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Re:Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargete... by Hizonner on Saturday July 29, 2023 @09:12PM (#36926657)
If you read the article, you'll see some TALK about child sex slaves. The only evidence you'll see of any ACTION is doxxing self-employed adult prostitutes.

That's probably because actual child sex slavery is relatively hard to find.

Re:Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargete... by jstarfish on Saturday July 29, 2023 @10:23PM (#36927166)
Call it logical fallacy, but just because it's hard [for you] to find doesn't mean it's not going on.

I used to work with multiple ex-vice detectives. They had some seriously harrowing stories about the shit they routinely found on motel raids.

If you think actual child sex slavery is "relatively hard to find," come visit Georgia. It's only been made hard to find because of FOSTA-SESTA; such services used to be advertised in plain English on Backpage.

https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/atlanta/news/pr...

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/31-arrested-in-georgia-as-p...

Re:Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargete... by Hizonner on Saturday July 29, 2023 @10:41PM (#36927291)
That's totally irrelevant. I didn't say that it didn't exist.

Even if it WERE being advertised openly, there'd still be less of it around than plain old adult prostitution. And as you point out it's NOT being advertised openly. So it is in fact relatively hard to find.

Therefore these guys go for the low-hanging fruit, because as far as they're concerned all prostitution is human trafficking (one of them says exactly that in the article). In their propaganda, it's in their interest to talk as if they were going after children in bondage... except, of course, when they give a count of their cases. That number is going to include everybody.

Re:Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargete... by beebmam on Saturday July 29, 2023 @10:39PM (#36927279)
I agree with you. But what do you think about organizations that use a facade of taking down child sex traffickers to cover up the fact that they use virtually all their resources to doxx self-employed adult sex workers?
Re:Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargete... by miracle2k on Sunday July 30, 2023 @02:11AM (#36928360)
These links are weak evidence that this is a wide-spread problem. Indeed, they arguably lack evidence for even the existence of human trafficking.

> https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/atlanta/news/pr...

48 of the 71 individuals identified (and having their names published online) are female adult sex workers. No claims are being made that any were victimized.

10 are crimes related to children, of those, 7 are "enticement", which may be LE setups. Certainly, no one being trafficked into motel rooms here.

We don't have details on the "11 juveniles recovered", but they are more like a 17y at risk of homelessness than what one would traditionally imagine to be "child sex slavery". It's also unclear if they are being helped by this recovery, or if you'll find their name appear on the arrest list for prostitution by next year's "human trafficking operation".

> https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/31-arrested-in-georgia-as-p...

What this article actually describes are people arrested for possession of CSAM. No claim is made that any victim was found during any motel raids. There is this:

> Seven of those arrested in Georgia traveled for the purpose of meeting and having sex with a minor.

But the phrasing makes it pretty reasonable to assume they were meetings setup by law enforcement.

Re:Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargete... by fakedang on Saturday July 29, 2023 @10:39PM (#36927274)
Not to mention, the ones doxxing prostitutes also have a good reason to do so - perhaps creating a smokescreen around their own pedophilic closet. We already saw this in various ways, including the campaigns against gays and drug users.
Re:Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargete... by Natsu on Saturday July 29, 2023 @11:52PM (#36927649)
> The only evidence you'll see of any ACTION is doxxing self-employed adult prostitutes.

Can you quote that part of the article? They make reference to looking for kids and browsing escort listings, but they're obviously looking for people on the younger side and even the article contains this bit:

> When asked about Skull Games’s position on arresting victims, Tiegs emphasized that “arresting is different from prosecuting” and argued, “Sometimes they do need to make the arrest, because of the health and welfare of that person. She needs to get clean, maybe she’s high. … Very rarely, in my opinion, is it right to charge and prosecute a girl.”

I don't see the word 'adult' at all in the article unless my ctrl+F isn't working, so I'm not sure where you get the idea that their "ACTION" is doxxing adults.

Re:Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargete... by Hizonner on Sunday July 30, 2023 @10:19AM (#36931381)
> "All we have is a picture and a fake name"

That's an admission that they don't know the target's age. Which we knew anyway; they can't know it until after they do the doxx.

Even if they go for the ones who both have pictures and look young, there are more 18-and-19-year-olds out there than 16-and-17-year-olds, so their "random" sample will be mostly adults. And of course nobody is going to post a picture of a CHILD-child, since that's obviously a huge red flag that will get them caught.

> "but, using some of these tools, you’re able to identify her mugshot."

Children don't tend to have mugshots that often. And, by the way, if they have one, that means the system has arrested them in the past and obviously failed to get anywhere.

> "Finding a target’s high school diploma or sonogram imagery nets 15 points,"

Children don't tend to have high school diplomas almost ever.

I have no idea what the sonogram thing is about.

> "while finding the same tattoo on multiple women would earn a whopping 300"

I will admit that that does sound pretty off, so I won't claim it as going after the "self-employed". However, it does count as going after adults, since it's hard for a minor to get a tattoo at all.

> "In a July Skull Games webinar, one participant noted that they had been able to use PimEyes to find a sex worker’s driver’s license posted to the web."

The longer you have your license, the more time there is for a picture of it to get posted.

In fact, all of the stuff they say they're using tends to accumulate over time. You are far more likely to find any of that stuff on an adult than on a teenaged minor, and you'll pretty much never find any of it on a child as the term is normally understood.

As for arrests, first, they've already been doxxed, by people most of them would really prefer not know who they are, before the question of arrest comes into it. Second, "the group has no information about how many have resulted in prosecutions or indictments of actual traffickers". So they're handing this stuff over to cops and at best just hoping they won't prosecute any of the people they consider to be victims. That's, um, irresponsibly optimistic.

Re:Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargete... by Natsu on Sunday July 30, 2023 @08:48PM (#36937689)
> That's an admission that they don't know the target's age

That's what they start with, but a picture is a pretty good way to figure out if someone is likely to bee underage and they also do significant investigation before turning this over to the police.

> And of course nobody is going to post a picture of a CHILD-child, since that's obviously a huge red flag that will get them caught.

This idea that people never post obvious criminal activity online is kinda silly when we're discussing people getting outed by... posting obvious criminal activity online. You can say it shouldn't be criminal, but there are democratic means to change that and actual locations where prostitution is actually legal, like that county in Nevada.

Nobody in the article seems to dispute that they catch actual child sex slaves, though. The main complaint is the unsubstantiated idea that they're catching mostly adults, but no evidence of this is presented. Instead, you're reading a lot of things between a lot of lines to infer that and claiming these inferences are obvious when they're not.

> Children don't tend to have high school diplomas almost ever. > it's hard for a minor to get a tattoo at all.

Better, but hardly proof. And you can still be trafficked when not a child if you're being held against your will. It's not like adult sex slaves are faring any better or like they don't exist and deserve sympathy.

> The longer you have your license, the more time there is for a picture of it to get posted.

I got mine at 16, posting it is something you're more likely to do when young and dumb.

> So they're handing this stuff over to cops and at best just hoping they won't prosecute any of the people they consider to be victims. That's, um, irresponsibly optimistic.

The DAs have standards about this, they're not going to randomly prosecute someone forced into slavery and the cops are the best people to actually deal with this since it's their literal job in society.

Also I have to note that your solution here is to ignore people being forced into literal slavery because you disagree with a democratically created law and want it changed by fiat instead of trying to actually fix it.

I get that there's a sort of trolley problem, but one might think that maybe they could do something legal or change the law instead of demanding that people ignore child sex slaves being sold online because they might get caught breaking a law they, and you, disagree with.