How can law enforcement sift through massive amounts of data to focus their time on the most vulnerable victims? Hear more from investigators using Spotlight on the front lines. Need the ability to download nonprofit data and more advanced search options? I was part of the team that was responsible for designing the UX/UI and rolling out the product Nationwide, along with our partners -Digital Reasoning- whose machine learning technology, Spotlight was built on. x Om7 ' Spotlight takes this massive amount of data and turns it into an asset for law enforcement. country every day, law enforcement cannot manually keep up with the volume of ads as they work to identify and track potential victims. This website is funded through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. xKk@aZp &@z(=6M5h6N0]|V^c DY: $ I~^_az{}n{wN2r0 G$?Df'QK(s[,3o@o Ecw]\Q sIIb4`W*4)zka0Xm?adhga$P0A*+F#JExueU\|%|Q(2TW,+ h[ QFSv`eDShjJ} x|c' $wGdX308@Ng/UTf The good news is, this can help investigators track down traffickers. These recent survey results confirm our initial hypothesis that Spotlight has indeed been an asset for law enforcement in earlier victim identification, collaboration and productivity. There are over 150,000 escort ads posted daily, and Spotlight takes this massive amount of data and turns it into an asset for law enforcement. The objective of Spotlight is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of domestic sex trafficking investigations and increase the number of children who are identified and connected with help resources. Initially, they had about 100 users from three U.S. states who were using Spotlight for their human-trafficking investigations. Used by law enforcement in all 50 states and Canada, Spotlight has assisted in over 25,000 cases in 2019 alone and has helped to identify nearly 5,500 child sex trafficking victims and nearly 6,500 child sex traffickers. endobj She shared, "Maintaining any technology product is always challenging because technology is constantly changing. endobj Learn More Our work has three pillars and one guiding vision. All Rights Reserved, thorn.org, Hear more from investigators using Spotlight on the front lines, surveyed underage sex trafficking victims. 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. stream 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. With the approval of the Thorn CEO, I led the design of a Spotlight product website and managed our vendors, Media Cause and Digital Reasoning - who were in charge of graphic design and engineering development. With only a 25% response rate, were confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. I get results fast allowing me to to gather important evidence and information in minutes compared to hours. We work with the sharpest minds from tech, non-profit, government and law enforcement to stop the spread of child sexual abuse material, stand up to child traffickers and uncover new kinds of abuse. I joined a superuser with the Louisiana State Police on a human trafficking sting operation in New Orleans, to observe how they used Spotlight in the field. How does this organization measure their results? We'll keep it out of your inbox, promise. Leadership Spotlight: Leading Through Tragedy. It's a hard question but an important one. Thorn Helps Law Enforcement Identify Child Sex-Trafficking Victims Faster on AWS. Be a part of the impact for our local and global partners by creating your campaign page today! Try a low commitment monthly plan today. in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section. HTS creates a blog, publishes research, and hosts a global resource database on human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Our tools are currently used by over 8,000 law enforcement officers in 37 countries, resulting in the identification of 10,000+ child sex trafficking victims and 847+ victims of child sexual abuse material. FOLLOW MORE IBT NEWS ON THE BELOW CHANNELS, IBT Fast Start - Let the best of International News come to you. Email contact available with a Pro subscription. 6 0 obj Furthermore, by making sure users were engaged and properly trained, user surveys have shown that Spotlight has since been able to reduce the time it takes to investigate a human trafficking case by 43%, identified close to 2,000 children, and over 2,000 traffickers. Sign In. Spotlight marketing collateral, based on what law enforcement needed to know. Founded in 2012, Thorn builds technology to defend children from sexual abuse. stream 1 0 obj We recently asked human trafficking investigators and prosecutors how Spotlight has impacted their investigations within the last 12 months here are a few highlights: It is the Google Search for combating human sex trafficking. Facial analysis in Amazon Rekognition helps investigators find photos of the same person that have been edited to defeat less intelligent image-search engines. to get more GuideStar Nonprofit Profile data today! The software, called Spotlight, is now used across all 50 states by more than 4,000 law enforcement officers, according to Thorn's website. We do all of this so every child can be safe, curious, and happy. On AWS, we can also respond to feature requests from officers in weeks or daysnot a level of responsiveness public-sector agencies are used to seeing. Hopeful that investigators could use technology to identify victims more quickly, we tested an early version of a potential tool among key agencies with promising results. COVID-19 Fraud. $300/yr. All of our technology partners are making crucial contributions to this fight. The organization's co-leader identifies as: Already have a GuideStar Account? Through my competitive analysis, I identified two major competing products, Traffic Jam and Rescue Forensics. But Thorn stays positive in the midst of engaging directly with such data. AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. 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. Use of THOR is periodically audited for compliance with these Rules. Please continue to fund this very important resource; it saves lives. 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. Both products had been around longer than Spotlight and had a few hundred more users than us at the time. endobj Output - describing our activities and reach. Research programs to better understand the role of technology in child sex trafficking. One aspect of law enforcement often discussed during an in-briefing or at a recruiting event is the idea that by joining the organization, you are being accepted into that agency's "family.". To help investigators overcome these and other hurdles, Thorn collaborated with AWS and Digital Reasoning, a company specializing in cognitive-computing solutions, to build Spotlight. endstream Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Dont see a resource that you know exists? Hear more from investigators using Spotlight on the front lines. Education and engagement with the public change risky and abusive behaviors. endstream It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. Numbers are to date since the launch of our tool in 2014. 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. For more information about the impact of Spotlight, check out the infographic below. According to our most recent survey, it is helping find more human trafficking victims, faster. More From Thorn About the Spotlight Technology. Kelbi writes, "We are philanthropically funded, which means that donations and grants like yours directly fund our products that we provide to law enforcement for free. 10 0 obj You can have your biggest impact in the community where you live thats where you know the most about the environment, the opportunities, the dangers. It is the greatest tool we have in the fight against human trafficking., Special Agent, Wisconsin Human Trafficking Task Force. Powered by 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Amazon EC2 C5 instances offer a memory-to-vCPU ratio that is ideal for demanding inference applications. Spotlight is a web-based application that helps law enforcement prioritize leads in their sex trafficking investigations. Identifying the best product and UX design to onboard users, so that Spotlight could become the leading machine learning tool for human trafficking investigators. We found that sixty-three percent of underage sex trafficking victims reported they had been bought or sold online. % There is a small group of people abusing our children, and we are a large community standing in strong opposition. Building is a core value that informs every strategy in our organization. Forgot your username or password? We piloted our workshop at the 2015 Atlanta ICAC Conference and received additional feedback on how to improve Spotlight Lab. endobj "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 solution uses Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to send alerts to law enforcement agents. Helped officers identify over 10,000 child victims of sexual trafficking and children whose abuse was recorded and distributed. "Abusers had figured out how to use advanced technology to facilitate their exploitation of children," says Sarah Potts, the head of marketing and communications for Thorn, the California-based nonprofit that created Spotlight. "Day to day, we strive to balance hard work with care for ourselves and each other so that we have the resiliency we need to keep fighting," Kelbi writes, "At Thorn, we are invested in a team wellness plan where we carve out time to discuss how were feeling and how were approaching our work. Spotlight is a web tool used by law enforcement agencies to more efficiently search the internet for victim and trafficker information. Easy communication at scale, disposable "burner" phones, and simple photo-editing tools these are just some of the ways the digital, connected world was helping traffickers operate anonymously, one step ahead of the lawespecially those who traffic children for sex online. <> <> ", In addition to the task of staying technologically relevant, Thorn faces another significant challenge: fundraising. Most Popular Stories. So much so that we launched Spotlight nationwide in October 2014. This is me at a conference booth, preparing to hold several usability testing sessions with human trafficking investigators. In the last five years, we have reached more than 2.6 million people globally through our child pornography deterrence program. my.evidence.com. Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Equipped more than 8,500 law enforcement officers across 2,000 law enforcement agencies in 35 countries with its tools, Tools speed investigation time by up to 65 percent, 2022 Skoll Foundation. Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Spotlight evolved from surveys completed by victims of . 2 0 obj The software makes tracking down traffickers easier and faster for law enforcement, which can cut down on the amount of time it takes to find victims. Thorn has worked tirelessly to improve three areas of child safety, finding abused children faster, deterring predators, and creating hostile online environments. To design the curriculum for Spotlight Lab, I conducted preliminary research. 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. Thorn runs the countrys most extensive online deterrence program, communicating directly with people searching for CSAM, disrupting their sense of anonymity and encouraging them to seek help. All Rights Reserved, thorn.org, launched Spotlight nationwide in October 2014, Spotlight assisted in the identification of 1,980 children and over 2,186 traffickers. We couldnt recommend it more taking time away from what is hard helps us all sustain our efforts to achieve our goals. The rise of the internet has done for child sexual abusers the exact same thing it has done for everyone else - made it easier to share images, and build a community. Thorn has created a program called Spotlight. Spotlight evolved from surveys completed by victims of trafficking that showed 63 percent of underage victims were bought or sold online at some point. Monthly Yearly One time only. COVID-19 fraud schemes have been a top concern for IRS CI and other . Thorn was founded in 2012 by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to combat online child abuse. $15/mo. <>/ExtGState<>/XObject<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> Rather, I will be detailing the UX/UI and program management that went behind the design of the on-boarding process, which I led during my time at Thorn. All Rights Reserved. I was given the goal of on-boarding 250 users in the next six months. Key results from our multi-channel strategy led to 19x the projected customer acquisition goal from all 50 states, by the end of 2015 (easily surpassing the initial goal of 250 users in six months). The organization collaborates with law enforcement agencies, tech companies, and nonprofits. Technology is a powerful tool. I cant begin to tell you how appreciative myself and the victim's families are that we have people that support a worthy cause such as this. Moreover, users wanted to learn from a law enforcement investigator currently using our tool - so we made sure to co-teach with a superuser. With only a 25% average response rate, were confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics, Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools, Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations, Revenue and expense data for the current fiscal year, CEO, Board Chair, and Board of Directors information, *with the ability to download the data for 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016. 4 0 obj To find children faster, they have created two online tools, Spotlight and Solis, for law enforcement agencies across the world, for free. Half of our 26 person staff are engineers and product managers focused on technology innovation and deployment. All rights reserved. $120/yr. Commit to wearing a dress or tie every day in December. 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. result in increased adoption of Thorns tools, a reduction in time to stop abuse and an increase in risk for perpetrators. endstream Washington D.C. tax attorney Kevin E. Thorn, Managing Partner of Thorn Law Group, explains. endobj "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 . All rights reserved. Thorn was founded in 2012 to build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. Vietnam. BACKGROUND Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick. Technology can be used to enable slavery but it can also be used to disable slavery, and thats what were doing, Kutcher said to wrap up his comments. Throughout this process, I worked collaboratively with Media Cause and Digital Reasoning to set timelines and execute. Copyright 2023 IBTimes LLC. I was given the goal of on-boarding 250 users in the next six months. And its working. He also noted that Spotlight is reducing investigation times by 60 percent. This was meant to identify areas in which we could make the tool more intuitive, to minimize obstacles to adoption. Thorn Helps Law Enforcement Identify Child Sex-Trafficking Victims Faster on AWS Answering the Challenge Using AWS We believe that every child has the right to be safe, to be curious, to be happy. Thanks to Spotlight I have returned victims to their families and put bad guys where they belong. $120 $180 $300 Other Other. Spotlight can connect contacts in minutes where it would take me weeks, if not months to do the same thing. By the end of my first year at Thorn, I had played a role in developing strategic partnerships with FVTC and the DOJ, designing a Spotlight Lab to effectively train potential and new users, and designing a Spotlight product website and a corresponding on-boarding process. The Tennessee Fusion Center may share information contained within THOR with other law . Amazon Rekognition, which uses deep learning to accurately identify objects, people, activities, and events in images and videos stored in Amazon S3, is at the heart of one of Spotlights most crucial capabilities. | Photos Copyright Kay Chernush, ArtWorks for Freedom. The internet has made it easier for children to be bought and sold online. Our product Safer is the first holistic solution for tech companies to detect, remove, and report child sexual abuse material at scale. 3 0 obj x["Yn and who do the programs serve? Powered by 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Amazon EC2 C5 instances offer a memory-to-vCPU ratio that is ideal for demanding inference applications. Our brand NoFiltr reaches youth directly with prevention and support messaging to help them better recognize online grooming. Our products would not be successful without the partnership we receive from the law enforcement users in every state, at every level of government, and in 37 other countries who use our products, give us feedback, and work tirelessly to identify children. 9 0 obj Spotlight is invaluable as a tool/resource. We hate spam too, unless it's on a sandwich with some eggs. According to our most recent user survey, Spotlight is helping find more child victims of human trafficking, faster. All rights reserved. Officers who login weekly report a time savings of 60% in their human trafficking investigations. <> There are over 150,000 escort ads posted daily, and Spotlight takes this massive amount of data and turns it into an asset for law enforcement. A leading assumption was that users wanted to learn by doing, so we used the outcomes from the New Orleans sting operation as a hands-on case study. 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. Registration is open for Dressember 2018 and fundraising has already started! These recent survey results confirm our initial hypothesis that Spotlight has indeed been an asset for law enforcement in earlier victim identification, collaboration and productivity. We reached out to her for more information about Spotlight. Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. Officers, directors, trustees, and key employees. 7 0 obj That's where Thorn comes in. We can use this tool to gather intelligence and plot trends prior to conducting an operation, during the operation we can allocate resources effectively and tighten our investigative vision to have the greatest immediate impact, and following this operation we can couple Spotlight with information gathered in interviews to develop a more complete picture of the scope of Human Trafficking in our area.. Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results. Spotlight was designed for law enforcement and prosecutors who investigate human trafficking networks so that victims can be identified and connected to services. Access is available for free to law enforcement agencies and can be requested at: htspotlight.com. Learn more about Spotlight. Thorn's Spotlight tool helps law enforcement more quickly identify sex trafficking victims who are advertised online. Earlier in her career she worked for Motorolas mobile phone division and helped launch HELIO, a mobile virtual network operator. $10/mo. 11 0 obj 2021 Dressember | Dressember is a 501 (C)(3) | design by anne agency + marrow design, Grant Partners, Dressember2018, human trafficking, modern day slavery, child advocacy, buisnesses ending slavery and trafficking, BEST, Danyella Wilder. is the CEO of Thorn and has helped grow the organization from inception in 2012. Spotlight Data How often is the information in Spotlight refreshed? 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. Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Password. Learn more about Amazon EC2 C5 Instances. Spotlight has been used in 21,044 cases identifying 12,328 adults, 5,791 children, and 6,553 traffickers in the past two years. Julie holds a B.A. It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. Telehealth Startup Cerebral To Cut 15% Of Staff, PlayStation's New Game To Feature Shiba Inu As 'Savior' Of 'Humanity', China Aims To Reach 'World-Leading Levels' Of Tech By 2035: CCP. Spotlight does investigative work in minutes that can take hours sometimes to collect. 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. How can people reading this help Thorn fight against child sex trafficking? $25/mo. We believe that every child has the right to be safe, to be curious, to be happy. <> $180/yr. We build products and tools, partnerships and communities, that support and accelerate the impact and intentions of many people who are dedicated to defending children from sexual abuse. 2023, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. Kelbi Ervin, Development Associate at Thorn, works with a team to develop partnerships and identify funding opportunities to sustain Thorn's work. We believe that technology is a tool, one we can use for incredible good. Top 5 IRS CI Enforcement Priorities. "Fighting human trafficking starts where you live. ", Spotlight was made to combat a difficult problem, and the data Spotlight handles is unsettling to say the least. Register. The exact details of how the software works have been protected by Thorn, in the hearing Kutcher was careful to not go in depth in the interest of making it harder for traffickers to potentially evade the software. 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. Editor's Pick Leise Hook / For Spotlight PA (Don't see an email in your inbox?
