St. Louis Congresswoman Introduces Online Sex-Trafficking Bill

ST. LOUIS, MO — Republican Congresswoman Ann Wagner, who represents Missouri's second district, has authored a new bill to regulate online sex trafficking, according to the public affairs network C-SPAN. Her bill, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, amends section 230 of a 1996 law called the Communications Decency Act to remove legal immunity from websites that distribute third party content related to sex trafficking.

Under current law, sites like Backpage or Craigslist, are treated as content distributors rather than publishers. Publishers, like newspapers or magazines, can be held liable for defamatory statements or illegal content that makes it into their print or web pages. Distributors, on the other hand, like bookstores or libraries, are immune for the same legal repercussions. Distributors simply don't have time to police all the content they sell or disseminate, the thinking goes.

Wagner's legislation would change that for platforms that are rife with sex-trafficking posts. "If it's criminal activity off line, it ought to be criminal activity online," she said in an interview with C-SPAN.

Many different online actors could be affected by the change. "What we're doing with my piece of legislation is to make sure that we are very narrowly going in and amending section 230 [of the Communications Decency Act] to make sure that Congressional intent is clear when it comes to the issue of sex trafficking," she said. Currently, she added, many online distributors are hiding behind the law as they knowingly pedal sex trafficking advertisements and other illegal information.

Seventy percent of trafficking victims are bought and sold online, and more than 150,000 escort ads — many for underage girls — are posted online every day, according to Thorn, a victims-advocacy and anti-human trafficking organization. Wagner believes the Communications Decency Act, which was written in the very early days of the internet, is in dire need of the update her bill would provide.

"We're going after these criminals, both at the state and local level, at the federal level, civilly and criminally, to make sure that we shut down these bad actors," Wagner said.

Some critics have called legislation like Wagner's an assault on the first amendment, but she calls that a red herring, insisting that the legislation is narrowly tailored and in line with Congress's intent when the law was written. Wagner has been working with her colleagues in the U.S. Senate, including Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who are advancing a similar piece of legislation called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. That bill cleared the Senate Commerce Committee with unanimous approval last week, after some of the largest U.S. technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, dropped their opposition to it.

“The momentum for this effort is building fast — but when it comes to protecting Missouri kids from an online marketplace that allows them to be bought and sold, it’s not a moment too soon,” McCaskill said.

A two-year investigation by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by McCaskill and Ohio Republican Rob Portman, found that Backpage knowingly facilitated criminal sex trafficking and covered up the evidence to maintain its bottom line — more than 90 percent of the site's revenue comes from adult advertisements. That investigation led directly to the Senate legislation.

"Their legislation and our legislation is aimed at the same thing," Wagner said, explaining that her bill has the support of 50 attorneys general and a coalition of advocacy and law enforcement groups, in addition to more than 155 co-sponsors in the House. The Senate bill has been endorsed by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as well as The Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, Missouri Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, and the St. Louis Police Officers Association.

One well-known internet platform, however, remains opposed to the legislation: Wikipedia. In a post on the blogging platform Medium, Wikimedia Foundation legal fellow Leighanna Mixter argued that the law might threaten the existence of Wikipedia and other smaller platforms. She believes by opening the floodgates to litigation, sites that don't have the legal clout of Facebook or Google could be forced to go dark.

"User-driven projects could not thrive if websites were subject to greater liability for user content, and certainly could not be supported by a small nonprofit organization like the Wikimedia Foundation," she said. "For that reason, we have some serious concerns about the potential impact of SESTA and other amendments to Section 230."

Wikipedia argues that provisions against "knowing" support of criminal activity might even dissuade websites from investigating content to avoid criminal liability.

Once the bills pass their respective chambers, they will likely go to conference committee where representatives and senators will decide which parts of each law to include in the final bill.

C-SPAN's interview with Rep. Wagner will re-air tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN2.

Image via C-SPAN