It’s hardly a newsflash that the Adult Services section of Craigslist has generated more than its share of controversy.  But the online want ad firm’s decision over the weekend to suspend the service, which largely pleased anti-trafficking advocates, also has its share of critics.  These latter believe that censoring Craigslist — no matter how unsavory is its content that appears to actively solicit prostitution — violated First Amendment freedom of speech and expression guarantees.

Now, another critic suggests that Craigslist’s decision to remove the Adult Services section actually helps traffickers.  In an article on Huffington Post, Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd (writing for herself and not her employers) argues that removing Adult Services denies law enforcement a relatively easy way to track down traffickers and pimps who’ve been advertising on the Craigslist website.

Her point of view, boiled down to its essence, is that an online service that purveys sex can be penetrated and monitored by police sting operations.  Which, Boyd argues, is exactly what Craigslist has provided.  Boyd writes:

“Working with ISPs to collect data and doing systematic online stings can make an online space more dangerous for criminals than for victims because this process erodes the trust in the intermediary, the online space. Eventually, law enforcement stings will make a space uninhabitable for criminals by making it too risky for them to try to operate there. Censoring a space may hurt the ISP but it does absolutely nothing to hurt the criminals. Making a space uninhabitable by making it risky for criminals to operate there — and publicizing it — is far more effective.”

Is this a convincing argument?  Anti-trafficking advocates largely have already spoken:  to them, the danger to vulnerable women and children offsets any law enforcement gain.  Thus, they say, the public good is best served by shutting down Craigslist’s controversial service.

What do you think?

Craigslist, the online classified ad website, has stopped offering its controversial Adult Services feature, but only in the United States, apparently, and for how long is anyone’s guess.

The Adult Services feature was felt by many critics to be a sex solicitation business used by traffickers to market their enslaved victims.  Although Craigslist officials denied the allegations, it appears that a mounting chorus of criticism — including a letter demanding action signed by 17 states Attorneys General — has finally had its desired effect.

Craigslist, even as it blocked this portion of its online business, appeared defiant.  Where Adult Services had been located on its website, there is no a black box with the word “Censored.”  And Adult Services is still available in Europe.

It is also unclear whether the action is permanent or temporary.  Craigslist executives were unavailable for comment.

Reverend Robert B. Dobbins of Sardinia, OH was one of the earliest Presbyterian ministers in Southern Ohio to lead his church in helping freedom seekers traveling towards freedom.

One of several Presbyterian ministers in South Central Ohio who sympathized with the plight of freedom seekers, Reverend Lockhart and his congregation in Russelville, OH aided those seeking refuge and sustenance on their passage out of slavery.

In 1804, James Gilliland, a Presbyterian minister, was forced to leave his home and pulpit in South Carolina because he continued to address the issue of emancipation despite calls from the presbytery and synod to stop. Gilliland relocated to Brown County, OH where he teamed up with a group of men who became known as “the Old Chillicothe Presbytery.”  Many of these men were ministers who had also been forced to leave the South because of their anti-slavery views, including Reverend John Rankin of Ripley, OH. The churches led by these men became centers of anti-slavery sentiments, and many of them, including Gilliland’s church, sheltered runaway slaves.

Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave

Tanner was in the habit of reading the Bible to his slaves on the Sabbath, but in a somewhat different spirit. He was an impressive commentator on the New Testament. The first Sunday after my coming to the plantation, he called them together, and began to read the twelfth chapter of Luke. When he came to the 47th verse, he looked deliberately around him, and continued— “And that servant which knew his lord’s will,”—here he paused, looking around more deliberately than before, and again proceeded—”which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself”—here was another pause—”prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.” “D’ye hear that?” demanded Peter, emphatically. “Stripes,” he repeated, slowly and distinctly.        “That nigger that don’t take care—that don’t obey his lord—that’s his master—d’ye see?—that ‘ere nigger shall be beaten with many stripes. Now, ‘many’ signifies a great many—forty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty lashes. That’s Scripter!” and so Peter continued to elucidate the subject for a great length of time, much to the edification of his sable audience. At the conclusion of the exercises, calling up three of his slaves, Warner, Will and Major or, he cried out to me—”Here, Platt, you held Tibeats by the legs; now I’ll see if you can hold these rascals in the same way, till I get back from meetin’.” Thereupon he ordered them to the stocks—a common thing on plantations in the Red River country.

Lunsford Lane, The Narrative of Lunsford Lane;

I had never been permitted to learn to read; but I used to attend church, and there I received instruction which I trust was of some benefit to me. In religious matters, I had been indulged in the exercise of my own conscience–a favor not always granted to slaves. To me, God also granted temporal freedom, which man without God’s consent, had stolen away.  On the Sabbath there was one sermon preached expressly for the colored people which it was generally my privilege to hear. I became quite familiar with the texts, “Servants be obedient to your masters”–”He that knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes,” and others of this class: for they formed the basis of most of these public instructions to us. The first commandment was to obey our masters, and the second was to do as much work when they or the overseers were not watching us as when they were. There was one very kind hearted Episcopal minister who was very popular with the colored people. But after he had preached a sermon to us in which he argued from the Bible that it was the will of heaven from all eternity we should be slaves, and our masters be our owners, most of us left him; for like some of the faint hearted disciples in early times we said,–”This is a hard saying, who can bear it?”

Utah apparently has become a leader in the hidden, illegal business of producing false documents that among other purposes, can be used to facilitate human trafficking.

So reports Salt Lake City’s Deseret News, which quotes law enforcement officials as describing Utah as the home for “widespread and sophisticated” document mills.

Virtually in any city of size in Utah, you can obtain a fake Social Security card, a driver’s license and a permanent resident alien card in a day — and often a Mexican voter registration card that helps with border crossings — with quality so good it can fool almost anyone, said Ken Wallentine, chief of law enforcement for the Utah Attorney General’s Office.

While Wallentine notes that most of the false papers are used to facilitate the movement of illegal immigrants into the U.S., other criminal activities, including drug and human trafficking, also rely upon high quality fake documents.  In one case, illegal aliens were coerced into producing false papers and held against their will in a house.

A new Utah state task force, was created last year to target serious crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Wallenstine says once it started pursuing criminal illegal aliens, the task force soon discovered how widespread document mills are.

“The FBI had done a couple of those cases in the past few years,” he said. “But we’ve done a couple dozen cases in just the past year.”

Last week, this space wrote about the fate of 72 migrant workers from Central and South America whose bodies were found in a remote farmhouse in northeastern Mexico, not far from the U.S. border.  The victims were apparently attempting to cross into the U.S. for work when they ran afoul of a drug gang that attempted to extort money from the group, and then murdered them in cold blood.

We asked the questions: who were these people, and how did they end up dead on the floor of a farmhouse far from their homes and families?

The New York Times has now provided at least some of the answers, in an admirable and detailed account that draws heavily upon the comments of the victims’ loved ones.  It is heart-wrenching reading, but a necessary reminder that there is in this world, amid splendor and plenty, a vast underclass of people who are desperately seeking out a better life, and because of their desperation, they are vulnerable to cruel exploitation — and worse.

Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights said in a report last year that 9,758 migrants were abducted from September 2008 to February 2009. Guatemala said that last year 27,222 of its citizens were deported from the United States and 28,800 from Mexico; Honduras estimates more than 500 of its people leave for the north every day. That’s a snapshot in one corner of the world, of the flow of men, women and children along a lengthy and largely invisible network that seems to exist outside the law, outside society, and outside human compassion.

The story of these migrants is now at the stage when the appropriate government agencies are vowing to address the situation, order up more law enforcement, and renew their commitment to honoring the human rights of even those who are not citizens of their countries. The Mexican government, in light of the massacre, has promised a new strategy to protect migrants, including better coordination among state and federal agencies to dismantle kidnapping gangs and disrupt their finances.

But, paraphrasing actor George Clooney at this week’s Emmy Awards, the proof of progress will be whether — or at all — in three, four or five years time, people on the move in the hopes of a better life actually can reach their destination, alive.

Francis Fedric,  Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky:

A badge of aristocracy among slaveholders is the number of slaves they hold, and white people of equal fortune are not generally allowed to visit slaveholders, who look down upon them with a species of contempt. One remarkable fact which I wish to impress upon my readers is this, that the white men born in those districts in America where slaves are held, are just as capable of bearing the heat as the black men. And the proof is this, that in the harvest-time, when the two are working together in the fields, the white men can actually beat the negroes at the work, and very often the black man has to give up, and is laughed at by the white labourer. They say, “Only give us sufficient wages, and we will work by the side of any nigger alive.” It is quite shocking to hear slaveholders distorting even the Bible itself to prove that a negro alone was made for hard work. On the cunning of slaves he says; I remember a slave, who was not treated very well with respect to food and other things, when he had done his work being lectured by his mistress on the duties of a slave, she telling him that in proportion to his obedience and servility as a slave he would be loved by God. Slaves are all of them full of this sly, artful, indirect way of conveying what they dare not speak out, and their humour is very often the medium of hinting wholesome truths. Is not cunning always the natural consequence of tyranny?

THE ENEMY WITHIN: TERROR IN AMERICA – 1776 TO TODAY OPENS AT THE FREEDOM CENTER SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11TH

New Exhibition Provides Insight into Terror on American Soil from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror

CINCINNATI, Ohio, August 30, 2010 — The Enemy Within: Terror in America – 1776 to Today, the only museum exhibition to provide historical perspective on acts of terror that have taken place on American soil, opens Saturday, September 11, 2010 at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

The Enemy Within, an International Spy Museum exhibition, reveals nine major events and periods in U.S. History when Americans were threatened by enemies within its borders: depicting how the government and public responded, illustrating the corresponding evolution of the U.S. counterintelligence and homeland security efforts, and examining the challenge of securing the nation without compromising the civil liberties upon which it was founded.

“Most Americans remember exactly where they were when they learned about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 – and regard this event as a turning point that forever changed their sense of security in the United States,” states International Spy Museum Chairman of the Board and Founder, Milton Maltz. “The fact is however, that Americans have endured thousands of incidents of terror, violence, or subversion right here at home by domestic terrorists and foreign agents, militant radicals and saboteurs, traitors and spies.”

The exhibition features dramatic moments in U.S. History – all frightening, and destabilizing events – that represent times when Americans have felt threatened within their own borders. Each event precipitated legislation and/or new counterintelligence measures and provoked debate about protecting both citizens and civil liberties.

“Terrorism in whatever form is an assault on freedom,” said Freedom Center President and CEO, Donald Murphy. “As this exhibition dramatically demonstrates, our freedoms have been challenged internally by terrorists since our founding, and it is a reflection of the strength of our democracy that we have not succumbed to the terrorist’s agenda.”

The Enemy Within will be open to the public until February 6, 2011.

About the Freedom Center

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center uses exhibits, programs and activities to educate and inspire contemporary audiences about the legacy of courage and multicultural cooperation as embodied in the story of the Underground Railroad, and to make that history relevant to issues confronting society today. Additional information is available at www.freedomcenter.org. 

About the International Spy Museum

The International Spy Museum, the only public institution in the world dedicated to presenting the world history of espionage, features the largest permanent collection of international spy-related artifacts on public display.  Through interactive exhibits with state-of-the-art audiovisual effects, film, and hands-on components, the Museum traces the evolution of espionage through the people who practiced the profession and it provides a context for guests to better interpret the role intelligence places in current events.  Additional information is available at www.spymuseum.org.

James Williams, Narrative of James Williams

Out of the two hundred and fourteen slaves who were brought out from Virginia, at least one-third of them were members of the Methodist and Baptist churches in that State. Of this number five or six could read. They had been torn away from the care and discipline of their respective churches, and from the means of instruction, but they retained their love for the exercises of religion, and felt a mournful pleasure in speaking of the privileges and spiritual blessings which they enjoyed in Old Virginia. Three of them had been preachers, or exhorters, viz. Solomon, usually called uncle Solomon, Richard, and David. Uncle Solomon was a grave, elderly man, mild and forgiving in his temper, and greatly esteemed among the more serious portion of our hands. He used to snatch and advise them to fix their minds upon the Savior, as their only helper. Some I have heard curse and swear in answer, and others would say that they could not keep their minds upon God and the devil (meaning Huckstep) at the same time: that it was of no use to try to be religious – they had no time – that the overseer wouldn’t let them meet to pray – and that even uncle Solomon, when he prayed, had to keep one eye open all the time, to see if Huckstep was coming. Uncle Solomon could both read and write, and had brought out with him from Virginia a Bible, a hymn-book, and some other religious books, which he carefully concealed from the overseer.