February 6, 2006
Modesto Bee
By MERRILL BALASSONE
It seems there is nothing out of reach on the Internet, from the benign everyday items to the quirky and ridiculous.
People search for boyfriends, apartments and used furniture, and have attempted to sell body parts and auction their names.
So it may come as no surprise that the world's oldest profession has reinvented itself for the digital age.
Police say some dating Web sites and online classified services increasingly feature blatant ads for prostitution.
After a recent sting netted eight arrests, the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department is investigating Web sites it says create a forum for prostitution.
"We're going to look into whether there are federal violations being committed and if so, we will pursue it," said Det. Ken Hedrick, whose previous investigations focused on catching child predators online. "If someone's paying them money to place an ad for prostitution on there, they're taking that money and they're committing a crime."
But Kurt Opsahl, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act holds that Web sites are not liable for information posted there by third parties.
If Web site creators were responsible for screening the thousands or millions of posts each day, Opsahl said, it would be nearly impossible for them to stay in business.
"That's pretty much the only way message boards on the Internet could possibly work," he said. "But if what they do rises to essentially pimping and they're getting fees based on providing the prostitution services, then it's no longer information from a third party."
Hedrick said he first stumbled across the problem by accident, when he found a prostitution ad on the Yahoo Personals site five years ago. He arrested a 45-year-old Salida woman through that first sting. A year later, the woman reposted her advertisement and was arrested again, detectives said.
Last month, the Sheriff's Department concluded a full-scale operation to catch prostitutes and their customers online. Detectives arrested five men, including two registered sex offenders, one who had been arrested weeks earlier on charges of possession and distribution of child pornography; a high school football coach; and two businessmen. Two women and a 17-year-old runaway also were arrested after Hedrick set up "dates" with them in hotel rooms or an apartment used for undercover operations.
Hedrick surfed several dating Web sites but found that Craigslist.org and MyRedBook.com were the ones most saturated with prostitution ads.
"I started checking those out and what I found was kind of astonishing," he said. "The number of people posting is outrageous, and the ads are just really blatant."
Site: Legality hard to determine
In November, Craigslist helped lead South San Francisco police to uncover a prostitution ring of at least eight juveniles who had posted ads on the site.
Craigslist, a free community classified service, allows more than 10 million users each month to post jobs, housing and personal ads among other categories. The site also has an erotic services link for escort services that Hedrick and other detectives used to uncover prostitutes.
Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's chief executive officer, said advertising illegal activities is strictly prohibited on the site. Each posting has a system through which users who spot illegal ads can flag them for removal by Craigslist staff.
But Buckmaster said it often is difficult to know by reading an ad whether the advertisement is offering legal escort services or illegal prostitution, making it necessary for police to go undercover to make the exchange of money for the promise of sex.
"We've gotten a lot of positive feedback and praise from law enforcement and (district attorneys') offices over the years for being especially prompt and cooperative in responding to their inquiries," Buckmaster said in an e-mail.
Tips given to avoid police
MyRedBook.com, a Web site that bills itself as "the Premier Guide to Escort, Massage and Strip Club services in the greater San Francisco Bay Area," includes names, numbers and reviews of escorts, as well as message boards where members can discuss sexual exploits and trade tips on how to avoid becoming the target of police busts.
There are more than 78,000 active members on MyRedBook.com, which was founded in 1997 by two high-tech professionals in the Bay Area identified only as Mr. R and Mr. B.
MyRedBook has a disclaimer that warns users not to post any illegal or explicit information.
Users on the site have developed a community of sorts, creating their own terminology, describing the males as "hobbyists" and females as "providers," along with a list of acronyms to describe sex acts. Accessing some of the reviews and the message board is free, but some pay to become VIP members.
The "providers" are reviewed on the site to reduce the likelihood of responding to an undercover police officer, Hedrick said. There are more than 1,000 names of "providers" in the Central Valley. People on the site frequently urge others to "stick with references" and "do their homework."
"It's always a good idea to play it safe and not give out selfincriminating information," said one post on the Central Valley message board. "But, we still want and need to share info or we wouldn't be here. It's just that from now on we're going to have to be smarter at it."
Hedrick said there is much talk on the site about legalizing prostitution as an act between two consenting adults, and many users say they believe Internet prostitution is a safer and easier alternative to cruising the streets.
Tough choice for lawmakers
Experts say lawmakers will face a difficult decision about whether to place responsibility on sites that knowingly or unknowingly advertise illegal activities.
Bob Berring, a professor specializing in new technology at the University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, said the Internet has developed far more quickly than the laws governing it.
"People are constantly pushing at the edges," Berring said. "If I can advertise a prostitute, could we have a bulletin board devoted to the sale of cocaine? If you make money because people come to your site, it's more difficult to justify that you don't have any control of what goes on."
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