Hearing Wrap Up: Technology Can Help Law Enforcement Identify and Protect Human Trafficking Victims

WASHINGTON-Yesterday, the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation held a hearing titled "Using Modern Tools to Counter Human Trafficking." At the hearing, Members examined how traffickers use technology to exploit victims and how outdated technology can create gaps for law enforcement to stop traffickers. Members also learned about how emerging technology, like artificial intelligence, is being used to identify and protect victims. An underlying concern with such technology is ensuring data collection does not violate the privacy of human trafficking victims.

Key Takeaways:

A growing digital world has created new avenues for human traffickers to exploit victims. Law enforcement agencies are overwhelmed by the number of human trafficking cases and lack of updated resources to address them.

• Megan Lundstrom, Chief Executive Officer of Polaris, stated in her opening testimony that "A decade ago, traffickers found people like me at gas stations and bus stops. They exploited us through hotels, prepaid gift cards and burner phones. Today, it's algorithmic targeting apps and digital wallets, where traffickers find us and sell us has evolved because technology has evolved. But why they target us and exploit us remains the same…Traffickers are opportunists. They will always adopt new technology faster than systems with compliance obligations. Our national response must be nimble to keep up, but never at the expense of the people we aim to protect."
  
• Melissa Snow, Executive Director for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), stated in her opening statement that "Child sex trafficking is a technology facilitated crime that occurs on the clear web. The internet provides unregulated and anonymous spaces where traffickers and buyers can engage with children in ways that would never be acceptable. Offline children are often approached first and groomed by offenders on gaming platforms and social media platforms. Traffickers and buyers also use publicly available online escort and dating websites, as well as social media to advertise, sell and purchase children for sex."

Artificial intelligence (AI) and other modern technologies can help law enforcement close the gaps, strengthen cases against traffickers, and get victims the justice they deserve.

• Ms. Lundstrom testified that "Ethical technology has enormous potential to combat human trafficking. With survivor input from day one, Polaris built a causal AI model that identifies structural drivers of trafficking. It shows, for example, that in the United States, child poverty is one of the strongest predictors of vulnerability to trafficking. This tool allows policy makers like you to test how interventions, like childcare tax credits for working families, could reduce the risk before exploitation ever occurs. We can use technology to change the conditions that traffickers prey on."
  
• Ms. Snow noted in her testimony that "Another specific anti-trafficking tool, Traffic Cam, allows NCMEC to use a search feature to identify hotel rooms where child sex trafficking victims have been photographed. Using these innovative tools is life-saving. When we can connect a missing child to an active online escort ad advertising a child for sale in a specific city, and it is even more powerful when we can narrow it to a specific hotel. Being able to pass along a lead that is actionable for law enforcement can mean significantly reducing the amount of time that child is experiencing a nightmare."
  
• Cara Jones, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Marinus Analytics, stated in her opening testimony that "Over 75 million ads for commercial sex flood the U.S. marketplace online. Hidden among them are a vast number of victims of trafficking. With over 1.3 billion records indexed, Traffic Jam delivers actionable insights in seconds, connecting ads, timelines, and networks so investigators can focus on safeguarding and justice, not drowning in data. Its intelligence strengthens cases and reduces the burden on victims and investigators, while expanding the burden of proof. Technology turns data into a clear story, corroborating testimony and enabling evidence-based prosecution that builds cases around victims, not on them. A profound innovation is using ai ethically to screen missing persons for trafficking risk, enabling proactive safeguarding. In just two years, analyzing 60,000 missing persons records from 20 public sources, we detected 734 victims, 95 percent girls and young women, 84 percent victims of color advertised online for sexual services."

Congress must evaluate the effectiveness of existing federal anti-trafficking legislation and find ways to close gaps and make improvements.

Member Highlights

Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation Chairwoman Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) inquired about how technological improvements have helped protect victims.

Subcommittee Chairwoman Mace: "And then in terms of technology and trying to find children who are victims of human trafficking, what has been the best-case scenario? What have you seen that's been very much working to the betterment of, of these victims with the advances of technology we see today?"

Ms. Snow: "Thank you so much for that question. I think there are three tools that I mentioned-Spotlight, Traffic Jam, Traffic Cam-that we use every single day in making connections between active missing children that are actively being exploited. And so, you know, with these being small companies, it's so important that there's continued resources to support the innovation, the expansion, the growth, and the ability to keep up with the trends in the field to ensure that we can continue to evolve with the offenders."

Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) asked about how AI is used to identify potential trafficking cases and what processes are in place for anti-trafficking organizations to share data with law enforcement without compromising victims' privacy.

Rep. Burlison: "I'll begin by asking a question of Mrs. Snow. Can you walk me through what your AI process is, and how does it identify a potential trafficking case?"

Ms. Snow: "Absolutely. Thank you so much for your question. So, in terms of how NCMEC is currently utilizing AI, and, of course, there's a variety of different ways, but one that I'll mention right now. So, as we continue to receive an increase in volume, especially in our reports, we have identified that we need to make sure that we're creating a safety net, right, to leverage and make sure that all of the data points. So, in a missing child case, we can have in a single missing child case, we can have 500 unique data points in a single cyber-tipline report, we can have up to a thousand data points. And so, the reality of being able to make those nuanced connections that can surface clear indicators of possible child sex trafficking is something that is exceeding human capacity with the volume of reports that we have. So, by now layering an AI component, specifically on the missing child cases that we have reported to us, it has allowed us to implement a system, again, that's leveraging decades of subject matter expertise and survivor knowledge to pull the nuanced data points that you know. Of course, when we find an online escort ad, that's a clear indicator. But there's a lot of other nuanced indicators that we now know that when we stack them together, create a more reliable indicator of possible trafficking."

Rep. Burlison: "Okay. So, are you also pulling data from, say, like Amber alerts or any of the data that's gathered from any kind of child abduction?"

Ms. Snow: "So if there was a situation where we identified within a family abduction or a child abduction case, that there was likely indicators of trafficking, that would be, of course, a part of that process."

Rep. Burlison: "Okay. Let me ask you this. Why do these traffickers, apparently from your from your written testimony, you said that they are often on, the open web there. You would think that they would be doing this on the dark web. Why? Why would they be so brazen to do it on the open web?"

Ms. Snow: "[The] very simple answer to that is that's where the kids are, right? Traffickers are going to be in places where they can have access to children and where they can begin to identify the vulnerabilities that those children are sharing. That allows an entry point for a trafficker to then take advantage of that."

[…]

Rep. Burlison: "Ms. Lundstrom, what is your process like when you're sharing data with law enforcement? How do you do that without compromising the victim's privacy? How do you work collaboratively with law enforcement?"

Ms. Lundstrom: "In running the National Human Trafficking Hotline for the last 18 years, our team has developed over 300 protocols around identifying trafficking situations and determining whether or not a situation needs to be reported to law enforcement. So, we start first and foremost with the laws recognizing that we are mandated reporters and we have a duty to report instances that involve individuals who are suspected to be under the age of 18 [are in] imminent harm or danger, and when survivors want to report. And so, we have an entire protocol around that decision making process that we have used and it's very nuanced. That sounds very simple. And the reality is that it isn't. So one of the examples that I like to share, to give a little bit more context to that decision, is 'what if we have a survivor that calls in on behalf of several other survivors and we're able to get the caller's consent, but we cannot confirm if the other survivors, who are maybe all over the age of 18, [who] want to report to law enforcement as well?' So those protocols really break down how to best make those decisions."

Click here to watch the hearing.