[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
115th Congress Printed for the use of the
2nd Session Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
_________________________________________________________________________
Fighting Human Trafficking in
Travel and Tourism: New
Challenges and Solutions
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
MAY 7, 2018
Joint Briefing of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
and the Congressional Trafficking Caucus
_____________________________________________________________________________
Washington: 2018
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
234 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-1901
[email protected]
http://www.csce.gov
@HelsinkiComm
Legislative Branch Commissioners
HOUSE
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi,
Co-Chairman Chairman
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas CORY GARDNER, Colorado
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee MARCO RUBIO, Florida
RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas TOM UDALL, New Mexico
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
Executive Branch Commissioners
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
III
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
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website of the OSCE is: .
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as
the Helsinki Commission, is a U.S. Government agency created in 1976 to
monitor and encourage compliance by the participating States with their
OSCE commitments, with a particular emphasis on human rights.
The Commission consists of nine members from the United States
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private individuals from participating States. The website of the
Commission is: .
[III]
Fighting Human Trafficking in Travel and Tourism:
New Challenges and Solutions
_________
May 7, 2018
Page
PARTICIPANTS
Allison Hollabaugh Parker, General Counsel, Commission for Security
and Cooperation in Europe ......................................... 1
Hon. Christopher Smith, Co-Chairman, Commission for Security and
Cooperation in Europe ............................................. 2
Michael ``Mick'' McKeown, Blue Campaign Executive Director, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security ................................... 3
Tracey Breeden, Director of Safety Communications, Uber ........... 4
Nancy Rivard, Founder and President of Airline Ambassadors ........ 6
Carol Smolenski, Executive Director, End Child Prostitution and
Trafficking-USA [ECPAT-USA] ....................................... 8
Craig Kalkut, Vice President of Government Affairs, American Hotel
& Lodging Association ............................................. 1
Nick Shapiro, Global Head of Trust & Risk Management, Airbnb ...... 13
(IV)
.
Fighting Human Trafficking in Travel and Tourism:
New Challenges and Solutions
----------
May 7, 2018
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
and the Congressional Trafficking Caucus
Washington, DC
The briefing was held at 3:02 p.m. in Room 485, Russell Senate
Office Building, Washington, DC, Allison Hollabaugh Parker, General
Counsel, Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe, moderating.
Panelists present: Allison Hollabaugh Parker, General Counsel,
Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe; Hon. Christopher
Smith, Co-Chairman, Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe;
Michael ``Mick'' McKeown, Blue Campaign Executive Director, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security; Tracey Breeden, Director of Safety
Communications, Uber; Nancy Rivard, Founder and President of Airline
Ambassadors; Carol Smolenski, Executive Director, End Child
Prostitution and Trafficking-USA [ECPAT-USA]; Craig Kalkut, Vice
President of Government Affairs, American Hotel & Lodging Association;
and Nick Shapiro, Global Head of Trust & Risk Management, Airbnb.
Ms. Parker. Good afternoon. Thank you all for joining us this
afternoon for this briefing hosted by the Helsinki Commission for
Security and Cooperation in Europe and by the Congressional Human
Trafficking Caucus.
My name is Allison Hollabaugh Parker. I'm general counsel for the
Helsinki Commission as well as one of the coordinators for the
Congressional Human Trafficking Caucus, both of which are co-chaired by
Congressman Christopher Smith, who is with us today to open our
briefing.
Congressman Smith needs little introduction within trafficking
circles. He has been fighting human trafficking for over two decades.
He's the author of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, as
well as its 2003 and 2005 reauthorizations, as well as the most recent
reauthorization that passed the House of Representatives just last year
in July called the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention
and Protection Act. It's H.R. 2200. To tell you more about that, here's
Representative Smith. [Applause.]
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Allison. And it is a privilege to
be here, and I thank you for your leadership on human trafficking. It's
been extraordinary for so many years, so I want to thank you for that,
Allison.
And I want to especially thank our distinguished panel, and the
insights that we will glean from what they have to tell us this
afternoon.
I want to thank all of you for joining us today for this joint
briefing. You know, according to the ILO--the International Labour
Organization--human trafficking in the private economy generates about
$150 billion in illegal profits per year. Sixteen million people are
exploited in labor trafficking, according to the ILO; 4.8 million are
exploited in sex trafficking; and approximately 4 million others are
exploited in state-imposed trafficking. Women and girls--as we know so
painfully well--women and girls account for 99 percent of sex
trafficking and about 58 percent are victims of labor trafficking.
The stories you will hear today show that it has been happening
right under our noses. It's not just over there. It's in the United
States. It's in every one of our congressional districts. And, of
course, it is in other countries as well. And you will hear from
people--these panelists--who are really on the front line in trying to
mitigate and end this horrific cruelty.
As Allison pointed out, in 1998 I introduced the comprehensive
legislation that was signed into law in the year 2000 called the
Trafficking Victims Protection Act. It was a very hard sell. There were
a lot of people who thought it was a solution in search of a problem.
When you talked trafficking to U.S. attorneys, they would say, oh, you
mean drugs, right? And we'd say, no, we're talking about human beings,
especially women, who are reduced to commodities for sale and for
resale and exploitation over and over again. The legislation provided
sheltering, political asylum, other protections for the victims, long
jail sentences and asset confiscation for the traffickers, and tough
sanctions for governments that failed to meet what we called minimum
standards prescribed in the legislation.
What is often forgotten is that it applies equally domestically.
The legislation codified very strong jail sentences and asset
confiscation for traffickers here in the United States. For example, on
April 19th, the indictment of Allison Mack of the TV series
``Smallville'' and others in a notorious sex-trafficking case--what
they're being charged under is the TPVA, the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act, and its many related provisions.
Every 3 to 5 years we build on the original TPVA of 2000, and 2018
is just another year where we're trying to update and strengthen our
comprehensive legislation. As Allison pointed out, we've introduced the
Frederick Douglass bill. It passed the House almost a year ago.
Hopefully the Senate will take it up soon and get it down to the
president for his signature.
Inspired by Nancy Rivard's work with the airline industry, which
she first brought to my attention in 2009, one section of the bill will
tie eligibility for airline contracts to fly U.S. Government employees
with whether or not they have a system in place, a protocol. It's not
absolute, but it will give preference, like we have with Delta and some
of the other airlines--a very strong, robust effort of situational
awareness. Well, if you have that in place, you're more apt to get a
U.S. Government contract.
Inspired by Carol Smolenski's ECPAT's briefing on the Hill some 2
years ago, we will also tie it to what's happening in the hotel
industry, because we do know that U.S. Government employees all over
the country are staying in hotels. We want to make sure that there's a
protocol in place there as well, a situational awareness training so
that, again, if you see something that looks wrong, is not right, you
will report upon it.
I would just point out, finally, that just this year sweeping
legislation was passed--it's Ann Wagner's bill--the Allow States and
Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. That became law and almost
immediately some of the worst online slave markets went dark, and the
CFO of Backpage.com plead guilty to child sex trafficking.
A coupe of years ago we passed the International Megan's Law. Megan
Kanka was from my hometown of Hamilton. She was brutally murdered and
raped by a convicted pedophile who lived across the street. It took
eight long years, but we got the International Megan's Law passed. And
now we notice countries--when a convicted pedophile plans to travel,
that person is noticed to that country and the country can take
appropriate steps, which usually means they're not allowed into that
country. And so far--it's about a year now--there's been an effect:
3,600 sex offenders with sex offenses against children have been
noticed to these countries. And many, the overwhelming majority of
those, have been turned back and said you will not come to our country
and abuse our children in secrecy.
I want to again thank this very distinguished panel, and Allison's
going to do the introductions for each and every one of them. This is a
good learning moment, and these are the experts who have made all the
difference in the world.
And I thank you. [Applause.]
Ms. Parker. Thank you, Congressman Smith.
First up, we have Michael ``Mick'' McKeown. He is the executive
director of the Department of Homeland Security Homeland Security
Advisory Council and Blue Campaign. If you ``see something, say
something.'' He oversees the 40 council members as well as the ongoing
policy work of the subcommittees. He also heightens the public's
familiarity with human trafficking and its identifiers. Under the ``If
You See Something, Say Something'' campaign, he raises public awareness
on indicators of terrorism and terror-related crimes and how to
recognize them.
Mr. McKeown. Thank you very much.
So, first, Representative, I want to also thank you for the Blue
Campaign Authorization Act that was passed unanimously through the
House and the Senate. Greatly appreciate your support on that. That is
a big first step for us at the Department of Homeland Security, to be
able to codify that type of office so that we will be there in
perpetuity--however you say that word--and be able to work together to
help eradicate this crime. Because that's what the whole point of this
table and all of the work we're doing is. We're not trying to fight it;
we're trying to eradicate human trafficking.
And one of the things that is so fulfilling to be able to be here
today is to know that when we work in the spaces that we do, the type
of responses that I get from the private sector. Predominantly when I
do my work I work with the hospitality industry, and we've been able to
introduce a Hospitality Toolkit. And this toolkit is giving us a great
conversation piece to bring to the private sector. Also, it's a two-way
communication. It's a way for us to get an understanding of what it is
that they're dealing with and how we in the Federal Government can help
them combat this crime.
That being said, when we work in these spaces, one of the things
that we're really trying to do here at the Blue Campaign is to make
sure that people kind of take a moment and look at things in a way that
they might not have looked at it before. One of the things that we have
to deal with is, you know, the ``why,'' right? Because ``why'' is a
funny little word. It can either paralyze us or empower us. And one of
the things that we try to do in the Blue Campaign is empower people to
be able to take that action that they so desperately need because of
those moments that give us pause, there's a reason why they give us
pause. And we have to kind of explore that. What here doesn't feel
right? What is that gut-check type of moment here that doesn't seem
right? What am I seeing?
And that's where the Blue Campaign is able to come in and help,
introduce the hospitality industry to the Homeland Security
Investigations department and giving them that thing to do, because it
might not necessarily be a 9-1-1 call, but they know that something's
going on that's not necessarily right. And so that's one of the things
that in our partnerships we're trying to really build on and to help
create.
There's other aspects of the Blue Campaign that we work on as well,
not only with our transportation industry. We have a component that's
called the Blue Lightning Initiative that works with doing training. We
also help with being the unified voice for the Department of Homeland
Security [DHS]. We go across not only the 22 components that are
composed of DHS, but also all the interagency work that goes along with
it so that we are able to make sure that we have a unified front when
dealing with this.
I have to say, though, the greatest honor of being at the Blue
Campaign and doing this is the victim-centered approach that we take to
how we handle this horrific crime. And every piece of product that we
send out, whether it's the Hospitality Toolkit or our new public
service announcement called ``Neighborhood Watch,'' has survivor input.
And I think that really makes it an important aspect of the work that
we do, because if you're going to have an authentic voice and be in a
noisy world like this is, you have to have a strong personal narrative.
And I think that we're able, by getting this type of victim-centered
approach, to get that survivor input. They might be victims at one
point, but when they work with us at the Blue Campaign they're
survivors. And to able to work with them and to be able to hear their
story and give a voice to those who have been voiceless for so long has
been one of the most rewarding works of public service.
So, that's it for my intro. Thank you very much. [Applause.]
Ms. Parker. Thank you, Mick.
Next up we have Tracey Breeden. Tracey's the director of safety
communications at Uber. In this role she leads global sex assault,
human trafficking, and women's safety campaigns. She has worked with
Cindy McCain to create trafficking education for drivers. She also
authored Uber's first safety tips for riders. She's the vice president
for the nonprofit Kick at Darkness, which was founded by a survivor of
child sex trafficking and helps fund healing services for survivors of
human trafficking, sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, and
hate crimes. Tracey is a subject-matter expert in sex crimes and
domestic violence, drawing from nearly 15 years of experience in law
enforcement as a former police officer and detective. We're so grateful
to have Tracey with us today.
Ms. Breeden. Thank you. Thank you for having Uber here today to
speak about this very important issue that affects all of our
communities across the globe.
Uber connects millions of people across the globe every single day.
Every single day across the globe we're doing 15 million trips. Think
about how many people that is, coming into contact with one another.
And we know that our drivers are uniquely positioned to really be able
to identify not only victims of human trafficking, but to be able to
prevent this. And we know that we play a significant role, and we want
to play that significant role in helping prevent this in our
communities and finding ways that we can work with our national
partners to make a difference in this space.
In 2015, Uber partnered with ECPAT-USA to be the first company in
the on-demand space to sign The Code. With that, we started to change
our policies. Our community guideline is to have zero tolerance for
human trafficking on our platform. And then we tried to find out how
can we use our innovation and our technology to help raise awareness,
to help educate in this space, to also help prevent this in our
communities that we serve.
We worked with organizations like the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children [NCMEC], ECPAT. Our other partners are the
McCain Institute as well as Thorn and Polaris. Most recently we just
partnered with Polaris at the first of the year to raise awareness
around the national hotline that's out there.
We worked with Cindy McCain and the McCain Institute to develop
tips specific to the rideshare platform. We wanted our drivers to know
if something's happening in their vehicle, what would it look like?
What would human trafficking look like? We started first by educating
and helping raise awareness with our drivers about what it is, because
I can tell you as a former police officer most people in our
communities don't even know this is happening. They don't know what it
is. They don't know what it looks like. So the first thing we have to
do is help them understand what it is and help them realize that this
happens in our communities each and every day, and no community is
immune from it. She helped us develop those tips specifically to that
platform. What should drivers look for when there's somebody in their
car?
And how can they take action? That's the third step. And by taking
action, we educated our drivers on calling 9-1-1 first and foremost
when you're in a safe position. But you know, just like Mike talked
about that gut check, sometimes you're just not going to know if it
raises to the level of 9-1-1. And you might have this feeling or this
suspicion that you're seeing something. So that's where the national
hotline comes in with Polaris, a way to call, to provide those tips to
the national hotline, to get more information. And Polaris can partner
with us to get that information to police.
We also rolled out driver events across the nation to educate our
drivers, to pull in local organizations as well as law enforcement and
our national partners to talk about what--not only that this is a
national issue and what it looks like on a national level, but what
does it look like in that specific community, and working with those
partners to help educate and raise awareness with those events.
We also did things around the Super Bowl, putting information out
around the big events. But we were also very careful that people
understand that this is not something that is just attached to big
events. This is something that's attached to every day in America, and
across the globe.
So those are some of the things that we've been working on. We
partner with Thorn. We provide our engineers to be able to help Thorn
develop technology to be able to catch traffickers online. We're always
thinking about how can we utilize the people in our organization that
have a skill set that could be helpful to these organizations; but also
how can we, working with our national partners and working with other
folks in this space, come up with solutions, ideas, and innovative ways
to help combat this on a global level.
We're also rolling this outside the United States. So for the first
in time, in January we sent our messaging and our tips out to nearly a
million drivers in the United States--that's every single driver in the
United States--as well as 10 million riders. We're now rolling that out
internationally and working in Canada and Mexico. Canada doesn't have a
national hotline, but is working on getting a hotline this year around
October or November. And we're working with Polaris to be a part of
that, as well as the same thing in Mexico and finding ways that we can
do things internationally.
I was just talking to Nancy, who's doing training--and I'm sure
she'll talk about that--in Guatemala. That's exciting to hear, of all
these countries that we're helping raise awareness with the millions of
people who not only drive on our app but ride on our app.
And we realize that we all have a role to play. We all have a role
to play in the safety of our communities, and we take that role
seriously. And we're committed to finding solutions and doing more in
this space.
So thank you for having Uber here.
Ms. Parker. Thank you, Tracey.
We next welcome Nancy Rivard. She's the president and founder of
Airline Ambassadors International, which has hand-delivered $60 million
worth of aid to children in 54 countries in orphanages, clinics, and
remote communities, impacting over 500,000 children around the world.
And as Representative Smith mentioned, she first brought the concern
about human trafficking on our flights to his attention in 2009. She
has been working tirelessly with the Department of Transportation and
DHS since that time, and we've seen wonderful results.
Nancy, I'll let you tell them more about it.
Ms. Rivard. Thank you so much.
I'm the president of Airline Ambassadors, who are a nonprofit
organization that has led advocacy on human trafficking awareness since
2009, when I went to Congressman Smith for assistance in getting the
word out to airlines. And when the airlines didn't really respond, we
took it upon ourselves to develop the first industry-specific campaign
or training on human trafficking awareness, which we just completed our
70th airport training in Haneda Airport in Tokyo last week. Our work
will be highlighted at the release of the new International Civil
Aviation Organization [ICAO] Guidelines at the end of this month and is
being highlighted this week at the International Air Transport
Association [IATA] meeting in Bangkok as well.
Because of the FAA Reauthorization Act in the United States of
2016, airlines are required to train flight attendants. Most of them
are utilizing the Blue Campaign's excellent online materials. Delta is
still first and out front. In 2018 they launched an enhanced training
with Polaris tailored directly for Delta's 54,000 employees, initiated
an apprentice program for trafficking survivors, hosted an event to
inspire new employees and also local CEOs, as well as new signage in
the airport. This year American Airlines joined Delta as being a signer
of the ECPAT Code of Conduct and JetBlue's commitment was also
recognized at the General Meeting of IATA last year in Cancun.
International airlines are jumping on board, too. Both Air Asia and
Air Emirates initiated a major launch of training last year. Copa and
AeroMexico joined the international Blue Heart Campaign, they jumped
on.
And there are successes. Airline Ambassadors provided training in
Sacramento last year, and the airport is proactive for awareness. In
February, Sacramento American Airlines agent Denice Miracle noticed two
girls, 15 and 17, who were traveling on a one-way ticket to meet a man
they had met on Instagram. Both their parents thought they were
spending the night with each other. Her alertness saved those two girls
from an uncertain future.
Congress can help by strengthening the laws to encourage airlines
to provide training to all employee groups, including agents, pilots,
and more. Funding should be increased so Blue Campaign can provide
trainings to the training staff of all 33 airlines. The online
trainings are very good, but many employees do not pay close attention
and are not taking the issue seriously. Here are three examples.
Last March, on a flight from Rome to Chicago, all eight flight
attendants in the back of a 767 were sure that a 50-year-old man was
trafficking a 7-year-old Albanian girl. They went to the cockpit and
they shared this information, and even pointed in the airline pilot's
manual where they're supposed to radio to the airport ahead. The pilots
refused, saying ``This has never been mentioned in pilot training and
we are not going to take the chance.''
Earlier last year also, the agents in Houston, where we had
provided a human trafficking awareness training at the airport checking
out to go home, they said, ``When is somebody going to train us? We see
trafficking every day. We just saw it this morning and we don't know
what to do.'' I visited airline operations to ask one of the workers
there what he would do if a pilot had radioed in a potential human
trafficking case. He said, ``Absolutely nothing. Has nothing to do with
aircraft security.'' More training is needed for all employee groups.
Funding should specify that ``Train the Trainers'' for training staff
of the 33 major airlines should include actual trafficking survivors,
as we do in all our trainings, to make the issue real and motivating
people to emphasize it.
Airports also play a key role in awareness. We helped Chicago, Las
Vegas, and San Francisco establish a video for all airport employees in
the online badging office. Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis, and
Sacramento have also been very proactive. The DHS ad campaign is in
most of the customs areas. A21 signage is in New York and Chicago. They
are also a human trafficking group. The Tip Line app that we developed
and give out at our trainings has received 1,000 tips since we unveiled
it in the last 2 years.
However, many airports have not been receptive to training, like
Los Angeles and Miami. They have said training is not needed and there
are no resources to support it.
But we know that training is needed. Donna Hubbard, one of our
trainers, noticed a woman crying outside a bathroom in Miami Airport.
The girl said that she didn't want to get on a plane. A man had bought
her a ticket the night before in a bar and she didn't want to get on
the plane. She wanted to go to New York and she wanted to go home to
her mother. Donna contacted the airport police and got them involved.
The airport police weren't trained properly in a victim-centered
approach, and they intimidated the girl so she just said everything was
all right. It was Donna who took the initiative and got the girl home
to her mother, saving her from a horrible future.
The Human Trafficking Investigations and Training Institute has one
of the best trainings out there for law enforcement. Most airports and
police departments are reluctant to use their limited training funds on
human trafficking awareness training because it's not mandatory at the
state level. Training resources need to be increased for training of
travel industry personnel.
Motivating the private sector--although the private sector is
critical in this fight, airlines do not truly understand or appreciate
that human trafficking awareness is needed and are hesitant to
integrate new policies into their corporate cultures. They are nervous
that vigilante flight attendants will make false accusations and they
will end up in a lawsuit. We sent a letter to 24 CEOs of travel
companies last year, last March, encouraging them to take an extra step
also to hire human trafficking survivors. Not one CEO responded, except
for the American Bus Association, which is demonstrative of their
social responsibility.
The critical infrastructure of our transportation system can no
longer be used as a tool to implement human trafficking or modern-day
slavery. It's the fastest-growing crime in the world, linked to drug
trafficking, human smuggling, arms trafficking, and terrorism. It is
also a cabin safety issue.
In the words of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants,
the largest flight attendant union in the world: ``We are committed not
only to preparing our membership to recognize and report suspected
incidents of human trafficking, but also to raise public awareness of
the problem. Putting an end to human trafficking will require a
coordinated effort and a commitment of the entire transportation
industry.''
Thank you.
Ms. Parker. Thank you, Nancy. I'd like to welcome next--
[applause]--oh, please do.
I'd like to welcome next Carol Smolenski. She's the executive
director and one of the founders of ECPAT-USA, which stands for End
Child Prostitution and Trafficking. She's been working in the field of
children's rights for 18 years, and she is a longtime nationally
recognized leader, especially in the area of commercial sexual
exploitation and child trafficking. She, at ECPAT, oversaw the
development of the first research project on child trafficking in New
York City and two other research projects about commercial sexual
exploitation of children. She was the project director for the New York
City Community Response to Trafficking Projects in New York, a
multifaceted groundbreaking project to inform communities at risk for
human trafficking about the Federal antitrafficking law and to help
them obtain better protections for victims. And may I just say that
Carol and ECPAT have been instrumental working with hotel and lodging
associations for decades with The Code. And I'll let her tell you more
about that.
Ms. Smolenski. Thank you, Allison. Thanks for pushing my button for
me. [Laughter.]
Good afternoon, everyone. Very happy to be here. I actually am much
older than that introduction implied because I've been actually at this
for 27 years. And I guess I have to edit my bio--[laughter]--because
I've been around the block a few times.
Twenty-seven years ago, ECPAT began advocating for the protection
of children from exploitation in the context of travel and tourism.
Back then nobody was talking about it, I can assure you, but I am very
proud to talk about today how much progress we have made since then.
Our first success back in 1994 was working to pass
extraterritoriality legislation that made it possible to prosecute an
American in the U.S. for having exploited a child in another country.
This law was then significantly strengthened in 2003. And I'm also very
proud to say that U.S. law enforcement does spend a lot of time
enforcing this law. They've been very proactive in comparison to some
other countries. This month a Florida man named David Lynch was
sentenced to 330 years in prison under one of these laws for having
exploited children in the Philippines, a really great success.
Our other big success, of course, has been the expansion of the
Tourism Child-Protection Code of Conduct that we've been talking about.
The Code was created in 1998 and we introduced it here in North America
in 2004. The Code is a set of six voluntary steps that companies can
take to protect children from sexual exploitation. Carlson Companies,
the company that owned Radisson and other brands, was the partner right
from the start, back in 2004. It took several years to get more
companies to be willing to pitch in. I'm proud to say that in 1022
Wyndham and Hilton both signed The Code of Conduct, and today every
large U.S. hotel chain has signed The Code. Besides the companies I
mentioned above, Marriott, Choice, and Hyatt. These are six of the 10
largest hotel companies in the world. Also, as Nancy mentioned, two of
the largest domestic air carriers, American and Delta, have signed The
Code of Conduct.
One of the most important steps of The Code is staff training. Let
me just tell you one story about a security agent who worked at a hotel
in Massachusetts. I'm going to call him Benjamin. His hotel was so
well-trained that the minute a trafficker entered his property, they
implemented their protocol and his whole team knew what to do. Raymond,
the trafficker, was head of an international trafficking ring who, it
was later found out, had been selling kids at 400 hotels, in fact,
before getting to Massachusetts. He tried his luck at Ben's hotel, but
he was stopped in his tracks. He had brought two children to Ben's
hotel, but instead of being abused they were identified; and instead of
Raymond--the trafficker--walking free, he was sentenced to the maximum
penalty of 30 years in prison. Yes, big success.
So spreading the word to hotel associates is crucial. In 2016 ECPAT
partnered with Marriott to expand online human training for their
associates. The training is now available through the American Hotel
and Lodging Association--I'm sure you'll be hearing about that next--
and used by hotel brands across the industry. Marriott-branded hotels
alone trained over 335,000 associates within 15 months of requiring the
training--335,000 people were trained by Marriott within 15 months. So
imagine if every hotel brand required training.
According to a 2017 nationwide survey of hotels initiated by ECPAT
and carried out by NYU's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, over
half of the U.S. hotels are trained to help prevent child trafficking.
This is a huge development that we're very proud of. More information
about our work with the hotel industry is in our report called ``No
Vacancy for Child Sex Traffickers,'' which is on our website. There are
a few copies outside on the table.
So, while we have come very far, we still have a long way to go. In
2016 ECPAT published the results of a 2-year global study on the sexual
exploitation of children in the context of travel and tourism.
Congressman Smith, of course, was at our global launch here in the U.S.
The study's 47 recommendations set the stage for the next phase of our
work. I'm also sharing copies of that with you. The executive summary
and recommendations again are outside on the table and also on our
website. \1\
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But one of the most important recommendations calls for all
businesses, not just those in the travel industry, to take steps to
protect children from sexual exploitation, that all of them adopt
child-protection policies, train, and join ECPAT's Code of Conduct. So
we are delighted, of course, about the new provisions introduced as
part of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act [TVPRA]
by Congressman Smith calling for U.S. [Government] employee travel to
take place with companies that have signed The Code.
But in addition, we are developing a new training for companies
that manage corporate travel and events, supported by Carlson Wagonlit
Travel and Maritz. So this will bring information to travel managers at
companies across the private sector. All big companies like Apple or
Ford or McDonalds hire travel management companies like American
Express or Carlson or Maritz [or many others] to manage all of their
global travel for all of their executives. We are now starting a
program to train travel management companies [like American Express,
Carlson and Maritz] about how to talk to their clients [like Apple, or
Ford, or McDonald's] about child-safe travel. This includes encouraging
them to have a policy against sexual exploitation of children for their
staff who travel and encouraging them to train them about what child
exploitation looks like to make sure that all of those executives
traveling around the world know not just how to travel safely and
responsibly, but how to spot potential child-trafficking cases and what
to do if they see them.
So let me just tell you one other story. A woman I'll call Jenny
attended a session hosted by Maritz Travel, one of the travel
management companies. They were having a business meeting in Mexico.
One of the awareness-raising sessions was about human trafficking. On
her way home from that conference in Mexico she saw a woman with a
plastic bag as luggage who looked disheveled and looked not quite
right. She thought that the situation, there was just something wrong,
so she reported her suspicions. And she was right: the girl she saw was
a human trafficking victim and she was rescued because of this woman.
Of course, the sexual exploitation of children also happens outside
of the context of travel and tourism. One of the fastest-growing areas
that children are exploited in is through the production of child abuse
imagery, commonly called child pornography. Most people are not aware
of the vast extent of this problem--the National Center on Missing and
Exploited Children cyber tip line received over 10.2 million reports in
2017. The Europe-based Internet Watch Foundation reported that in 2017
that 55 percent of the images were children 10 years old or younger. It
also reported that in these pictures, the content showing the rape or
sexual torture of children is up by 5 percent, from 28 percent to 33
percent.
This is a huge, horrific problem that we are yet to grapple with
both as a country and really globally. We will soon be issuing a report
for recommendations that include things like stronger background checks
for anyone who comes in contact with children; more oversight of ICANN,
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which
registers website names; among many other recommendations. It's a
complex and growing industry that needs a range of responses, but that
definitely includes government regulation and oversight.
So, as we talk about legislative priorities, I just want to thank
members of the House who were involved in the successful package of
FOSTA [Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act]/SESTA [Stop Enabling Sex
Traffickers Act] legislation. It was a hard-won victory, and we
appreciate your offices who might be here who had led the charge in
spite of opposition from the tech industry. It does, I feel like, call
for the pathway for additional regulation to counter the huge growth of
children being exploited online.
And second, of course, many of your offices have been instrumental
in moving along TVPA reauthorization. Thank you so much again. The
House-passed bill was particularly strong and made a number of
adjustments that we strongly supported. We understand they are very
close to a final conference agreement. We look forward to endorsing the
bill that will be sent to the president.
So we've made great strides in the protection of children over all
of these years. But as the problem of child exploitation constantly
adapts to a changing world--moving off the streets and online, going
behind the doors of private residences--we have to be ever more adept
at responding. We cannot lag behind the abusers and traffickers who
spend every minute trying to figure out ways to get around the laws. We
have to work faster. We have to work smarter. We will. We've been doing
this. We can do this.
The travel industry is one of the biggest industries in the world,
which is a means for exploitation to take place. But the good news is
that one of the biggest industries in the world is mobilizing to stop
it. I am really proud of this, and I'm looking forward to working with
all of you to continue this fight.
Thank you. [Applause.]
Ms. Parker. Thank you, Carol.
Next, I'd like to welcome Craig Kalkut. Craig is the vice president
of government affairs at the American Hotel and Lodging Association,
where he leads AH&LA's efforts in the areas of travel promotion, tax,
and enterprise issues such as terrorism risk insurance, and patent
reform. He joined the association after nearly 8 years in the U.S.
Senate, most recently as the chief counsel for Senator Amy Klobuchar
and the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and
Consumer Rights. Craig has been very helpful as we've refined the
TVPRA, and I look forward to hearing more about what the Hotel
Association has been doing.
Mr. Kalkut. Great. Well, thank you, Allison. Thank you for having
us here today.
Thank you, Congressman Smith, for your years of devotion and
passion on this issue. And thank you, again, to you, Allison, on your
work with us and all the stakeholders on your boss' great legislation
to make it as effective as it possibly can be.
I also want to recognize other champions that we've worked with
that have pushed through legislation on the Hill: my old boss Senator
Klobuchar, but also Senator Grassley, Senator Cornyn, Senator Portman,
Senator Blumenthal; and then on the House side, in addition to Rep.
Smith, Representatives Wagner, Walters, Bass, and many others who have
worked on this.
So, to step back for a moment, I joined the American Hotel and
Lodging Association just over 4 years ago after working on Capitol
Hill. And I think a couple weeks into my job I got a phone call from a
Senate office asking what our industry was doing on human trafficking.
And I was honestly taken aback and confused. I didn't know why they
were calling us, why they were asking. Even though I had worked on
human trafficking on Capitol Hill, I hadn't come across the connection
to hotels. So, you know, I told them I would look into it and get back
to them, and I didn't know what I was going to find.
So I started asking around the office and asking our members, and
was incredibly pleased to find out that we indeed had been very engaged
on this issue. I found out very quickly perhaps the most significant
thing, or most significant single action we've taken was in 2013, the
year before I joined the association, we had worked with Carol and her
team at ECPAT to design a training program, an online training module
geared specifically for hotel employees on human trafficking. And Carol
mentioned in 2016 this was revamped with ECPAT again and Marriott, as
well as Polaris, and so it's a new and improved version of that
program. And as she said, Marriott has trained over 335,000 employees
already. I know a couple of our other major members have told me
recently they have each trained over 50,000. So just from those three
companies alone you're talking 450,000 people trained in the last
couple years. And it's not just those companies; those are the ones
that happen to have the most up-to-date statistics.
So our efforts on trafficking really focused on two key pillars.
The first, training, and I've sort of already touched on that. The
other is raising awareness. And so we do whatever we can to do that.
And, of course, these two things work together. The more people are
aware, the more they are going to have their companies get trained,
have their colleagues get trained, and work with others in the industry
to increase training.
So, in terms of raising awareness, we've taken a number of steps. I
speak on panels like this one whenever I have the privilege of being
invited to speak. Two weeks ago I was in Atlanta speaking with the
attorney general of Georgia, who has been a leader on the issue of
human trafficking, at an event that was attended by over 200 people--
almost all hotel employees--who were there to be trained by the Georgia
Bureau of Investigation. So the attorney general sort of set the
framework and talked about his statewide efforts, and then GBI--the
Bureau of Investigation--came and did an actual training.
And so the ECPAT-HLA-Marriott-Polaris training is one training, but
there are others out there. Sometimes they're done by law enforcement.
DHS and the Blue Campaign have materials and training available. So
we're happy to have people train however they can most easily find it
and wherever they can get it and whatever works best for them. And I
think the Congressman's legislation is going to help ensure that even
more people in the industry are trained, and we think that is vital. I
think that's the most important thing we can do in the industry.
We've also invited people to come speak at our events. And so a
couple years ago, when we had our big legislative fly-in, we invited
one of Carol's employees, Michelle, to come speak to our conference.
This is our largest gathering of the year, every year. And I believe
that year she was the only person on the speaking agenda who was not
either a member of our industry--and typically those are people on our
staff or CEOs--or a member of Congress. So it just shows the value and
priority that we place on trafficking.
In addition, we take whatever opportunities we can around, as
others have mentioned, the Super Bowl--just to put out alerts,
sometimes with ECPAT or Polaris other partners like the McCain
Foundation--just to remind hotel employees, hotel owners, guests to be
vigilant. And it was also mentioned we make sure to be clear that
trafficking doesn't just happen around big events like the Super Bowl,
and I think some question whether there is even an increase. But
whatever the case is, it does present an opportunity to get attention--
to get attention in the media and to raise awareness.
One other step we took a couple years ago was to issue hotel
industry principles on human trafficking. We did this, again, to
elevate it as an issue within our industry and also to give some of our
members general guidelines and direction as to how to tackle this
problem. And that is probably most helpful for our small members. Our
association has members such as Marriott and Hilton and Hyatt, but we
also have franchisees who are small-business men that own one hotel,
and it may be more difficult for them to sort of grapple with these
large issues like human trafficking. And so we issued these principles,
created these trainings, hold webinars, put out press releases to
frequently remind our members big and small of the importance of this
issue.
So we're proud of what we've done in the industry. It's been a
commitment over a long period of time, as was mentioned. Carlson
Hotels, which is one of our major members, was the first signatory to
the ECPAT Code of Conduct. That was way back in 2004, and since then
the other major hotel companies have come onboard as well. And we
continue to seek whatever opportunities we can, as I mentioned, to
raise the issue, to raise awareness, and to get more and more hotel
employees trained.
So thank you and look forward to a discussion. [Applause.]
Ms. Parker. Thank you, Craig.
And, last but not least, we have Nick Shapiro. Nick is the Global
Head of Trust and Risk Management for Airbnb. He was previously the
CIA's deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to CIA Director John
Brennan. Shapiro served on the National Security Council staff, and was
a White House counterterrorism and homeland security aide in the last
administration. Nick?
Mr. Shapiro. Thank you. First, I want to start by thanking you,
Allison, for having Airbnb here and for putting this together.
And thank you so much, Representative Smith, for all of your
leadership on this issue.
It's great to be here with such esteemed colleagues as well, as I'm
already learning things from everyone on the panel. So it's an honor to
be here.
As Allison said, my name's Nick Shapiro. I'm the Global Head of
Trust and Risk Management at Airbnb. Previously, I was the CIA deputy
chief of staff and a senior counterterrorism aide to President Obama on
the NSC.
When I left government about 3 years ago, I had no idea where I
wanted to go or what I wanted to do. I've been to Yemen more times than
I've been to San Francisco and did not know what a tech company was
going to be like. I very quickly learned that I was a little different,
I think, than everyone else. My meetings throughout Silicon Valley, the
meetings I was in with Airbnb, I realized that everyone at Airbnb and
the sharing economy in Silicon Valley were so optimistic--brilliant,
but so optimistic. And I quickly found out that maybe I brought a
healthy counterbalance to the extreme optimism of the sharing economy.
I quickly became the guy no one wanted to invite to meetings--you know,
the buzzkill, the guy who said are you crazy, we can't do that. But
it's become a great partnership, and it's a partnership that works. And
it has to at the scale that we're operating at.
You know, my team is in charge of making sure that the community in
Airbnb is safe. We've had 300 million guest arrivals to date. We've got
close to 5 million listings in 191 countries. That's more than the top
five hotel chains combined. Tonight, there will be 2 million people
staying somewhere in the world in an Airbnb.
Again, we take this extremely seriously. And trafficking is a
scourge that absolutely has to be eradicated. One of the first things
that impressed me about Airbnb, is the commitment the company had to
making sure that we were going to use all of our technological advances
to fight that issue.
So what we put together shortly after I arrived was a five-point
strategy for how we were going to make sure that the problem of
trafficking doesn't become a problem in Airbnb. As the new kid on the
block, we have the ability to leverage the expertise and the learnings
and the experience of those who have been doing this for decades, and
so we tried to put that to use and we developed this five-point
strategy.
The first is partnerships. Again, people have been doing this long
before Airbnb existed and there's so much good work out there, so we
needed to go out there and find that work. So we've worked with the
Blue Campaign, which they do have amazing materials. We've worked with
Thorn. We just signed a partnership with Polaris. And what these orgs
have brought to us is a skill set and an expertise that, frankly, the
company didn't have internally. So we have been almost like a vacuum
cleaner, just sucking up as much as we possibly can to make sure that
we set out this program the right way.
Second--as lots of people have mentioned--trainings, education, and
awareness. We've taken all of the lessons learned, all of the training
materials, and we've implemented programs to teach all of our frontline
employees--our customer service agents, our trust and safety agents--
what they need to look for in order to spot trafficking, as well as
what they can do when they come across a survivor to make sure it's
handled the best way possible.
The third pillar of our strategy is, I think, the most exciting. It
lets us go on offense. It's our technological advantage. You know,
Airbnb is lucky. We sit at the intersection of technology, travel, and
hospitality. We have some of the brightest minds in Silicon Valley.
Every single reservation on Airbnb is scored ahead of time for risk. So
we use machine learning, behavioral analysis, predictive analytics,
instantly evaluating hundreds of different signals, looking to see if
there is anything suspicious about a reservation so we can stop
suspicious behavior before it actually takes place. We can actually
stop the trafficking before it happens in an Airbnb.
We've got 10 years now of address history--or reservation history,
in a sense, so we're able to teach our model more every single day,
what looks different about this reservation. And we learn from Polaris
and from the Blue Campaign, and from everyone else who has done this,
and we feed all of that information into this model, and it has become
an unbelievably successful tool that we're making smarter every single
day.
We use PhotoDNA, you know, and so every single photo, message,
picture on Airbnb gets screened through PhotoDNA and it matches with
NCMEC's CEI--Child Exploitation Imagery Database--to make sure that
there is no CEI on Airbnb, and if it is, it's rooted out. We background
check every single host and guest in the U.S., and every host and guest
all over the world gets screened against financial sanctions and global
terrorist watch lists.
Traffickers have tried to take advantage of the Internet, as we all
know. They use the anonymity of the Internet, but it's a double-edged
sword for them because they need the Internet to also advertise and to
make known where people can go to do this abhorrent act. So that's
where we go. At Airbnb, not only do we do all of this risk scoring and
the background checks that I talked about, but we are screening the
dark web. We are using the sites that prosecutors tell us, that we
learn from the cases that they run against, that our coordination with
law enforcement and intelligence tell us. So we are on those very
sites, and we are looking for those bad actors.
You have to again, you know, advertise in some way, so often there
has to be a contact number, contact information given, an IP address.
Things like that nature we're screening, we're looking for, and if any
of that shows up on Airbnb, again, we can stop it before it actually
happens and really help ensure that Airbnb is a place where this
behavior is not going to be tolerated, and it's not going to continue
to grow.
Fourth is our coordination with law enforcement and intelligence,
and we work with Interpol, work with a lot of my former colleagues
throughout the intelligence community in the world. And we take every
opportunity we can to seek out advice from them on what we can be
looking for. Again, we have these technological advances, we have these
tools that we just need to feed information to, we just need to teach
it the right things to find, and we can make such a great dent in this
problem we think.
Fifth is probably the most fun, to be honest. It is proactive
communication and public engagement. You know, talking about a horrible
issue like trafficking is not what people want when they are going on
Airbnb to plan their adventurous travel or their dream vacation, but we
need to. Not talking about this and hiding it, or sweeping it under the
rug, hoping it doesn't become a problem is not going to do anything
except encourage the problem to grow and to fester. It is not going to
help eradicate it. That's why we don't do that. We talk about this very
hard topic as publicly as possible because I think it's a deterrent. We
want the traffickers to know that we are looking for them, that we are
screening our site for them--kind of, ``it's not going to happen on my
watch'' type thing. We want them to know that we are all over these
dark websites. We are everywhere that they think they're hiding. That's
where we go, and we are looking for them to make sure they don't do
this on Airbnb.
So again, there is so much more work that needs to get done. We are
learning more every day, and we want to learn from the folks who have
been doing this a lot longer than we have. We're excited to learn more.
I'm going to spend more time here tomorrow meeting with a lot of folks
on the Hill and a lot of bosses of the folks in this room, and I'm
looking forward to hearing their suggestions, and looking forward to
get in some time with other folks on the panel, and I'm happy to answer
any questions.
Ms. Parker. Thank you, Nick.
I'd like to open the floor to questions from the audience first.
Any questions burning? If so, we have a mic to your right. Please
identify yourselves. I so appreciate the very practical work each of
you do in fighting trafficking within your specific industries, and
Carol and Nancy, you shared stories of success. Craig, do you have a
success story that you would like to share?
Mr. Kalkut. Sure. We hear them as we talk to our members or travel
around the country, and sometimes they make the news, sometimes they
don't.
One that sticks out in my mind is one that took place in New
Orleans last year, and there was a 12-year-old boy who was with two
older guests, and a hotel employee who had been trained thought
something looked a little wrong, thought it looked off--sort of phrases
you've heard before, and that's often the key. And there are specific
signs that can be taught. We have a lot of them in our training. But
sometimes I think the most important part of the training--sorry, I'm
getting a little off topic here--but sometimes the most important part
of the training is just reminding hotel employees, and airline
employees, and whoever it is that this is a problem, that you can help.
You should help. You have to help. And so when people see something
they know to act. And then when you give them the specific
instructions, then they are even better equipped to act.
And so this hotel employee noticed this young boy with two older
men, something seemed off, and then she heard one of the men say, I
think I'm going to take this one home with me. And so--you know, so the
alarm bells went off, and she went to her manager at the hotel. They
reported it to the police, as it's supposed to work. The police came,
and lo and behold, the boy had been missing for 3 days and was in fact
a victim of sex trafficking. And so because of that hotel employee's
awareness and decision to say something to her boss, this boy was
saved.
I think one of the reasons it stands out in my mind is that,
although this is overwhelmingly a problem for women and girls, there
are men and boys who are victims. And so I think it demonstrates again
the importance of training, importance of being vigilant, and knowing
that you should take action.
Ms. Parker. Question from Representative Smith?
Mr. Smith. I'll just be brief, and then if others would have
questions, please sing out.
Nick Shapiro, I'll just say if you are buzzkill, we need more of
it. [Laughs.] And I thank you for piercing that--you know, it's good to
be optimistic, but we need people who are sober, aggressive, and
realize that this is going on right under our noses, so thank you for
bringing your skill set to bear.
All of you are just tremendous. I would ask Airbnb--you could have
so good of a chilling effect that the traffickers decide to go
elsewhere, which is a good thing as long as elsewhere is also doing a
simultaneous standup of these efforts.
If I could ask you, have you--has this led to any prosecutions, or
do you think it's more of a fact that the bad guys feel, don't go there
because you'll get caught?
I would also ask, if I could--Tracey, how does an Uber driver
actually do it? Do they do it while they are going from one area to
another with their fare, or do they do it as soon as they let that
person off? And how do they do it surreptitiously so that person in the
back doesn't take some retaliatory action? Is there a code? And are
there examples where police responded quickly? Because we all know Uber
is there on the spot. I've been amazed at times when I've been anywhere
in Washington, you contact Uber and they're there. How quickly are the
police there to ascertain whether or not it's a bad situation that
they're involved with?
And I would ask Carol and maybe Nancy Rivard if you could just
speak to what kind of pushback do you get? We know and you know--
because you testified at previous hearings that I had--both of you--
there were some airlines that were unwilling to do it. Yes, American
Airlines was one of them, and now that seems not to be the case. Is
that fear of some kind of legal obligation or vulnerability? Is that
over with? Do they realize, because of the good work of what the Blue
Campaign is doing as well, that they're on the side of the angels and
on protection, and that acquiescence and indifference is really being
on the side of the traffickers? They are obviously the conduit to
getting people from here to there. You could speak to that as well.
You go first, Nick?
Mr. Shapiro. Sure. Thank you, and again, thank you so much for all
the attention that you focus on this issue.
I'd say two things. One, we absolutely don't want to kick the can
down the road. I want to make that crystal clear. You know, we have to
do everything we can to prevent it from happening at Airbnb, but we do
that so we can help eradicate it across the travel and tourism
industry. And that's frankly where we've seen a lot of help from
Polaris. Polaris saw early, I think, in us this risk scoring that we do
and the technological advantages that we throw at this problem. And
they're actually connecting us to Delta, to Marriott, and to other
parts of the travel industry, and are trying to broker how can we use
some of our technological advantage with folks who have been doing this
for so long and can help feed this both ways. So we've been working
closely with Polaris on that.
As for prosecutions, it has led to prosecutions, and one thing I
recall that I think is substantial is there is a specific prosecutor
that's known in trafficking circles in King County. The guy is a
genius. This is like his life's mission. It sounds like people know who
I'm talking about. And we got together and started--realized from my
familiarity in counterterrorism and how we went after terrorists
online, that we should be attacking traffickers the same way. So we've
been starting to develop programs with this prosecutor about how you
can use personas, and you can get on these chat rooms in a way that
really hasn't been done in the trafficking fight. And you can use
incentivizing. You know, he talks a lot about how it is not enough to
just--you know, obviously you can't arrest the survivors--arrest your
way out of the problem just like you can't kill your way out of a
counterterrorism problem. You need to change behavior. And he's doing
some amazing things, working with us, that remind me so much of the
same programs we were doing, and we're helping feed the information and
the technology into him, who again is treating these chat rooms like--
you know, it's going fishing in a sense, and it is picking them off one
by one, it's turning them against each other, and it is changing
behavior.
They've done amazing things like run ads on the platform that you
think, in a sense, are positive in a sense for a trafficker. It entices
them, and then all of a sudden up will come the picture of a little
girl whose father can't go to her birthday party anymore because he's
now a registered sex offender--not because he was the trafficker,
because he was the john. It's changing the behavior of the buyers and
the sellers, and it has been wonderful, as Airbnb, to be a part of that
conversation and to use the expertise that we have from a
counterterrorism perspective, from a law enforcement perspective, from
an intelligence perspective, and from a technological perspective.
Ms. Smolenski. So your question was about pushback from the private
sector. This is something we faced early on in the hotel industry. You
know, as I mentioned, Carlson signed in 2004. It took 7 years for
another big company to sign.
There was a lot of concern early on about liability and also about
being associated with an ugly topic, but we actually, I have to say,
have substantially overcome that, at least in the hospitality industry.
That companies are now proudly talking about the steps that they are
taking--you know, we used to have to be quite careful with companies
about how they were depicting their work, their commitment to The Code
of Conduct, their recognizing that kids were being bought and sold on
their properties. And it was quite a--sort of a diplomatic dance we
did.
They now are very comfortable talking about it because now they
know they are actually putting in place the steps that they have to put
in place, and it's really quite gratifying to see. We don't get
pushback from the hospitality industry so much anymore.
And as for the airline industry, it's actually been a little bit
more difficult. Maybe Nancy can talk about that. While the two big
companies have signed on, the others haven't, and I don't know as much
about what's behind that. It doesn't mean that they are not taking
steps because we have seen that in the hospitality industry. For a long
time, companies kept assuring us they were taking steps but didn't want
to sign The Code, and didn't want to sort of--as we put it--go all the
way. They wanted to sort of tiptoe down it, and now they're starting to
feel more comfortable. And so I am curious, actually, about what Nancy
says about the airline industry.
Ms. Rivard. Well, I think--thank you, Carol. I agree with
everything you've said, and it's beginning to change. I reached out
again to every major airline in the United States, and only one
responded to me, to share with me their success stories--only Delta.
And American signed on--I'm a legacy American Airlines flight
attendant--but they said nothing. They're afraid to step out even
though our survivor, who is an American Airlines flight attendant, is
being highlighted in IATA in Bangkok and in Geneva.
So one idea I had was if the United States would join the
international campaign for human trafficking called the Blue Heart
Campaign, which would coordinate with Blue Campaign, which is just an
easy way for an airline to--maybe they're afraid to develop the
marketing materials, afraid of making a fool of themselves--make it
easy and fun for them to do it. Mira Sorvino, an actress, is the
goodwill ambassador for the Blue Heart Campaign. I think that would be
a way to push them in that direction.
I'm also very excited about working with Airbnb and on the new
technology. We got a standing ovation at the Interpol Conference in
both Albania and Dubai about the encrypted app that we've developed
that goes directly to law enforcement and geo-locates you. And I would
love to coordinate with everybody working on technology--and Uber as
well on that. We're excited to be working with both with Uber and the
hospitality industry in El Salvador and Guatemala next month.
So we still have a ways to go. We have to push these companies to
do the right thing. They're a little nervous still. It's moving, but
slowly.
Mr. McKeown. I'm just going to hop in real quick on the airline
industry. One of the things that we do have at the Blue Campaign is the
Blue Lightning Initiative. And BLI is run by the Custom and Border
Protection unit, and we have been able to highlight and train 70,000
airline personnel in the United States, and this is one of the things
that we have been able to get on there. I do agree that there is still
work to be done in the field, and there is obviously awareness and
education is always a good thing to have, and the more we know, the
better off we are. But we are working within the airline parameters,
and I do know that it's part of federal funding in the FAA
Reauthorization Act that that training is mandated, and we are working
with them.
So I do agree that we have some more work to do, but with that
being said, we have--I know with the Blue Campaign and Blue Lightning,
we've already done around 70,000 personnel.
Ms. Breeden. Yes, to answer your question, how do they do it--well,
there's many ways they do it, but we definitely encourage them safety
first. So a lot of times we'll encourage them to call 911, but it means
separating yourself from the scene and then calling 911. Or again, if
they don't know exactly what's going on, and they just have their
intuition, or they're seeing some of these signs, they could call the
national hotline, and we encourage them to call the national hotline.
And to further answer that question, how do they do it, I'll give you
three examples of how they have done it, because I think these are
great examples, and they showcase other things.
We had an Uber driver in Sacramento, California, who was providing
a trip. Two women--adult women--had ordered a trip to a hotel, and they
were traffickers. And they had a 16-year-old girl sitting in the front
seat of that vehicle. And as he was driving them to the hotel, they
were coaching her about what to do. They were coaching her about how to
take the money from the person who had bought her. And as they got to
the hotel, he let them out at the hotel and he pulled a little bit away
from the hotel and called the police. So you asked about response--
quickly. The police got there, they were able to arrest both of the
traffickers, who had ordered that trip as well as arrest the person who
had purchased that girl. And so that was a quick response. He was
recognized by NCMEC with a courage award--so the other component of
this is that is we need to value and acknowledge those folks who are
doing these things because they are heroes. Those are community heroes.
So NCMEC did a great job of acknowledging and valuing that person,
and we also try to play a part--whatever it may be--in fulfilling a
need, but making sure that we acknowledge and value that driver when
they do intervene in a situation like that.
To give you another example of how they do it, we had a female Uber
driver in Philadelphia, and a trafficker had purchased an airline
flight for a young woman on a national airline, flew her to
Philadelphia where he ordered an Uber to pick her up, and take her to a
national hotel chain to meet the person who had bought her online.
There's three components there, right--three times that there could
have been an intervention. That female Uber driver was able to identify
her as a victim of human trafficking and was able to call police and
provide her aid, as well as help police with making an arrest on the
trafficker who had sent her.
Another example of how they do it is in Phoenix, Arizona, we had an
Uber driver who--he was a retired Marine. He had just lost his job and
just got a divorce. So he started driving for Uber to make some money,
and he was living in a hotel. There was a trafficker also living at
that hotel who approached him and said, are you an Uber driver? And he
said yes. He said, I would like for you to do some transportation for
me and transport some of my girls. And by that--by the information, the
training that they had received--in all three of those cases--he
contacted the police. He contacted the Phoenix police department, and
they were able to use him in a sting, and he cooperated, and he was in
an undercover sting to catch those traffickers and put them behind
bars.
In all three of those cases there were arrests made. So let me tell
you that the other component behind the scenes is we have a law
enforcement outreach team that consists of local and federal retired
police officers who go around the country, as well as around the globe,
and they meet with police departments to educate them on how police can
use our technology as evidence to hold people accountable because that
component is very important, and that's accountability. So it's
important that we work with police, that we help them in not only
having the evidence and the information they need, but to put these
folks behind bars because that's where they belong for doing these type
of things.
So we do have a law enforcement outreach team that also works hand
in hand with those detectives on those investigations and gets them the
information that they need. In the Philadelphia case, they were able to
get the information of somebody who had ordered that trip, or that
girl, and helped identify that trafficker. So that's an important
component of behind the scenes of how they do it, and how we're
supporting law enforcement in making arrests in these cases.
Ms. Smolenski. Can I say one more thing? I just want to pitch
another idea about what to do to deter people from sexually exploiting
children, especially during travel and tourism.
When the first extraterritoriality law was passed in 1994--we
started talking about this--the idea of posting some kind of signage or
alert that it's against the law to exploit a child in every country,
because some people traveling think it's okay if you do it in another
country where they're poorer than us, et cetera. And so we've been
seeking to get signage in U.S. airports in the outgoing areas--where
all of those other warnings are posted--that says something about it's
also against the law to exploit children everywhere, and citing the
law.
So been pitching that idea for a long time, and I'm just pitching
it for this crowd, as well--just something to think about.
Ms. Rivard. Oh, and I wanted to make one more comment real quickly
about private sector. One action that any corporation can take is to
provide jobs for trafficking survivors. You know, the airlines employ
thousands of people that work as reservations agents. They work from
home. These trafficking survivors could easily be trained. And many of
them have children, they could work from home, and this is part of what
they need to get their life back together, so it's an immediate first
step to encourage corporations.
Ms. Parker. Thank you all for your responses to that question. And
we're running out of time, but we've got two questions from the
audience. The first is from Saber Rock.
Questioner. Good evening, everyone. My name is Saber Rock. I work
for Airline Ambassador[s] as a country manager, plus I am subject
matter expert for military forces in Afghanistan.
So I have two questions, one question for Ms. Nancy. Do you have
any connection in Afghanistan? Do you have plan to work for human
trafficking in Afghanistan? Because our military forces in Afghanistan
have a lot of problems for human trafficking there. The Taliban and
ISIS, they are using kids against our military forces, against our U.S.
military forces. They are doing suicide bombings. They are using many
different things. So I brought that message. Please answer that.
And from Uber, Ms. Tracey, a lot of the linguists--and I was the
senior linguist of 10,800 interpreters in Afghanistan while I was
working for General John Allen as a cultural advisor--the question is,
a majority of the Special Immigrant Visa [SIV] interpreter who work for
U.S. Government, they came by SIV to United States. In 50 states we
have 11,000 families of interpreter, and the interpreter, they are--92
percentage of the interpreter, they are driving Uber. Why? Because they
didn't find any job, because they are the green card holder.
Number 2, they're asking every day that why the Uber is not signing
up or hiring us as a[n] employee? Because they can't buy house, they
can't feed their kids, or they can't treat their family in Afghanistan
as well because their family is in danger in Afghanistan. But they
cannot afford that much money that they make from Uber. The living in
the United States is very expensive, you know. They pay more than a
thousand dollars rent per month. Plus, they have----
Ms. Parker. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rock. We're running out of
time.
Questioner. Thank you so much.
Ms. Parker. And the next question?
Questioner. I just have a question for Uber. I think probably all
of us ride Uber, and I've talked to a lot of my Uber drivers and asked
them about trafficking and if they've been trained, and most of them
kind of have a blank stare like, no, how do I do it? And I would like
to know and have everybody know like how do you tell your Uber drivers?
Is there a URL? Or what would they do to encourage Uber drivers to get
the training? Because I think it's optional.
Ms. Breeden. Well, to answer the first question, I'll--to be honest
with you, I don't have a lot of background or knowledge on that. What I
will tell you is that we--we're open to receiving information,
learning, and listening, and open to doing better, wherever that might
be. So I wish I had a better answer for you, but I don't in that space.
To answer your question about training and about education for Uber
drivers, I ask when I get in the vehicle, have you received the
information about human trafficking? Do you know anything about human
trafficking? And I'll find drivers that have not seen it. Or I'll find
drivers that--just like when I was in LA the other day--who told me he
had received it, and he was excited about receiving it, because I love
taking those stories back to my executives, and the people who are
making decisions around this to know that this is meaningful and it
matters.
So it is optional because, you know, our drivers are independent
contractors, so it's very difficult as far as training being required--
that's an employer-employee relationship so it makes it a little
difficult, but we're doing our best, and we're trying to do better in
getting that information out in different ways. So some of the ways
that we're doing it is through the in-app technology and sending
information through the app, and trying to get them to engage and go to
a driver resource page. And we have a driver resource page that lives
24/7 for riders. We have a section where riders can learn more
information, and we try to drive them to that information at times. So
we try to drive them through our in-app technology and using that, as
well, to get them to that place.
And what I can tell you about that, what's really exciting about
that is we've seen four times the engagement than what we've seen with
Uber Ice Cream. So what does that tell me? That tells me that people
want this information, that our drivers want this information. And it's
a good thing to make it available for them.
So we use our in-app technology. We're also trying to use driver
appreciation events to raise awareness around this, so we're partnered
with all the national partners and leaders in this space, and so we
invite them to those driver events, as well as local organizations, as
well as local law enforcement to help us educate our drivers, and try
to bring them to an event where we celebrate them and encourage them to
come in and hear more about it.
And to be honest with you, we're listening and working with our
partners, like how can we do this, thinking outside of the box. How can
we get this information to our drivers through our technology? Because
we have millions of drivers, millions of eyes and ears on the road out
there that can be making impact and creating and making a difference in
this space.
So we're definitely listening, learning, and trying to think of new
ways and innovative ways that we can use our technology, as well as
using the old ways of doing things like inviting people with food, and
inviting people and encouraging them to want to learn more about this,
but we're also using that technology that we have to try to think of
creative ways to get that information to them and get them interested
in it about learning more.
Ms. Rivard. And, Saber, to your question, we know that--well, both
forced child marriage and child terrorism--suicide bombers are being
recruited by the Taliban and ISIS. And we are planning a training in
Kabul Airport. We're the first NGO to move in there and bring this
issue public to empower women and awareness in Afghanistan. So we're
looking forward to working on that with you.
Ms. Parker. We are out of time. Thank you all for being here today,
for sharing with us your expertise, and for what you do every day to
keep our air, our streets, our hotels, our homes free from human
trafficking.
Please join me in thanking everyone here. [Applause.]
If you've missed any part of this briefing, both the video
recording and the transcript will be--and the testimonies will be
available on the Helsinki Commission website. Thank you so much for
joining us today.
[Whereupon, at 4:19 p.m., the briefing was adjourned.]
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