All Rights Reserved. All rights reserved. To request technical assistance, training, or other resources through this initiative, agency POCs shouldemail usor call 202-833-1460. With only a 25% average response rate, were confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. User research through interviews, personas, and journey mapping of proactive and reactive searches had already been done prior to my start date. 10 0 obj Officers who login weekly report a time savings of 60% in their human trafficking investigations. There is a small group of people abusing our children, and we are a large community standing in strong opposition. According to our most recent survey, it is helping find more human trafficking victims, faster. endstream GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader <> Spotlight's machine-learning models analyze new escort ads in real time and use intelligent image analysis and natural-language processing (NLP) to flag those that match risk profiles developed in cooperation with law enforcement agencies. Thorn builds technology to defend children from sexual abuse. Spotlight helps officers identify child sex-trafficking ads much faster than the old paper-and-pencil methods., Brooke Istook, Director of Strategy and Operations, Thorn. Build relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Thorn is a team of issue experts, business leaders, and engineers who build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. x nH@ \ FOLLOW MORE IBT NEWS ON THE BELOW CHANNELS, IBT Fast Start - Let the best of International News come to you. "Abusers had figured out how to use advanced technology to facilitate their exploitation of children," says Sarah Potts, the head of marketing and communications for Thorn, the California-based nonprofit that created Spotlight. The software, called Spotlight, is now used across all 50 states by more than 4,000 law enforcement officers, according to Thorns website. Washington D.C. tax attorney Kevin E. Thorn, Managing Partner of Thorn Law Group, explains. The rise of the internet has done for child sexual abusers the exact same thing it has done for everyone else - made it easier to share images, and build a community. I agree to the terms of use, privacy policy and agree to receive promotional emails, reminders and updates from Thorn Spotlight evolved from surveys completed by victims of trafficking that showed 63 percent of underage victims were bought or sold online at some point. It is the greatest tool we have in the fight against human trafficking., Special Agent, Wisconsin Human Trafficking Task Force. Spotlight has been used in 21,044 cases identifying 12,328 adults, 5,791 children, and 6,553 traffickers in the past two years. I cant begin to tell you how appreciative myself and the victim's families are that we have people that support a worthy cause such as this. Easy communication at scale, disposable "burner" phones, and simple photo-editing tools these are just some of the ways the digital, connected world was helping traffickers operate anonymously, one step ahead of the lawespecially those who traffic children for sex online. 1 0 obj Spotlight, on the other hand, is a complex piece of software that doesn't have any sales to help fund its production. 6 0 obj ", Combating online child sex trafficking is a team effort, according to Istook. " from UCLA and an M.B.A. from Northwestern. <> Since 2016 alone, Spotlight has helped officers in the United States and Canada open more than 21,000 trafficking cases and identify about 18,000 victims, including more than 6,000 children. The organization's co-leader identifies as: Already have a GuideStar Account? Initially, they had about 100 users from three U.S. states who were using Spotlight for their human-trafficking investigations. The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick. 2023, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. To find children faster, they have created two online tools, Spotlight and Solis, for law enforcement agencies across the world, for free. Spotlight's machine-learning models are trained and run on Amazon EC2 C5 instances. It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. The objective of Spotlight is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of domestic sex trafficking investigations and increase the number of children who are identified and connected with help resources. How can people reading this help Thorn fight against child sex trafficking? After the 2015 Atlanta ICAC Conference, we quickly realized that we needed a better on-boarding process that no longer relied solely on Google Sheets to manage requests. Identifying the best product and UX design to onboard users, so that Spotlight could become the leading machine learning tool for human trafficking investigators. On Wednesday, Kutcher testified before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee along with the CEO and President of the organization Human Rights First, Elisa Massimino, to ask the United States Government for help fighting trafficking and sexual exploitation. The National Policing Institute, formerly known as the National Police Foundation, is an independent non-profit, non-partisan institution based in Arlington, Virginia that has been dedicated to advancing policing through innovation and science for over half a century, and works to translate those findings to practice through technical assistance, training, and dissemination. Officers can set customized alerts and search Spotlights constantly growing database of ads to aid in their investigations. Use of THOR in a manner outside the scope of these Rules is strictly prohibited. 11 0 obj We piloted our workshop at the 2015 Atlanta ICAC Conference and received additional feedback on how to improve Spotlight Lab. The Transportation Industrys Human Trafficking Prevention Toolkit, The Educators Human Trafficking Awareness & Prevention Toolkit, Hospitality Industry and Human Trafficking Toolkit, Visibly Invisible Sex Workers and Sex Trafficking in the EU, Prison Labor: What Happened in the 5 States That Had The Exception Clause On the Ballot, Illuminating a Nexus: The Interplay Between Disaster Events and Exploitation, Preparing for the Known Unknown: Human Trafficking and Disaster Response, Forced to Scam: Cyber Slavery in South Asia, Avoiding Cascading Effects: Why Suspension of The Davis-Bacon Act May Allow Forced/Exploited Labor. Julie was raised in Lindsay, California, a small farming community in Californias Central Valley. Dont see a resource that you know exists? Don't recognize this agency? Facial analysis in Amazon Rekognition helps investigators find photos of the same person that have been edited to defeat less intelligent image-search engines. "Permitted Use" means any use of the Services by an Authorized User for the benefit of Customer solely for supporting his or her law enforcement, social services, academic or other similar professional role, including to detect criminal actions, identify missing/exploited victims, or measure statistical trends surrounding the adult services . Empowering law enforcement to collaborate beyond jurisdictions or national borders is a key to success in identifying victims who are moved frequently, or are broadcast through peer-to-peer platforms (P2P) on the dark web from a hidden location. There are over 150,000 escort ads posted daily, and Spotlight takes this massive amount of data and turns it into an asset for law enforcement. I started by conducting a competitive and stakeholder analysis to help with the overall discovery of where we were with our current process. You can view our, Meet the 2019 Skoll Awardees for Social Entrepreneurship. Armed with this data, we worked with our technology partners and law enforcement to understand how these existing digital footprints could assist law enforcement in faster victim identification. These recent survey results confirm our initial hypothesis that Spotlight has indeed been an asset for law enforcement in earlier victim identification, collaboration and productivity. stream Leadership Spotlight: A System Focus. I also created high-fidelity prototypes of key touchpoints on our site, whose content I validated through additional user feedback. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Equipped more than 8,500 law enforcement officers across 2,000 law enforcement agencies in 35 countries with its tools, Tools speed investigation time by up to 65 percent, 2022 Skoll Foundation. To build the world we believe in, we know we must: 1) Accelerate Victim Identification 2) Make Digital Environments Safer and 3) Deter Predatory Behavior. Education and engagement with the public change risky and abusive behaviors. endstream Help Spotlight PA hold the powerful to account with a gift today. Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? All rights reserved. Used by officers in all 50 states and Canada, our web-based tool has helped in identifying 17,092 child victims of human trafficking in the past four years. Eventually, I reached out to them, and we agreed to partner and co-teach a Spotlight Lab workshop at major conferences across the Nation to drive awareness and adoption. For more information about the impact of Spotlight, check out the infographic below. Password. <> We have resource guides for researchers across the globe on all forms of trafficking for various stakeholders. I also conducted guerrilla usability testing to learn about the major pain points of the product itself. I was part of the team that was responsible for designing the UX/UI and rolling out the product Nationwide, along with our partners -Digital Reasoning- whose machine learning technology, Spotlight was built on. ", In addition to the task of staying technologically relevant, Thorn faces another significant challenge: fundraising. Law enforcement doesnt have enough time to navigate the online commercial sex market to find children and identify their traffickers. An infographic detailing the reach that Spotlight has gained, since its national roll-out in February 2015. More From Thorn About the Spotlight Technology. Please check your inbox in order to proceed. Expanded partnerships with law enforcement. <>/Metadata 508 0 R/ViewerPreferences 509 0 R>> After the 2015 Atlanta ICAC Conference, we quickly realized that we needed a better on-boarding process that no longer relied solely on Google Sheets to manage requests. Share it with us and well add it to the database! s#fDr$G#;3s/U@q~}NHO. $180/yr. Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results. Our work has three pillars and one guiding vision. This is me at a conference booth, preparing to hold several usability testing sessions with human trafficking investigators. about GuideStar Pro. Kelbi Ervin, Development Associate at Thorn, works with a team to develop partnerships and identify funding opportunities to sustain Thorn's work. This combination of streamlining workflows and increasing successful victim identification is what has propelled Spotlight to continue to grow its user base. Throughout this process, I worked collaboratively with Media Cause and Digital Reasoning to set timelines and execute. Human Trafficking Search (HTS) seeks to raise awareness and help prevent and eliminate human trafficking worldwide. As Thorn started work on a tool that could help investigators identify children being exploited, more than 150,000 new escort ads were being posted online every day in the United States. One aspect of law enforcement often discussed during an in-briefing or at a recruiting event is the idea that by joining the organization, you are being accepted into that agency's "family.". Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? After I completed this phase of research, I used the information to iterate on the workshop design, and improve the overall usability of Spotlight. A virtual team based in the U.S., Thorn employs 25 people. Initially, they had about 100 users from three U.S. states who were using Spotlight for their human-trafficking investigations. Powered by 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Amazon EC2 C5 instances offer a memory-to-vCPU ratio that is ideal for demanding inference applications. 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