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 Who wants this job?
You have your own air-conditioned computer workstation connected to the Internet and equipped with a webcam and a microphone. You pose in front of the webcam, invite clients to a private chat room, tickle their sexual fantasies, have cyber sex, and keep them glued as long as you can. You are the “model” and they are your “clients” who pay you by the minute.
Your employers cover your board and lodging. You have maids at your beck and call and you can earn as much as US$2,000 a month in commissions. That’s about P100,000 at the prevailing exchange rate.
If you’re very good, you can earn up to $4,000 (about P200,000) a month. That is as much as senior managers and assistant vice presidents in local banks can earn.
It’s modern-day prostitution. And this was how an alleged cyber sex shop in southern Metro Manila operated before it was raided by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) in January 2005. Nineteen women purportedly in their teens were rescued.
The media usually refer to cases like this as “cyber trafficking,” although legally speaking, there is no such crime. “We don’t say it’s cyber trafficking. It’s Internet pornography,” says Police Supt. Gen. Yolanda Tanigue of the Women and Children’s Division of the Philippine National Police (PNP). “The law is not enough to cover cyber trafficking.”
Republic Act (RA) 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003 extensively covers domestic and international human trafficking, but not cyber trafficking. It doesn’t define the term. “There’s only one paragraph on Internet pornography,” Tanigue says.
Nevertheless, the operators of the alleged cyber sex shop were charged in August of 2005 for violating RA 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003. They were accused of “hiring, maintaining, and harboring women for sexual exploitation for purposes of Internet pornography.”
It’s still domestic trafficking in that sense, says the special prosecutor in charge of the case. The only difference is that instead of peddling the victims in bars for sex as is done in traditional human trafficking, the sexual exploitation is done through Internet pornography.
Like other advocates against human trafficking, the prosecutor does not agree with the law. “We should not be protecting the criminals,” she says. “They should be exposed so that people will be warned against them.”
Lucrative Business
Cyber trafficking is a lucrative business. Based on Newsbreak’s estimates, the cyber sex shop raided by the CIDG had to be earning from P4 million to P10 million a month. It was a high-end cyber sex shop with clients mostly from the US and Germany.
Based on the figures, operating the shop easily cost P2 million a month. This covered monthly commissions for the 19 “models” (P100,000 each) and four maids (P6,000 each), electric bills, Internet connection, hosting fees, computer maintenance, and the models’ board and lodging. Supposing the operators took from 50 to 80 percent in commissions from the earnings of the models, that would translate to an additional P2 million to P8 million.
It’s an excellent return on investment, considering that it takes no more than P1 million to start up an Internet shop with 20 computers, provided that the software is licensed.
Based on the investigation of the National Bureau of Investigation’s (NBI) Anti-Fraud and Computer Crime Division, clients are charged $3.99 to $4.99 per minute, says Palmer Mallari, division supervising agent and executive officer. The operation of sites with these rates is usually based abroad, and what local operators do is partner with overseas counterparts.
Pornographic Web sites usually provide clients with various categories. They can choose to check out videos and webcams of “Asian women,” “Latina,” “virgin teenagers,” “big boobs,” and others that graphically describe the preferences of clients. Local pornographic Web sites usually supply the “Asian women” category.
In such a case, every $3.99 is split this way: $2 goes to the operator abroad, $1 to the local operator, and only about $0.50 (12.5 percent of earnings) goes to the model. The rest of the fee covers other expenses in the cyber sex shop. At these rates, clients are charged P11,000 per hour, of which only P1,500 goes to the model.
 Emotional Damage
The reason why the models usually allow themselves to be trafficked in the Internet for cyber sex is because they don’t have alternatives, says Tanigue. “A lot of the kids should be in school, but they don’t have the money. They are pitiful. During raids, you discover that they are actually on drugs. It’s the only way they can do cyber sex,” she says.
Ferdinand Lavin, head of the NBI’s Anti-Human Trafficking Division, says it’s the young age of the victims that is exploited. They find cyber sex more acceptable because it doesn’t involve physical sexual exploitation.
But the damage could actually be worse. “You cannot see the physical effect but later on, the psychological and emotional damage will be much worse. The stigma will last their lifetime. If they were raped, the laceration will heal. How about the psychological and emotional damage that they encountered?” Tanigue points out.
They do not testify against their traffickers in court because they don’t want to relive the experience, Tanigue adds. Others just want to be rescued. They don’t realize that if their traffickers don’t pay for their crime, other people may become victims, too.
Thanks to RA 9208 and Executive Order 54—which mandates prosecutors to pursue human trafficking cases even when the victims have filed affidavits of desistance—cases can prosper even without the cooperation of the victims. A motion of desistance is normally ground to dismiss cases against criminal suspects.
Without the testimonies of the victims, however, the law enforcers have to work harder on forensic evidence.
The PNP’s problem, however, is that the police lack training in handling and investigating human trafficking cases, and more so, in computer crimes. The modus operandi in cyber trafficking is very different from traditional human trafficking. It takes technically savvy law enforcers to keep up with rapidly evolving technology in cyber space.
The special prosecutor in charge of the alleged cyber sex shop in southern Metro Manila, for instance, had to arrange for a computer forensic expert to collect the evidence from the computers seized by the CIDG. Otherwise, she would have had to wait for the results from the CIDG.
Of course, the absence of a law particular to cyber trafficking does not help at all. “What we need is a new law that will extensively cover cyber trafficking and will address the limitations of RA 9208,” Tanigue says.
Gaña fears that if he is unable to present more convictions under RA 9208, the country could be assessed by the US State Department as not exerting enough effort to comply with the minimum standards to eliminate human trafficking—in accordance with the internationally adapted Trafficking of Victims Act of 2000.
The Philippines is now under Tier 2, referring to countries that “do not fully comply” with the Act “but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.” A Tier 3 assessment, according to the Trafficking in Persons Report (tip) for 2006, “could trigger the withholding of non-humanitarian,
non-trade-related assistance from the United States to that country.”
The problem is already rampant, for sure. For instance, typing “sex Filipina” in search engines will easily link to hundreds of Web sites trafficking Filipino women. “If you click the Asian category, most of them are Filipino women. I can say it’s about 70 percent,” Mallari says.
The Philippines, he says, is more a supplier than a consumer of cyber sex.
There are also Web sites operating locally that offer more than cyber sex, Mallari adds. Others can arrange for clients to meet with models in motels. Mallari’s division occasionally checks the publication Buy and Sell, for example. A lot of the massage and escort services advertised there are fronts for prostitution dens, he says.
New Laws Needed
Cyber trafficking is not limited to Internet pornography. The Department of Labor and Employment recently issued a warning against fraudulent recruitment schemes on the Internet that entice people to work in the United Kingdom.
Law enforcers and advocates agree that a new law should extensively define and penalize trafficking of persons on the Internet—be it for sexual exploitation or labor.
Apparently, there is some confusion about what the models and their traffickers should be charged with.
According to Tanigue, the PNP would sometimes use RA 9208. “There’s one paragraph on Internet pornography,” she says. Other times, however, the PNP would use the Revised Penal Code and go back to categorizing the models as prostitutes—which runs counter to the spirit of RA 9208, which categorizes them as victims. This confusion also partially explains why the PNP and NBI have no dedicated data on cyber trafficking.
Lavin says that the new legislation should mandate Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to open their records to law enforcers. When a surveillance operation results in positive identification that cyber trafficking was committed, the ISPs are needed to identify the subscriber of the Internet connection. This subscriber then becomes the suspect.
DISCLAIMER
This story was made possible with support provided by The Asia Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development under the terms of Award No. 492-A-00-06-00034-00. The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Asia Foundation or the U.S. Agency for International Development."
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