Thorn Helps Law Enforcement Identify Child Sex-Trafficking Victims Faster on AWS Answering the Challenge Using AWS stream Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? 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. That's where Thorn comes in. Try a low commitment monthly plan today. A 2012 Thorn survey of child sex-trafficking survivors found that 75 percent had been sold online, most of them through escort websites. Our web-based tool is now used by over 5,000 officers in all 50 states and Canada. A verification email has been sent to you. x Om7 ' While learning the ins and outs of Spotlight, and shipping features from our product backlog, I began to focus on ways to improve our on-boarding process for increased acquisition and adoption. Thorn was founded in 2012 by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to combat online child abuse. Both products had been around longer than Spotlight and had a few hundred more users than us at the time. This project was supported by Grant No. 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. It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. endobj Thorn builds technology to defend children from sexual abuse. We are only one player in a critical ecosystem working on behalf of our children. "Spotlight was designed based on insights from our first survivor survey. SOURCE: Self-reported; last updated 6/9/2021. We do all of this so every child can be safe, curious, and happy. My background in law enforcement and anti-human trafficking was well suited for the needs of Spotlight when I first joined the team. Hi-fidelity prototypes of key touch points on the Spotlight website. Get free shipping on all Thorne products, connect with health professionals and clients, and read Take 5 Daily to get the latest news in the health and technology industry. Build relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Register. This is me at a conference booth, preparing to hold several usability testing sessions with human trafficking investigators. Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results. $25/mo. For more information about the impact of Spotlight, check out the infographic below. Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Additionally, through my stakeholder analysis, I focused on Fox Valley Technical College (FVTC) - a leading law enforcement education center - and the DOJ (both of whom I know, because I currently consult for them on human trafficking). COVID-19 Fraud. My goal was to not only design a workshop that increased adoption but to build a tool that added value for current users through an intuitive user experience and user interface - which would then translate to more victims identified in a shorter amount of time. An improved product and UX journey delivers a seamless onboarding and training process for our users and admin staff, Streamlining the onboarding process for law enforcement, Designing a user experience for human trafficking investigators to help them solve cases faster than ever. Spotlight's sophisticated machine-learning capabilities save time for overworked, under-resourced investigators by automatically flagging ads likely to represent at-risk children and keeping law enforcement agents from getting lost in a sea of online data. Spotlight has been used in 21,044 cases identifying 12,328 adults, 5,791 children, and 6,553 traffickers in the past two years. One of the most significant obstacles is the massive volume of these ads. Somewhere in that pile of data are children who are bought and sold online for sex. and who do the programs serve? Thanks to Spotlight I have returned victims to their families and put bad guys where they belong. Learn more about Spotlight. All Rights Reserved, thorn.org, Hear more from investigators using Spotlight on the front lines, surveyed underage sex trafficking victims. Spotlight has been used in 21,044 cases identifying 12,328 adults, 5,791 children, and 6,553 traffickers in the past two years. To request technical assistance, training, or other resources through this initiative, agency POCs shouldemail usor call 202-833-1460. Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Thorn has created a program called Spotlight. 2 0 obj Spotlight is used by more than 6,000 law enforcement officers in all 50 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. 11 0 obj x["Yn I agree to the terms of use, privacy policy and agree to receive promotional emails, reminders and updates from Thorn Share it with us and well add it to the database! Thorn was founded in 2012 to build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. country every day, law enforcement cannot manually keep up with the volume of ads as they work to identify and track potential victims. In 2013, we published the first version of The Thorn Sound Practices Guide, which educates companies about proven practices, tools and resources that exist to identify, remove, report and prevent child sexual abuse material and abusive behavior on their platforms. Most Popular Stories. Additionally, many new supervisors inevitably will speak with and encourage employees to ensure they take care of their . 4 0 obj We couldnt recommend it more taking time away from what is hard helps us all sustain our efforts to achieve our goals. 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. We choose to use it for good. What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants (CIRI) founded in 1918, is a statewide nonprofit human services agency that addresses the need to provide new immigrants and refugees in Connecticut with services to help them become self-sufficient, integrated and contributing members of the community. Click here to return to Amazon Web Services homepage, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C5 instances, Identified 18,000 victims, including over 6,000 children. 5 0 obj According to our most recent survey, it is helping find more human trafficking victims, faster. "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 . <>/ExtGState<>/XObject<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> All Rights Reserved. We'll keep it out of your inbox, promise. Moreover, users wanted to learn from a law enforcement investigator currently using our tool - so we made sure to co-teach with a superuser. Using this data the company worked with law enforcement to understand how such digital footprints could lead to the discovery of victims and their traffickers. Washington D.C. tax attorney Kevin E. Thorn, Managing Partner of Thorn Law Group, explains. endstream <> Click here to resend it.). Human Trafficking Search (HTS) seeks to raise awareness and help prevent and eliminate human trafficking worldwide. We believe that every child has the right to be safe, to be curious, to be happy. endobj The success of Spotlight would not be possible without the countless hours that investigators spend looking for our kids; the technology partners who influenced and encouraged its development and our donors. ", Combating online child sex trafficking is a team effort, according to Istook. " Most locations in the United States are updated every six hours. Trafficking in human beings: protect women and children and focus on sexual exploitation, Desperate for Cash, Afghans Toil in Mines That Are Deadlier Than Ever, Forced to Beg: Tanzanias Trafficked Kids. Thorn also works to speed the identification of children featured in sexually abusive material. 1 0 obj Through my competitive analysis, I identified two major competing products, Traffic Jam and Rescue Forensics. 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. Law enforcement doesnt have enough time to navigate the online commercial sex market to find children and identify their traffickers. I started by conducting a competitive and stakeholder analysis to help with the overall discovery of where we were with our current process. stream Lucas Moore is a writer in Los Angeles. Learn more 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. Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. Click on the link in that email Thorn Helps Law Enforcement Identify Child Sex-Trafficking Victims Faster on AWS. result in increased adoption of Thorns tools, a reduction in time to stop abuse and an increase in risk for perpetrators. endobj There is a small group of people abusing our children, and we are a large community standing in strong opposition. Sign In. Spotlights analytics pipeline begins with a third-party solution that ingests more than 100,000 new online escort ads each day, storing text and image data as objects in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets. It is the Google Search for combating human sex trafficking. To date, Spotlight has helped officers reduce investigative time by up to 65% and has helped identify 18,119 trafficking victims (including 5,791 children) and 6,553 traffickers. Spotlight's machine-learning models are trained and run on Amazon EC2 C5 instances. GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center. Registration is open for Dressember 2018 and fundraising has already started! Our tool Spotlight accelerates law enforcements ability to identify victims of 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. Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress. But Thorn stays positive in the midst of engaging directly with such data. Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. Julie was raised in Lindsay, California, a small farming community in Californias Central Valley. <> Kutcher elaborate on the software during the hearing, Its a tool that can be used by law enforcement to prioritize their caseload. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Spotlight is a web-based application that helps law enforcement prioritize leads in their sex trafficking investigations. 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 in P2P onthe dark web from a hidden location. AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. 3 0 obj Per Kristin, "The genesis of Spotlight started after we conducted a sex trafficking Survivor Survey in 2012, seeking to learn directly from victims how technology was used throughout their trafficking situation. Thorn's Spotlight tool combines publicly available classified ad and online forum data with smart algorithms to help law enforcement identify an average of eight child sex trafficking victims every day. <>/Metadata 508 0 R/ViewerPreferences 509 0 R>> Its a neuralnet, it gets smarter over time, it gets better and it gets more efficient as people use it. COVID-19 fraud schemes have been a top concern for IRS CI and other . "With the flexibility and easy integration of AWS, we can experiment and prototype new products like Spotlight that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive to develop. The genesis of Spotlight started after we conducted a sex trafficking Survivor Survey in 2012, seeking to learn directly from victims how technology was used throughout their trafficking situation. Viral child sexual abuse material is removed from the internet to end the cycle of trauma. All rights reserved. Reports from our users show that, with the help of Spotlight, law enforcement is identifying 9 kids per day on average and those who use Spotlight daily see over 60% in time savings. Just within the last 12 months investigators reported: Officers who login weekly report a time savings of 60% in their human trafficking investigations. I gathered additional information through phone call interviews with customers who were familiar with Spotlight and the other two products to get a sense of what features and design they liked. <> ", In a YouTube video describing Thorns use of technology to fight child pornography and sex trafficking, Thorn Co-founder Ashton Kutcher said, We have to stay on the front cutting edge of that technology, because the criminals, theyre on the front cutting edge., I asked Kelbi what challenges Spotlight faces in keeping at the front of the technological curve. 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