Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Secret Memos Show the Government Has Been Lying About Backpage

In general, staff would respond to subpoenas within the same day; "With respect to any child exploitation investigation, Backpage often provides records within the hour." Staff regularly provided "Live testimony at trial to authenticate the evidence against defendants who have utilized Backpage," and the company held seminars for law enforcement on how to best work with Backpage staff and records.

"In the course of introducing evidence about what Backpage did not do to monitor its site and exclude prostitutes, much evidence would be admitted about what Backpage did do to monitor its site," they said.

Because Backpage worked so closely with authorities to stop bad actors, it had given the government all the goods it needed to prosecute-even as prosecutors ignored the many sex-ad hubs that weren't working with authorities.

Since the time when the memos were first drafted, officials have figured out ways to frame any positive parts of Backpage operations into legal liabilities and points of public horror.

Backpage lawyers in the criminal case have been barred from using the memos as part of their clients' defense.

In issuing her order, Brnovich agreed that the memos had "Clearly been distributed to many people," including "Other people that the government was working with," and said any suggestion Backpage defendants or lawyers had supplied the memos to Wired was pure "Speculation."

Since the vast majority of these platforms employ no more stringent age-verification tools than Backpage did, whatever amount of ads for minors got through on Backpage is also likely getting through now.


https://reason.com/2019/08/26/secret-memos-show-the-government-has-been-lying-about-backpage/

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