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Interesting case going on there. This is from the article:
The Vice Section of the Hillsborough County Sheriff?s Office started it?s own escort service web page, thereby joining the subject Web Site. Within a few hours of joining the web page, the undercover web page had thousands of ?hits? and hundreds of subsequent offers for ?dates? from members of the Web Site.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff?s Office subsequently set up ?dates? with some of those members and arrested six subjects for soliciting prostitution within two working days. The Hillsborough County Sheriff?s Office took in a total of $2,200 from those subjects as ?escort fees?.
I think this guy has some strong free speech claims if it turns out that he wasn't personally involved in prostitution in any way. You shouldn't be able to arrest a person for talking about or providing information on illegal activities. In that case, all sites with drug info would be illegal, many newspaper articles would be illegal, etc.
However, we are living in a country with many leaders who are very strongly under the influence of religious fanatics. I would not be surprised if the government started making more arrests where people are simply providing information about illegal acts. John Ashooooo and Bush are no friends of free speech, and the attitude at the top tends to have some influence on what all levels of law enforcement are willing to try to prosecute.
If this guy is involved with prostitution personally, then he's really fucked.
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