Finally, we designed marketing collateral to drive further customer acquisition. 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. After the sting operation, we sat down with FVTC and the DOJ to put together the curriculum for Spotlight Lab. A 2012 Thorn survey of child sex-trafficking survivors found that 75 percent had been sold online, most of them through escort websites. Spotlight was designed for law enforcement and prosecutors who investigate human trafficking networks so that victims can be identified and connected to services. 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. 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. Top 5 IRS CI Enforcement Priorities. User research through interviews, personas, and journey mapping of proactive and reactive searches had already been done prior to my start date. The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick. For more information about the impact of Spotlight, check out the infographic below. <> Streamlining the onboarding process for law enforcement An infographic detailing the reach that Spotlight has gained, since its national roll-out in February 2015. 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. $10/mo. I started by conducting a competitive and stakeholder analysis to help with the overall discovery of where we were with our current process. 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? 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. Copyright 2023 IBTimes LLC. 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. We are dedicated to ending child sex trafficking and eliminating child sexual abuse from the internet, and we wont stop until every child can simply be a kid. The organization's co-leader identifies as: Already have a GuideStar Account? This year, Dressember is proud to partner with Thorn, an organization that uses technology to combat child sex trafficking. All Rights Reserved. <> It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. endobj I get results fast allowing me to to gather important evidence and information in minutes compared to hours. result in increased adoption of Thorns tools, a reduction in time to stop abuse and an increase in risk for perpetrators. 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 was founded in 2012 by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to combat online child abuse. Thanks to Spotlight I have returned victims to their families and put bad guys where they belong. Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. Leadership Spotlight Compassion in Law Enforcement Compassion is characterized by a willingness to purposely assist others on an emotional level and to selflessly put the needs of others before. Its not uncommon for celebrities to act on a social or political issue theyre passionate about. Officers who login weekly report a time savings of 60% in their human trafficking investigations. Abused children are identified and removed from harm and their abusers are held accountable. s#fDr$G#;3s/U@q~}NHO. endobj It is the Google Search for combating human sex trafficking. All Rights Reserved. Human Trafficking Search (HTS) seeks to raise awareness and help prevent and eliminate human trafficking worldwide. All rights reserved. <>/ExtGState<>/XObject<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> Kelbi Ervin, Development Associate at Thorn, works with a team to develop partnerships and identify funding opportunities to sustain Thorn's work. 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. 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. Sign In. endobj We found that sixty-three percent of underage sex trafficking victims reported they had been bought or sold online. Spotlight is a web tool used by law enforcement agencies to more efficiently search the internet for victim and trafficker information. I agree to the terms of use, privacy policy and agree to receive promotional emails, reminders and updates from Thorn 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. To build the world we believe in, we know we must: 1) Accelerate Victim Identification 2) Make Digital Environments Safer and 3) Deter Predatory Behavior. From there the software developed further to better analyze and track data that can lead to building strong cases against traffickers and finding the victims. % Officer Wellness Spotlight: Police Chaplains - An Integral Part of Law Enforcement. "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. 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. Just within the last 12 months investigators reported: Officers who login weekly report a time savings of 60% in their human trafficking investigations. Activation of the tech industry helps eliminate abuse content from their platforms. Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn more about Amazon EC2 C5 Instances. Viral child sexual abuse material is removed from the internet to end the cycle of trauma. Register now. x["Yn Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? How does this organization measure their results? 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. 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. Thorn is a team of issue experts, business leaders, and engineers who build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. The organization collaborates with law enforcement agencies, tech companies, and nonprofits. 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. "When I asked if Spotlight was available to law enforcement in other countries, Kelbi said no, not yet, "But were constantly evaluating the landscape to understand where it can have impact internationally as well.". Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? While learning the ins and outs of Spotlight, and shipping features from our product backlog, I began to focus on ways to improve our on-boarding process for increased acquisition and adoption. Spotlight evolved from surveys completed by victims of trafficking that showed 63 percent of underage victims were bought or sold online at some point. Spotlight is like a investigative partner in human trafficking investigations. 1 0 obj Spotlight has been used in 21,044 cases identifying 12,328 adults, 5,791 children, and 6,553 traffickers in the past two years. Building is a core value that informs every strategy in our organization. about GuideStar Pro. Our team built and launched Spotlight in 2014 to improve investigator workflow to find child victims faster. Build relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Thorn's Spotlight tool helps law enforcement more quickly identify sex trafficking victims who are advertised online. There are many things you can do right now to get started in your community to support local survivor organizations.". 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. Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants (CIRI) founded in 1918, is a statewide nonprofit human services agency that addresses the need to provide new immigrants and refugees in Connecticut with services to help them become self-sufficient, integrated and contributing members of the community. I also created high-fidelity prototypes of key touchpoints on our site, whose content I validated through additional user feedback. While learning the ins and outs of Spotlight, and shipping features from our product backlog, I began to focus on ways to improve our on-boarding process for increased acquisition and adoption. We reached out to her for more information about Spotlight. 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. <> Most Popular Stories. Thorn developed Spotlight, an app that helps law enforcement close trafficking cases much faster than by using traditional manual methods. Our web-based tool is now used by over 5,000 officers in all 50 states and Canada. stream Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress. 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. Learn More 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. Sign in. 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. 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. Thorn was founded in 2012 to build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. 8 0 obj The software, called Spotlight, is now used across all 50 states by more than 4,000 law enforcement officers, according to Thorns website. We depend on the anti-trafficking community to keep our resource hub up to date. Nothing makes my job more rewarding when a victim says "thank you" and tells me about her rebuilt life. Education and engagement with the public change risky and abusive behaviors. AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. Most locations in the United States are updated every six hours. Per Kristin, "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. After I completed this phase of research, I used the information to iterate on the workshop design, and improve the overall usability of Spotlight. Helped officers identify over 10,000 child victims of sexual trafficking and children whose abuse was recorded and distributed. 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. We piloted our workshop at the 2015 Atlanta ICAC Conference and received additional feedback on how to improve Spotlight Lab. Output - describing our activities and reach. Our programs and products find child abuse victims faster, make online environments safer, and deter criminal behavior. More From Thorn About the Spotlight Technology. Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Don't recognize this agency? endobj Thank you for supporting the fight to end human trafficking! My background in law enforcement and anti-human trafficking was well suited for the needs of Spotlight when I first joined the team. Email contact available with a Pro subscription. Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. How can people reading this help Thorn fight against child sex trafficking? 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. | Photos Copyright Kay Chernush, ArtWorks for Freedom. 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. Spotlight can connect contacts in minutes where it would take me weeks, if not months to do the same thing. 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. With only a 25% response rate, were confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. x Om7 ' (Don't see an email in your inbox? ", In a YouTube video describing Thorns use of technology to fight child pornography and sex trafficking, Thorn Co-founder Ashton Kutcher said, We have to stay on the front cutting edge of that technology, because the criminals, theyre on the front cutting edge., I asked Kelbi what challenges Spotlight faces in keeping at the front of the technological curve. Spotlight is a web tool used by law enforcement agencies to more efficiently search the internet for victim and trafficker information. Hear more from investigators using Spotlight on the front lines. Throughout this process, I worked collaboratively with Media Cause and Digital Reasoning to set timelines and execute. FOLLOW MORE IBT NEWS ON THE BELOW CHANNELS, IBT Fast Start - Let the best of International News come to you. HTS creates a blog, publishes research, and hosts a global resource database on human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Problems of scale like this cry out for automated processes, but another big obstacle is the fact that escort ad data is anything but consistent: traffickers use code words, slang, and reused content to complicate detection by machines. 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. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Our tool Spotlight accelerates law enforcements ability to identify victims of child sex trafficking. At Dressember, we release a line of dresses each year, but those products are sold. Monthly Yearly One time only. Copyright Human Trafficking Search 2023. With just over 20% of users reporting, we are confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. Both products had been around longer than Spotlight and had a few hundred more users than us at the time. Thorn has created a program called Spotlight. Washington D.C. tax attorney Kevin E. Thorn, Managing Partner of Thorn Law Group, explains. Numbers are to date since the launch of our tool in 2014. The Tennessee Fusion Center may share information contained within THOR with other law . I started by conducting a competitive and stakeholder analysis to help with the overall discovery of where we were with our current process. Spotlight helps officers identify child sex-trafficking ads much faster than the old paper-and-pencil methods., Brooke Istook, Director of Strategy and Operations, Thorn. 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 <> Thorn builds technology to defend children from sexual abuse. "It didn't make sense to build our own facial-recognition service when AWS already offers a best-in-breed solution like Amazon Rekognition. from UCLA and an M.B.A. from Northwestern. stream That's where Thorn comes in. Law enforcement doesnt have enough time to navigate the online commercial sex market to find children and identify their traffickers. AWS Lambda functions orchestrate Amazon Simple Queueing Service (Amazon SQS) to queue new ads for processing by the app's analytics engine, Digital Reasoning Synthesys. This website is funded through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. 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. "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. Use of THOR in a manner outside the scope of these Rules is strictly prohibited. 9 0 obj 10 0 obj Our brand NoFiltr reaches youth directly with prevention and support messaging to help them better recognize online grooming. Potts adds, "We built Spotlight because we wanted to use advanced technology to help law enforcement turn the tables and find these children faster.". Thorn Helps Law Enforcement Identify Child Sex-Trafficking Victims Faster on AWS. Kelbi Ervin, Development Associate at Thorn, works with a team to develop partnerships and identify funding opportunities to sustain Thorn's work. 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. How can law enforcement sift through massive amounts of data to focus their time on the most vulnerable victims? 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. THOR Usernames and Passwords must be maintained as confidential by the User and may not be shared. You can view our, Meet the 2019 Skoll Awardees for Social Entrepreneurship. Sign up and stay up to date with our daily newsletter. In addition to a powerful team of experts, 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. about GuideStar Pro. It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. 5 0 obj The internet has made it easier for children to be bought and sold online. We are only one player in a critical ecosystem working on behalf of our children. GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center. Journey map of users navigating htspotlight.com. 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. There is a small group of people abusing our children, and we are a large community standing in strong opposition. Where they belong Fall 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to beta... This website is funded through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Assistance, of... And Passwords must be maintained as confidential by the user and may not be shared research, and criminal... Spotlight was designed for law enforcement agencies to more efficiently search the internet for victim and trafficker information quickly sex! Ghz Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Amazon EC2 C5 instances offer a ratio... 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