Backpage Seized By The Feds

The United States government has seized Backpage.com, the controversial classifieds website. A notice informing visitors of the seizure was posted on the site, and a Justice Department spokesperson confirmed the notice.

According to the notice, the website and its affiliates were seized "as part of an enforcement action" by the FBI, as well as other federal and local agencies. The notice provides little other information, saying the Department of Justice will provide more soon.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed that the website has been seized and that additional information would be made available Friday evening. However, a judge decided that the federal case should remain sealed on Friday night. No other additional information was provided.

A two-year Senate investigation into online sex trafficking found that found that Backpage.com knowingly aided criminal sex trafficking of women and young girls, simply scrubbing terms from ads such as "Lolita," "teenage," "rape," "amber alert," and publishing them on its site. After the investigation was published in January 2017, Backpage.com shut down its adult ads section.

The company has been targeted with several lawsuits over the years, but has been largely protected by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, a legal protection that gives a broad layer of immunity to online companies from being held liable for user-generated content. Companies are supposed to act in good faith to protect users, but critics argue the law can be used as a shield. The law, however, does not, protect sites from federal liability against criminal law, like child-pornography laws.

The Backpage seizure comes two weeks after Craigslist eliminated their personal ads following Congress' passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which repealed a previous law that provided "legal protection to websites that unlawfully promote and facilitate prostitution and websites that facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims."