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Supreme Court Chief Justice Blocks Congressional Subpoena Over First Amendment Rights

posted by martyb on Wednesday September 07 2016, @04:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the back-and-forth dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday temporarily blocked a congressional subpoena that seeks information on how the classified advertising website Backpage.com screens ads for possible sex trafficking.

The order came hours after Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer asked the high court to intervene, saying the case threatens the First Amendment rights of online publishers.

A federal appeals court ruled 2-1 on Friday that the website must respond to the subpoena within 10 days. Roberts said Backpage does not have to comply with the appeals court order until further action from the Supreme Court.

[...] The Senate panel has tried for nearly a year to force Backpage to produce certain documents as part of its investigation into human trafficking over the Internet.

After the website refused to comply, the Senate voted 96-0 in March to hold the website in contempt.

[...] While Backpage has produced over 16,000 pages of documents responding to the subpoena, Ferrer said documents relating to the website's system for reviewing ads are part of the editorial process protected under the First Amendment.

"This case presents a question of exceptional nationwide importance involving the protection the First Amendment provides to online publishers of third-party content when they engage in core editorial functions," Ferrer said in a brief filed to Roberts.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUPREME_COURT_SEX_TRAFFICKING

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @04:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @04:21PM (#398766)

    I've never heard of the site before - it seems to be a clone of Craigslist.

    [Backpage] prohibits illegal services including prostitution and users must agree to these terms before posting on the site.

    [...] Backpage says that it blocks about a million ads per month, mostly suspected of child sex trafficking or prostitution. Of those, they report around 400 ads a month to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which in turn notify law enforcement. Content submitted to Backpage is surveyed by an automated scan for terms related to prostitution. At least one member of a team of over 100 people also oversees each entry before it is posted.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpage [wikipedia.org]

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by WillR on Wednesday September 07 2016, @04:42PM

    by WillR (2012) on Wednesday September 07 2016, @04:42PM (#398774)

    it seems to be a clone of Craigslist

    Yup. It's more or less a combination of the classified ads from your local alt-weekly newspaper (Backpage used to be part of the company that publishes most of those papers) and all the escorts that got kicked off of Craigslist when CL got popular.