Just within the last 12 months investigators reported: Officers who login weekly report a time savings of 60% in their human trafficking investigations. Sign in or create an account to view Form(s) 990 for 2020, 2019 and 2018. "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. Nothing makes my job more rewarding when a victim says "thank you" and tells me about her rebuilt life. Thorn developed Spotlight, an app that helps law enforcement close trafficking cases much faster than by using traditional manual methods. There are more than 150,000 escort ads posted every day in this country. The software, called Spotlight, is now used across all 50 states by more than 4,000 law enforcement officers, according to Thorns website. Thorn was founded in 2012 by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to combat online child abuse. Throughout this process, I worked collaboratively with Media Cause and Digital Reasoning to set timelines and execute. COVID-19 Fraud. From what I gathered, Spotlight was by far the most intuitive and robust, providing a better user experience, despite having a ways to go itself. 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 in P2P onthe dark web from a hidden location. 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. Abused children are identified and removed from harm and their abusers are held accountable. 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. 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. It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. Share it with us and well add it to the database! endobj Expanded partnerships with law enforcement. GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center. 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. Most Popular Stories. Identifying the best product and UX design to onboard users, so that Spotlight could become the leading machine learning tool for human trafficking investigators. 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. 1 0 obj $10/mo. After the sting operation, we sat down with FVTC and the DOJ to put together the curriculum for Spotlight Lab. ", Combating online child sex trafficking is a team effort, according to Istook. " 11 0 obj Half of our 26 person staff are engineers and product managers focused on technology innovation and deployment. The Law Enforcement Family. We are only one player in a critical ecosystem working on behalf of our children. 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. THOR Usernames and Passwords must be maintained as confidential by the User and may not be shared. Officer Wellness Spotlight: Police Chaplains - An Integral Part of Law Enforcement. 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 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. An infographic detailing the reach that Spotlight has gained, since its national roll-out in February 2015. 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. Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Through my competitive analysis, I identified two major competing products, Traffic Jam and Rescue Forensics. How can law enforcement sift through massive amounts of data to focus their time on the most vulnerable victims? Thorn has created a program called Spotlight. The Amazon Rekognition team has been very responsive in helping us address any challenges we encounter.". How does this organization measure their results? Our work has three pillars and one guiding vision. Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. Initially, they had about 100 users from three U.S. states who were using Spotlight for their human-trafficking investigations. 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. Use of THOR is periodically audited for compliance with these Rules. Its a neuralnet, it gets smarter over time, it gets better and it gets more efficient as people use it. Thorn is a team of issue experts, business leaders, and engineers who build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. AWS support for Internet Explorer ends on 07/31/2022. This process was relatively ad hoc, however, with no identified workflow to drive rapid acquisition and adoption. Spotlight can connect contacts in minutes where it would take me weeks, if not months to do the same thing. Here are samples of the Spotlight product website: home page, request access page, and request demo page. 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. Learn more Human Trafficking Search (HTS) seeks to raise awareness and help prevent and eliminate human trafficking worldwide. I started by conducting a competitive and stakeholder analysis to help with the overall discovery of where we were with our current process. 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. Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results. 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. Moreover, users wanted to learn from a law enforcement investigator currently using our tool - so we made sure to co-teach with a superuser. The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick. We choose to use it for good. 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 based on insights from our first survivor survey. endobj 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. "It didn't make sense to build our own facial-recognition service when AWS already offers a best-in-breed solution like Amazon Rekognition. A 2012 Thorn survey of child sex-trafficking survivors found that 75 percent had been sold online, most of them through escort websites. 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. Initially, they had about 100 users from three U.S. states who were using Spotlight for their human-trafficking investigations. Don't recognize this agency? Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Leadership Spotlight: Leading Through Tragedy. Additionally, many new supervisors inevitably will speak with and encourage employees to ensure they take care of their . (Don't see an email in your inbox? 2016-2022 National Policing Institute -Privacy Policy-Documents in PDF format require Adobe Acrobat Reader, Spotlight A Tool to Improve Sex Trafficking Investigations, Documents in PDF format require Adobe Acrobat Reader. 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. The Transportation Industrys Human Trafficking Prevention Toolkit, The Educators Human Trafficking Awareness & Prevention Toolkit, Hospitality Industry and Human Trafficking Toolkit, Visibly Invisible Sex Workers and Sex Trafficking in the EU, Prison Labor: What Happened in the 5 States That Had The Exception Clause On the Ballot, Illuminating a Nexus: The Interplay Between Disaster Events and Exploitation, Preparing for the Known Unknown: Human Trafficking and Disaster Response, Forced to Scam: Cyber Slavery in South Asia, Avoiding Cascading Effects: Why Suspension of The Davis-Bacon Act May Allow Forced/Exploited Labor. Leadership Spotlight: Leading with the Pen - The Handwritten Note. There is a small group of people abusing our children, and we are a large community standing in strong opposition. To request technical assistance, training, or other resources through this initiative, agency POCs shouldemail usor call 202-833-1460. I started by conducting a competitive and stakeholder analysis to help with the overall discovery of where we were with our current process. Email or Username. I was part of the team that was responsible for designing the UX/UI and rolling out the product Nationwide, along with our partners -Digital Reasoning- whose machine learning technology, Spotlight was built on. I get results fast allowing me to to gather important evidence and information in minutes compared to hours. 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. GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader Our product Safer is the first holistic solution for tech companies to detect, remove, and report child sexual abuse material at scale. ", Spotlight was made to combat a difficult problem, and the data Spotlight handles is unsettling to say the least. Email contact available with a Pro subscription. How can people reading this help Thorn fight against child sex trafficking? 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. 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. 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. 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). Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues. Kelbi Ervin, Development Associate at Thorn, works with a team to develop partnerships and identify funding opportunities to sustain Thorn's work. <> 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. Need the ability to download nonprofit data and more advanced search options? Spotlight marketing collateral, based on what law enforcement needed to know. Spotlight, on the other hand, is a complex piece of software that doesn't have any sales to help fund its production. COVID-19 fraud schemes have been a top concern for IRS CI and other . The success of Spotlight would not be possible without the countless hours that investigators spend looking for our kids; the technology partners who influenced and encouraged its development and our donors. $120 $180 $300 Other Other. User research through interviews, personas, and journey mapping of proactive and reactive searches had already been done prior to my start date. <> Supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. It went from beta in Summer 2014, to extended beta in Fall 2014, to a national roll-out in Winter 2015. endstream 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. "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. 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). endobj 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. Register now. Our tools take massive amounts of data and turns it into an asset for law enforcement. The organization collaborates with law enforcement agencies, tech companies, and nonprofits. Spotlight is a web tool used by law enforcement agencies to more efficiently search the internet for victim and trafficker information. 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. Thorn builds technology to defend children from sexual abuse. 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. According to our most recent survey, it is helping find more human trafficking victims, faster. % One aspect of law enforcement often discussed during an in-briefing or at a recruiting event is the idea that by joining the organization, you are being accepted into that agency's "family.". 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 . 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. $15/mo. Click here to resend it.). Thorn was founded in 2012 to build technology to defend children from sexual abuse. Help Spotlight PA hold the powerful to account with a gift today. We believe that every child has the right to be safe, to be curious, to be happy. Activation of the tech industry helps eliminate abuse content from their platforms. Earlier in her career she worked for Motorolas mobile phone division and helped launch HELIO, a mobile virtual network operator. 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. 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. Sign up and stay up to date with our daily newsletter. Spotlight's machine-learning models are trained and run on Amazon EC2 C5 instances. 8 0 obj 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. 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. Most locations in the United States are updated every six hours. Spotlight is like a investigative partner in human trafficking investigations. 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. A virtual team based in the U.S., Thorn employs 25 people. 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. Officers can set customized alerts and search Spotlights constantly growing database of ads to aid in their investigations. Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? 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. This combination of streamlining workflows and increasing successful victim identification is what has propelled Spotlight to continue to grow its user base. Have you recently published a useful resource? ", 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. endstream Forgot your username or password? This combination of streamlining workflows and increasing successful victim identification is what has propelled Spotlight to its large user base. 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. The bad news is that law enforcement just doesnt have the time, energy, or manpower to efficiently pursue the information available online. 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. 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. He likes Neo-noir films, running and cycling, classic American novels, small venue music shows, and burritos. To design the curriculum for Spotlight Lab, I conducted preliminary research. More From Thorn About the Spotlight Technology. 4 0 obj This website is funded through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Use of THOR in a manner outside the scope of these Rules is strictly prohibited. Learn more about Spotlight. 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. You can view our, Meet the 2019 Skoll Awardees for Social Entrepreneurship. With just over 20% of users reporting, we are confident these numbers represent the low end of our impact. Please check your inbox in order to proceed. Spotlight is a robust search tool that uses machine learning to help law enforcement identify victims of trafficking online. 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