[ ♪ ] i'm ali velshi, "on target," unspeakable acts, a fight to keep children being bought and sold for sex online, and the use of deadly force by police in america. the puzzling truth about who is not keeping track. been america is a nation of rights and laws based on a constitution designed to protect citizens from a variety of threats, inclue ght the government itself. sometimes they come into conflict, forcing lawmakers, judges and other to weigh the

cost of the protecting principles laid down by the founding fathers. think of the second amendments right to bear arms and the problem of gun violence in america. tonight a focus on how the right to free speech granted under the first amendment is coming into play in a battle involving sex trafficking and society's most vulnerable citizens, children. instead of guns, some of the criminals involved use a weapon the founding fathers never imagined - the internet. the best known example involves craigslist, a website. this site decided in 2010 to close the profitable adult services section as part of its business. that section allowed sex traffickers to do business. a sale of sex with minors, craigslist made a decision to close the section, despite federal law that protects it

against liability for what its users post. that's what i mean about society and companies weighing the cost of rights that they are granted under the law. as you have probably guest, a decision by craigslist did not stop child sex trafficking in america. two weeks ago mary snow brought you the story of natalie, on the left with her mother. she ran away from home, and was sold for sex by a pimp on backpage.com. that's a classified website. whose business stopped. an illinois sheriff who unsuccessfully sued craigslist in 2009 is going after backpage.com. sheriff thomas dart has started a battle after convincing mastercard and visa to join his fight. as marie vo reports, the website

and its lawyers are fighting back. >> reporter: it's moments like in this woman thought she'd never have with her daughter, that's because her daughter wound up being travelled for sex online after running away. she and her family showed these images showing her from being an all-american girl, to be advertised by a pimp on backpage.com. >> he sold me every day and every night. for 100-plus days. he sold me. he did it on backpage.com. >> reporter: what was the reason me gave you for using backpage. >> he said it was better than being on the streets, it was safer. he said there was a lot of money

there. >> natalie, who doesn't want her face shown today was arrested during a sting operation 108 days after she ran away from home. her pimp is behind bars. the site where she was sold is in business around the globe. >> when you hear that your 15-year-old has been sold as a weekend special that's your baby, your child. and you think how can it be in the u.s. we can sell kids on the internet, free lie, like... ..how can you do this? >> reporter: natalie and two other minors trafficked for sex on the website are currently in a legal battle by backpage.com to get them shut down, but backpage is fighting back. >> if the website creates content the website can be liable. that is not the case in our

case, plaintiffs admit that the ads were authored, created and uploaded by pimps. >> reporter: backpage saysst says it's important because it provide police a way of monitoring. in sheriff is taking on the fight against backpage, and wrote letters to mastercard and visa, calling on them to stop supporting sex trafficking on the site by pulling their card as a method of payment. they did. he held this tribute. >> for those that came together i can't think you enough. there's still more to do. >> reporter: the victory was short lived. backpage.com sued dart accusing him of misutesing his power. the company accuses him of

violating kill speech, writing constitution does not allow censorship: a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against dart. the company wants dart to rescind the letter to the credit card companies. for natalie, no matter the outcome of the legal battles, she feels she has paid too high a price to go unnoticed. >> there's no way to get my childhood back. there's no way i can make up for lost time with that website. majoring things for me, a million times worse, because i guarantee if i had of been part of it they would have found a

way before that. >> reporter: know junior joins us. -- mary snow joins us. where does the case stand. >> a federal judge scheduled a hearing. one of the questions is whether visa and mastercard acted solely because of sheriff dart's letter. he reached out. his legal team advised him of doing interviews whilst the restraining order is in place. this says that he has to stop his campaign until this is resolved, his campaign to defund back page. we also reached out to visa and mastercard. both stand out where they came. >> reporter: this is it whether sheriff dart influenced the decision from a position of authority. >> correct. >> reporter: what about nathalie's case? >> this is it more complicated. oral argument were heard in the full. natalie and her family would

like to see the escort section of back-page be taken down, put her asht is whether or not backpage is liable for its consent. we are waiting for a decision, when it's handed down it will be whether the case moves forwards. >> it's not the decision on that section that you were talking about, it was the 1996 law, that says a third yart can't be liable. >> that is at the crux of their suit. the decision is whether or not this case an move forward. >> we'll stay on top it much. >> the unspeakable horror of child sex trafficking. why backpage.com says keeping the adds up and running is the right thing to do. to do.

more now on backpage.com and the increasing pressure on the

website from cook county sheriff thomas dart to cut down on child sex trafficking. the site says its escort services section helps law enforcement crack down on traffickers. i heard that from liz mcdougall, the company's counsel. i interviewed her after mary snow's report. here is more of my brew with mcdougall -- interview with mcdougall. you heard the young woman say if not for the web page, she would be found sooner. a pimp told her backpage was safe are on the street. do you worry when you see something like that, that backpage is paving a road for the pimples. my heart goes out for natalie and her family, i understand how it feels. the reality knows that it could be responsible for what happened to her, or for the perpetuation

of prostitution, sex trafficking, child sex trafficking. we had sex work in our society, legal and illegal. that is not going away. i see no indication of that. i see no imperial evidence. the internet is not going away any time soon. so long as both of those exist. people who are engaged are going to use the internet as a tool, just as people use it for legal purposes, it will getused to illegal purposes. so it's a problem of the intersection of traffic and technology, not one website. the proof positive and when attorneys general, sheriff dart and others targeted craigslist. and they said if it would shut down the adult category.

we'd rid the country of the problem of minor sex trafficking. craigslist in 2010 decided it shut down the adult category. i wasn't with them, i was outside counsel at the time. can i point out that craigslist shut down the category, and it didn't make a dent. the content scattered to other websites and other places on craigslist. >> mr dart convinced visa card and mastercard not to process transactions for backbeige from them, and they took the opportunity to sue, why. >> when visa and backpage will not accept payment for a particular service, store, industry, they have effectively

censored that arena. >> they are private companies, they can make that choice. >> they are private companies, they can make the choice, it's frightening that there's two credit card companies that can be the sensors of what is going to be speech and speech on the internet. that's a decision for the federal court. >> why sue the police chief, and not the banks. >> the banks happened at the direction of the police chief. they've been going business, with mastercard and visa for 11 years. we've had good relationships, with banks. sheriff dart sense a letter saying you must cease and desist doing business. sheriff dart nose he can't do that. he has no jurisdiction, no authority to do that. he has endeavoured to use his

power. the two credit card companies to cut off the revenue stream, to choke us off, to kill us. he thinks he, and he is not alone, and is certainly not in the majority thinking that it may be a helpful way to eradicate child sex strategy. >> sounds great. a silver bullet to shut down sex page. do anything to do it. fabulous, but it's not true, and it's counterproductive to the kids. without us you are going to lose the ability to access and rescue so many. children. besides that, there's a significant first amendment issue about who is it you want to sensor your content. do you want is to be companies or the court. >> you take it seriously, you probably know more about this, because you've been involved with craig last and in a lot of court cases.

i guess this is a take away. we see the story of natalie, the court cases and you present 300-400 cases to the national centre. something is broken. you have... >> it is broken. >> so you understand that there's a law here, and you are arguing that you are not breaking the law. that's possible. many courts sided with you. what is the better solution. you know more about that. you understand the brokener society that allows this to happen. we need a better system. wouldn't you like to be in a system that doesn't allow kids to be pimped out. >> i would, that requires us to be in a world where children are not pimped out. to the extinct that this happened and continues to happen in the united states, we are the most dedicated service provider and the most effective tool that law enforcement has to find someone. when you get to the political

level, and will somebody says "well, shut it down, it's a silver bullet", craigslist does that. it's not a silver bullet. where it goes next is to websites that are offshore, or in the deep web. >> there is money in here. there's a group aimed at backpage, 36 million from an adult ad in 2012. some say it's a conservative estimate. how lucrative is this. is that a reason why to get out of the business. >> no, it's not the reason why. i'm not sure how they do the numbers. it's not something i can answer. we are a private company, and the revenue figures are private. we had a number of monitorizition system until the sheriff tried to take matters in his own hand and sensor

indirectly. but the reason for financing in this is because it's the right thing to do. >> it's the right thing to do to allow there to be ads for child prostitutes. >> the assumption is that it will go away. >> no, i don't think it's going away but i don't have websites for child prostitutes. i get it exists. >> it exists. the perpetrators, the pimples are going to use the internet. do you want them to use an internet website looking for the illegal contents or looking for the kids or trying to rescue them, or working for law enforcement to get the evidence in these very difficult cases. i work closely. with the vice cops, the agents doing the work. they understand the value, and we'll work with them no alert

what. >> we have spoken to some, some say they do, some don't. some would rather not have you around. others say it's easy. it's not universal. i don't think it's a simple issue. >> i don't know who you are talking to. you are talking to someone at the elected level. regardless, the point is that the answer is in collaboration. there's no - nothing is being accomplished right now by sheriff dart or whelm ever is challenging us. we are getting nowhere. >> reporter: what is the thing that is going to stop 300-400 by your estimates, the ads. they may be the same people, who knows. that has to be what keeps you up at night. not that sheriff dart doesn't want you taking credit cards. >> this is happening in our society, and our government, and the majority of our media is

more interested in sensationalizing pictures from a website than dealing with the fundamental issues... >> dealing with it. >> we are not. the fundamental issues that caused children to be vulnerable. most of the children have been sexually abused in their home somewhere between infancy. >> i'm not holding you to sket for the fact that the children are trafficked. >> we need to address the issues. some are arguing that you are making it easier to happen. that's the discussion we are having with you. we do not hold you responsible for child trafficking. >> but your question is what do we do to cure it. those are the issues we should focus on. >> in the meantime you make money off of it. >> you get why that is trickery, it looks like in the meantime while societal ils are dealt

with, we are happy to take your money. >> i don't care what it looks like, we care about the reality. we are doing more than anything else, if we shut down, it's going somewhere else, and i don't believe anyone could or would do the job. >> that was more of my conversation with liz mcdougall. we are expecting a number on the cases, the case of the sheriff in illinois. we will stay on top of this story. another story we are on top of is a polarizing topic in america. we wanted to know how much cops across the country use deadly force. we were surprised by what we found, not for the reasons you might think, that is next. hat is next.

michael brown's death in ferguson a year ago shined a spotlight on black men that died at the hands of police, a new report shows how hard it is to get a grip on the size of that problem. in 2013 justice asked for use of

force, for a report on it. the data is inconsistent and mostly useless. large police departments said they didn't collect the data or refused to provide it. even though justice is supposed to public the annual report around the data, it refused to be done. there's a group of people stepping in. >> reporter: every weekend journalism students from nevada reno meet in brian's dining room to crunch data drawn from splits departments across the country. he is the founder of a website and uses data to figure out how many are killed by police. there's no agency comprehensively tracking the number of people dying in police custody. >> these are the records coming

from texas. >> the federal government tracks anything that matters, anything. the numbers of shoes sold, you know, rainfall in death valley, the fact that they collecting the information suggesting that is didn't matter. zeke edwards thinks the lack of data is unsettling. >> we need the data to know what police are doing not just this year and last year, but what happened before. are they shooting more people. are they disproportionately african-americans, >> reporter: it wasn't supposed to be like that. an act was past requiring from police to report any deaths. the law had no teeth, and when

it expired several states decided not to participate. >> it's very patchy and is dependent on departments collecting the data and sharing the data. they don't do that reliability. the department of the justice only records half. brian's fatal encounter's organization identified 1,192 lives lost at the hands of the police in 2014. 28% higher than official efforts. >> in a higher level. the police department records this. >> this is a 25-year-old university graduate. who created a website. he analysed data, and drawing

from his background in statistical analysis they break down material by race, genderfication. >> we learnt what the protesters were saying. black folks are three times like i to be killed by police, and white folks. more black people that were unarmed than white people that are unarmed. despite the fact that white people are five times greater. the analysis uncovers other disturbing trends. he found that if you are black you are five times for likely. a black person and 10 times more likely. despite georgia having twice as many as florida, an north

american african-american is more like i to be killed. a law was passed in 2014 by president obama. many say it's not enough. >> it's voluntary, we rely on the goodwill of police departments to by transparent, which history shows doesn't come naturally. >> failure to report the death of a person in custody. >> reporter: for now brian will copy his dining room table stacked with police reports. >> most believe human life matters more than anything. for the government not to track who it's killing or why is incomprehensible and that is our show for tonight. i'm ali velshi, thank you for

joining us. fleeing the wildfires. >> i didn't take any family pictures or anything like that. i did not think anything would happen flames chasing them out of their homes as the military gears up to help fire grews you crews battle blazes. >> reporter: defying the present. >> iraq is limiting the capability, but not dismantling or rolling it