This appeared in this morning's Boston Globe.

Read the article - "Program in Boston targets men who buy sex"

The only reason they care so much about escorting is because uncle Sam can'y get his cut. Why can they solve real crimes?

Not sure why the city of boston is staring this crackdown on prostitudes and clients
, up and down the east coast there is a bigger problem with heroin, people are dying from  
Overdoses and a bad mix of heroin, no one one is dying from a Gfe sessio

The sad part is that they will not target the woman who really need their help and that are being used against their will.  They will target the woman who work for themselves, who are honest hard working woman and their clients.

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So the politicians need to stay on top of them to get reelectioned to office. As long as they are on the right side.  
Also there is a new mayor in Boston, he needs to make his mark.  

As for the article, it looks like they are going to be targeting BP, and Craigslist. ( Funny CL has been out of the escort post for years now, They seem kinda clueless.) But I will say if your going to find the people running human trafficking rings, they will be on BP. Not on TER or Eros.  

Since most of the ladies that use TER and Eros, require screening, it's gong to be harder for them to get to these ladies.
They can if they really want to but the effort to do so is not worth it.They will most likely be  busting streetwalker and BP ladies

As for brothels in Boston, if I am right, a few years ago a guy got busted for running back in 2011 in Roxbury.
Amp will most likely be classified as brothels, since they do fixed locations and some do sell more then a massage.

I think within a year this will all blow over.

 
Just my thought on it

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I guess Boston's famous Puritanism is alive and kicking.  There's no telling what new half-baked schemes they might cook up to catch us 'johns".

Today's Globe article, "Program in Boston targets men who buy sex", says:

"Solicitation largely occurs online, so the groups will use data-scraping technology to see how many men are visiting websites such as backpage.com and Craigslist in search of sex, said Lina Nealon, director of policy and outreach for Demand Abolition".

If you go to demandabolition.org you will see Harvard prof millionaire Swanee Hunt has put together a very well funded, national nonprofit all devoted to arresting us hobbyists.

...any experts on 'data-scraping' here

That tidbit caught my eye too. Data-scraping? Boston has been under target for a couple yrs now.  Thanks to our attorney general.  She has been trying to up the anti.  John education class?  More $ for the state, similar to drunk driver class. Wish they would knock off the public awareness campaign.  Enough already!

Can mean anything from watching the traffic to and from these websites to tapping into PRISM data that's been collected to subpoenaing google/yahoo records.  

However, the funding for this will likely be so low that any mining they're doing will be so minuscule and unproductive that it will most likely just be an information gathering mission to get statistics and facts to help target the "johns".

That being said, I'd suggest at the very least a proxy when looking at any type of hobbying sites and a "burner" email. Just my .02.

The federal government has allocated funding to train federal, state, and city level officials in computer crimes. Your local computer crimes task force is growing faster than a stubborn 5 o'clock shadow.

 I advise folks on both sides of the hobby do their due diligence when it comes to this matter. A year or two ago incentive grants were made available on to states and local cities so that they could better train their officials from Homeland security, secret service, local law enforcement, state level law enforcement and also other related persons to be able to track different types of cyber crime as it happens. One particular arena that they were watching was online prostitution as well as yes, human trafficking in the name of "rescuing" and "reforming" those who have been trafficked.  

This measure was done as a way of recruiting cities and locales who desperately needed funds for their police departments and such. All in the name of stamping out human trafficking and getting rid of those who may be sending illicit photos of children and what not. How many actual child predators have they really stopped? Well that is debatable because the information is often skewed. Remember this is the government not Chris Hanson on Dateline offering up cookies and a gal that just looks young.

Google your local cyber crimes task force, police departments, even human services and grants, as well as human trafficking conferences in your area. These are all a matter of public record. There was just a recent training seminar in Norwood not too long ago. This has been happening everywhere and all agencies are connected.

Stay informed and stay safe, don't be paranoid...just aware.
I don't want to see any of the great folks here lead astray by false information.

Grace

-- Modified on 6/4/2014 7:41:11 AM

I think that everyone here knows the diff between trafficking and choosing to participate in this activity of your own free, well informed will.  If it was legalized, regulated and taxed, LE could then focus their resources on the REAL traffickers that would have to remain underground or otherwise outside the law.  

On the flip side, there was a Boston agency that was banned from TER because they had used questionable methods when dealing with some of their staff.  In other words, TER did something to try to protect the workers from being mistreated by that agency.  (I don't have all the facts, nothing close to both sides of the story, but that's what I think happened from the board discussions.

To my knowledge there is nothing illegal about browsing on BP or CL, if so the sites would not be there, correct?

There certainly needs to be much more evidence than browsing. To watch and collect browsing data to see if it matches data they have from human trafficing or other crimes makes sense. But the collection of dats from common folks just browsing, what does that mean? Emails with stated arrangements etc would have some legal value, not sure how much because it still is not proof? But the costs both monitarily and with personal need to justify the crime, at least to some extent, and so to me this will take their focus higher than common folks simply browsing BP and CL. Millions browse those sites daily, just browse.

Please all chime in with their views. Thanks.

Oh guys this is nothing. I bet deep down Marty W wishes he was out there with us and just doing his "politician thing".  
Wait 'til Coakley gets in. Then we'll be facing a true believer, an upholder of puritan tradition in truly  "Mather"ly sense of the word (history buffs would know exactly who I'm alluding to). A true fighter for needy and disadvantaged ... as long as it doesn't take all day to find out who really needs help and who doesn't

have been a activist for erotic service provider since 2009.  This has nothing to do with trafficking, it is about launching the "end the demand campaign", that is a global movement to ABOLISH US.

Just yesterday Canada announced their plan to criminalize clients and make it illegal for the service providers to advertise online.  Yet they were instructed by their supreme court to come up with new legislation that does not violate the rights of the workers or put them at a greater risk of violence.

When we look at how New Zealand created their "prostitution reform act" they didn't give 2 shits about the public's opinions, as their priority was the health and safety of the workers.  A great book  to read is called "Taking crime out for sex work, New Zealand sex workers fight to decriminalization.

Just the other day on "international whores day"  Rhode Island Governor XXXXX signed another bad bill allowing the cops to seize the assets of any pimp or trafficker, so all the RI spa's that paid taxes for years are now deemed major criminals.  The US law defines all commercial sex acts as trafficking, thus we re all victims.

Recently they have found 2 different victims that lied about being victims, that spend decades collecting donations to save other victims.  They also forced other young girls to lie and say they were victims and many of these girls were raped in these shelters, and the women were forced to work in garment factories for 1/3 of a living wage.  There is big money in being a rescue pimp and these people live lavish  lifestyles while their narrative directly causes more stigma and violence towards providers.

 
We have data that counters every myth the abolitionist create in the media

Review our evidence here http://www.policeprostitutionandpolitics.com/  

 
Here is how you can become part of the solution and help erotic service providers gain their right to agency and their labor rights and also protect our clients.
 
See our US constitutional challenge case here  
 
Litigation For Emancipation http://www.gofundme.com/litigatetoemancipate  
 
The "End the demand" campaign has arrived to the US, this is a global movement to try to ABOLISH us, and further criminalize our clients.  
 
Are you a Erotic Service Provider and you are tired of the discrimination, then its time to join our union at espu-ca.org  
 
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