
Stop SESTA: Amendments to Federal Criminal Sex Trafficking Law Sweep Too Broadly - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/stop-sesta-amendments-federal-criminal-sex-trafficking-law-sweep-too-broadly
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danjoc
This sounds suspiciously like the Estonia leak. Specifically like the more
extreme Option B part of the leak.

[https://edri.org/leaked-document-eu-presidency-calls-for-
mas...](https://edri.org/leaked-document-eu-presidency-calls-for-massive-
internet-filtering/)

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will_brown
TL;DR: EFF is against criminal liability of internet platforms for the actions
of their users...specifically in this instance for a law targeting liability
for sex trafficking.

To understand this position from a legal perspective it's helpful to
understand _mens rea_ , or the mental intent of the criminal.

There are all kinds of legal standards, from knowing/willful all the way down
to strict liability, including between such as reckless and negligence.

Strict liability is a very rare standard in criminal law, but basically means
you will be guilty of a crime regardless of your intent. The most
common/famous example from law schools is statutory rape. Normally crimes
require some form of intent, but in the case of statutory rape the act alone
is enough to convict. The extreme hypothetical is the case of a man meeting a
girl at a bar that is 21 and over. The man takes a woman home, who should be
21 based on the circumstance, but in an abundance of caution checks her ID and
confirms she is 21. Turns out she committed her own crime of possessing a fake
government issued ID and she is really 16, the man has no legal defense based
on lack of intent (lack of knowledge, willfulness, or even recklessness or
negligence). The act occurred so he is guilty.

There is another line of cases regarding "burying your head in the sand".
Example, you take a package from person x who pays you $1M to deliver it to
address Y. Turns out it's drugs, the common defense would be, there was no
intent to possess or transport drugs, but case law holds you can't escape
criminal liability by burying your head in the sand.

I think the EFFs position is a slippery slope, sure we don't want criminal
liability of internet platforms where they really didn't know about sex
trafficking and even would have stopped it if they had known, but we don't
want platforms claiming a la Uber, we are just a tech platform if people are
using our platform to break laws we aren't liable for that. Yes, platforms
should be liable when they help hide and facilitate crimes, especially in the
case of Uber where their business model is facilitating drivers in illegally
operating as taxis or rides for hire (as they do/did in many jurisdictions).

~~~
lobotryas
Disagreed completely. In my view it is enough for a platform to comply with
legitimate requests for information from LE and have a team that handles user-
generated reports of illegal/rule breaking activity that occurs on the
platform. Anything more is placing an undue burden on these companies and
either making some technologies dangerous to use/invest in (bitcoin can be
used to sell drugs) or barring small companies from particular business
opportunities because they would require too much monitoring overhead.

Let's trust the laws that already exist to handle things that have been
illegal for a long time.

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will_brown
>Let's trust the laws that already exist to handle things that have been
illegal for a long time.

So in other words I can create an Uber for murder for hire, and I'll connect
people who want someone dead and people who will do the job; ill process the
payment and take a cut. If the two conspirators get caught fine, let the laws
that exist work it out...but I escape any liability "because I'm just a tech
platform". All I have to do is respond to LE subpoenas during the murder
investigation, that's what you are suggesting.

Don't get me wrong I agree with points about bitcoin, that it serves as a
legit technology and shouldn't be outlawed because it might be used for
illegal transactions, but the arguement is not that "banks already engage in
money laundering for drug dealers and other illegal businesses, and at worst
they pay fines, no one has gone to jail; therefore, bitcoin should remain
unregulated so even one else can engage in money laundering".

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gjjrfcbugxbhf
No running a platform explicitly for murder for hire is already illegal.

~~~
will_brown
I know it's extreme,but no there is no law about a murder for hire tech
platform, just laws against various types of murder, all distinguished by the
criminal intent.

It's like saying many jurisdiction had laws against unlicensed taxis and
illegal rides for hire, and we know Uber willfully operated in those
jurisdictions...drivers have been arrested and fined, but nothing happened to
Uber.

So using real world examples, yes I would like to see platforms be liable
where they knowingly and willfully operate to break the law. If people could
interpret that reasonably, they would understand I'm not suggesting what is
obviously being interpreted or projected onto my comments.

~~~
gjjrfcbugxbhf
> I know it's extreme,but no there is no law about a murder for hire tech
> platform, just laws against various types of murder, all distinguished by
> the criminal intent.

Rico?

