ryandalton

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.

bingo

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.

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.

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.

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!