Group+1A

toc = How Craigslist Has Changed Human Trafficking in the United States and Internationally =

by Group 1A: Julia Scholl, Beth Elderkin, Carine Lee, Antonio Zaragoza and Holly Pablo

1 Introduction
As defined by the [|United Nations], human trafficking is, “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation". [|(United Nations, 2010)] Human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is a problem that has not only recently emerged. However, with the advancement of technology, the Internet has served as a veil to those who choose to pay for sexual services from women, men, and in extreme cases, children, whom are often sold against their will as sex slaves. Craigslist serves as a wide online network that serves specific communities through classified advertisements. Their “adult services” section was under fire between 2008-10 for ads being posted that allowed human trafficking and sexual exploitation to take place. Craigslist, as the main target for the recent scrutiny regarding this issue, serves as an example to other online communities and how the issue of human trafficking has easily spread across the internet, nationally and internationally.

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2 The Making of Craigslist
by Holly Pablo

2.1 Beginnings
[|Craigslist] began as a simple email list of arts and technology events in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1995. Founder [|Craig Newmark], an information technology specialist working at [|Charles Schwab]at the time, started the project as a fun hobby in his living room. One year later, Newmark put Craiglist online as a simple, web-based service for free, local classifieds. This community-based model of sections devoted specifically for job listings, housing, personals, items wanted and for sale, activities and discussion forums proved popular.

Within the next few years, Craigslist began generating up to a million page views per month. By 2000, Newmark resigned from his job as a software engineer to work fulltime on the website. Today, [|the business employs 30 people from its office] in the Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. The for-profit company supports its operations primarily on [|job advertisements in 18 markets], but remains mostly free to the public. Craigslist remains one of the busiest websites on the Internet, generating more than 20 billion page views per month.

2.2 Growth and Expansion
The beauty of Craigslist is that it is community moderated, allowing people to connect and deal locally. By dealing locally, Craigslist provides an alternative to other purchasing options offered through corporations such as eBay and Amazon. Since its fruition, [|Newmark has declined any form of banner advertisements], retaining the website’s [|non-commercial nature]. Craigslist has been [|expanded to cover 700 local sites in 70 countries] and is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portugese and Spanish.



3 History of Human Trafficking
by Carine Lee

3.1 Ancient History
While there is no definitive date as to when human trafficking began, [|one of the first known major slave societies was in Athens]. Human trafficking for pure exploitation, however, dates back a few thousand years. One of the most well-known incidents of human trafficking is that of the [|sugar revolution in the Caribbean], that had slaves being sold from Africa and ending up in sugar colonies ran by Europeans. This eventually led to slaves being sold to the southern United States through the trading of other goods, such as coffee and tobacco. It was there that the slaves began working on cotton plantations. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution officially abolished slavery in the United States. Though the legal version of human trafficking was ended, illegal human trafficking still exists in today’s society.

3.2 Modern Reality
The United States is generally a destination country for international trafficking. An estimated 14,500 to 17,500 people, mostly women and children, are transported to the United States every year.[| Monitoring of human trafficking] in the U.S. began in 1994 by the U.S. State Department. It focused mostly on the trafficking of females for sexual exploitation. It has since expanded to include men and trafficking for all forms of exploitation, not just for sex.

In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented on the [|Trafficking in Persons Report] and the United States’ first-ever ranking. Clinton goes on to say that the ranking isn’t being taken “as a reprieve but as a responsibility to strengthen global efforts against modern slavery, including those within America. […] This fluid phenomenon continues to affect cultures, communities, and countries spanning the globe.”



**4 Relationship Between Craigslist and Human Trafficking**
by Beth Elderkin

**4.1 Allegations of Trafficking**
Ever since the Erotic Services section was implemented in 1995-96, Craigslist was accused of increasing human trafficking in the United States: “Craigslist is like the Walmart of online sex trafficking right now in this country” (Andrea Powell of the FAIR Fund, 2010). Between 300,000-800,000 posts directly soliciting sex for money were posted on U.S. Craigslist every single month, many of which featured instantly accessible explicit materials, such as photographs displaying sexual acts or nudity. Several crimes and illegal activities had been linked to trafficking on Craigslist, including the 2009 FBI arresting of 14 members of the Gambino crime family who were selling the sexual services of girls ages 15 to 19 on Craigslist (New York Times, 2010). There was also the 2009 case of model Jessica Brisman, who was murdered by a client who had responded to an ad she had placed on Craigslist (New York Daily News, 2009), as well as a story featured on CNN about a 12-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and forced into prostitution on Craigslist for several weeks until authorities were able to track her down and rescue her (2010).

According to former trafficked sex worker and current executive director of More Than Purpose Nikki Junker, Craigslist completely changed the world of prostitution due to the anonymity of johns and the ease in which prostitutes could advertise themselves and solicit sex without the dangers of streetwalking (2010). In addition, the affordability of sex postings made it much easier for sex workers and pimps to post multiple ads simultaneously, thereby increasing their revenue; to purchase an Adult Services ad in a newspaper or magazine could cost upwards of $150 per week, where on Craigslist each posting cost between $5-10 (Washington City Paper, 2010). However, due to the sheer number of postings, Craigslist still generated soaring profits from Adult Services. By mid 2010 Craiglist was generating $3.7 million every month from commercial sex advertisements. This amounted to approximately $36.6 million annually, roughly 30% of their total revenue (CBS Business Network, 2010).

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**4.2 Craigslist's Response to Trafficking Allegations**
In November 2008 Craigslist issued a joint statement with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (//__NCMEC__//) and over 40 U.S. attorneys general, stating that it would implement “sweeping new measures” in order to combat illegal prostitution on their Erotic Services section. In 2009 they changed the name to Adult Services and started requiring credit card numbers. Craigslist also announced that it would have attorneys manually screen every rejected adult advertisement and report any suspicious postings to authorities, primarily involving potentially underage girls. However, in the 15 months this program was implemented, only 132 ads were reported to authorities, out of more than 700,000 adult services ads that had been rejected by Craigslist (CNN, 2010).

On September 4, 2010, Craigslist placed a bar marked 'Censored' over the link to their Adult Services postings in the United States, which removed accessibility. The censored bar stayed over the Adult Services link until September 9, 2010, when the link was removed completely. Craigslist has stated that it will not reinstate Adult Services on their United States website in the foreseeable future, although they do claim it is a step backwards in their allegedly active fight against human trafficking and underage prostitution.

5 National Consequences
by Julia Scholl

5.1 Police and Government Involvement
Police officers in the United States have approached the human trafficking issue carefully due to the nature of the crime, the amount of parties involved, and the frequency of that which children are involved as sex slaves. Law enforcement are involved with a nationwide campaign called [|Innocence Lost], which focuses on combating underage prostitution and has a goal of decriminalizing the girls while concentrating on catching the pimps who control them [|(CNN, 2008)]. This is to ensure that these children are treated as victims, not criminals, and to make an effort to reintroduce them in to normal society.

[|Innocence Lost] launched in 2003 as an initiative between the FBI and the [|Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section], and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Currently, there are 39 task forces in the United States, consisting of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies that work with the US Attorney’s Offices. As of November 2010, their efforts have recovered 1,200 children. [|(FBI, 2010)]

The crack-down on online ads promoting human trafficking has been centered on Craigslist.com due to its size and wide influence. Attorneys general in 17 states worked together, led by [|Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal], to urge Craigslist to discontinue its adult services section all together. In August, 2010 they sent a letter to [|Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster] and [|Founder Craig Newmark] stating that, “The increasingly sharp public criticism of Craiglist’s Adult Services section reflects a growing recognition that ads for prostitution- including ads trafficking children- are rampant on it.” [|(CNN, 2010)]. Matt Zimmerman, a senior staff attorney for the Electric Frontier Foundation stated that Craigslist, under protection of [|The Communications Decency Act], cannot be held criminally liable for the actions of its users [|(CNN, 2009).][| Section 230]of the act grants broad immunity from certain types of legal liability stemming from content created by others. [|(Citizen Media Law Project, 2010)]

5.2 American Public Involvement through Activism
The public outcry against human trafficking, particularly that of minors, brought forth activism against Craigslist’s adult section. Websites, such as that of [|The Human Trafficking Project] are online communities dedicated to raising awareness of the issue, as are certain nation-wide organizations. [|The Rebecca Project]is a national organization that works at the state and local level, which advocates for change resulting in justice for the victims of human trafficking.

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Some people have been boycotting Craigslist due to the adult ads. One way that they have been boycotting it is through using other websites offering free or inexpensive classified ads, such as kijiji.com, which goes through eBay[|.(Trafficking Project, 2010)]

5.3 How Craigslist Removing their Adult Services Section Affected Other Sources of Classified Ads
The Director of Customer Service and Law Enforcement relations at Craigslist, William “Clint” Powell, explains that even though Craigslist has recently removed the adult services section of their website, Americans may still access it on foreign sites, such as its Canadian site [|(CNN, 2010)] In addition, ads for adult services find their way to other sections of the website, including “casual encounters” [|(ABC News, 2010).]

Craigslist competitor sites such as Backpage.com have been expected to fill the vacuum left behind by Craigslist, according to Ernie Allen, chief executive of the [|National Center for Missing and Exploited Children] [|(CNN, 2010)] Also benefiting from Craigslist’s removal of the ads are [|alternative weekly papers], which have seen a significant increase to how many adult ads were listed. SF Weekly, for example, had about 160 adult ads posted the week before Craiglist made changes in 2009 and then the week following, it had bumped up to 910. [|(Washington City Paper, 2009)]

Craigslist was targeted for their adult services section, the final resolution being that the section was taken down. However, the issue of human trafficking through online classified ads has merely shifted to other sources.

**6 International Consequences**
By Antonio Zaragoza

6.1 The International Phenomenon
Human Trafficking is an international phenomenon that has effects on a global scale. The illegal business of trafficking men, women, young girls and young boys is estimated to net between $7-10 billion annually with approximately 50,000 people being smuggled into the United States alone every year. The growth of this complex, worldwide issue is compounded by a lack of global commitment to combat the issue; the root of which stems from not understanding the social-economical causes of the human trafficking, as well as the lack of distinguishing between the burgeoning sex trade. The International Labor Organization has deemed the phenomenon of human trafficking as “the underside of globalization”.

In 2000, in Palermo, Italy, the [|United Nations] announced the [|Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children] or also known as “The Trafficking Protocol”. It was enacted on Dec 25th 2003; as of 2010 117 countries have signed it. But it has yet to develop as a deterrent or global manifesto to combat human trafficking.

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**6.2 Global Outcry**
Recently Craigslist has removed its adult services content from its site but only in the United States. In Border States like Arizona, California, and Texas and northern states that border Canada, usage of Craigslist’s adult services has increased. While activist groups, such as the Polaris Project, the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, the FAIR Fund and Courtney's House commend Craigslist for removing adult services content from their site, they are still pushing for the removal of adult content services from all international sites. "While this is a good first step in the U.S., there are still more than 250 other Craigslist 'erotic' pages around the world where children and young women are still being sold for sex through Craigslist," the organizations said in a statement. In Tijuana, Mexico, a prostitute will advertise services, cross the border into California, and travel up as far as Oceanside or Orange County to engage in illegal prostitution.

**6.3 Situational Apathy**
Essentially, Craigslist is under no legal obligation to shut down the adult portion of its site and it can continue to profit from adult services abroad. This very fact underscores the lack of proactive legislation, not only here in the United States but around the globe. Additionally, because there is a lack of concentrated, cohesive effort to curb the sex trade or the amount of global human trafficking, sites like Craigslist that offer safe havens for those who would engage in illicit organized crime, operate with relative impunity the world over. Even in the United States, Craigslist only removed its adult services content after an overwhelming outcry from organizations and law enforcement agencies. There is no legal authority that can currently force Craigslist to do anything in regards to its services section and is merely “dealing” with a public relations problem of insurmountable proportions. And although the revenue lost from adult services on its site will undoubtedly be recovered by readjusting prices in its other international markets that operate with little or no restriction or oversight at all.

References:

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