endobj The Tennessee Fusion Center may share information contained within THOR with other law . It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor any of its components operate, control, are responsible for, or necessarily endorse, this Web site (including, without limitation, its content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided). Spotlight, a tool developed by Thorn, is a web-based platform that assists law enforcement in identifying sex trafficking victims faster. The Law Enforcement Family. Help Spotlight PA hold the powerful to account with a gift today. Copyright 2023 IBTimes LLC. 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. 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. A GuideStar Pro report containing the following information is available for this organization: This information is only available for subscribers and in Premium reports. 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). All Rights Reserved. Spotlight does investigative work in minutes that can take hours sometimes to collect. Need the ability to download nonprofit data and more advanced search options? 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. Get free shipping on all Thorne products, connect with health professionals and clients, and read Take 5 Daily to get the latest news in the health and technology industry. Thorn is a team of issue experts, business leaders, and engineers who build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. Our web-based tool is now used by over 5,000 officers in all 50 states and Canada. 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 continues to monitor new and emerging trends that will help make sure our tool remains relevant for investigators to do their jobs efficiently and ultimately help the kids we serve. Spotlight marketing collateral, based on what law enforcement needed to know. Access is available for free to law enforcement agencies and can be requested at: htspotlight.com. "Fighting human trafficking starts where you live. 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. I get results fast allowing me to to gather important evidence and information in minutes compared to hours. Helped officers identify over 10,000 child victims of sexual trafficking and children whose abuse was recorded and distributed. Kutchers company Thorn developed software to combat this challenge. in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section. GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center. 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. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the SMART Office. Register now. 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. Learn More A virtual team based in the U.S., Thorn employs 25 people. 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. Click here to resend it.). A virtual team based in the U.S., Thorn employs 25 people. Spotlight takes this massive amount of data and turns it into an asset for law enforcement. Thorn's Spotlight tool helps law enforcement more quickly identify sex trafficking victims who are advertised online. 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. Similarly, The Tote Project, sells their bags, which helps them pay expenses. 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 Viral child sexual abuse material is removed from the internet to end the cycle of trauma. Finally, we were awarded the 2015 Cloudera Social Impact Award, for the work we did on Spotlight. 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 bad news is that law enforcement just doesnt have the time, energy, or manpower to efficiently pursue the information available online. Copyright IBTimes 2023. $120 $180 $300 Other Other. 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. 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. 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. Our team built and launched Spotlight in 2014 to improve investigator workflow to find child victims faster. Journey map of users navigating htspotlight.com. Sign in or create an account to view Form(s) 990 for 2020, 2019 and 2018. Sign in. ", 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. <> Both products had been around longer than Spotlight and had a few hundred more users than us at the time. This tool will allow us to conduct faster, more precise investigations that will remove criminals from the street and, most importantly, recover victims. 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. Hi-fidelity prototypes of key touch points on the Spotlight website. According to our most recent user survey, Spotlight is helping find more child victims of human trafficking, faster. Thanks to Spotlight I have returned victims to their families and put bad guys where they belong. endobj Our tools take massive amounts of data and turns it into an asset for law enforcement. 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. endobj 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. Registration is open for Dressember 2018 and fundraising has already started! Build relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Officers can set customized alerts and search Spotlights constantly growing database of ads to aid in their investigations. We piloted our workshop at the 2015 Atlanta ICAC Conference and received additional feedback on how to improve Spotlight Lab. Julie holds a B.A. 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. 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. However, the following six districts So when I came on, I got caught up to speed by reviewing that material, along with learning the product inside out by receiving, and then conducting, Spotlight demos and online trainings. $300/yr. AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. <> I was given the goal of on-boarding 250 users in the next six months. "We tested multiple facial-recognition services and found Amazon Rekognition was extremely accurate," says Kristin Boorse, the director of product management for Thorn. endobj All rights reserved. result in increased adoption of Thorns tools, a reduction in time to stop abuse and an increase in risk for perpetrators. 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. Building is a core value that informs every strategy in our organization. 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. This process was relatively ad hoc, however, with no identified workflow to drive rapid 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. There are many things you can do right now to get started in your community to support local survivor organizations.". My background in law enforcement and anti-human trafficking was well suited for the needs of Spotlight when I first joined the team. All of our technology partners are making crucial contributions to this fight. Other Amount: Donate now Yes, accountability matters. Our work has three pillars and one guiding vision. This combination of streamlining workflows and increasing successful victim identification is what has propelled Spotlight to its large user base. Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. Don't recognize this agency? I also created high-fidelity prototypes of key touchpoints on our site, whose content I validated through additional user feedback. Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? The software, called Spotlight, is now used across all 50 states by more than 4,000 law enforcement officers, according to Thorns website. 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. Its a neuralnet, it gets smarter over time, it gets better and it gets more efficient as people use it. 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. Be a part of the impact for our local and global partners by creating your campaign page today! We have resource guides for researchers across the globe on all forms of trafficking for various stakeholders. Nokia's New G22 Phone Allows You To Repair Broken Parts Yourself; A Knack For Storytelling: Should AI Take Over What Makes Us Human? 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. Spotlight is a web-based application that helps law enforcement prioritize leads in their sex trafficking investigations. from UCLA and an M.B.A. from Northwestern. That's where Thorn comes in. She previously served as the VP of Marketing/Communications of (RED), where she helped establish the brand as one of the most successful cause marketing initiatives in history, delivering more than $160 million to fight HIV/AIDS across Africa. Sign In. "Day to day, we strive to balance hard work with care for ourselves and each other so that we have the resiliency we need to keep fighting," Kelbi writes, "At Thorn, we are invested in a team wellness plan where we carve out time to discuss how were feeling and how were approaching our work. Vietnam. Initially, they had about 100 users from three U.S. states who were using Spotlight for their human-trafficking investigations. Thorn has created a program called Spotlight. This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ. Powered by 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Amazon EC2 C5 instances offer a memory-to-vCPU ratio that is ideal for demanding inference applications. Additionally, through my stakeholder analysis, I focused on Fox Valley Technical College (FVTC) - a leading law enforcement education center - and the DOJ (both of whom I know, because I currently consult for them on human trafficking). Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results. The organization collaborates with law enforcement agencies, tech companies, and nonprofits. <>/ExtGState<>/XObject<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> x Om7 ' <> How does this organization measure their results? I was given the goal of on-boarding 250 users in the next six months. Empowering law enforcement to collaborate beyond jurisdictions or national borders is a key to success in identifying victims who are moved frequently, or are broadcast through peer-to-peer platforms (P2P) on the dark web from a hidden location. Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues. When we surveyed underage sex trafficking victims, 3 out of 4 who entered the life in the past decade said they had been advertised online at some point in their trafficking situation. Copyright Human Trafficking Search 2023. All rights reserved. s#fDr$G#;3s/U@q~}NHO. 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. 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. stream Leadership Spotlight: Leading with the Pen - The Handwritten Note. How can law enforcement sift through massive amounts of data to focus their time on the most vulnerable victims? After I completed this phase of research, I used the information to iterate on the workshop design, and improve the overall usability of Spotlight. endobj ", Combating online child sex trafficking is a team effort, according to Istook. " 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. I started by conducting a competitive and stakeholder analysis to help with the overall discovery of where we were with our current process. Click on the link in that email 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. A 2012 Thorn survey of child sex-trafficking survivors found that 75 percent had been sold online, most of them through escort websites. It is the Google Search for combating human sex trafficking. Officers who login weekly report a time savings of 60% in their human trafficking investigations. After the sting operation, we sat down with FVTC and the DOJ to put together the curriculum for Spotlight Lab. 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. Expanded partnerships with law enforcement. % Our brand NoFiltr reaches youth directly with prevention and support messaging to help them better recognize online grooming. 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.. Kelbi Ervin, Development Associate at Thorn, works with a team to develop partnerships and identify funding opportunities to sustain Thorn's work. With only a 25% average response rate, were confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact.