Elizabeth Nolan Brown Talks About the Secret Backpage Memos and What They Mean for Free Speech Online

Politicians accused the site of victimizing women and children. A federal investigation found otherwise.

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Elizabeth Nolan Brown Talks About the Secret Backpage Memos and What They Mean for Free Speech Online

For most of its existence, Backpage.com was mired in legal and political controversy. The website, which hosted online classified ads much like Craigslist, was accused of facilitating child sex trafficking, and was targeted by state attorneys general who said Backpage "exploited women and children." 

Founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin were hauled in front of the U.S. Senate where an official report claimed they "knowingly facilitated the criminal sex trafficking of vulnerable women and young girls." Eventually, federal agents shut down the site and raided their homes.

The founders are now forced to wear ankle bracelets and are prohibited from leaving Maricopa County, Arizona, where they await their 2020 trial. 

But as it turns out, the government's case was built on bad faith and bogus arguments. As Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown reported, a pair of secret government memos from 2012 and 2013 undermine nearly every aspect of the case against Backpage and its founders. 

Brown talks with Reason Features Editor Peter Suderman about the case against Backpage, the contents of the memos, and what the story means for the ongoing legal and political arguments around sex trafficking and online speech. 

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Photo credit: Hector Amezcua/TNS/Newscom

Comments

[loveconstitution1789]

If the government gets to haul the owners of Backpage.com (a classified ad company) into criminal court, might as well haul Executive Officers of Google, Yahoo, Craigslist, Twatter, Facebook….

They’re all GUILTY of making it allowing access to classified ads on the webpages.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Feature, not bug, right?

[loveconstitution1789]

I didn’t think the Drug Warriors would go quietly but I could have never predicted that they would switch to become Consenting Sex Warriors.

[Robert Beckman]

HL Mencken said it a century ago, “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

[DenverJ]

I seem to recall Mz Nolan Brown herself specifically noting it some years ago.

[Eddy]

You can make 1000s a week on the Internet, to learn the secret just come visit my windowless van. Don’t bring any electronic devices, please, it, ah, messes with the feng shui. And don’t tell your friends and family where you are, it would just make them jealous.

[$park¥ is the Worst]

I was walking around my neighborhood last night and on one of the side streets was a house with a production company truck parked out front. My first thought was that they must be filming a homemade porno. Was that wrong?

[Eddy]

“Was that wrong?”

What am I, Ann Landers?

[Robert]

TL,DL (read the earlier article), so what was their real reason? Are they just anti-sex? Opposed to any new business becoming big quickly? Or just somebody had a hunch and nobody wanted to prove them wrong?

[icannotread]

My take is that this was done as a warning/a way to move forward. Set precedent.
Backpage proved that they knew their site was being used for nefarious purposes. I mean, they were actively helping police. They can’t deny that they didn’t know. The average person, when discovering that their website was being used to do bad stuff to children would have shut down at least that section. They didn’t.
With that said, if they remove CDA section 230 everyone that owns a website isn’t going to want to wind up like these guys so they will comply with the law.

[DenverJ]

Nope. It’s all about the fame and promotions from winning cases: promotion and the chance of elected office.

[Conchfritters]

The founders are now forced to wear ankle bracelets and are prohibited from leaving Maricopa County, Arizona

I consider that time served.

[DenverJ]

Aren’t most of the founders buried thousands of miles from Maricopa county?

[Gaear Grimsrud]

If the prosecution hid exculpatory evidence isn’t an appeal obviously justified?

[Hank Phillips]

So “knowingly facilitating” Christian National Socialist totalitarianism is still legal, right? You wouldn’t want to see judges and politicians forced into a cage like that and made to answer questions, like at Nuremberg.

[BigT]

Suderman actually did a fine job on this podcast, forcing bubbleheaded ENB to provide context. I can only imagine what her articles would be like unedited.

KMW, kick Suderman off the Reason podcasts, but let him edit your airheaded writers. Maybe Shikha?

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[roger villiam]

Free speech online.. I am totally not agree with them.
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