"Fighting human trafficking starts where you live. An infographic detailing the reach that Spotlight has gained, since its national roll-out in February 2015. <> Julie was raised in Lindsay, California, a small farming community in Californias Central Valley. s#fDr$G#;3s/U@q~}NHO. 5 0 obj Thorn was founded in 2012 by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to combat online child abuse. and who do the programs serve? By the end of my first year at Thorn, I had played a role in developing strategic partnerships with FVTC and the DOJ, designing a Spotlight Lab to effectively train potential and new users, and designing a Spotlight product website and a corresponding on-boarding process. Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? How can law enforcement sift through massive amounts of data to focus their time on the most vulnerable victims? 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. Sign in or create an account to view Form(s) 990 for 2020, 2019 and 2018. $25/mo. All Rights Reserved. Thorn Helps Law Enforcement Identify Child Sex-Trafficking Victims Faster on AWS. Officers, directors, trustees, and key employees. Before presenting the first award of the night, "The Ranch" star Ashton Kutcher walked the red carpet in Dolce & Gabbana. Spotlight does investigative work in minutes that can take hours sometimes to collect. Learn more about Spotlight. ", Combating online child sex trafficking is a team effort, according to Istook. " There is a small group of people abusing our children, and we are a large community standing in strong opposition. It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. Spotlight evolved from surveys completed by victims of trafficking that showed 63 percent of underage victims were bought or sold online at some point. 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. We are only one player in a critical ecosystem working on behalf of our children. Registration is open for Dressember 2018 and fundraising has already started! All Rights Reserved. To date, Spotlight has helped officers reduce investigative time by up to 65% and has helped identify 18,119 trafficking victims (including 5,791 children) and 6,553 traffickers. It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. Editor's Pick Leise Hook / For Spotlight PA 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. 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. Thorn was founded in 2012 to build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. Using this data the company worked with law enforcement to understand how such digital footprints could lead to the discovery of victims and their traffickers. We believe that technology is a tool, one we can use for incredible good. Email or Username. Build relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. We'll keep it out of your inbox, promise. endobj 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. Leadership Spotlight: Leading At-Risk Employees - Law Enforcement and the Addiction Crisis. The organization collaborates with law enforcement agencies, tech companies, and nonprofits. 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. from UCLA and an M.B.A. from Northwestern. 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 . In 2012, we learned that 75% of child sex trafficking victims were being bought and sold online. This is me at a conference booth, preparing to hold several usability testing sessions with human trafficking investigators. Dont see a resource that you know exists? 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. 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. Learn more 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. 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. <> Spotlight was designed for law enforcement and prosecutors who investigate human trafficking networks so that victims can be identified and connected to services. The Tennessee Fusion Center may share information contained within THOR with other law . ", 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. We hate spam too, unless it's on a sandwich with some eggs. 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. Thorn is a registered 501(c)(3) organizationEIN: 27-0943677, 2023 Thorn. SOURCE: Self-reported; last updated 6/9/2021. Spotlight, on the other hand, is a complex piece of software that doesn't have any sales to help fund its production. Just within the last 12 months investigators reported: Officers who login weekly report a time savings of 60% in their human trafficking investigations. You can view our, Meet the 2019 Skoll Awardees for Social Entrepreneurship. 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. Spotlight's machine-learning models are trained and run on Amazon EC2 C5 instances. The Amazon Rekognition team has been very responsive in helping us address any challenges we encounter.". The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick. Viral child sexual abuse material is removed from the internet to end the cycle of trauma. 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. Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Spotlight is a web-based application that helps law enforcement prioritize leads in their sex trafficking investigations. It is the greatest tool we have in the fight against human trafficking., Special Agent, Wisconsin Human Trafficking Task Force. 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. With only a 25% response rate, were confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. I get results fast allowing me to to gather important evidence and information in minutes compared to hours. 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. Washington D.C. tax attorney Kevin E. Thorn, Managing Partner of Thorn Law Group, explains. Through my competitive analysis, I identified two major competing products, Traffic Jam and Rescue Forensics. 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. 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. Similarly, The Tote Project, sells their bags, which helps them pay expenses. stream Output - describing our activities and reach. Leadership Spotlight: Leading Through Tragedy. Don't recognize this agency? Law enforcement doesnt have enough time to navigate the online commercial sex market to find children and identify their traffickers. 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. 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. But Thorn stays positive in the midst of engaging directly with such data. 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. 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. Used by officers in all 50 states and Canada, our web-based tool has helped in identifying 17,092 child victims of human trafficking in the past four years. 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. Thorn has created a program called Spotlight. Officers can set customized alerts and search Spotlights constantly growing database of ads to aid in their investigations. Our programs and products find child abuse victims faster, make online environments safer, and deter criminal behavior. Numbers are to date since the launch of our tool in 2014. Spotlight is used by more than 6,000 law enforcement officers in all 50 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. Be a part of the impact for our local and global partners by creating your campaign page today! We believe that every child has the right to be safe, to be curious, to be happy. All rights reserved. x Om7 ' Spotlight is invaluable as a tool/resource. Click here to resend it.). Abused children are identified and removed from harm and their abusers are held accountable. To request technical assistance, training, or other resources through this initiative, agency POCs shouldemail usor call 202-833-1460. Forgot your username or password? Help us get you more of the nonprofit information you need, including: An email has been sent to the address you provided. stream HTS creates a blog, publishes research, and hosts a global resource database on human trafficking and modern-day slavery. To design the curriculum for Spotlight Lab, I conducted preliminary research. 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. Register now. FOLLOW MORE IBT NEWS ON THE BELOW CHANNELS, IBT Fast Start - Let the best of International News come to you. 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. 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). I started by conducting a competitive and stakeholder analysis to help with the overall discovery of where we were with our current process. The software, called Spotlight, is now used across all 50 states by more than 4,000 law enforcement officers, according to Thorns website. 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. endobj <> $300/yr. A GuideStar Pro report containing the following information is available for this organization: This information is only available for subscribers and in Premium reports. Building is a core value that informs every strategy in our organization. Spotlight can connect contacts in minutes where it would take me weeks, if not months to do the same thing. 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. Matt Damon wants clean water for all, Shailene Woodley was arrested protesting the Dakota Access pipeline, and Ashton Kutcher is the co-founder of a tech company fighting human trafficking and sexual exploitation. 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.. According to our most recent survey, it is helping find more human trafficking victims, faster. Potts adds, "We built Spotlight because we wanted to use advanced technology to help law enforcement turn the tables and find these children faster.". Somewhere in that pile of data are children who are bought and sold online for sex. Kelbi Ervin, Development Associate at Thorn, works with a team to develop partnerships and identify funding opportunities to sustain Thorn's work. 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. "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. 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. 2016-MU-BX-K005 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. 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. Identifying the best product and UX design to onboard users, so that Spotlight could become the leading machine learning tool for human trafficking investigators. AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. Access is available for free to law enforcement agencies and can be requested at: htspotlight.com. Thorn builds technology to defend children from sexual abuse. Raise your voice against slavery this December! Spotlight marketing collateral, based on what law enforcement needed to know. Initially, they had about 100 users from three U.S. states who were using Spotlight for their human-trafficking investigations. Thorn was founded in 2012 to build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. Copyright Human Trafficking Search 2023. Thorn Helps Law Enforcement Identify Child Sex-Trafficking Victims Faster on AWS Answering the Challenge Using AWS The organization's co-leader identifies as: Already have a GuideStar Account? 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. And Demi Moore to combat online child sex trafficking investigations in Winter 2015 Task! 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