Take a Picture To Help Fight Against Sex Trafficking
As a whole, most of society uses their technology to solve individual problems. Boredom, curiosities, planning, these are all common uses for apps and the internet. Now I am not saying that using our devices for these purposes is inherently bad: technology is designed in order to make our lives easier. But what if we could use our devices in more helpful ways? Ways that can help drastically improve the lives of others?
Sex Trafficking is a very real problem, with over 300,000 children in the US and 1.2 million worldwide being trafficked every year. This problem is not localized to children, but that is a startling statistic, and so is the fact that most of these children are recruited between ages 12-14. These children are forced into doing acts that no pre-teen/teen should be required to do, and for other peoples gain no less, which will in most cases lead to extremely negative side effects.
Problems like this unfortunately exist in our broken world, but from the minds of good people come ways to combat these problems. The traffickers who move the children around typically will post photos for online ads, photos which can then be used as evidence to find and prosecute these people and set the children free. However, unless the investigators know where the photo was taken, it cannot be used as evidence.
This is where TraffickCam comes in. TraffickCam is available in website form and as an app for both Android and iOS. It operates under the simple idea that there are many people who travel on a regular basis. These people need only take a few pictures of the room they're staying in and upload it to the TraffickCam database. By having reference imagery to compare with, authorities can figure out where the traffickers are using simple image matching technology: four images and a correct location is all it takes. Some hotels are even freely offering up images of their rooms in order to help the effort.
These kinds of problems can be difficult to process, but they are happening whether we try and think about them or not. If we all band together we can stop problems like this from happening. Next time you're travelling or decide to get away to a hotel for a quick escape, consider using TraffickCam and you might just save someone's life.
Sex Trafficking is a very real problem, with over 300,000 children in the US and 1.2 million worldwide being trafficked every year. This problem is not localized to children, but that is a startling statistic, and so is the fact that most of these children are recruited between ages 12-14. These children are forced into doing acts that no pre-teen/teen should be required to do, and for other peoples gain no less, which will in most cases lead to extremely negative side effects.
Problems like this unfortunately exist in our broken world, but from the minds of good people come ways to combat these problems. The traffickers who move the children around typically will post photos for online ads, photos which can then be used as evidence to find and prosecute these people and set the children free. However, unless the investigators know where the photo was taken, it cannot be used as evidence.
This is where TraffickCam comes in. TraffickCam is available in website form and as an app for both Android and iOS. It operates under the simple idea that there are many people who travel on a regular basis. These people need only take a few pictures of the room they're staying in and upload it to the TraffickCam database. By having reference imagery to compare with, authorities can figure out where the traffickers are using simple image matching technology: four images and a correct location is all it takes. Some hotels are even freely offering up images of their rooms in order to help the effort.
These kinds of problems can be difficult to process, but they are happening whether we try and think about them or not. If we all band together we can stop problems like this from happening. Next time you're travelling or decide to get away to a hotel for a quick escape, consider using TraffickCam and you might just save someone's life.
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