the data they're using is publicly available. I don't think it's a realistic view for the future that we'll be able to put things we don't want people to know about on public forums and trust that no one's going to build the tools to piece it together. That sounds like a really unsustainable security through obscurity situation to me.
I think we can distinguish ourselves from spies because we only collect open source intelligence - meaning publicly available records. Technology is like a knife. It can be used to create or destroy, can be used by a surgeon for good or for a killer for evil. The same is true for big data technologies. They can be used for mass surveillance and violation of civil liberties or for recovery of trafficked children. We're not violating anyone's civil liberties or right to privacy.
The one thing I'd want to know about this outfit is whether they'd sell some of this intelligence to third parties.
On their data collection they will discover paedos --which is great, but they will also be able to discover philanderers, cads, tax cheats, drug users, etc. If these things fall under law enforcement's orbit, that's one thing, the bad thing is the possibility of third parties getting this data and using it to blackmail people.
Maybe they already have that angle covered, in which case, nevermind.
I love the idealism, I really do, but I have to wonder under what criteria this company was accepted into YC? Certainly there's money in law enforcement tools, but there isn't much incentive for LE to pursue trafficked or underage sex workers, nor are they hard to find.
The most common reason I've seen for my friends to be trapped in agencies or abusive pimps has been immigration status, by far. And nobody is doing them any favours by taking them in. LE hates the paperwork so much that a decent way to get out of a pickup is to feign being an illegal alien.
Underage workers are similarly avoided. If you're 16-17 with no fixed address, it's going to be a nightmare of social services for everyone involved before you're spat back out onto the street. (I was arrested twice when underage. Both times they let me go when they saw I was 17 and a ward of the state.)
I don't doubt that there's revenue here though, because LE just loves to do stings. Mostly they're single moms or otherwise trapped by circumstance and trying to make ends meet with a side gig. They're the ones who go quietly, who plead out, who pump arrest records, etc.
Sex trafficking is an immigration/social services problem far more than it is a law enforcement concern. Giving LE more tools to track us is going to make things worse.
I supported myself with sex work when I was a self-sufficient and independent from 15-19. Now I'm a software developer in my late 20's, but that's still my community. I realy wonder if these founders ever actually asked any of us what we thought about this idea before charging ahead?
Note: Throwaway acct. (And I mean throwaway. I'm in an incognito window I'm about to close, with a /dev/random -generated password, and won't be watching for replies. Please leave me alone.)
There actually is a good deal of money in law enforcement for this kind of tool. Anti-trafficking efforts are becoming more and more of a priority at the federal, state, and local levels. There is also a lot of demand for this solution as demonstrated by our user base.
Federal grants are increasingly common, local and state multi-disicplinary task forces are being established more and more frequently, and they need solutions for dealing with these kind of problems.
Sex trafficking is rarely an immigration problem. According to the DOJ, 83% of their cases deal with victims of sex trafficking who are U.S. citizens and trafficked by U.S. citizens. The remaining 17% are foreign nationals. This is a homegrown problem, generally.
"The company itself doesn’t make any judgments about what might constitute illegal trafficking behavior. That’s up to investigators to determine, as there are adult women who want to do sex work and aren’t being trafficked."
I'm glad to see this at least get mentioned; there are people in bad situations who need help, but too often well-meaning people are unfortunately reluctant to listen to the people they think they're trying to help.
Yeah, I went and read their FAQ, and I'm struggling to see how this tool isn't equally useful to target sex workers.
I'm perfectly willing (in my ignorance) to believe that sex trafficking is a problem worth tackling (in scale, in urgency, etc). But I also (already) believe that anti-sex-work laws act to oppress and victimize already-marginalized women, with dubious benefit (without taking a side on whether this effect is deliberate).
For example, in my jurisdiction (IANAL), although I understand that prostitution itself is not illegal as such, the following things are illegal:
* posting/negotiating prices openly
* operating a place of business for prostitution (a "bawdy house")
* living "off the avails"
This last law is supposed to allow the prosecution of pimps (yay!), but it also means that sex workers cannot hire bodyguards or accountants. The second law is presumably supposed to keep "decent" neighbourhoods "decent", but it also results in more streetwalkers, and more liaisons in minimum-price hotels, and so lowers safety.
It seems sort of obvious that the right direction is to have better laws, and then enforce them. I'm not holding my breath.
And, to return to TFA, in the mean time, what stops LEAs from using Rescue Forensics to pad their docket by harassing already-oppressed sex workers who are not victims of trafficking, merely victims of being poor and desperate.
PS: I salute and hugely respect people tackling social justice problems, and I want to emphasize that I'm not condemning Rescue Forensics, I'm expressing a concern.
There are retweets of sex work abolitionist groups, @SharedHope and @RestoreCorps. There are also tweets like this one: https://twitter.com/RescueForensics/status/25676583846244352...
"We are building forensics to fight human trafficking online - abolitionists must bring the fight to the internet!"
It looks like Rescue Forensics has aligned itself with sex work abolitionist groups that pose as anti-trafficking groups. And who have huge incentives to inflate the problem by many orders of maginitude, to create government funding for their groups and for this kind of work.
An aisde: as of today, @RescueForensics has 6,231 followers but only 74 tweets. The first 6,000 or so of these followers look like they were bought. Some might say that gives some indication of the ethics of this company.
If you look at most human trafficking law enforcement efforts, the vast majority is arrests of adult men and women who are consensually buying and selling sex. This is incorrectly labeled "sex trafficking" by law enforcement and the media. But the federal definition of sex trafficking is coercion, or of someone under 18.
It is unconscionable for law enforcement and abolitionists to use stings to go after the large, easy targets of consenting adults to pump up the numbers and money, while the horror of real human trafficking takes real investigative effort, time, and money, but doesn't have large numbers to as easily justify this effort.
The real solution is to decriminalize consensual adult sex work (like in New Zealand and parts of Australia), allowing everyone to focus on the true horrors of human trafficking. But that goes against the goals of the religious-based abolitionist groups, which have hijacked the human trafficking discussion and funding to push their anti-sex agenda.
The more I thought about this, the more bothering it potentially seems. Their Twitter feed chats with a religious group, which may appear biased. Does the company press for reform laws?
How would such a company be treated if it was looking for drug buyers and sellers? Especially if such a company didn't encourage legalization but appeared to stand with Christian groups? What steps are they taking to ensure innocent people are not being prosecuted with their tools? Going by current laws is no moral compass.
Finally, if they or the anti trafficking groups want to be taken seriously, provide real stats. This is from their Twitter account:
"39,000 escort ads were posted on the #Louisiana Backpage since July. How many are sex trafficking victims?"
Well, I don't know, why don't you tell us? They've got big data and LE, but they post leading questions like that with apparently no followup.
It's like saying X number of people OD on heroin. For any X we should figure out A: if current legislation is helping or hurting that number, B: is infringing on the rights and potentially destroying people's lives worth the cost? I'm sure it feels great to save 100 people from OD'ing. Does that mean it's OK to imprison millions?
I know this probably comes off making me look terrible. And I don't know anything except this article and reading the company's Twitter account. But it feels slightly off, as if I'm being convinced of a problem without seeing all the numbers. Where're the calls for legalization and regulation? Maybe I'm just too cynical.
Craigslist still has sex ads, usually veiled in euphemism (roses instead of dollars), but yes, this is the argument that Craigslist raised. There are plenty of other sites though.
Craigslist has way fewer ads than they used to. They are actually playing ball and closing off many of these ads. The journalist was really kind to not mention our primary data sets we collect. We don't want traffickers hiding somewhere else.
I logged in just to say that you don't have to feel so disconnected from the startups in SF. Although I don't go to many parties, if I met you at one, I would consider it my good fortune and anything but a buzzkill. Most of my friends probably share that opinion.
Are you guys a nonprofit or a company? I am not a big angel investor (I have made one investment so far), but this sounds like something I would like to invest in / donate to.
My email is aj at ridelabs dot com if you're interested.
Hey, when I made that comment I was being playful. She made it sound way more serious than I made it. It is tough to talk about sex trafficking at a party though!
Gosh, there is no reason to be embarrassed about your mission. Your mission is more inspiring than any other I've seen in the startup world. While all the other 'cool' startups are doing things like "enabling people to watch other people play video games all day", you guys are literally saving and changing lives. And if it works you'll be doing it at scale. It's inspiring, it matters, and you should be damn proud.
Hah Im not embarassed at all, I just am sensitive to bringing up such a dark topic at social settings. Im happy to talk to anyone about our work anytime. The comment I made was being playful - came out a bit more serious in the article. Thanks so much for the encouragement.
I'm not sure I'd want to found a startup like this, simply because the pressure of messing and it having real, huge impacts on peoples lives. If the founder at Twitch screws up, maybe a few thousand people don't get to watch the video game they wanted. These guys really deserve a lot of praise.
Web sites can put a robots.txt that prohibits crawlers. Are violations of the robots.txt a violation of the computer fraud and abuse act, which would knowing operating a bit in violatoin a felony?
The content and images posted could also be copyrighted or such that they are only for viewing in a browser and any other purpose would be a copyright violation or at a minimum a violation of the terms and conditions of using the site.
Companies don't like their content being made available elsewhere, and would probably fight vigorously.
How much bandwidth would polling and copying the site take? Wouldn't the companies notice it? Wouldn't they stop it?
Wouldn't most of these sites would want to work with the police to ensure that there were no underage people offering sex for money or anybody of any age being forced to work? Wouldn't most of these sites have an alert link for each posting? People can probably ignore consensual adults making an illegal business transaction, but probably not underage or forced prostitution.
If the software can recognize under age workers or people being forced to work, wouldn't the sites welcome the software alerting them of such listing? Would they be willing to pay for it?
I wonder, what is going to happen when there is a 10x/100x revenue opportunity in providing LE in US and other countries with data on other criminals, including sex workers? Illegal aliens, drug users, vandalism? Will they become fair game for Rescue Forensics? It is a for-profit company after all.
The sad part is how "everyone’s buzz gets killed" when he mentions the true mission of his company. Here he is, making an attempt at solving a real problem in the real world but he has to feel ashamed because somehow it's less sexy than web intelligence.
>The company itself doesn’t make any judgments about what might constitute illegal trafficking behavior. That’s up to investigators to determine, as there are adult women who want to do sex work and aren’t being trafficked.
There are lots of ways to do work that "matters." For example, I work for a 50 year old company that makes medical devices. Those devices save lives. I'm only a small cog, but I'm working on something that, if it didn't exist, would probably mean some number of people would die or suffer. I'm very grateful to be working on something like that, and it's not a sexy new startup, it's a smallish BigCo.
Look around, find something that interests or matters to you, and consciously move in that direction. Start now.
[+] [-] staunch|11 years ago|reply
This private company is building a mass surveillance database to track people. They're scraping and archiving what used to be considered anonymous postings. Their current goal is to go after sex trafficking, but they could easily expand into spying on people for any reason.
They're not the government, so I think they have a strong right to do this, but don't let cause of "the children" confuse the issue. This is a new kind of spying, unlike anything that has existed in the history of American society.
Just imagine how much crime we could stop if local police had full access email, phone, and social networking data. There's no question that we could save thousands of children per year. You would have to be a monster or a terrorist not to consent to having your data searched.
[+] [-] userbinator|11 years ago|reply
Personally I agree, but only on the basis that they appear to be only archiving publicly accessible information and the old mantra of "what you post online, stays online".
Just imagine how much crime we could stop if local police had full access email, phone, and social networking data.
Or if everyone's lives were already controlled to the extent that they're essentially living in jail already... that seems like the ultimate result of a gradual increase in pervasive surveillance: people will become so used to, unable to oppose, and scared at the possibility of even thoughtcrime that they'll have no choice but to complacently conform, not unlike Orwell's 1984.
[+] [-] jdoliner|11 years ago|reply
I think it's a bit disingenuous to call this "a new kind of spying" all of the data they're using is publicly available. I don't think it's a realistic view for the future that we'll be able to put things we don't want people to know about on public forums and trust that no one's going to build the tools to piece it together. That sounds like a really unsustainable security through obscurity situation to me.
[+] [-] ryandalton|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|11 years ago|reply
It's not anonymous when people put their phone number in the ad for commercial purposes.
[+] [-] pekk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|11 years ago|reply
On their data collection they will discover paedos --which is great, but they will also be able to discover philanderers, cads, tax cheats, drug users, etc. If these things fall under law enforcement's orbit, that's one thing, the bad thing is the possibility of third parties getting this data and using it to blackmail people.
Maybe they already have that angle covered, in which case, nevermind.
[+] [-] art187|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shurcooL|11 years ago|reply
If the police had that access, wouldn't the criminals avoid the insecure communication medium?
[+] [-] analog31|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zenogais|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway022015|11 years ago|reply
The most common reason I've seen for my friends to be trapped in agencies or abusive pimps has been immigration status, by far. And nobody is doing them any favours by taking them in. LE hates the paperwork so much that a decent way to get out of a pickup is to feign being an illegal alien.
Underage workers are similarly avoided. If you're 16-17 with no fixed address, it's going to be a nightmare of social services for everyone involved before you're spat back out onto the street. (I was arrested twice when underage. Both times they let me go when they saw I was 17 and a ward of the state.)
I don't doubt that there's revenue here though, because LE just loves to do stings. Mostly they're single moms or otherwise trapped by circumstance and trying to make ends meet with a side gig. They're the ones who go quietly, who plead out, who pump arrest records, etc.
Sex trafficking is an immigration/social services problem far more than it is a law enforcement concern. Giving LE more tools to track us is going to make things worse.
I supported myself with sex work when I was a self-sufficient and independent from 15-19. Now I'm a software developer in my late 20's, but that's still my community. I realy wonder if these founders ever actually asked any of us what we thought about this idea before charging ahead?
Note: Throwaway acct. (And I mean throwaway. I'm in an incognito window I'm about to close, with a /dev/random -generated password, and won't be watching for replies. Please leave me alone.)
[+] [-] ryandalton|11 years ago|reply
Federal grants are increasingly common, local and state multi-disicplinary task forces are being established more and more frequently, and they need solutions for dealing with these kind of problems.
Sex trafficking is rarely an immigration problem. According to the DOJ, 83% of their cases deal with victims of sex trafficking who are U.S. citizens and trafficked by U.S. citizens. The remaining 17% are foreign nationals. This is a homegrown problem, generally.
[+] [-] username3|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hartator|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prutschman|11 years ago|reply
I'm glad to see this at least get mentioned; there are people in bad situations who need help, but too often well-meaning people are unfortunately reluctant to listen to the people they think they're trying to help.
[+] [-] jholman|11 years ago|reply
I'm perfectly willing (in my ignorance) to believe that sex trafficking is a problem worth tackling (in scale, in urgency, etc). But I also (already) believe that anti-sex-work laws act to oppress and victimize already-marginalized women, with dubious benefit (without taking a side on whether this effect is deliberate).
For example, in my jurisdiction (IANAL), although I understand that prostitution itself is not illegal as such, the following things are illegal:
This last law is supposed to allow the prosecution of pimps (yay!), but it also means that sex workers cannot hire bodyguards or accountants. The second law is presumably supposed to keep "decent" neighbourhoods "decent", but it also results in more streetwalkers, and more liaisons in minimum-price hotels, and so lowers safety.It seems sort of obvious that the right direction is to have better laws, and then enforce them. I'm not holding my breath.
And, to return to TFA, in the mean time, what stops LEAs from using Rescue Forensics to pad their docket by harassing already-oppressed sex workers who are not victims of trafficking, merely victims of being poor and desperate.
PS: I salute and hugely respect people tackling social justice problems, and I want to emphasize that I'm not condemning Rescue Forensics, I'm expressing a concern.
[+] [-] escortingadvice|11 years ago|reply
There are retweets of sex work abolitionist groups, @SharedHope and @RestoreCorps. There are also tweets like this one: https://twitter.com/RescueForensics/status/25676583846244352... "We are building forensics to fight human trafficking online - abolitionists must bring the fight to the internet!"
It looks like Rescue Forensics has aligned itself with sex work abolitionist groups that pose as anti-trafficking groups. And who have huge incentives to inflate the problem by many orders of maginitude, to create government funding for their groups and for this kind of work.
An aisde: as of today, @RescueForensics has 6,231 followers but only 74 tweets. The first 6,000 or so of these followers look like they were bought. Some might say that gives some indication of the ethics of this company.
There are two other projects that are doing similar work in scraping sex work ads in the US. The first is MEMEX - a DARPA project. http://www.wsj.com/articles/sleuthing-search-engine-even-bet...
The second is ASPASIA project, an academic project out of University of Washington. ASPASIA is very sex worker friendly, and understands the difference between human trafficking and consensual adult sex for money. https://github.com/uwescience/incubator/wiki/aspasia-project https://twitter.com/aspasia_project
If you look at most human trafficking law enforcement efforts, the vast majority is arrests of adult men and women who are consensually buying and selling sex. This is incorrectly labeled "sex trafficking" by law enforcement and the media. But the federal definition of sex trafficking is coercion, or of someone under 18.
It is unconscionable for law enforcement and abolitionists to use stings to go after the large, easy targets of consenting adults to pump up the numbers and money, while the horror of real human trafficking takes real investigative effort, time, and money, but doesn't have large numbers to as easily justify this effort.
The real solution is to decriminalize consensual adult sex work (like in New Zealand and parts of Australia), allowing everyone to focus on the true horrors of human trafficking. But that goes against the goals of the religious-based abolitionist groups, which have hijacked the human trafficking discussion and funding to push their anti-sex agenda.
For more information, see my blog https://www.escortingadvice.org, or follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/EscortingAdvice.
[+] [-] xkcd-sucks|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelGG|11 years ago|reply
How would such a company be treated if it was looking for drug buyers and sellers? Especially if such a company didn't encourage legalization but appeared to stand with Christian groups? What steps are they taking to ensure innocent people are not being prosecuted with their tools? Going by current laws is no moral compass.
Finally, if they or the anti trafficking groups want to be taken seriously, provide real stats. This is from their Twitter account:
"39,000 escort ads were posted on the #Louisiana Backpage since July. How many are sex trafficking victims?"
Well, I don't know, why don't you tell us? They've got big data and LE, but they post leading questions like that with apparently no followup.
It's like saying X number of people OD on heroin. For any X we should figure out A: if current legislation is helping or hurting that number, B: is infringing on the rights and potentially destroying people's lives worth the cost? I'm sure it feels great to save 100 people from OD'ing. Does that mean it's OK to imprison millions?
I know this probably comes off making me look terrible. And I don't know anything except this article and reading the company's Twitter account. But it feels slightly off, as if I'm being convinced of a problem without seeing all the numbers. Where're the calls for legalization and regulation? Maybe I'm just too cynical.
[+] [-] MichaelGG|11 years ago|reply
And isn't the illegality in the states (like the "seizure" of RedBook) just causing all sex work to go more underground?
[+] [-] lsiebert|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandalton|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AznHisoka|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schimmy_changa|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajju|11 years ago|reply
Are you guys a nonprofit or a company? I am not a big angel investor (I have made one investment so far), but this sounds like something I would like to invest in / donate to.
My email is aj at ridelabs dot com if you're interested.
[+] [-] ryandalton|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] porter|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandalton|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhayden|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigmofo|11 years ago|reply
The content and images posted could also be copyrighted or such that they are only for viewing in a browser and any other purpose would be a copyright violation or at a minimum a violation of the terms and conditions of using the site.
Companies don't like their content being made available elsewhere, and would probably fight vigorously.
How much bandwidth would polling and copying the site take? Wouldn't the companies notice it? Wouldn't they stop it?
Wouldn't most of these sites would want to work with the police to ensure that there were no underage people offering sex for money or anybody of any age being forced to work? Wouldn't most of these sites have an alert link for each posting? People can probably ignore consensual adults making an illegal business transaction, but probably not underage or forced prostitution.
If the software can recognize under age workers or people being forced to work, wouldn't the sites welcome the software alerting them of such listing? Would they be willing to pay for it?
[+] [-] anigbrowl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzakrajs|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vdaniuk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] athenot|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wcummings|11 years ago|reply
Pretty weaselly.
[+] [-] pskittle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajiang|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awesome_work_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a3n|11 years ago|reply
Look around, find something that interests or matters to you, and consciously move in that direction. Start now.
[+] [-] guelo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitkack|11 years ago|reply