There actually is a good deal of money in law enforcement for this kind of tool. Anti-trafficking efforts are becoming more and more of a priority at the federal, state, and local levels. There is also a lot of demand for this solution as demonstrated by our user base.
Federal grants are increasingly common, local and state multi-disicplinary task forces are being established more and more frequently, and they need solutions for dealing with these kind of problems.
Sex trafficking is rarely an immigration problem. According to the DOJ, 83% of their cases deal with victims of sex trafficking who are U.S. citizens and trafficked by U.S. citizens. The remaining 17% are foreign nationals. This is a homegrown problem, generally.
No, these cases only include instances where an adult is involved who is forced, defrauded, or coerced into the commercial sex trade, or a child is involved in a commercial sex act. It does not include prostitution prosecutions.
Hey, thanks for the concern. We take this very seriously. We also didn't build this in an echo chamber. I've worked for five years in this space and am very familiar with concerns about sex workers, poverty, desparation, and exploitation.
I can say with confidence that law enforcement, particularly human trafficking investigators, are also sensitive to these distinctions, generally. This used to not be the case, but a lot is changing and very quickly.
An example: An investigator I spoke to the other day said they used to be called a "VICE" unit, but they changed their name to the "counter-exploitation unit". This is similar to many agencies across the US and Canada.
We reserve the right to revoke a user's license if they are using our platform to harass persons, but so far this has not been a problem. In fact, just the opposite.
Probably changed their name because "vice" obviously sounds like enforcing a questionable moral code (while having fun), whereas "counter-exploitation unit" sounds more important and serious.
Underage sex work and human trafficking was already illegal in Canada, but they recently shut a lot legitimate sex workers down.
How are you actually auditing LE to make sure they're only targeting trafficking/minors or other real offenses?
Edit: To be clear, how do we know this isn't a sham like drug laws? No drug user I've ever known, even the ones that OD'd and died, ever benefitted at all from drug laws. Quite the opposite in fact. So forgive us for being skeptical about another morality law enforcement system that might have a similar damage ratio.
Even the first question that comes to me: Is the sex market so bad that buyers are interested in coerced workers? Sure, some people might be into underaged (regardless of the cutoff), and I suppose some people might be into abusive stuff they couldn't buy from willing participants. But does that make up the majority even? Or is it really just a lot of bored, or ugly, or busy, or curious, etc. etc. buyers?
More pointedly, where are your morals? Are you pushing for better laws, despite that they might hurt business?
If you are not working with groups like http://www.swopusa.org/ already, you need to start now, or you will likely end up hurting more people than you help.
I think we can distinguish ourselves from spies because we only collect open source intelligence - meaning publicly available records. Technology is like a knife. It can be used to create or destroy, can be used by a surgeon for good or for a killer for evil. The same is true for big data technologies. They can be used for mass surveillance and violation of civil liberties or for recovery of trafficked children. We're not violating anyone's civil liberties or right to privacy.
Let's look through some of the things you claim, shall we?
Images can be cross referenced against other ads to detect hidden relationships.
Evidence artifacts can be collected and introduced during criminal proceedings.
Rescue Forensics collects millions of records for anti-trafficking investigations and prosecution.
Search by phone number, text, or images, and filter by location, age, and date ranges.
Hidden phone numbers are unmasked so human traffickers can’t hide their victims online.
Intelligence from across the world can be searched in one central location.
Images can be cross-referenced against the rest of the web to find profiles and social media accounts.
Our intuitive interface allows you to target the intelligence you need on all your devices.
Yeah. So, you're straight-up building a massive blackmail ledger, without a stated business model other than "We're helping the police save the children!".
One of my favorites, also from your front page:
STOP SENDING SUBPOENAS
Our database contains millions of records of classified advertisements representing up to two years of historical data. Stop waiting days or weeks to get a subpoena response from a hosting site that may only offer a few months of records. Find all the targeted intelligence you need right now.
Yeah, man, that whole due-process thing is a pain in the ass, isn't it? Better to do the work for the .gov instead of making them follow their own laws.
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I don't think it is a surprise to anyone who's been watching the trends lately with regards to law enforcement in the US and the trends with data mining that you are not receiving an unconditional pat on the back.
Frankly, companies like yours are part of the problem--even if you do offer help in the small picture.
EDIT:
Bahahahahahaha, I love this one:
The user-generated information archived by Rescue Forensics is completely unmodified and retrieval of this information is an automated process. We only redact copyrighted material, such as company logos or other intellectual property.
Yes, so, you've got protection for companies, but nothing against, say, a deliberate smear campaign. Your platform looks like it doesn't do anything to prevent, say, a bunch of jerks deliberately scattering fake evidence, and you'll hoover it up all the same, I'm betting?
Also, they seem to fail to recognize that everything subject to copyright is copyrighted on creation, so if they were actually filtering out "copyrighted material", most of the content they are storing would be redacted.
>We only redact copyrighted material, such as company logos or other intellectual property.
>Yes, so, you've got protection for companies
No, this protection is in the other direction - of their own lower back _from_ the companies. They don't care about smaller fish which can't bite.
Anyway, all this bro-hah-hah piled upon them is pointless. They are just one of many Palantir wannabes. There is no way they or others can be stopped. You can't stop the wave. A new kind of society is upon us where everybody would be able to know everything about everybody and thus information assymmetry power (be it of corporations, governments or whomever) will be no more.
> I think we can distinguish ourselves from spies because we only collect open source intelligence - meaning publicly available records.
No, it's what use you put those records to that is the definition.
I can collect the license plate numbers of every car that goes down my street in the morning. It's when I use that to figure out which house to break into that I cross the line.
The problem is that there is no distinguishing those cases until something bad happens, and by then it's too late.
A distinguishing use case for open source intelligence is being able to counter lossy consciousness factors with open source counterintelligence.
Readily able to read and write due diligence are literate, educated, emotionally-intelligent populations who can be a part of (the granular war to determine) distinguishing records.
Hah Im not embarassed at all, I just am sensitive to bringing up such a dark topic at social settings. Im happy to talk to anyone about our work anytime. The comment I made was being playful - came out a bit more serious in the article. Thanks so much for the encouragement.
Craigslist has way fewer ads than they used to. They are actually playing ball and closing off many of these ads. The journalist was really kind to not mention our primary data sets we collect. We don't want traffickers hiding somewhere else.
Hey, when I made that comment I was being playful. She made it sound way more serious than I made it. It is tough to talk about sex trafficking at a party though!
Alright! Hope to see you at alumni demo day. I think your company will be better off if you stay in the bay area instead of returning to Tennessee. I am from Atlanta, started my company there, and miss it a lot, so I do identify with your feelings.
