Alleged prospective sex buyers in this scheme first had to respond to a survey and provide information online, including their driver’s license photos, their employer information, credit card information, and they often paid a monthly fee to be part of this.”
Wait, what? (͡•_ ͡• )
That should make the prosecutors jobs much easier.
Wow, imagine willingly providing that information to what you know is a criminal organization. The people who signed up are obviously a major security hazard to whoever they work for.
Yeah. This is the real issue here.
Sex work should be legal and the morality discussion here is about people lying to their spouses and if anybody is being forced into sex work… all interesting topics.
But anybody implicated in this situation needs all security clearances and access dropped because they are high risk morons.
100%. I wouldn’t even give all that information to my online pharmacist and I need some of those medications to survive.
Seriously. How dumb do you need to be to be in an actual high ranking (government) position and willingly give up all that info to an even slightly shady organisation? Never mind an illegal prostitution network you are sure is both illegal and easily blackmailable.
The ease of prosecuting is directly proportional to how wealthy and influential the accused is.
Remember, it's a legal system ... not a justice system ... you can easily distinguish the difference by how wealthy you are (or are not)
Could be a honey pot. Either the guys running it wanted to use the info to blackmail the clientele or sell the info to foreign intelligence
Why is sex work even illegal in the first place.
Selling is legal, fucking is legal, why isn't selling fucking legal?
-- George Carlin
Seas he also the fella that said “Getting paid for sex is illegal… UNLESS YOU RECORD IT!”
For years I've contemplated the idea if I came into a bunch of money if starting a porn studio where the customer is an actor/actress in the porn.
We have a building and several "sets" with cameras recording, customer picks their "partner" and "set" and "shoot the porn", after they are done the video is burned on to a dvd(or blue ray or potentially put on a private file server).
The customer isn't paying for sex, they are paying for the video.
Pretty sure it would have a ton of legal push back and I would need a lot of money for the lawyers to fight the cases.
But 1. Safer for everyone imvolved(it's video taped so you won't beat/hurt/kill the other party) 2.technically legal just like shooting porn
The underlying assumption is the same as in abortion: that women can't be entrusted with agency over their own bodies.
Because one of the biggest issues with sex work, human trafficking, gets worse with legalization. Studies across Europe have shown that countries that outlaw prostitution see a decrease in human trafficking victims while countries that legalized or decriminalized it see an increase.
Unlike with drugs, you don't just create a way to increase the supply. A very small minority of women actually want to engage in sex work. And the few who do, usually envision the high class escort lifestyle. But working in a brothel charging $100 per client isn't something many want to do.
But legalizing prostitution increases demand. Which makes it more profitable for criminals to utilize human trafficking to fill that demand.
https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/
One source of it.
It also doesn't help at all with protecting victims of human trafficking. Victims of human trafficking are already protected. But they don't step forward because of threats against their own well being and that of their families. Something that doesn't change just because their work technically is legal now.
Which leaves a small percentage of people who fall into financial hardship and consider prostitution as a method of overcoming said hardship. For them that might slightly improve their situation. But that still means exploiting vulnerable people and isn't people engaging in sex work because they want to. And it's even questionable if people in these scenarios would follow the legal way.
So while initially it might seem like legalizing it solves a lot of issues, it is more difficult than that.
Us laws regarding sex work are firmly based in puritanical values not out of any concern whatsoever regarding trafficking.
Puritan values.
Old white men elected themselves under the guise of voting (gerrymandering who?) and are too embarrassed and confused to allow women the rights they have as humans. Isn't democracy silly.
My bet is on America's conservative puritan history where anything good is bad.
Also sex trafficking. At least that's the argument for keeping it illegal. :(
I'd say the diagram of "Why is sex work illegal" and "Why is abortion illegal" is almost a perfect circle.
It's about contolling other peoples' bodies and weakening the separation of church and state.
Sex work differs from most other type of work in one very significant way - it's an industry in which capitalists cannot really control the means of production unless slavery (ie, a person can become the private property of another) is legalized and institutionalized. In other words, a sex worker - for the most part - is not as easily coerced into selling their labor to capitalists like most workers can be, and capitalists hate when people have a way to opt out of being hosts for their parasitism.
Sex work also has a way of subverting patriarchal norms upon which the status quo rests.
This is not to say that sex work is automatically a revolutionary, anti-capitalist or even "empowering" thing by itself - there are plenty of ways in which our socio-economic systems allows and enables de facto slavery without calling it slavery - but it certainly doesn't fit into the neat class hierarchy that capitalists wants society to be trapped within.
Sex work also has a way of subverting patriarchal norms upon which the status quo rests.
cough, what? No, it reinforces those norms. Men in power get to have women at their beck and call.
This isn't a capitalist thing. Just look at how profitable the sex industry is in Nevada.
It's a "holier than thou" thing that we just haven't been able to get rid of in our society.
As much as I like calling out greed for what it is, this simply isn't one of those cases.
I'm assuming they're arresting the sex workers and not the politicians and military officials?
Hopefully neither, and they’ll arrest the organizers/pimps/etc.
sex workers and clients should be the lowest priority.
3 individuals sounds like just the pimps.
They'd probably have to confirm identities to arrest those folks, and also prove they aren't just getting name-dropped.
Just grabbing the pimps and workers is a lot easier and less case intense
Anybody remember that one piece about our servicemen being involved in trafficking women overseas about three years ago that was swept under the rug?
I only remember the rug as I’m supposed to.
Customers are not named in the affidavit, according to the agent, because ~~the investigation into their involvement is “active and ongoing.”~~ these are the type of people who don't get held accountable, ever.
Ah, yes, 4-star generals in Procurement retiring to gold-plated consulting gigs in the very companies from which they ordered $1000 paper clips and congressional members using insider info from some congressional comission or other they're in for trading on their portfolios is all fine, it's paying for sex that's the real problem with holders of high level official positions in America.
The bribery potential of those officials violating the laws they're publicly supporting is the problem.
The client list will likely go in the same vault as Epstein's. They're all assets now.
I'm sure they'll be arresting and charging the politicians any and revoking security clearances any moment now...
I really don’t understand the way the US works in regards to „bought“ sex… on the one hand prostitution is illegal (with the exception of ~~Las Vegas~~ parts of Nevada) and as soon as you point a camera on the paid fucking it is called PORN and it is still a multi billion dollar industry.
You guys are weird
Edit: changed the Las Vegas part
Prostitution isn't legal in Vegas. Parts of Nevada yes, but in Clark county where Las Vegas is located prostitution is illegal.
There are porn producers who do such a crappy job that I’d swear they only film so they have legal access to prostitution.
In this day and age where nothing stays secret, how is it hard for elected officials not do stupid stuff like visiting brothels?
In this day and age, why aren't brothels and sex work legal?
Buddy, we're still working on legalizing an absurdly common plant because for a while much of the country thought it was satanic or whatever.
"In this day and age," in America, of course it's not legal yet. That is gonna take a long time.
Where else are they going to get sex? From the woman they live with that is laughably called their wife?
Look at Ted Cruz and tell me that there is a woman on the planet earth who will allow him inside her without money being exchanged.
If the girls were sex trafficked I have a problem with this, if they were free to do as they please, then I have no issue with this.
Since it’s illegal and probably secret from their wives, it opens the client to blackmail, which isn’t good for the public if they’re in government or military.
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