if when backpage said we don't want to talk to you if we said okay. that's fine. and they said we refuse and we said okay. noem problem. let's just go on our way. but instead when we were confronted with their stubborn unwillingness to participate in the united states senate investigation, we did what was to hold them accountable and not involve the cooperation of the entire senate. once they refused to show up and they said we don't have to give you anything because of the current law as it relates then we said no. that's not true we got the entire united states senate backed up every single member. i don't know how unusual t it is to say zero on one side and i don't know about you but i have seen very few times. usually one or two for one reason or another no matter how uncontroversial it is but we got everybody who voted said yes. take backpage to court to assert our ability under the constitution to investigate so we took them all the way to the supreme court and we won the case. what happened after that is important to understand because there were a lot of f

and the national group said 75% on backpage. that's the national center for missing and exploited children number. another group said no, it's 80%. in other words, we knew this was happening, but we couldn't get the information because although we subpoenaed documents and subpoenaed their testimony, they refused to show up and they refused to give us documents. so we had to go through an extraordinary process. again, i will let senator mccaskill talk about it, but for the first time in 21 years, this senate did something that was critical to our investigation. i just again want to thank her for her hard work. i'd like to yield time to her to talk about that. ms. mccaskill: thank you, mr. president. i want to thank my colleagues. mrs. mccaskill: we spent a lot of time on the floor thanking each other, which is a good thing. unfortunately too often we go back to tribal warfare after we thank each other, but this is an example of where we have worked together in a bipartisan way. i think those thanks are justified, particularly in

, to learn about what backpage was really up to. it was the investigation where backpage thought they would be able to win again in court and deny us our opportunity to look at the documents and look at the underlying evidence that you should always look at in an investigation. mrs. mccaskill: frankly, us getting the senate resolution through this body almost unanimously -- i think it was unanimously, wasn't it, senator portman? unanimously and going all the way to the supreme court and winning, finally it was the first time that backpage had to turn over the dirty evidence of them knowingly facilitating sex trafficking on their page. and that's why this language is knowingly facilitating. just to make sure that going forward, no bad guys can hide behind section 230. the other part of this bill that i think is very important, i think a lot of people forget -- and with all due respect to my friends who were in this chamber that were u.s. attorneys -- over 90% of the crime prosecuted in this country is prosecuted by state prosecutors

backpage's activities were no secret. so in the absence of action by the department of justice, a senate subcommittee led by our colleagues senators portman and mccaskill conducted their own investigation and subpoenaed key documents. among those documents were e-mails that appeared to show that backpage was actively working with sex traffickers to create advertisements. that meant that backpage was not due protection under section 230. in fact, a lawsuit in boston was given the go-ahead based on that precise finding. and it has been widely reported that the justice department now has its own investigation under way, although it's coming years and years too late. this should have happened eons ago, and it is only one example of where the government's efforts have fallen short. now, following what i have described, the twin failures of the big technology companies and federal law enforcement, this body is responding to a very serious, serious moral challenge with flawed policy changes. in my view, the legislation before th

even though the families were suing backpage none of the lawsuits were successful because of what some people come to believe the communications decency act it is the broad reach of one section to protect the website for underage girls for sex judges have said to congress to change the law and now it is our time to do just that. the original law was intended to protect free speech which is important i have course like all colleagues them a firm believer in the first amendment but that is no license to engage in illegal activity. free speech can be used as an excuse to offer young people intoe sexual servitude and not be a safe place with child sex traffickers at last count 67 senators have joined this effort as cosponsors joined by anti- human trafficking advocates states attorneys general civil rights community and faith-based groups and tech companies like facebook and oracle. we have all made clear that we stand behind this bill i hope the colleaguesgi will join me to vote with this legislation this week so that online platforms can be held accountable to facilitate sex trafficking.

she's told to like on this place called backpage. she does. she sees her daughter's photographs there, sexually explicit. she calls backpage and says that's my daughter. she's 14 years old on your website. thank you for taking down the ad. their response? did you pay for the ad? she says no, of course i didn't pay for it. i'm the mother. we can't take down the ad because you didn't pay for it. that story tells you how evil these websites are. let me tell you another story. it's yvonne am ambrose. her daughter was 16 years old. she was trafficked on backpage.com, sold for sex on backpage.com at 16 years old. yvonne got a call on christmas eve 2016. the call no parent ever wants to get. and the call was from law enforcement saying that her daughter desiree who was being packaged at the time on backpage.com had been murdered. yvonne is honoring her memory by getting engaged in this issue and helping us pass this legislation. but she's also sure that this legislation is the thing that would have kept girls like her daughter from getting involved i

with the website backpage lately facilitated sex services , it is no longer in business.s say he -- it is a bad bill. >> i think it's overreaching. >> thomas says he has used craigslist to buy and sell items. he has never used a personal section. the personal ad can be useful in solving crimes and providing a record of any legal transaction. he says personals have long been a part of american society. >> there have been people who have found lifelong partners through personal ads, both paper, and craigslist. >> the are so many ways to meet people that don't allow the same kind of anonymous hosting in the same kind of commerce in this shady way. >> reporter: the bill project and shields the company from legal liability for the contents of their site. president trump is expected to sign the bill into law. live in san francisco, amberley, ktvu, foxnews. >>> trump signed a spending bill hours after threatening to veto it. the budget which will fund the government through september. he decided to sign the bill. there's much needed funding. he says he was unhappy that the bill

in some states courts found that sites like backpage should be moderated. but the bad samaritan amendment could protect platforms like backpage.com from liability for bad-faith editing practices, leaving victims with even less of a recourse than they have today. simply put, it could eviscerate the steps we are taking in sesta. i'm confident our colleague does not intend this result but that would be the consequence of adopting either one of those amendments. so i hope my colleagues will join me in voting in favor of sesta this week and opposing these amendments. that's the best way we can ensure these websites and online platforms can be held accountable for facilitating sex trafficking. mr. president, later today the senate will be voting on a privilege resolution that i spoke on yesterday offered by three of our colleagues. simply put, it would direct the president to cut off all u.s. support for the saudi-led coalition in yemen. some people may be looking at a world map to figure out where yemen is and what the import of this conflict may be. but suffice

it will help us take on nefarious actors like backpage who hid behind the communications decency act to avoid prosecution for trafficking crimes. it's time to rip the cover away from these bad actors. we are going to do that by making narrowly crafted changes to the law to ensure websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking online are held accountable. knowingly is the key word here. during the last session of congress, the homeland security committee, under the leadership of senators portman and mccaskill, johnson, uncovered just how much backpage knew, and it was a lot. in fact, backpage's operators helped customers modify their ads to hide references to underage prostitutes. i think we can all agree that rises to the threshold of knowingly facilitating sex trafficking online. should this bill pass -- and i believe that it will in a very bipartisan way -- these bad actors won'ting able to fade -- won't be able to fade quietly into the dark as we are going to give the authority to prosecute websites that violate sex trafficking laws. that's why i support this bill. that's why

weep found that backpage was knowingly selling people online. we did this through a subpoena process that had to be aced proved here in the -- approved in the united states senate because the company objected to responding to our subpoenas. we had to come to the united states senate for the first time in 21 years to get approval to enforce the subpoenas. we then had to take it to the supreme court because they appealed all the way up, and we won. and through this we were able to get about 1 million documents. we went through the documents to find out what was happening. what we learned was that this website was actually actively and knowingly involved in selling people online. when a user would post an ad that might have a word that indicated that the girl that they were selling was underaged, for instance, it might say cheerleader or reference the age of the girl, 16, 17, younger sometimes. packbeige, -- backbeige, instead of rejecting it would clean up the ad. instead editing out the words that someone was underaged. they didn't remove the pos

she finally found a photograph of her daughter on backpage. she calls backpage and says i found my daughter. she's on your website. thank you for taking her off your website. she's 14 years old. the person on the other end of the line said, from backpage, did you pay for the ad? the mom said no, i didn't pay for the ad. that's my daughter. they said then we can't take down the ad. these are who these people are. they have shown great courage by coming forward with their stories. now it's our turn to show courage by coming together and voting on this bill, sending it to the president's desk and fixing this problem, fixing the federal law to allow justice for the trafficking victims and to hold accountable those who knowingly facilitate these crimes. we've got an opportunity to do something important here, to create a better, safer and more just society. i'm hopeful next week we'll have that legislation before this body, we'll have the debate, we'll pass the legislation and begin to provide for these victims of trafficking for the justice they d

this is an e-mail from one of backpage executives in 2010. it says, i'm attaching a spreadsheet with the most current list of coded items to be stripped out. e-mail me your list by the end of the day. thanks. in other words, they were telling these people who were posting ads, oh, you damages say this word ar that word because then law enforcement will know we're engaged in selling underaged girls online. so they told them to edit these word out. it's unbelievable what kind of words were stripped out of the ads? allowing sex trafficking 90s to stay up without violating those proposed rules? these are the kinds of words they took o teenage, little girl, school girl, cheerleader was one of them. for those of you who are literary types, lolita -- a novel about an underaged girl and an older man. fresh. so -- amber alert. this is the kind of people we're dealing with here. once these incriminating words were removed, the post could then go on the website and thos how backpage coached the treasury, on thousand get away with their crimes. this did