And its working. He also noted that Spotlight is reducing investigation times by 60 percent. stream 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. Officer Wellness Spotlight: Police Chaplains - An Integral Part of Law Enforcement. 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. As Thorn started work on a tool that could help investigators identify children being exploited, more than 150,000 new escort ads were being posted online every day in the United States. $25/mo. <> ", Spotlight was made to combat a difficult problem, and the data Spotlight handles is unsettling to say the least. 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. from UCLA and an M.B.A. from Northwestern. to get more GuideStar Nonprofit Profile data today! (Don't see an email in your inbox? 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. Education and engagement with the public change risky and abusive behaviors. 8 0 obj It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. You'll challenge yourself, expand your knowledge on modern slavery, and be equipped to lead your community in the fight to end human trafficking. Kutcher elaborate on the software during the hearing, Its a tool that can be used by law enforcement to prioritize their caseload. Dont see a resource that you know exists? 1 0 obj 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. Sign in or create a new account. This website is funded through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. <> 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). Spotlight Data How often is the information in Spotlight refreshed? Most Popular Stories. 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. 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). There are more than 150,000 escort ads posted every day in this country. Half of our 26 person staff are engineers and product managers focused on technology innovation and deployment. 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. 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. 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. Julie was raised in Lindsay, California, a small farming community in Californias Central Valley. All Rights Reserved. 9 0 obj Thorn was founded in 2012 by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to combat online child abuse. This combination of streamlining workflows and increasing successful victim identification is what has propelled Spotlight to its large user base. An infographic detailing the reach that Spotlight has gained, since its national roll-out in February 2015. User research through interviews, personas, and journey mapping of proactive and reactive searches had already been done prior to my start date. 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. We do all of this so every child can be safe, curious, and happy. We piloted our workshop at the 2015 Atlanta ICAC Conference and received additional feedback on how to improve Spotlight Lab. Washington D.C. tax attorney Kevin E. Thorn, Managing Partner of Thorn Law Group, explains. To request technical assistance, training, or other resources through this initiative, agency POCs shouldemail usor call 202-833-1460. The good news is, this can help investigators track down traffickers. We couldnt recommend it more taking time away from what is hard helps us all sustain our efforts to achieve our goals. "Spotlight was designed based on insights from our first survivor survey. 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. A verification email has been sent to you. 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. You can view our, Meet the 2019 Skoll Awardees for Social Entrepreneurship. <> Identifying the best product and UX design to onboard users, so that Spotlight could become the leading machine learning tool for human trafficking investigators. Spotlight marketing collateral, based on what law enforcement needed to know. 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. I agree to the terms of use, privacy policy and agree to receive promotional emails, reminders and updates from Thorn Thorn Helps Law Enforcement Identify Child Sex-Trafficking Victims Faster on AWS Answering the Challenge Using AWS <> The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick. endobj With over 150,000 ads posted online every day, we know that law enforcement doesnt have enough time to navigate the online commercial sex market to find children and identify their traffickers. With only a 25% average response rate, were confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. 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? It's a hard question but an important one. 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. Learn More Spotlight, which is offered free of charge to law enforcement and allied organizations, uses Amazon Cognito to provide a secure user directory that can scale to millions of users. 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. All Rights Reserved. stream All Rights Reserved, thorn.org, Hear more from investigators using Spotlight on the front lines, surveyed underage sex trafficking victims. 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. 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. We choose to use it for good. Email contact available with a Pro subscription. SOURCE: Self-reported; last updated 6/9/2021. Based on IRS CI's FY 2021 Annual Report, here are five top enforcement priorities that are likely to carry over into 2022: 1. Our team built and launched Spotlight in 2014 to improve investigator workflow to find child victims faster. Somewhere in that pile of data are children who are bought and sold online for sex. Help Spotlight PA hold the powerful to account with a gift today. 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. In 2012, we learned that 75% of child sex trafficking victims were being bought and sold online. The organization collaborates with law enforcement agencies, tech companies, and nonprofits. Sign in or create an account to view Form(s) 990 for 2020, 2019 and 2018. Facial analysis in Amazon Rekognition helps investigators find photos of the same person that have been edited to defeat less intelligent image-search engines. I was given the goal of on-boarding 250 users in the next six months. That's where Thorn comes in. The organization collaborates with law enforcement agencies, tech companies, and nonprofits. 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. about GuideStar Pro. Stay up to date with our daily newsletter, testified before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee, evolved from surveys completed by victims of trafficking, Ashton Kutcher Blew A Kiss To John McCain. 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. Due to the sensitivity of the product itself, I will not be using this case study to highlight the product design or development of Spotlight, the tool. 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. 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. endobj It is the Google Search for combating human sex trafficking. Spotlight is the #1 investigative tool I have utilized to find child victims and arrest their traffickers in countless cases. 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. We found that sixty-three percent of underage sex trafficking victims reported they had been bought or sold online. Sign In. 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. | Photos Copyright Kay Chernush, ArtWorks for Freedom. This project was supported by Grant No. The internet has made it easier for children to be bought and sold online. $180/yr. 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. 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.. We believe that every child has the right to be safe, to be curious, to be happy. After the sting operation, we sat down with FVTC and the DOJ to put together the curriculum for Spotlight Lab. Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. For more information about the impact of Spotlight, check out the infographic below. 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. One of the most significant obstacles is the massive volume of these ads. 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. In Wednesdays hearing Kutcher discussed the wide use of the dark web by traffickers, and the difficulties law enforcement officials face in navigating the expanse of content. % Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues. We reached out to her for more information about Spotlight. FOLLOW MORE IBT NEWS ON THE BELOW CHANNELS, IBT Fast Start - Let the best of International News come to you. endstream Our web-based tool is now used by over 5,000 officers in all 50 states and Canada. Leadership Spotlight: A System Focus. Click here to resend it.). Leadership Spotlight: Leading At-Risk Employees - Law Enforcement and the Addiction Crisis. Its a neuralnet, it gets smarter over time, it gets better and it gets more efficient as people use it. <>/Metadata 508 0 R/ViewerPreferences 509 0 R>> 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. 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). $120/yr. Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Thorn developed Spotlight, an app that helps law enforcement close trafficking cases much faster than by using traditional manual methods. 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. 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. Spotlight takes this massive amount of data and turns it into an asset for law enforcement. Monthly Yearly One time only. This tool will allow us to conduct faster, more precise investigations that will remove criminals from the street and, most importantly, recover victims. 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 just over 20% of users reporting, we are confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. Our programs and products find child abuse victims faster, make online environments safer, and deter criminal behavior. 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. 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. He likes Neo-noir films, running and cycling, classic American novels, small venue music shows, and burritos. x Om7 ' 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. 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