Additionally, through my stakeholder analysis, I focused on Fox Valley Technical College (FVTC) - a leading law enforcement education center - and the DOJ (both of whom I know, because I currently consult for them on human trafficking). Thorn's Spotlight tool helps law enforcement more quickly identify sex trafficking victims who are advertised online. 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.. Streamlining the onboarding process for law enforcement An infographic detailing the reach that Spotlight has gained, since its national roll-out in February 2015. Nothing makes my job more rewarding when a victim says "thank you" and tells me about her rebuilt life. Spotlight is a web-based application that helps law enforcement prioritize leads in their sex trafficking investigations. Help Spotlight PA hold the powerful to account with a gift today. 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. What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, Through my competitive analysis, I identified two major competing products, Traffic Jam and Rescue Forensics. I started by conducting a competitive and stakeholder analysis to help with the overall discovery of where we were with our current process. 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. We believe that every child has the right to be safe, to be curious, to be happy. After the 2015 Atlanta ICAC Conference, we quickly realized that we needed a better on-boarding process that no longer relied solely on Google Sheets to manage requests. Finally, we designed marketing collateral to drive further customer acquisition. On Wednesday, Kutcher testified before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee along with the CEO and President of the organization Human Rights First, Elisa Massimino, to ask the United States Government for help fighting trafficking and sexual exploitation. The Tennessee Fusion Center may share information contained within THOR with other law . 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. Thank you for supporting the fight to end human trafficking! "Spotlight was designed based on insights from our first survivor survey. Top 5 IRS CI Enforcement Priorities. Sign In. According to our most recent survey, it is helping find more human trafficking victims, faster. stream Spotlight's machine-learning models are trained and run on Amazon EC2 C5 instances. This year, Dressember is proud to partner with Thorn, an organization that uses technology to combat child sex trafficking. Click on the link in that email Spotlight, on the other hand, is a complex piece of software that doesn't have any sales to help fund its production. We choose to use it for good. All rights reserved. This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ. Somewhere in that pile of data are children who are bought and sold online for sex. To find children faster, they have created two online tools, Spotlight and Solis, for law enforcement agencies across the world, for free. Need the ability to download nonprofit data and more advanced search options? endstream The National Policing Institute, formerly known as the National Police Foundation, is an independent non-profit, non-partisan institution based in Arlington, Virginia that has been dedicated to advancing policing through innovation and science for over half a century, and works to translate those findings to practice through technical assistance, training, and dissemination. %PDF-1.7 To design the curriculum for Spotlight Lab, I conducted preliminary research. We piloted our workshop at the 2015 Atlanta ICAC Conference and received additional feedback on how to improve Spotlight Lab. <> Monthly Yearly One time only. endobj HTS creates a blog, publishes research, and hosts a global resource database on human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Before presenting the first award of the night, "The Ranch" star Ashton Kutcher walked the red carpet in Dolce & Gabbana. x Om7 ' Technology is a powerful tool. Spotlight is invaluable as a tool/resource. One of the most significant obstacles is the massive volume of these ads. My goal was to not only design a workshop that increased adoption but to build a tool that added value for current users through an intuitive user experience and user interface - which would then translate to more victims identified in a shorter amount of time. From what I gathered, Spotlight was by far the most intuitive and robust, providing a better user experience, despite having a ways to go itself. Thorn also works to speed the identification of children featured in sexually abusive material. $120 $180 $300 Other Other. According to our most recent user survey, Spotlight is helping find more child victims of human trafficking, faster. Half of our 26 person staff are engineers and product managers focused on technology innovation and deployment. endobj "Our law enforcement partners say Spotlight helps officers identify child sex-trafficking ads much faster than the old paper-and-pencil methods," says Brooke Istook, director of strategy and operations at Thorn. The bad news is that law enforcement just doesnt have the time, energy, or manpower to efficiently pursue the information available online. Spotlight marketing collateral, based on what law enforcement needed to know. A GuideStar Pro report containing the following information is available for this organization: This information is only available for subscribers and in Premium reports. "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 . My background in law enforcement and anti-human trafficking was well suited for the needs of Spotlight when I first joined the team. This combination of streamlining workflows and increasing successful victim identification is what has propelled Spotlight to continue to grow its user base. Lucas Moore is a writer in Los Angeles. It is the Google Search for combating human sex trafficking. Access is available for free to law enforcement agencies and can be requested at: htspotlight.com. Our web-based tool is now used by over 5,000 officers in all 50 states and Canada. "We tested multiple facial-recognition services and found Amazon Rekognition was extremely accurate," says Kristin Boorse, the director of product management for Thorn. from UCLA and an M.B.A. from Northwestern. I get results fast allowing me to to gather important evidence and information in minutes compared to hours., Spotlight is a force multiplier at every stage of the operation. Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? 5 0 obj The app does this on a serverless Amazon Web Services (AWS) architecture that includes Amazon Rekognition, a deep learningbased image and video analysis service, and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) C5 instances. Law enforcement doesnt have enough time to navigate the online commercial sex market to find children and identify their traffickers. Eventually, I reached out to them, and we agreed to partner and co-teach a Spotlight Lab workshop at major conferences across the Nation to drive awareness and adoption. For this phase of the project, I used the data I already gathered from Spotlight users to create a journey for those seeking to learn more about Spotlight, request a demo, request access, and to log in. We do all of this so every child can be safe, curious, and happy. endstream 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. Thorn Helps Law Enforcement Identify Child Sex-Trafficking Victims Faster on AWS. Our tool Spotlight accelerates law enforcements ability to identify victims of child sex trafficking. Armed with this data, we worked with our technology partners and law enforcement to understand how these existing digital footprints could assist law enforcement in faster victim identification. All Rights Reserved. Sign in or create a new account. Hear more from investigators using Spotlight on the front lines. Journey map of users navigating htspotlight.com. Leadership Spotlight: A System Focus. I get results fast allowing me to to gather important evidence and information in minutes compared to hours. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. According to our most recent survey, it is helping find more human trafficking victims, faster. 2016-2022 National Policing Institute -Privacy Policy-Documents in PDF format require Adobe Acrobat Reader, Spotlight A Tool to Improve Sex Trafficking Investigations, Documents in PDF format require Adobe Acrobat Reader. But Thorn stays positive in the midst of engaging directly with such data. With only a 25% response rate, were confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. However, the following six districts Spotlight, a tool developed by Thorn, is a web-based platform that assists law enforcement in identifying sex trafficking victims faster. 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. ", In addition to the task of staying technologically relevant, Thorn faces another significant challenge: fundraising. Thorn is a team of issue experts, business leaders, and engineers who build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. Thorn Helps Law Enforcement Identify Child Sex-Trafficking Victims Faster on AWS Answering the Challenge Using AWS 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. Julie holds a B.A. Our product Safer is the first holistic solution for tech companies to detect, remove, and report child sexual abuse material at scale. Learn more about Spotlight. Officer Wellness Spotlight: Police Chaplains - An Integral Part of Law Enforcement. stream The Law Enforcement Family. After the 2015 Atlanta ICAC Conference, we quickly realized that we needed a better on-boarding process that no longer relied solely on Google Sheets to manage requests. The organization collaborates with law enforcement agencies, tech companies, and nonprofits. ", Spotlight was made to combat a difficult problem, and the data Spotlight handles is unsettling to say the least. The Amazon Rekognition team has been very responsive in helping us address any challenges we encounter.". A virtual team based in the U.S., Thorn employs 25 people. Law enforcement doesnt have enough time to navigate the online commercial sex market to find children and identify their traffickers. With just over 20% of users reporting, we are confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. COVID-19 Fraud. Sign up and stay up to date with our daily newsletter. That's where Thorn comes in. <>/ExtGState<>/XObject<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> $120/yr. Over the past year, reports show that we are identifying on average 8 kids per dayand that law enforcement who use Spotlight daily see a 65% time savings in their process. A 2012 Thorn survey of child sex-trafficking survivors found that 75 percent had been sold online, most of them through escort websites. For more information about the impact of Spotlight, check out the infographic below. The software, called Spotlight, is now used across all 50 states by more than 4,000 law enforcement officers, according to Thorn's website. Email contact available with a Pro subscription. Spotlight evolved from surveys completed by victims of trafficking that showed 63 percent of underage victims were bought or sold online at some point. Research programs to better understand the role of technology in child sex trafficking. Spotlight is used by more than 6,000 law enforcement officers in all 50 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. Spotlight's sophisticated machine-learning capabilities save time for overworked, under-resourced investigators by automatically flagging ads likely to represent at-risk children and keeping law enforcement agents from getting lost in a sea of online data. An infographic detailing the reach that Spotlight has gained, since its national roll-out in February 2015. Candid has made improvements to the race and ethnicity options. Thorn developed Spotlight, an app that helps law enforcement close trafficking cases much faster than by using traditional manual methods. We depend on the anti-trafficking community to keep our resource hub up to date. 3 0 obj Spotlight takes this massive amount of data and turns it into an asset for law enforcement. (Don't see an email in your inbox? 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. Spotlight is a web tool used by law enforcement agencies to more efficiently search the internet for victim and trafficker information. 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. Expanded partnerships with law enforcement. <> Hi-fidelity prototypes of key touch points on the Spotlight website. It's a hard question but an important one. One way for law enforcement agents to catch traffickers and rescue kids would be to identify and investigate escort ads that seem to feature minors, but there are many obstacles to doing this. Eventually, I reached out to them, and we agreed to partner and co-teach a Spotlight Lab workshop at major conferences across the Nation to drive awareness and adoption. Leadership Spotlight: Leading with the Pen - The Handwritten Note. Activation of the tech industry helps eliminate abuse content from their platforms. endobj Spotlight is a web tool used by law enforcement agencies to more efficiently search the internet for victim and trafficker information. in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section. Sign in or create an account to view Form(s) 990 for 2020, 2019 and 2018. Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. This project was supported by Grant No. 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 . 4 0 obj 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. my.evidence.com. There are many things you can do right now to get started in your community to support local survivor organizations.". Thorn was founded in 2012 by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to combat online child abuse. From there, I created an information architecture for the content on the website, put together a website design inspiration board, sketched wireframes by hand and through an online tool - and then wrote the content itself. $10/mo. In the last five years, we have reached more than 2.6 million people globally through our child pornography deterrence program. The good news is, this can help investigators track down traffickers. The organization collaborates with law enforcement agencies, tech companies, and nonprofits. 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. The solution uses Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to send alerts to law enforcement agents. | Photos Copyright Kay Chernush, ArtWorks for Freedom. Its not uncommon for celebrities to act on a social or political issue theyre passionate about. Empowering law enforcement to collaborate beyond jurisdictions or national borders is a key to success in identifying victims who are moved frequently, or are broadcast through peer-to-peer platforms (P2P) on the dark web from a hidden location. We believe that every child has the right to be safe, to be curious, to be happy. Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Spotlight has been used in 21,044 cases identifying 12,328 adults, 5,791 children, and 6,553 traffickers in the past two years. My background in law enforcement and anti-human trafficking was well suited for the needs of Spotlight when I first joined the team. 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. Commit to wearing a dress or tie every day in December. After I completed this phase of research, I used the information to iterate on the workshop design, and improve the overall usability of Spotlight. All Rights Reserved, thorn.org, Hear more from investigators using Spotlight on the front lines, surveyed underage sex trafficking victims. 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. FOLLOW MORE IBT NEWS ON THE BELOW CHANNELS, IBT Fast Start - Let the best of International News come to you. 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. Password. 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. How can people reading this help Thorn fight against child sex trafficking? Spotlight is the #1 investigative tool I have utilized to find child victims and arrest their traffickers in countless cases. 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 An improved product and UX journey delivers a seamless onboarding and training process for our users and admin staff, Streamlining the onboarding process for law enforcement, Designing a user experience for human trafficking investigators to help them solve cases faster than ever. 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