Human trafficking, often referred to as modern-day slavery, represents a growing crisis in the United States. A type of human trafficking is sex trafficking, which involves the exploitation of individuals for commercial sexual activities through force, fraud, or coercion. Alarmingly, this crime has been reported in all 50 states, victimizing thousands of people, including minors, each year.
The internet has significantly increased the scale of this problem. Online platforms provide traffickers with new reach and anonymity, enabling them to exploit victims on a much larger scale. This digital shift has propelled sex trafficking to become one of the fastest-growing criminal industries globally. Statistics paint a grim picture: the average age of entry into sex trafficking is just 15 years old for females. Perhaps more disturbingly, 55% of survivors report attending school during their exploitation, highlighting how this crime operates within plain sight.
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Guardian Group's Project 1591, named after the U.S. Code criminalizing child sex trafficking, stands at the forefront of this battle. The initiative leverages Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) to identify potential victims of this heinous crime. Their team of skilled analysts and crowdsourced volunteers meticulously sift through publicly available information to identify and locate victims, gathering crucial evidence for law enforcement to act.
However, the sheer volume of data poses a significant challenge. With an estimated 150,000 new escort ads posted online daily in the United States, the task of manual analysis becomes overwhelmingly time-consuming. The limited number of trained analysts with high level OSINT skills makes their time an incredibly valuable and finite resource.
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Recognizing the need to maximize the efficiency of these skilled analysts, I developed Prospector™, an autonomous OSINT tool designed specifically for Guardian Group's Project 1591 program and their internal Analyst Team. Prospector™ serves as an assistant in the fight against human trafficking, reducing the time analysts need to spend sifting through thousands of online escort advertisements.
Prospector™ works by autonomously filtering through vast numbers of online ads, employing sophisticated algorithms and novel technology to identify potential instances of human trafficking. The tool generates comprehensive reports for individual cities, utilizing various OSINT techniques to determine the likely identity of potential victims. By automating a part of the initial triaging process, Prospector allows analysts to dedicate more of their valuable time to in-depth verification and investigation of the most promising leads.
"It’s volunteers like Mr. Campi that help us recognize the power of technology to cut through the white noise throughout the internet. He completed our volunteer training and gained access to Project 1591. He quickly realized the work wasn’t within his wheelhouse and that he felt he had a unique skillset to help us in a different way, having seen the sheer volume of what our internal Analysis Team and other volunteers are up against daily. He proceeded to build a proprietary tool for us and we are forever grateful for his work. It will definitely impact our support to law enforcement and more importantly help us find those potential victims quicker" said Guardian Group COO.
The development of Prospector for Guardian Group has been an incredibly rewarding project. Over several months, I had the privilege of volunteering my time and expertise to create this tool, and I am very grateful to Guardian Group for providing this unique opportunity to contribute to their mission.
I extend my heartfelt thanks to those at Guardian Group for their partnership throughout the development of this innovative tool. Working with them has been very fulfilling, and I look forward to seeing how Prospector will assist their analysts in the future.
Project 1591 is the first-ever 24/7 crowdsourcing process and platform that enables volunteers to become force multipliers to Guardian Group's mission of illuminating child victims of sex trafficking in the United States. Dedicate your time and expert OSINT skills and volunteer today. Your skills could be used to make a lifesaving impact on a victim of human trafficking right here in the United States.
Software engineer and researcher with a passion for AI and Cyber Security