Author: Vassilia Orfanou, PhD, Post Doc
Headline Diplomat eMagazine
Technology plays an essential role to reduce and stop child trafficking, but equally increase it. Traffickers use fake information, false promises, and other fraudulent factors to recruit victims both in person, but equally via the internet, social media and gaming platforms.
Reports from the Child Liberation Foundation reveal that 25% of all Human Trafficking victims are children, making child trafficking a global pandemic needing immediate attention and reaction.
Reflecting on technological means from a positive angle, they can prove to be an effective and innovative strategy to reduce or even stop this terrible practice. From the use of AI-powered video recognition services to apps that identify potential victims, focusing on technology can aid law enforcements in identifying predators and traffickers before harm happens.
Our team presents below some of the technological implementations that can help law enforcement stop or reduce child trafficking activities. Read on!
1. Blockchain-Based Identification Services
Blockchain-based identification services make identification easier since the technology contains people’s details to ascertain whether an individual is as they claim.
This technology plays an essential role in reducing or stopping child trafficking since many traffickers use fake information, false promises, and other fraudulent factors to recruit victims.
By using Blockchain-based identification services, individuals and organizations can verify identities and be certain of their credibility. Also, this technology can be used to ensure that people aren’t fraudulent or misleading when coming to seek assistance from law enforcement.
2. AI-Based Video Analytics
Artificial intelligence has reached new heights in recent decades, and this development is evident in AI-Based Video Analytics. This technology aims to identify people and objects via image recognition providing crucial insight into child trafficking operations.
One implementation of AI-Based Video Analytics is identifying fake documents since many child traffickers use fake IDs and false information to secure fraudulent documents.
Another example of this AI image recognition is searching for signs and hints of sexual exploitation in videos. One common hint of child sexual exploitation is a child being escorted while looking frightened, unhappy, or sad around the individual, place, or situation.
It’s worth mentioning that AI-Based Video Analytics is also used to track the source and moment of stolen goods, which are often used in child sex trafficking.
3. Automated Recognition Software
AI-based image recognition can work to identify images of child sexual abuse and other types of child exploitation. The AI’s function would be to reduce the backlog of images that police and other law enforcement agencies need to review manually, thereby fighting the abuse of children, especially online.
By leveraging Artificial Intelligence and its automated image recognition capabilities, law enforcement can quickly identify potential victims of human trafficking. Essentially, this technology is the future in reducing or stopping exploitation of any categories.
4. Online Marketing and Advertising Solutions
The internet is commonplace for child traffickers to find their victims, but some exploiters go further by advertising attractive offers, opportunities, and deals targeted at young individuals. Upon interacting with these ads, traffickers then use manipulative techniques to force these children into servitude of different forms.
By using automated software, organizations identify these dubious offers and illicit advertising, take them down, and possibly find the source. The technology is similar to how Google and Facebook use Artificial Intelligence to identify and remove fake news.
Applying this technology to social media platforms with video ads, social media posts, and display advertising, organizations can quickly and easily prevent traffickers from recruiting new children to exploit online.
Can Technology end Child Trafficking?
Technological innovations, especially Artificial Intelligence, contribute to the fight against Human trafficking, especially regarding children. This battle ranges from apps capable of identifying potential victims to software capable of assessing situations and stolen items.
Although these programs and devices can’t completely stop human trafficking, they continue to help law enforcement find potential victims and traffickers and bring justice with little to no damage done.
Conclusion
Technological advancements aim to ease hassles in any endeavor, and this ease translates to finding child traffickers and their victims.
For this reason, we urge organizations and tech companies to lend their support and invest in these technologies today. It plays a crucial role in helping law enforcement do their jobs better and catch predators.
Featured photo: ThisIsEngineering, Pexels
