Often initially positioned as ‘employment’ opportunities or simply a means for refugees to gain asylum in foreign destinations, human trafficking has an ominous global footprint. The roots of this worldwide trade lie in poverty and conflict, with the gangs and organisations responsible holding out the prospect of a better life to their often-desperate victims.
The reality is far removed from the traffickers’ thin promises. People are sold into servitude in scenarios such as remote work camps, factory environments and even onto ships to carry out fishing and haulage roles. There are over two-dozen different forms of human trafficking from forced marriages to child soldiering and beyond.
Kingpins and bosses within the trafficking rings threaten to hurt the victim’s family or intimidate the individual with other forms of abuse including physical violence if they attempt to break free. As many as an estimated 25 to 40 million people around the globe are suffering because of human trafficking.
It’s perhaps strange in our connected world that these crimes can continue on such a scale. So where can technology offer hope in combating this vile trade?
The Global Emancipation Network is developing new techniques to combat human trafficking based on so-called ‘machine data’ using a software platform known as Splunk. Deriving its name from the term ‘spelunking’, an Americanism used to refer to cave exploration, Splunk provides data analysis engines and software tools to sift through the huge volumes of data created by our everyday use of devices, software applications, ecommerce services and the Internet at large.
Decrypting digital exhaust
With so many of our human actions and interactions now also connected to some form of technology-based action, there is a new vent of ‘digital exhaust’ created by every connected machine that we use. Creating an identifiable fingerprint out of this exhaust by looking for connected data patterns and user behaviour anomalies is where Splunk can help decrypt the machine information and help feed the Global Emancipation Network with vital insights.
Sherrie Caltagirone is founder and executive director of the Global Emancipation Network itself. The Washington state, USA-based non-governmental organisation is currently operational in 22 countries with Middle East interests focused on Egypt, Lebanon and Syria in particular. The organisation currently works in six languages including English, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German.
Whether they rank among the wealthier or more developing nations within the Arab League, Caltagirone explains that all Middle East countries are being impacted by the issue of human trafficking.
“Across the Middle East today it’s almost impossible to estimate total numbers, but we can confidently say that trafficked victims do exist across every nation. Immigration departments do have retinal scan databases and we are keen to break down data silos where they exist. Having said that, the Middle East is usually a transit destination (rather than final destination, or origin) as victims are often only present for a short time while en route to their target destination,” said Caltagirone. “But I must also say, this is a global challenge that every nation faces, whether as a transit, destination or origin location.”
Arab Initiative to combat human trafficking
The Global Emancipation Network helps inform the TIP (Trafficking In Persons) Report from the US Department of State. Caltagirone herself has worked at an international level and helped draft legislation that the Arab League passed on human trafficking, which led to the Arab Initiative to combat human trafficking.
“One of the benefits that we have as an organisation that is working in this space is that we are able to turn the tables on traffickers. Traffickers are using the Internet in much the same way commercial companies do. That’s how they move their product, which in this case, very sadly, is human beings. They advertise for people online, they recruit people through social networks and false job advertisements. We can use Splunk to analyse data and look for patterns, activity on websites and the communications spawned from those websites to look for correlations and spot mistakes that the traffickers make,” said Caltagirone.
Caltagirone and team are working to undermine the human traffickers using a variety of techniques. Some tactics will be as ‘obvious’ as looking for where traffickers have used their personal online profiles to also register on trafficking websites. Other maneuvers see the team crunch through data in predominantly three types (text, images and physical notes made when victims are interviewed) and interplay this with telemetry data to work out who is saying what to who and when they are saying it.
At the more technical end, the Global Emancipation Network is also working with technology partners to cross-reference data etched onto the global transactions ledger blockchain. Being able to de-anonymise records by correlating them to expenditure logs showing on known trafficking websites is just one of the techniques being employed here.
Splunk for good
Benefitting from donations as part of what is known as its Splunk4Good initiative, Splunk has pledged to donate 100 million dollars’ worth of software products, staff training and support to educational institutions and non-profit organisations including the Global Emancipation Network. Caltagirone says that other than taking down trafficking rings, one of the best things about her job is seeing the light bulbs go on in technical engineers’ heads when they realise their technology can do some good for humanity in the non-profit sector.
In our increasingly digitally connected world, it only makes sense that we should look to machine intelligence to help provide answers to human problems. It’s a sobering thought to think that every action and interaction we make on the Internet creates some sort of log file that is ultimately searchable to help pinpoint where we are on the planet. But if we steadfastly channel this kind of technology intelligence for good, then ultimately it’s a comforting thought too.
You can read more about the work of the Global Emancipation Network at http://www.globalemancipation.ngo/