Research Assistant Marqueze Kennedy
May 2019
Introduction: Child trafficking has been a problem for centuries. The technological advancements of the internet era, however, have brought with them an alarming growth of trafficking. Traffickers now use technologies such as social media, untraceable cryptocurrency, and the dark web to conduct their criminal activities. Though these technologies are used by criminals to lure and exploit vulnerable children around the world, many innovative technologists have made efforts to fight child trafficking by building tools to catch and prosecute traffickers, and to protect vulnerable children.
The ways these technologies are being used range from anonymous and secure crime reporting to using AI to scan and scrape CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) from the web at a level of speed and accuracy far beyond human capability. The range of these technologies is truly remarkable. Though some of these technologies are run by private organizations that are completely independent of any user base, many of these tools need to gather a large audience and user base in order for them to become effective. Many of them create platforms to empower ordinary people who want to fight child trafficking in their own communities. The goal of this white paper is to present a comprehensive list of existing technologies being used to combat child trafficking. By providing this unique resource, we hope to help consolidate core knowledge and thus enable law enforcement, government agencies, and nonprofit groups to select and combine strategies with maximum effectiveness.
Learn more about the Tools Against Child Trafficking (TACT) Project here.
