[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY
IN COUNTERING TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
AND OVERSIGHT
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 28, 2020
__________
Serial No. 116-78
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
40-870 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma,
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois Ranking Member
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon MO BROOKS, Alabama
AMI BERA, California, BILL POSEY, Florida
Vice Chair RANDY WEBER, Texas
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas BRIAN BABIN, Texas
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
KENDRA HORN, Oklahoma ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
JERRY McNERNEY, California PETE OLSON, Texas
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
PAUL TONKO, New York MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
BILL FOSTER, Illinois JIM BAIRD, Indiana
DON BEYER, Virginia FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida GREGORY F. MURPHY, North Carolina
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois MIKE GARCIA, California
BEN McADAMS, Utah THOMAS P. TIFFANY, Wisconsin
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania
------
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight
HON. BILL FOSTER, Illinois, Chairman
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina,
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee Ranking Member
DON BEYER, Virginia ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
------
Subcommittee on Research and Technology
HON. HALEY STEVENS, Michigan, Chairwoman
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois JIM BAIRD, Indiana, Ranking Member
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
BRAD SHERMAN, California TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
PAUL TONKO, New York ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
BEN McADAMS, Utah THOMAS P. TIFFANY, Wisconsin
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
C O N T E N T S
July 28, 2020
Page
Hearing Charter.................................................. 2
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Bill Foster, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science, Space,
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 9
Written Statement............................................ 10
Statement by Representative Ralph Norman, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 11
Written Statement............................................ 12
Statement by Representative Haley Stevens, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 12
Written Statement............................................ 13
Statement by Representative Jim Baird, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 14
Written Statement............................................ 15
Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 15
Written statement by Representative Frank D. Lucas, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 16
Witnesses:
Ms. Anjana Rajan, Chief Technology Officer, Polaris
Oral Statement............................................... 17
Written Statement............................................ 19
Mr. Matthew Daggett, Technical Staff, Humanitarian Assistance and
Disaster Relief Systems Group, Lincoln Laboratory,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Oral Statement............................................... 26
Written Statement............................................ 28
Ms. Emily Kennedy, President and Co-Founder, Marinus Analytics
Oral Statement............................................... 46
Written Statement............................................ 48
Ms. Hannah Darnton, Associate Director of Ethics, Technology, and
Human Rights, Business for Social Responsibility
Oral Statement............................................... 52
Written Statement............................................ 55
Discussion....................................................... 75
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Ms. Anjana Rajan, Chief Technology Officer, Polaris.............. 96
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Statement submitted by Kayse Lee Maass, Ph.D., Assistant
Professor of Industrial Engineering & Director of the
Operations Research and Social Justice Laboratory, Northeastern
University..................................................... 100
THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY
IN COUNTERING TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2020
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Investigations
and Oversight,
joint with the Subcommittee
on Research and Technology,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 10:09 a.m.,
via Webex, Hon. Bill Foster [Chairman of the Subcommittee on
Investigations and Oversight] presiding.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Foster. And, without objection, the Chair is
authorized to declare a recess at any time.
But before I deliver my opening remarks, I want to note
the unusual circumstances under which we're meeting today.
Pursuant to House Resolution 965, today, the Subcommittee is
meeting virtually. Both of them are meeting virtually. And I
want to announce a couple of reminders to the Members about the
conduct of this remote hearing. First, Members should keep
their video feed on for as long as they are present in the
hearing. Members are responsible for muting and unmuting their
own microphones, so please keep your microphones muted or
unmuted, as appropriate.
Finally, if Members have documents that they wish to
submit for the record, please email them to the Committee
Clerk, whose email address was circulated prior to the hearing.
And so with that, good morning, and welcome to today's
remote hearing entitled ``The Role of Technology in Countering
Trafficking in Persons.'' This is a joint Subcommittee hearing
between the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee and the
Research and Technology Subcommittee, and I'm so pleased to
welcome Chairwoman Stevens and Ranking Member Norman and
Representative Baird, as well as our colleagues.
Representative Baird and I represent the entire supply of
Ph.D. scientists in the U.S. Congress, which is a fact I seldom
miss an opportunity to point out to this Committee. But I am
also the son of a civil rights lawyer. My father wrote much of
the enforcement language behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
My dad knew Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and many of
the early heroes of the civil rights movement, and Dad had
dinner at the kitchen table with Myrlie and Medgar Evers just 6
weeks before Medgar Evers was shot down in his driveway.
John Lewis, who we're all mourning this week, used to sit
with me between votes in the House and where John would tell me
more about all of the stories of the early civil rights
movement that I'd grown up listening to from my father.
My dad was also a scientist, but he stepped away from his
career in science because he saw civil rights as the great
moral challenge of his generation. Certainly, stopping human
trafficking and modern-day slavery is one of the great moral
challenges of today, and we must bring every tool that we have
to that fight.
So, as we prepare to mark the annual World Day Against
Trafficking in Persons on July 30, I can think of no better
time to shine a light on the tragic persistence of human
trafficking and explore the new technologies that will assist
our efforts to defeat this scourge once and for all.
Trafficking in persons is a complex problem in the United
States and around the world. We need to develop better tools to
disrupt criminal networks, to bring the perpetrators to
justice, and to support the victims of human trafficking. This
hearing is an opportunity to learn about new research and novel
technologies and to consider how America can better integrate
these assets into the fight against human trafficking.
And let's be clear. Technology is frequently misused to
facilitate human trafficking in persons. It provides new
opportunities for traffickers to target potential victims,
conduct anonymous and illicit financial transactions, and
expand their criminal markets. Yet despite its obvious
challenges, technology is also an important asset for those
involved in combatting trafficking in persons. Its positive use
can aid investigations, enhance prosecutions, raise awareness,
provide services to victims, and shed new light on how
trafficking networks operate.
With this in mind, our ability to counter trafficking in
persons largely depends on how we harness this technology in
our efforts. We know there's a lot of good work happening to
combat human trafficking, but there also seems to be a lot of
opportunity to elevate the role of Federal research and
development (R&D) in increasing collaboration between the
agencies.
The National Science Foundation (NSF), the National
Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of
Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, the
Department of Transportation's R&D programs, and others can all
contribute to the goals of prevention and disruption of this
crime. And we have at our disposal a wide range of tools that
could be used to support antitrafficking efforts, including
artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. For example,
AI can help make predictions, recommendations, and decisions to
identify financial transactions that may be indicative of human
trafficking networks.
I'm looking forward to hearing from today's panel of
witnesses because they bring real-world experience to the
table, and can recommend ways that we on the Science Committee
can support efforts to meet challenges with cutting-edge
technology. This hearing is a great opportunity to think
outside the box when it comes to research and technology that
can address many of the causes and consequences of human
trafficking.
The more obvious examples are technologies that can aid
law enforcement in identifying potential perpetrators and
victims. But beyond that, there are analysis tools that can
comb through the dark web for illicit transactions; blockchain
analytics that can help companies and the government track
their supply chains and identify vulnerabilities that increase
the risk of human trafficking; and there's an acute need for
social science research to assess the medical, emotional, and
material needs of victims and ensure that they are connected to
the resources that can help them as they reenter society.
So thank you to all our witnesses for appearing today and
for the work that you do. Your expertise is invaluable as we
consider how the Science Committee's oversight and legislative
powers can help in the fight against human trafficking.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Foster follows:]
Good morning, and welcome to today's remote hearing
entitled ``The Role of Technology in Countering Trafficking in
Persons.'' This is a joint Subcommittee hearing between the
Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee and the Research and
Technology Subcommittee, and I'm so pleased to welcome
Chairwoman Stevens and Ranking Members Norman and Baird, as
well as all of our colleagues. As we prepare to mark the annual
World Day Against Trafficking in Persons on July 30, I can
think of no better time to shine a light on the tragic
persistence of human trafficking and explore the new
technologies that will assist our efforts to defeat this
scourge once and for all. Trafficking in persons is a complex
problem, in the United States and around the world. We need to
develop better tools to disrupt criminal networks, bring the
perpetrators to justice, and support the victims of human
trafficking. This hearing is an opportunity to learn about new
research and novel technologies, and to consider how America
can better integrate those assets into the fight against human
trafficking.
Let's be clear--technology is frequently misused to
facilitate trafficking in persons. It provides new
opportunities for traffickers to target potential victims,
conduct anonymous and illicit financial transactions, and
expand their criminal markets. Yet despite its obvious
challenges, technology is also an important asset for those
involved in combatting trafficking in persons. Its positive use
can aid investigations, enhance prosecutions, raise awareness,
provide services to victims, and shed new light on how
trafficking networks operate. With this in mind, our ability to
counter trafficking in persons largely depends on how we
harness technology in our efforts.
We know that there is a lot of good work happening to
combat human trafficking, but there also seems to be a lot of
opportunity to elevate the role of the Federal research and
development enterprise and increase collaboration between the
agencies. The National Science Foundation, the National
Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of
Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, the
Department of Transportation R&D programs, and others can all
contribute to the goals of prevention and disruption of this
crime.
We have at our disposal a wide range of tools that could be
used to support anti-trafficking efforts, including through
artificial intelligence and machine learning. For example, AI
can help make predictions, recommendations, or decisions to
identify financial transactions that may be indicative of human
trafficking networks. I'm looking forward to hearing from
today's panel of witnesses because they bring real-world
experience to the table, and can recommend ways that we on the
Science Committee can support efforts to meet challenges with
cutting-edge technology.
This hearing is a great opportunity to think outside the
box when it comes to research and technology that can address
the many causes and consequences of human trafficking. The more
obvious examples are technologies that can aid law enforcement
in identifying potential perpetrators and victims. Beyond that,
there are analysis tools that can comb through the dark web for
illicit transactions; blockchain can help companies track their
supply chains and identify vulnerabilities that increase the
risk of human trafficking; and there's an acute need for social
science research to assess the medical, emotional, and material
needs of victims and ensure they are connected to resources
that can help them as they reenter society.
Thank you to our witnesses for appearing today. Your
expertise will be invaluable as we consider how the Science
Committee's oversight and legislative powers can help in the
fight against human trafficking.
Chairman Foster. And the Chair now recognizes Ranking
Member Norman for an opening statement.
Mr. Norman. Thank you, Chairman Foster, and Chairwoman
Stevens. And I want to thank our witnesses for taking the time
to participate in this joint Subcommittee hearing on this sad
but real issue, problem that we have going on in America. I'm
looking forward to learning more from our expert witnesses
about how technology is being leveraged to combat human
trafficking and what tools are needed to tackle it.
Human trafficking is a heinous crime that unfortunately
impacts all countries. Experts estimate that there are
approximately 25 million victims of human trafficking around
the world, many at very young ages, generates roughly $150
billion in illegal profits annually for criminal organizations,
terrorists, and rogue nations.
The internet makes it easy for traffickers to exploit
victims online and abuse technology to advance their criminal
enterprises. On the other hand, technology can also be used for
prevention, prosecution, and the protection of victims and the
survivors.
The United States is leading the charge to eradicate human
trafficking. The Trump Administration has made it a priority to
confront human trafficking head on using available resources to
end this horrendous crime once and for all. In 2018, President
Trump became the first sitting President to attend a meeting of
the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking in Persons since it was created in 2000. The
President's recent Executive Order on Combating Human
Trafficking and Online Child Exploitation in the United States
establishes a comprehensive and coordinated response to
preventing and countering human trafficking on United States
soil.
It is imperative that we do not turn a blind eye to human
trafficking in our own communities and work together to address
and end this crime for good. I again want to thank the
witnesses for taking the time to share your expertise with us
today. I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Norman follows:]
Thank you, Chairman Foster, and Chairwoman Stevens. And
thank you to our witnesses for your participation today in this
joint subcommittee hearing.
I am looking forward to learning from our expert witnesses
about how technology is being leveraged to combat human
trafficking and what tools are needed to tackle it.
Human trafficking is a heinous crime that unfortunately
impacts all countries. Experts estimate that there are
approximately 25 million victims of human trafficking around
the world, generating roughly $150 billion in illegal profits
annually for criminal organizations, terrorists, and rogue
nations.
The Internet makes it easy for traffickers to exploit
victims online and abuse technology to advance their criminal
enterprises. On the other hand, technology can also be used for
prevention, prosecution, and the protection of victims and
survivors.
The United States is leading the charge to eradicate human
trafficking. The Trump Administration has made it a priority to
confront human trafficking head on using available resources to
end this horrendous crime once and for all. In 2018, President
Trump became the first sitting president to attend a meeting of
the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking in Persons since it was created in 2000.
The President's recent Executive Order on Combating Human
Trafficking and Online Child Exploitation in the United States
establishes a comprehensive and coordinated response to
preventing and countering human trafficking on U.S. soil.
It is imperative that we do not turn a blind eye to human
trafficking in our own communities and work together to address
and end this crime for good. I again want to thank the
witnesses for taking the time to share your expertise with us
today. I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And the Chair now recognizes
Chairwoman Stevens for an opening statement.
Ms. Stevens. Well, good morning and let me say we are all
ears as we examine the role of science and technology (S&T) in
combatting human trafficking. I am very eager to hear the
testimony and responses to our questions from this very
distinguished panel, particularly as we reflect on World Day
Against Trafficking in Persons later this week.
The perpetrators of human trafficking exploit the most
vulnerable for profit. They often charm or befriend victims,
mostly the young and those in desperate circumstances, by
offering a place to live, money, or attention. Then they use
force, fraud, and coercion to strip them of their freedom. In
my home State of Michigan, we have had the 11th highest call
volume in the National Human Trafficking Hotline. I have
personally attended many symposiums and dialogs on this issue
in my home district. Particularly in Oakland County, the Human
Trafficking Task Force serves as a resource for victims and
their advocates and parents, professionals, and others.
National and international antitrafficking efforts have helped
rescue countless survivors of sexual exploitation and forced
labor.
Unfortunately, trafficking statistics are increasing
despite these efforts for the past 20 years. And COVID-19 has
only rededicated these illicit activities toward more cyber-
enabled exploitation, especially the sexual exploitation of
minors. This is a $150 billion enterprise in part because it is
low risk and high reward for the perpetrators. We simply lack
the tools to disrupt human trafficking at scale, which is what
we are here today to discuss, explore, and try to solve.
However, increased and focused investments in science,
technology, and collaboration enable us to achieve significant
progress in our antitrafficking efforts. We do not have
standardized and interoperable data sets to understand and
measure the prevalence of human trafficking and not having
identifiable metrics for measuring effectiveness of
interventions. But increased collaboration among organizations
collecting various types of data and tools such as machine
learning can help us overcome these challenges.
I'm calling today on our National Science Foundation, the
Department of Transportation, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, all agencies that fall under our
jurisdiction on the Research and Technology Subcommittee to
utilize their resources, to develop tracking, standards, detect
patterns, and develop data analytics to combat the existence of
human trafficking at a national and global level.
We have a lot of work to do, and I am very proud to be
here with all of you today on this topic. Let's get something
done. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Stevens follows:]
Good morning and welcome to this hearing to examine the
role of science and technology in combatting human trafficking.
I look forward to hearing testimony from our distinguished
panel of witnesses on this critical issue, especially as we
prepare to reflect on World Day Against Trafficking in Persons
later this week.
The perpetrators of this crime exploit the most vulnerable
for profit. They often charm or befriend victims, mostly the
young and those in desperate circumstances, by offering a place
to live, money or attention. Then they use force, fraud, and
coercion to strip them of their freedom. In my home state of
Michigan, we have the 11th highest call volume to the National
Human Trafficking Hotline. In my own district, the Oakland
County Human Trafficking Task Force serves as a resource for
victims and their advocates and parents, professionals, and
others.
National and international anti-trafficking efforts have
helped rescue many survivors of sexual exploitation and forced
labor. Unfortunately, trafficking statistics are increasing
despite these efforts for the past 20 years. And COVID-19 has
only re-directed these illicit activities toward more cyber-
enabled exploitation, especially the sexual exploitation of
minors. This is a $150 billion enterprise in part because it is
low risk and high reward for the perpetrators. We simply lack
the tools to disrupt human trafficking at scale.
However, increased and focused investments in science,
technology, and collaboration may enable us to achieve
significant progress in our anti-trafficking efforts. We do not
have standardized and interoperable data sets to understand and
measure the prevalence of human trafficking and not having
identifiable metrics for measuring effectiveness of
interventions. But increased collaboration among organizations
collecting various types of data and tools such as machine
learning can help us overcome these challenges. I am calling on
the National Science Foundation, the Department of
Transportation, the National Institute of Standards and
Technology and other federal research agencies to utilize their
resources to develop tracking, standards, detect patterns, and
develop data analytics to combat the existence of human
trafficking at a national and a global level.
We have a lot of work to do and I look forward to today's
discussion.
Thank you and I yield back.
Chairman Foster. Well, thank you. And the Chair will now
recognize Ranking Member Baird for an opening statement.
Mr. Baird. Well, thank you, Chairman Foster and
Chairwoman Stevens, for convening this hearing to examine the
role of science and technology in disrupting this horrendous
trade of human trafficking. It's good to see my colleague
Ranking Member Norman, and I do want to thank all the witnesses
for being here today and sharing their expertise. Many of my
remarks, Mr. Chairman, are going to be very similar to some of
those that have already been made, but I think that kind of
demonstrates how significant this problem is and how important
it is that we utilize all of our experience and the experience
of the witnesses here today to try to counteract this problem.
You know, and someone already mentioned there's 25 million
people worldwide are exploited and subjected to forced labor
through human trafficking every year. To say human trafficking
is a monumental challenge, I think, would be an understatement.
It's a challenge that requires a global response. It requires
international coordination and engagement between government,
industry, non-profit organizations, and academia. We have such
a capability in our world today to move internationally and
move these kinds of situations internationally, and so I do
think it takes the international coordination and engagement.
As they've already been mentioned, this is the 20th
anniversary of the signing of the United Nation's Trafficking
in Persons Protocol and the enactment of the United States
Trafficking Victims Protection Act. And over these 20 years,
public awareness of human traffic has grown substantially.
Reporting and detection of trafficking is also up globally.
This anniversary is the opportunity to recognize the progress
that has been made, but it's also a chance for us to take a
look at the future to examine and accelerate the new tools to
prevent, combat, and end human trafficking over the next 20
years.
It's amazing to me when we think about the advancements in
technology in the last 20 years, these last two decades, so
being able to utilize that technology, it has been an
enhancement for traffickers. It makes it easier for them, but
it also may serve as a tremendous tool for us to have
counterefforts to prevent this kind of thing from taking place.
Today, we see NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and
governments and industry using technology to protect victims,
to stop the traffickers, and prevent trafficking by identifying
and dismantling the systems that allow them to operate. We're
lucky to have the experts in these fields with us today as our
witnesses.
I would like to applaud the work of the Trump
Administration in strengthening the Federal responsiveness to
human trafficking and encouraging increased collaboration from
government, industry, and law enforcement.
Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention how the
COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the need for all stakeholders
to work together in this fight. We know persons who are
targeted by traffickers tend to be the most vulnerable.
Isolation and the closure of critical services caused by the
pandemic means the number of vulnerable people susceptible to
exploitation by traffickers is rapidly growing.
So I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today on
how their organizations are utilizing research and technology
to stem this tide and strengthen efforts to combat human
trafficking. Thank you all for taking your time to be here with
us this morning, and I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Baird follows:]
Thank you, Chairman Foster and Chairwoman Stevens, for
convening today's hearing to examine the role of science and
technology in disrupting the horrendous trade of human
trafficking.
Nearly 25 million people worldwide are exploited and
subjected to forced labor through human trafficking every year.
To say human trafficking is a monumental challenge would be an
understatement. It is a challenge that requires a global
response. It requires international coordination and engagement
between government, industry, non-profit organizations, and
academia.
This year is the 20th anniversary of the signing of the
United Nation's Trafficking in Persons Protocol and the
enactment of the United States Trafficking Victims Protection
Act. Over the last 20 years, public awareness of human
trafficking has grown substantially. Reporting and detection of
trafficking is also up globally. This anniversary is an
opportunity to recognize the progress that's been made. But it
is also a chance for us to look to the future to examine and
accelerate new tools to prevent, combat, and end human
trafficking over the next 20 years.
Technology will play a critical role in combatting human
trafficking in the future. Although technology can be a tool in
the hands of the trafficker, it can also be a key tool in our
efforts to combat trafficking. Today, we see NGOs, governments
and industry using technology to protect victims, stop
traffickers, and prevent trafficking by identifying and
dismantling the systems that allow them to operate. We are
lucky to have experts in these fields with us today as our
witnesses.
I would also like to applaud the work of the Trump
Administration in strengthening the Federal responsiveness to
human trafficking and encouraging increased collaboration from
government, industry, and law enforcement.
Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention how the
COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the need for all stakeholders
to work together in this fight. We know persons who are
targeted by traffickers tend to be the most vulnerable.
Isolation and the closure of critical services caused by the
pandemic means the number of vulnerable people susceptible to
exploitation by traffickers is rapidly growing.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today on how
their organizations are utilizing research and technology to
stem this tide and strengthen efforts to combat human
trafficking. Thank you all for taking your time to be here with
us this morning and I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And if there are any Members
who wish to submit additional opening statements, your
statements will be added to the record at this point.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]
I want to thank Chairman Foster and Chairwoman Stevens for
holding this important hearing, and I want to thank our
witnesses for joining us here today. As many of you know, July
30th is the U.N. World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. It
is thus very timely for the Science, Space, and Technology
Committee to convene a hearing to discuss how research and
technology can be leveraged to help address the horrific
problem of human trafficking.
The Federal government can and should do more to invest in
research and technology to deal with the many facets of the
causes and consequences of human trafficking. Earlier this
year, the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system received funding to
help identify and adopt specific measures to address human
trafficking. In order to ensure such money is being used to
implement science driven, effective approaches to reducing
trafficking, we must invest in the promising work being done by
scientists across the country. From analyzing illicit online
activity, to identifying potential victims and perpetrators of
human trafficking, to understanding and addressing the needs of
victims as they reenter society, the research community has
much to contribute to this important fight.
As we battle a worldwide pandemic, we must not forget about
the perennial problem of human trafficking, which touches every
country and every state. I look forward to hearing from our
witnesses about how this Committee and this Congress can
support the research community's important work.
Thank you, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]
Human trafficking is a global problem, causing untold
suffering and pain. And while it often remains an unseen
problem, the truth is that it is far more widespread and
destructive than it may seem.
Emerging and evolving technologies can help us fight this
plague, though. One of the reasons I enjoy serving on the
Science Committee is our ability to focus on solutions to some
of the greatest challenges we face.
Trafficking in people is a complex problem and fighting it
requires work on many fronts, from deterrence to detection and
from enforcement to survivor support. The encouraging news is
that advances in technology give us new tools at every step of
this process.
Using AI to perform big data analysis can help us identify
patterns of trafficking-a task far too time-consuming for human
agents to perform. AI tools can comb through websites to find
advertisements for trafficked people. Photo recognition
software can help agents identify where victims are being held
by analyzing photos for similarities to known locations.
Similarly, facial recognition software can identify
similarities between photos of trafficked people and missing
person notices. Because of machine learning, the more these
tools are used, the better they become.
This is just a small sampling of technological
interventions we can employ to fight trafficking, and our
witnesses will share many more today.
The President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons is committed to ending human
trafficking and supporting survivors of this modern-day
slavery.
As Members of the Science Committee, we can help focus and
enhance the technological tools available to the federal
government in this effort.
This is one more area in which investing in basic research
can produce exceptional dividends. Strategic investment in the
fundamental knowledge needed to advance technologies like AI
and big data analysis will pay off in discoveries and
innovations that law enforcement, private industry, and non-
governmental organizations can use to coordinate and improve
their efforts to fight trafficking in persons.
It's one of thousands of applications that will benefit
from technological advancements, and it is one more reason I've
proposed doubling our national investment in basic research in
the Securing American Leadership in Science and Technology Act.
I hope that our Committee can work together to support the
technology needed to end human trafficking.
Chairman Foster. At this time, I'd like to introduce our
witnesses. Our first witness is Ms. Anjana Rajan. Ms. Rajan is
the Chief Technology Officer of Polaris, an NGO that uses data-
driven strategies to disrupt and prevent human trafficking and
modern slavery. Prior to her role at Polaris, Ms. Rajan was the
former Chief Technology Officer of Callisto, a nonprofit that
builds cryptographically advanced technology to combat sexual
assault and a Tech Policy Fellow at the Aspen Institute.
After Ms. Rajan is Mr. Matthew Daggett. Mr. Daggett is a
member of the Technical Staff of the Humanitarian Assistance
and Disaster Relief Systems Group at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's (MIT'S) Lincoln Laboratory, where
he's worked since 2005. Mr. Daggett's current research focuses
on developing analytic technologies and systems for the study
of dark and illicit social networks such as human trafficking
operations.
Our third witness is Ms. Emily Kennedy. Ms. Kennedy is the
President and Co-Founder of Marinus Analytics, which was
founded in 2014. Ms. Kennedy has led Marinus Analytics national
and international social impact efforts, product deployment,
and partnerships expansion. Marinus Analytics is a semifinalist
in the global IBM Watson AI XPRIZE competition.
Our final witness is Ms. Hannah Darnton. Ms. Darnton is an
Associate Director of Ethics, Technology, and Human Rights at
Business for Social Responsibility. Ms. Darnton focuses on the
intersection of human rights and new disruptive technology and
leads the Tech Against Trafficking Collaborative Initiative.
Prior to her position at Business for Social Responsibility,
Ms. Darnton worked with the Skoll Foundation.
And, as our witnesses should know, you will each have 5
minutes for your spoken testimony. Your entire written
testimony will be included in the record of the hearing. And
when you've all completed your spoken testimony, we will begin
with questions. Each Member will have 5 minutes to question the
panel.
And we will now start with Ms. Rajan. You are recognized
for 5 minutes.
TESTIMONY OF MS. ANJANA RAJAN,
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, POLARIS
Ms. Rajan. Thank you, Chairman Foster, Ranking Member
Norman, Chairwoman Stevens, Ranking Member Baird, and Members
of the Subcommittees, for having me here today. My name is
Anjana Rajan, and I'm the Chief Technology Officer of Polaris.
Polaris's mission is to eradicate human trafficking and
restore freedom to survivors. We do this in two main ways.
First, we provide immediate response to victims and survivors
of human trafficking through our technical operation of the
National Human Trafficking Hotline. Second, we take the 13
years of data and insight from the hotline to make long-term
systems change. We tackle the underlying systems that enable
sex and labor trafficking, and we work with financial
institutions to make trafficking less profitable and higher
risk. Survivors' perspectives inform all of our work.
At its core, human trafficking is the business of
exploiting people for profit. It is a $150-billion-a-year
criminal industry with 25 million victims worldwide. Fighting
human trafficking must focus on the broader systems that make
people vulnerable to sex and labor trafficking, and technology
should be part of an overall strategy to drive change at the
systems level.
Human trafficking is about people with power exploiting
and controlling vulnerable people for their own profit.
Survivors tell us that restoring their sense of control,
including choosing when law enforcement intervenes, is
paramount to their healing. Technology should not only enable
law enforcement to identify traffickers, it should also be used
to put power back in the hands of victims and survivors.
To pass meaningful and effective legislation, it is
imperative for legislators to fully understand how these
technologies work. One of the technologies that has recently
been discussed in this space is encryption. Since my background
and expertise are in applying cryptography to human rights and
national security issues, I would like to focus my testimony on
the importance of encryption in fighting human trafficking.
In the public debate around encryption, we often only see
two sides represented, one side that says we should identify
and apprehend perpetrators at all costs even if that means we
break encryption to do it, and the other side that says we
should protect encryption at all costs even if that means
victims and survivors get hurt. This is a false dichotomy.
There is a third way that can optimize for both virtues because
encryption protects victims and survivors. In fact, we can hold
perpetrators and the platforms that enable them accountable for
their abuse and exploitation using advanced cryptography, but
doing so will require innovative thinking and an accurate
understanding of how these technologies work.
The threats victims and survivors face are very dangerous,
uniquely complex, and highly dynamic. They face prolonged
control and manipulation from traffickers and organized crime
networks. They face physical, psychological, and sexual
violence. They face intimidation from conspiracy theorists who
weaponize disinformation about human trafficking. They may even
face threats from law enforcement agencies who arrest them
instead of helping them find freedom.
To honor the exploratory nature of this Committee hearing,
I am proposing three possible ideas on how encryption could be
used help fight human trafficking and support victims and
survivors.
First, victims and survivors need safe trauma-informed
reporting channels. Cryptographic reporting escrows are
examples of systems where they can learn about their options
and have the power to take action that is best for them. The
underlying technology pinning these escrows is called secure
multiparty computation.
Second, human trafficking is inherently a commercial
enterprise. Financial system intervention in human trafficking
has the potential to increase the risk for traffickers and
reduce a community's vulnerability to trafficking. Homomorphic
encryption could allow human trafficking researchers to run
analytical functions directly on a financial institution's
encrypted data without ever seeing the sensitive plaintext.
And third, since human traffickers have eagerly adopted
the use of cryptocurrencies, law enforcement could leverage the
fact that these transactions are permanently stored on a public
decentralized blockchain ledger. With known wallet addresses
and their corresponding public transactions, law enforcement
agencies can build an open source data set of human trafficking
buyers and sellers and ultimately map out the entire network of
a human trafficking ring.
In conclusion, human trafficking is a complex problem that
requires nuanced solutions. It is the result of social, policy,
and market failures. Technology at its best can help rebalance
power. However, it is not a panacea. The unchecked use of
advanced technologies have the potential to suppress freedom
rather than restore freedom to survivors. We need to design and
deploy technology with the best interest of victims and
survivors at the center.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I'm happy to
answer any questions you may have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Rajan follows:]
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Chairman Foster. Thank you. And next is Mr. Daggett.
TESTIMONY OF MR. MATTHEW DAGGETT,
TECHNICAL STAFF, HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE
AND DISASTER RELIEF SYSTEMS GROUP,
LINCOLN LABORATORY,
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Mr. Daggett. Good morning, Chairman Stevens, Ranking
Member Baird, Chairman Foster, Ranking Member Norman, and
Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the honor and the
privilege of joining you today to represent the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory and discuss with
you some of our research and recommendations toward improving
the role of technology in countering human trafficking.
MIT Lincoln Laboratory researches and develops a broad
array of advanced technologies to meet critical U.S. Government
national security needs. One of our core areas of research
involves developing technologies for global humanitarian
assistance and disaster relief, and as part of that initiative,
we are building novel technologies and systems to counter human
trafficking. In that role, we're leveraging advances in data
science, machine learning, and related fields to develop
enhanced digital evidence analysis capabilities and
collaborations with Federal and State agencies to reduce the
time and human-intensive nature of trafficking investigations
and prosecutions. We also developed a human trafficking
technology roadmap for the Federal Government consisting of
targeted findings and recommendations sequenced into a
prioritized and phased implementation strategy.
I hope that my testimony today will provide a unique
perspective on the challenges and opportunities of current
research and technology for combating human trafficking, and
the following recommendations, which are detailed in my written
testimony, may help inform actionable policy initiatives.
First, the most urgent need for applying technology to
counter human trafficking is substantially increasing Federal
funding for research and development, R&D efforts. Today,
several agencies fund primarily academic research and studies,
and more funding is greatly needed for prototyping and
development of new technology. Comparatively, Federal R&D
budgets that counter other types of illicit and organized crime
such as narcotics smuggling and counterterrorism are several
times greater than those for human trafficking. This scarcity
of funding in size and in frequency limits the establishment of
a community of engineers, scientists, and technologists who
understand the human trafficking domain and can become
practitioners in developing needed solutions.
Second, we need to establish an interagency R&D entity
specifically for human trafficking and fundamentally rethink
how we approach R&D initiatives. Today, point solutions are
solicited, funded, and developed within individual agencies and
are often not coordinated across interagency operations and
result in more limited impacts than if developed in concert
with other initiatives as part of a broader research strategy
and vision. And an interagency structure specifically for R&D
that is focused on and empowered to take risks could
revolutionize the funding, development, operationalization of
technology, while improving collaboration and reducing
duplication of effort.
Third, we must enhance our R&D agility in technology
transition. Often, technology is not fully informed by and
developed in concert with the operations they seek to impact
and fail to be adopted by practitioners once mature. Agencies
should adopt a user-centered paradigm where operators are joint
stakeholders at every stage of the R&D process. User-centered
methods enable technology to adapt to the mission much more
quickly and the mission to evolve with continual advances in
the technology resulting in increased agility, improved
adoption, and enhanced operations. Additionally, we must
transition capabilities to our State and local partners, as
those agencies need new technology the most and have
significant opportunities for impact.
Fourth, we need to cross-leverage government technology
delivered within one mission that has a direct impact--
application or could be modified for a different mission area.
For example, Department of Defense capabilities to characterize
and interdict terrorist networks have strong corollaries to
human trafficking networks. To increase opportunities for
cross-leverage, the government could establish and elicit a
network technology working group to create a conduit for shared
research and technical capabilities across agencies.
Fifth, we need to measure--develop measures of
effectiveness and assess our impacts. A key component of a
coordinated R&D strategy is a process to measure progress
against an objective. And while Federal and State agencies
track performance statistics such as individuals prosecuted or
victims provided with a service, no measure of merit exists to
assess the effectiveness of the collective government response
to human trafficking. In order to frame such numbers, we need
national levels of models of vulnerability, prevalence, and
demand estimation. Measures of performance and effectiveness
need to be developed alongside research initiatives so that
they can impact these investments, and the resultant
capabilities can assist.
Six, we need to address the existing technology gaps
today, including developing capabilities to automate time-
consuming analytical tasks and reduce workloads for
investigators and prosecutors; enhancing financial
telecommunication and forensics device evidence analysis;
establishing repositories of tools, evidence templates, and
trafficking signatures to be shared among organizations;
improving the standardization, completeness, and consistency of
trafficking data collection; and establishing incentive
mechanisms to greater enable data-sharing.
Human trafficking is a challenging and pervasive problem
that necessitates broad action and bold ideas. Thoughtfully
designed technology can empower the collective human
trafficking community to disrupt these illicit operations.
Increased R&D holds the potential to make a tremendous impact
by accelerating justice and hastening the healing of victims.
I want to thank you for your interest in this pressing
issue and for the opportunity to speak with you today. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Daggett follows:]
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Chairman Foster. Thank you. And next is Ms. Kennedy, now
recognized for 5 minutes.
TESTIMONY OF MS. EMILY KENNEDY,
PRESIDENT AND CO-FOUNDER, MARINUS ANALYTICS
Ms. Kennedy. Chairman Foster, Chairwoman Stevens, Ranking
Members Norman and Baird, and Members of the Subcommittees,
thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to
discuss the role of artificial intelligence in fighting human
trafficking. My name is Emily Kennedy, and I am President and
Co-Founder of Marinus Analytics.
Sex trafficking is rape for profit, and it's one of the
most egregious crimes of our time. I first encountered human
trafficking when traveling through Eastern Europe as a
teenager, and I knew that I had to spend my life doing
something about it.
What started as my student project in Carnegie Mellon
University robotics resulted in a tool that has helped identify
an estimated 6,800 victims of sex trafficking just in the last
2 years. My company Marinus Analytics develops AI for social
impact. Our flagship software Traffic Jam is an AI-based
investigative tool used by law enforcement across the United
States, Canada, and the U.K. to identify sex trafficking
victims and dismantle organized criminal networks. It's also
used by nonprofits like the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children (NCMEC), which uses Traffic Jam to process
the approximately 10,000 child sex trafficking reports they
receive every year.
Traffic Jam looks at data across publicly available online
classified ads like the ones as notorious as Backpage.com where
their victims are advertised. We see millions of data points
weekly here in the United States. This activity is far too
extensive for investigators to process manually, and it makes
it easier for traffickers to stay hidden in the data.
Traffic Jam leverages AI to find patterns that aid in
victim recovery and help reveal massive organized criminal
networks. For example, the tool can identify trafficking rings
operating across cities and States and help prioritize leads
for critical resource planning.
Traffic Jam helps narrow the scope of relevant information
to an amount that is manually digestible. It brings to light
the most potentially actionable leads for an investigation, and
it often cuts down investigative time from months to days for a
fraction of the cost of a full-time equivalent.
In addition to helping find missing kids, we also identify
organized crime groups exploiting dozens or even hundreds of
victims. As a result of one of the leads that we generated, an
organized crime ring was indicted in early 2019 for trafficking
Chinese foreign nationals for sex in 12 U.S. cities and
Toronto. The sting operation successfully took down nearly 500
website domains and computer systems that logged more than
30,000 customer phone numbers.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the economic risk for
already-vulnerable persons to fall into human trafficking. We
saw at most about a 20 percent drop in activity over the first
half of this year, and activity has since grown back to near
normal levels. This could suggest new entrants into this space
despite increased physical risks, and it could also suggest an
increased reliance on digital forms of commercial sex.
Traffic Jam provides reports that highlight recent
potentially vulnerable entrants into commercial sex during the
lockdown, and by pairing this with victim-centered training, we
help promote safeguarding during the pandemic.
There are also frequent upheavals in the online space.
When Backpage.com was shut down, illicit activity rapidly
shifted to a variety of smaller websites. But within 6 months,
we saw the total activity on these websites surpass the volume
on Backpage in the month before the shutdown. Many
investigators had cases whose online presence went cold when
they couldn't easily go to Backpage to find new activity, but
we were able to quickly help them navigate this new
environment.
And recently, we have seen new challenges in a flood of
phishing and cyber fraud online. Money made from these schemes,
in addition to money laundering of sex trafficking proceeds
often fund organized crime. More research and development are
needed here to identify and combat the funding channels
sustaining organized crime groups.
All of this would not have been possible without the
support of the National Science Foundation, who believed in our
mission of AI for social good. The NSF bridges the crucial gap
between scientific research and operational impacts. We
participated in the NSF I-Corps program before receiving
funding and found it invaluable. The I-Corps program meets a
crucial need for commercialization of university research
because it provides a training ground before entrepreneurs
launch.
The funding we received through the NSF SBIR (Small
Business Innovation Research) has also been crucial to our
success. SBIR focuses on high-risk, high-reward research, which
is important because criminals move so fast online that
innovation is needed to keep pace. Now that we have grown from
a startup to a small business, we would encourage you to help
NSF and the SBIR program provide more exposure to potential
Federal Government customer relationships and reduce
procurement challenges for up-and-coming businesses who serve
the public sector. We also encourage continued authorization of
funding for NSF to do this work because it is driving the
ingenuity that we need to solve these serious, worldwide
problems.
I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kennedy follows:]
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Chairman Foster. Well, at this point we will begin our
first round of questions. The Chair will now recognize himself
for 5 minutes.
And, first, we have to thank Ms. Rajan for her shout out
for homomorphic cryptographic systems. This, I think, is our
second Subcommittee that I've chaired that has actually dealt
with this issue, which is the solution--the potential solution
for a large number of problems we face trying to strike the
right balance between privacy and detection of criminal
activities.
And so although the problem of human trafficking is
certainly not a new one, there are modern technologies, you
know, things like online marketplaces and so on----
Voice. Chairman Foster----
Mr. Weber. Hey, Bill----
Voice [continuing]. I think we may have another witness.
Chairman Foster. Whoops. Oh, I am terribly sorry. OK.
Thank--you know, I--all right. My apologies. And so I will now
recognize Ms. Darnton for 5 minutes, and my apologies.
TESTIMONY OF MS. HANNAH DARNTON,
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF ETHICS, TECHNOLOGY,
AND HUMAN RIGHTS, BUSINESS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Ms. Darnton. Not a problem. Thank you so much. Good
morning, Chairman Foster, Chairman Stevens, Ranking Members
Baird and Lucas, and Members of the Subcommittee. And thank you
so much for having me here today.
I am Hannah Darnton from Tech Against Trafficking, and
Tech Against Trafficking is a coalition of technology
companies, including Amazon, AT&T, BT, Microsoft, and
Salesforce.org that are collaborating with global experts to
help eradicate human trafficking using technology. Launched in
2018, the goal of Tech Against Trafficking is to work with
civil society, law enforcement, academia, and survivors to
identify and support technology solutions that disrupt and
reduce human trafficking that prevent and identify crimes and
that provide remedy mechanisms for victims and survivors.
To inform the development of Tech Against Trafficking's
long-term strategy, our first step was actually to map the
landscape of existing technology tools being used to combat
human trafficking. Together with partners, we've actually
identified over 305 antitrafficking technology tools across a
range of geographies, target users, and focus areas. The tools
range from simple mobile apps informing vulnerable communities
and individuals at risk of labor exploitation to more advanced
technologies such as satellite imagery and geospatial mapping
tools being used to track down fishing vessels engaged in
illegal activity. We also identify tools using facial
recognition and blockchain, big data analysis, and
visualization.
Beyond individual organizations, technology presents a
massive opportunity for the broader antitrafficking field.
Technology can help disparate actors connect across
geographies, share data to facilitate the identification and
victims of traffickers--victims and traffickers, and improve
case management and survivor care, as well as raising awareness
in at-risk communities.
However, as was stated earlier by earlier panelists, the
antitrafficking ecosystem is largely siloed. In collaboration
and engagement between organizations, deploying these
technologies is minimal. Efforts are often duplicated, and
opportunities for new solutions are missed due to lack of
information about similar initiatives, the lack of shared or
compatible data, nominal technical infrastructure and
expertise, and a dearth of sustained funding and support.
As an example, our mapping identified approximately 70
unique technology tools developed for the purpose of victim or
trafficker identification. Our goal at Tech Against Trafficking
is to help support the work of individual organizations looking
to more effectively utilize and deploy technology to advance in
skill their work by simultaneously creating the connective
tissue to bring together organizations and technology tools
operating across antitrafficking sectors and lead them to
systems-level change.
To this end, in 2019 we launched the Tech Against
Trafficking accelerator program. This accelerator advances and
scales the work of selected organizations deploying promising
technology solutions by providing resources and support from
our member companies while building an ecosystem of actors that
will provide ongoing support for the participating
organization.
For the inaugural Accelerator, the Tech Against
Trafficking members and advisors worked with the Counter
Trafficking Data Collaborative, CTDC, an initiative of the
International Organization for Migration, to explore and
promote best practices around data anonymization, privacy, and
security, and I'm happy to provide more information on this if
needed.
Beyond the Accelerator, we've published findings from our
landscape analysis in an interactive map on the Tech Against
Trafficking website and partnered closely with the OSCE, the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to put out
a seminal publication in June on the use of technology to fight
trafficking in human beings. While I'd recommend reading the
full paper to glean insights from the research, we do have a
number of specific points that we'd like to highlight for
government actors looking to support technology in the field.
The first is the need for ongoing technical support.
Technology often acts as a multiplier effect in terms of
organizational impact, but many of the civil society
organizations, nonprofits developing and deploying these tools
have limited capacity, resources, and personnel, which creates
barriers and challenges to taking on and maintaining effective
technology and scaling it. The maintenance of such tools is
particularly important. Organizations often receive funding to
use or develop technology. However, without that ongoing
resource and support, they often have difficulties keeping the
technology up-to-date and operational, iterating it and
customizing it to become more effective, and it severely
inhibits the usage, utility, and impact of such a tool. The
government can play an enabling role here by building the
capabilities and relationships between stakeholders that
facilitate the effective use of these technologies.
Furthermore, we'd like to see active engagement and
participation of those closest to the issues. Those who are
funding, developing, and implementing technology-based
solutions should ensure the active engagement and participation
of vulnerable populations and target groups through the design,
development, and deployment of solutions. We also want to make
sure these technologies are fit-for-purpose, addressing the
problems at hand, that we're looking at the limitations of what
technology can do. They can't substitute for the range of other
factors needed to effectively combat trafficking, and that we
consider the easy solutions.
So a range of tech solutions are needed in this space,
many actually, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, dedicated SMS
(short message service) channels allow multiple avenues to
communicate with victims seeking assistance, and these simple
solutions can provide straightforward ways for victims to
communicate in real-time with service providers or personal
support networks. And the organizations are looking for simple
tech solutions or focus on the underlying infrastructure that
would allow them to use technology effectively.
And finally, and perhaps most importantly, we'd like to
look at due diligence of these solutions. The provision of such
technologies must be accompanied with training not only for the
direct use of tools but for their ethical use with respect of
human rights and data protection. Due diligence should be
conducted on all technologies deployed by government, law
enforcement, and service providers to identify, avoid, address,
and mitigate potential adverse human rights impacts that may
arise from the use of these technologies in accordance with the
U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. I'll stop
there.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Darnton follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Foster. Well, thank you. And my apologies again
for making a mistake in the order. I will try to limit myself
to a little less than the 5 minutes that I normally take here.
And maybe I'll just sort of cut to the chase of one of the
things. A number of the Members here wrestle with the issue of
the tradeoff of privacy in payments versus--you know, versus
the need for law enforcement to actually see what's going on.
And we wrestle with that in Financial Services, as well as the
Science Committee.
And so I guess if all the witnesses here could comment on
whether you think that eventually we're simply not going to be
able to allow anonymous cryptographic payment tools that are
truly anonymous or whether we're going to have to be in a
situation where you can go to a trusted court system,
demonstrate probable cause, and unmask the participants in a
digital payment transaction. How do all of you individually,
collectively, see that tradeoff, and what--the endpoint we're
going to have to go to there? Yes, just pick it up. I'll pick
on someone or--Ms. Rajan, I bet you've thought about this.
Ms. Rajan. Sure. I think you bring up a great point about
the use of cryptocurrency in human trafficking. Like in many
criminal enterprises, human traffickers have adopted the use of
cryptocurrencies to finance their operations. And
cryptocurrencies are appealing for many reasons. First, the
decentralized nature means there's no central authority that
can shut down or freeze funds. And second, it provides a
certain level of anonymity because you can create a Bitcoin
address and receive tokens without needing to provide a valid
name or address.
According to a company called Chainalysis, which is a tech
company that analyzes blockchain data, there was nearly $1
million worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum payments in 2019 for
child sexual abuse material.
This isn't unique to human trafficking. We've seen this in
domestic terrorism and extremism. In fact, the House Committee
on Financial Services had a hearing earlier this year about the
financing of domestic terrorism and extremism, and one of the
recommendations presented at the hearing was that
cryptocurrency providers should ban extremist organizations
with the intention of cutting off their financial supply. And
one could argue that it would--you can make a similar
recommendation for human trafficking.
But there is a lot of limitations to that recommendation.
First, I think it would--some cryptocurrency advocates would
argue that it really violates the intended value proposition of
a decentralized currency, and private-sector stakeholders are
very likely to push back on this regulation. Second, it merely
treats the symptom, not the root cause. Bad actors will
continue to find new and illicit ways to finance their
operations. But, most importantly, eliminating access misses
the very significant opportunity to leverage the technology's
properties to solve the primary problem of dismantling human
trafficking networks altogether.
As I mentioned earlier, the unique properties of
blockchain technology actually allow us to fight against human
trafficking. Even though cryptocurrencies are anonymous, part
of what drives the consensus around the legitimacy of the
currency is that the transactions are permanently stored on a
very public, decentralized immutable ledger, so, again, if law
enforcement can uncover the Bitcoin wallet addresses, you can
actually map the whole network of a human trafficking ring and
ultimately dismantle a human trafficking crime network.
Chairman Foster. Yes, that is true, and we have to speak,
I guess, carefully because we can have very interesting
classified briefings on the extent to which Bitcoin is truly
anonymous. But the--there are next-generation cryptographic
currencies that will be much closer to truly anonymous. And so
the question is will we ultimately have to ban these as an
essential part of preventing things like money laundering?
Just, you know, what do you think the endpoint of that
discussion is? You know, if you were in charge, anyone of our
witnesses here, that if you were in charge of making a
decision, should we ultimately have to ban truly anonymous, you
know, value transactions? Or not? It's a tough one. All right.
Matthew, I'll pick on you.
Mr. Daggett. OK. I'll try and take a stab at that. One of
the things I would like for--to keep in mind is thinking about,
you know, measures and counters. So when there was pressure put
on Backpage to--for the credit card providers to stop accepting
credit card payments, some of that moved to Bitcoin. The same
thing when Backpage was taken down, you know, the--some of that
activity scattered away from one large site to many smaller
different sites.
So thinking about when you apply this Darwinian pressure
to any one facet of this problem, you need to be thinking about
what do you think that the next--you know, the primary and
secondary effects are going to be from a policy initiative or
some type of, you know, enforcement action.
The other thing to keep in mind is that because of the
democratization of technology and how a low barrier to entry it
is to get into this crime, you know, the saying used to be the
cost of a Backpage ad and a burner cell phone and you
essentially have a trafficking operation. There is still
tremendous money being moved around in all cash, laundered
through gift cards, as well as using, you know, money remitters
for some of the more international ones, so it's----
Chairman Foster. OK.
Mr. Daggett [continuing]. Important to kind of--they won't
be the most sophisticated actors. There will be a range of
different actors.
Chairman Foster. OK. Thank you. And I will now recognize
Ranking Member Norman for 5 minutes.
Mr. Norman. Thank you, Chairman Foster.
This is for Ms. Darnton. Ms. Darnton, the exploitation of
children is huge in my district. With COVID-19, schools not
being in session, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) has
issued a warning about the closings. What measures are we
taking to protect the children from sexual exportation when
many times the parents are working and are just not there?
Ms. Darnton. Thank you so much for the question. I think
we've done a fair amount of analysis on the effects and impacts
on human trafficking due to COVID-19. We have seen indications
of a rise in online sexual exploitation of children. As you
mentioned, the FBI has warned that the school closings have led
to additional cases of exploitations. And, similarly,
traffickers living with their victims, they expand to new forms
of abuse, including online live-streamed exploitation of
current victims.
We have not looked into all of the different ways in which
this can be combated to date, so Tech Against Trafficking
really focuses on how the tech industry as a whole can come and
leverage its support and use of this technology, and I think
that this is something that still needs to be explored. But I
am unable to speak to the specifics of individual member
companies who I think are tackling this on an individual level.
Mr. Norman. OK. And I guess, Ms. Darnton, the other
issues you highlighted, the importance of safe data-sharing to
take a look at the practices that are put into effect, you
identify the challenges of protecting the privacy of
trafficking victim data. Can you tell us how technology is
being leveraged to establish the privacy-preserving data
methods and instilling confidence in victims to come forward
because many of these victims just will not come forward from
what I'm told because of the stigma that they're branded with
for life.
Ms. Darnton. Yes, happy to expand on that. So we actually
worked on data privacy-preserving mechanisms in our first
Accelerator program last year with the Countertrafficking Data
Cooperative out of Iowa. And one of the important areas that we
see is that really the case data on individual victims of
trafficking, we need to be able to share it and publish such
data, but this publication and sharing poses risks to the
victims represented within the data sets, so we're looking at
kind of data at a larger scale. And this includes the privacy
risk of individuals, as you mentioned, being identified within
the data, as well as the safety risk associated with
traffickers identifying victims within the data and retaliating
against the victims, their friends, families, or their
community.
So despite these risks, it's crucial to develop safe forms
of data-sharing that allow for evidence-based policy and
practice. Without access to data on the prevalence and nature
of trafficking in different contexts and over time, it's
difficult to make decisions about how and where to allocate
resources for maximum impact. So data-sharing agreements may
sometimes be possible between frontline organizations or an
individual victim perhaps that capture data on the victim's
trafficking and the government, law enforcement, and civil
society organization that need to access and analyze such data.
However, it is typically not possible to complete such
agreements at the speed and scale needed for comprehensive and
current overview of the problem. There's always going to be the
data gap between prospective providers and consumers of
sensitive data unless we can create a scalable data-sharing
solution with guaranteed privacy protection.
So through our research, one of our member's research team
worked with the U.N. Migration Agency to develop a new form of
data anonymization and analysis directly targeting the needs of
the counter trafficking community so that the primary risk is
that traffickers will identify victims in published data based
on identifying combinations of attributes like age, gender,
citizenship, as well as recruitment, trafficking, and control.
The solution asserts that only common attribute
combinations appear in published data sets and therefore cannot
be linked to the individual or even small groups of
individuals. This is achieved through combined use of synthetic
data, precomputed statistics, and interactive visual
inferences--interfaces rather, enabling exploratory analysis
and accurate reporting without exposing any data on actual
identifiable individuals.
So we've actually published a paper that shows the new
mechanisms and ways to do this, and we're happy to go into
further detail.
Mr. Norman. Well, thank you so much. I want to thank all
of our witnesses today for taking time. This is a sad yet it's
a real problem all over this country. I yield back.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And I will now recognize
Chair Stevens for 5 minutes.
Ms. Stevens. Thank you, Chairman Foster.
Emily, how did you get involved with combating human
trafficking? I'm reviewing your bio and looking at your story
and particularly you're an example of technology transfer if
you think about it. You were at the university level, and you
basically spun out this enterprise utilizing some of the best
applications and technology, just to speak bluntly about it.
But how did your work lead you to this field? And what promise
and opportunity do you see in utilizing these technology
applications to combating human trafficking?
Ms. Kennedy. Absolutely. Thank you for the question. So
my story personally of getting into this is a very windy story.
I, unlike most of the other people on the witness panel, do not
have a technology background. I--as I mentioned in my
testimony--encountered what I was told was human trafficking in
Eastern Europe when I was 16, and it honestly just kind of
burned it into my brain that this kind of thing existed.
And so I knew, you know, going into high school and then
college that I wanted to focus my career on it, but I didn't
know what that would be. I had kind of assumed law school. I
was studying the humanities, and it was really due to the--
first, the interdisciplinary nature of Carnegie Mellon that I
started to--it was around the time that Backpage became the
most popular website. And I was looking at sex trafficking
online, and there wasn't a lot of study around it and decided I
wanted to focus my senior honors thesis on how can we use
online data to fight human trafficking.
And so I basically took that to my humanities advisor, who
then referred me to an advisor in the Robotics Institute
because he said you're going to need some technology behind
this. And back then I didn't know what machine learning was. I
didn't know much about AI and was kind of thrown into the deep
end of how it might be able to solve some of these problems.
And so at the same time I connected with local law enforcement,
as well as Pittsburgh FBI at the time and started to learn the
challenges that they were having on the enforcement side and
trying to identify victims.
So I kind of have always been a connector between the
technology people who have the tech that can solve problems and
the people on the ground who need it. And as I refer to my
testimony regarding NSF, I have too often seen that gap where
there is awesome technology and research, there's amazing
technology being published or it's in a lab, but my question
was always how do we get this on the ground, you know, making a
difference. So that has really been a big mission of mine.
And I think there's a lot more opportunities to kind of
speed up that process to get technology out of research and
into the hands of people who can use it.
Ms. Stevens. And, Anjana, who--could you give us--with
your work at Polaris, could you give us--and thank you for
that, Emily. That was very lovely and such a--we're going to
thank your linguistics professor. That's really just--we'll
connect more on that offline. But I wanted to get Anjana in
here as well just with some concrete examples and an
understanding of human trafficking in the United States so that
we can best understand when we talk about data sets and the use
of technology applications and how complex this is, what is
the--if you know this, Anjana, what's the average age of an
individual in the United States who is human trafficked? What's
the profile? And what is the size of the human trafficking
groups that are in the United States? And are they sometimes
run by foreign operators that are infiltrating our country or
are they homegrown operations? And I could ask another
question, but I'm going to stop there.
Ms. Rajan. Thanks for the question. I think the most
important thing to recognize is that trafficking is not a
monolith. At Polaris, we cover all forms of trafficking,
including sex and labor. A few years ago we put out a report
looking at the topology of the types of human trafficking, and
in our research we learned that there were over 25 types of
human trafficking and that they came in different forms of how
force, fraud, and coercion were applied to victims, the
demographic of victims themselves, and how they were recruited.
And I can certainly send you that report after the hearing if
you'd like to see more information.
Ms. Stevens. Great. Well, thank you. Mr. Chair, I'm out
of time, OK. I'm going to do some questions for the record
because there's a lot here. This has been amazing. Thank you
all. Thank you for all--the testimonies have just been
fabulous. Thank you guys. I'm yielding back.
Chairman Foster. If Members--I'd just say if Members are
interested in hanging around for a second round of questioning,
we'll evaluate that toward the end of the first round of
whether that's a feasible possibility.
I now recognize Ranking Member Baird for 5 minutes.
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Kennedy, in your testimony you mentioned that your
company has received support from the National Science
Foundation both through the participation in I-Corps and the
SBIR award. Can you tell us a little bit more about how the NSF
has both helped advance your Traffic Jam software, as well as
support your mission of AI for social good? And can you
describe how invaluable it is for NSF to continue to support
work like yours in the counteracting of human trafficking? Ms.
Kennedy?
Ms. Kennedy. Absolutely. Yes, thank you for the question.
So we received the SBIR phase I, phase II, and phase IIB, about
$1.4 million in funding total. A little note I like to mention
is that we actually did not receive it the first time we
applied. It was good vetting on their part, and they gave us
feedback on how to improve and we got it the second time, so it
taught us not to give up.
And it was amazing to help especially the I-Corps program,
to help us learn as university researchers about customer
discovery, commercialization of technology because myself,
along with pretty much everyone else in my cohort, had been
deep in research but had no idea about how to run a business,
start a business, you know, understand the market, things like
that. And it's a very different mindset from the researcher
mindset. So I learned so much from the other students in the
program. And, like I said, it was really invaluable to our
success, not just the funding but also the training that came
along with it.
So we were funded for the first couple awards to focus on
de-obfuscation of sex trafficking on the public web, so
basically finding patterns in the structured data where the
criminals were trying to remain anonymous and kind of pulling
out those patterns.
And then for phase II we're now expanding into the human
services space, and so this involves mining unstructured data
for insights from thousands of pages of social worker case
notes to help them measure trends and progress, provide
proactive insights, and generally, you know, in the context of
this conversation, help them intervene and prevent children
from falling into exploitation in the first place.
So we are really, really happy and honored to be involved
with the NSF SBIR program. It's been game-changing for our
company, and I think it allowed us that opportunity to learn
how to commercialize research and also do the kind of high-
risk, high-reward research and development that was needed in
order to put out these tools. It's very difficult, particularly
for socially impact-focused companies to have that research
funding that they need to get off the ground because often
that's needed before you can actually produce a product. So the
SBIR program was very, very helpful for us, and we're honored
to be involved.
Mr. Baird. Thank you very much. Well said. Mr. Chairman,
I can't see the clock. How much time do I have left?
Chairman Foster. One minute and a half.
Mr. Baird. A minute and a half. So here's my question for
the other three witnesses, and we've got a minute and a half,
so that's 90 seconds, right? OK. Many times the things that
we're responsible for in these two Committees involves basic
research. Sometimes it's the areas that industry can't justify
getting involved in but we can put some dollars there to do
some of this basic research.
So my question to the other three members is what areas of
basic research do you think would provide the most impact on
expanding the use of emerging technologies to counter human
trafficking? So I used about 20 seconds of that I'm assuming,
so we've got about a minute left for the three of you.
Ms. Darnton. I'd like to take a first response. I'll keep
it brief. But something that Matthew mentioned earlier was
measuring the impact of the use of these technology tools. And
I think that there's a lot of research needed. So often, the
tools themselves, the deployment of technology is seen as the
solution, but really it's contributing to part of the solution.
It's not a solution in of itself. We still have to track what's
happening, how it's supporting the field, and what additional
support is needed, and I think that there could be a lot of
research around that impact of technology.
Mr. Baird. Dr. Daggett?
Mr. Daggett. Well, I would agree with that. I do think,
you know, grappling with the scope of the scale of the problem
and understanding, you know, how we are actually making inroads
against it is critical, and that's something that does happen
at the basic level. And I also think there's a fair amount that
is also needed to come at the next phase of research and more
at the advanced level for some of the other science and
technology directorates.
Mr. Baird. So, Mr. Chairman, have I got time for Ms.
Darnton?
Chairman Foster. Yes, we'll--yes, briefly, very briefly.
Mr. Baird. Ms. Darnton?
Ms. Darnton. Oh, sorry, I was the first one.
Chairman Foster. Yes.
Mr. Baird. Oh, Rajan, I'm sorry.
Ms. Rajan. Sure, no problem. Yes, I think if we're going
to think about funding and technology and development for this
phase, I think there are four key principles we should keep in
mind. I think, first, we need to ensure that the technologies
are serving the overarching goal of ending trafficking. I think
we most importantly need to center the needs and experiences of
victims and survivors. We need to enable the correlated scaling
up technologies that are evidenced-based. And then, finally,
any support for new technology should be in addition to
continued funding for key services to prevent trafficking and
support victims and survivors.
Mr. Baird. I thank all of you very much, and I yield
back.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And we'll now recognize
Representative Lipinski for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And before I start
on my questions, I just want to say, Ms. Kennedy, for the last
eight and half years, as the Members of this Committee know,
I've spent a lot of time talking about I-Corps and the
importance of I-Corps, and you just did an excellent job there,
your testimony about the benefits of I-Corps, and I'm very glad
that it has been helpful to you and to your company.
I want to thank the Chairmen, Chairman Foster and also
Chairwoman Stevens, for holding this hearing today. I think
this is an issue that most people have no idea what a huge
problem this is. They may hear about it, but they probably
don't understand the scope of it.
And I was really struck--I remember I was listening to the
radio a couple years ago, and I heard a statement, and I
looked--I'm not sure if it came from Andrew Forrest, but I know
that Andrew Forrest, who is the founder of the Walk Free
Foundation, has stated, ``We now have the largest number of
slaves on earth that we've ever had in human history.'' And
that really struck me, that this is going on, and there's so
little that most people know about it.
So I thank all of you for the work that you are doing.
There's a lot of recommendations that we have heard from
all of you, and I sit here and I wonder, you know, maybe this
really should be an answer that--a question for us on the
Members of the Committee, but I want to look to our witnesses,
you know, why have we not done more about this problem from
your perspective? You come to us with what we can do better,
what the government can do better. Do you have a sense of why
more has not been done? You know, specifically, this is about
technology but on technology and other things that we can do to
help combat human trafficking. So let's start with Ms. Rajan. I
just--any ideas that you have.
Ms. Rajan. I think, again, the most salient point here is
that human trafficking is a systems problem and requires us to
understand the data. I think a fact that's not well-known is
that victims of human trafficking are the most likely party to
be criminalized when prosecuting these cases. I think we need
to really zoom out and think about what is a more systems-
driven approach to solving these problems.
When we think about the criminal justice side of it, I
think many law enforcement entities don't regularly pursue
financial investigations on human trafficking cases and thus
fail to penalize the most profitable traffickers. So I think
one way we can really shift--restore balance--the balance of
power back to survivors is looking to seek support, enable and
pursue human trafficking-related prosecutions that disrupt the
profitable, large, organized sex and labor trafficking
enterprises because, one, I think the main thing here is that
the financial crimes approach human trafficking can actually
just put the pressure off of victims because they are not
relied on to cooperate in these cases, which can be very
traumatizing. And so I think there's--again, looking at one of
the ways that we think about all of the things that not just
result in trafficking but what are the conditions that actually
drive survivors and victims into positions of being exploited
in the first place?
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. Mr. Daggett?
Mr. Daggett. Well, first, I'd like to agree with all that
was just said. I think that it's, you know, right to the point.
That said, I do agree that we need a coordinated Federal
strategy to really go after those high-impact quick wins first
and then start to do the longer-term foundational funding and
things that are going to take many years of effort year-to-year
to get real solutions to.
I think, you know, in those regards it's just a--it's
critical that we have both to go with the strategy, the
increased level of funding and prioritization that shows when
we take on initiatives across the different, you know, science
and S&T organizations, where those pieces of the puzzle fit in
the overall broader strategy. So I totally agree it is a
systems problem. We have to think about it systematically and
analyze it systematically.
Mr. Lipinski. Ms. Kennedy?
Ms. Kennedy. To add to what's already been said, I think
there's also just generally a public kind of lack of
understanding around AI. And, again, I'm saying this as a
generally non-technical person who can communicate about these
things, either thinking that AI is too advanced or not advanced
enough, maybe more advanced than it really is, so I think just
general understanding and education around what's really
possible would be help.
And then to add to what Anjana said, I agree about going
after the largest financially benefiting groups in this, and
that's what our recent deployment in Traffic Jam earlier this
year through a graph data base helps do. It actually pulls out
largest groups in the data. And we're currently looking for
Federal partners who want to pick up those investigations and
prosecute them. And, you know, the technology also does help
take the pressure off of victims like Anjana said, which is
really important because we don't want the burden--full burden
of proof of a case to be on the victim. And this is where the
online evidence can really help.
Mr. Lipinski. Thanks. And, Ms. Darnton?
Ms. Darnton. Yes. First, I'd just say I agree with all of
the other panelists, and I'd say there seems to be thus far a
need for enhanced collaboration. Right now, we're seeing a lot
of highly distributed funding and lack of coordination. And I
think to solve this problem we really need to bring in
academia, consumers, companies, law enforcement, government,
and create a space where everyone can work together rather than
in a siloed approach.
There's no silver bullet to human trafficking, and so we
need to increase the support for the infrastructure that will
allow for technologies, especially innovative technologies, to
be successful. And a lot of that groundwork needs to be built
before they can actually be further used and developed.
I'd also say that simultaneously we need to address the
key drivers of vulnerability, so a lack of economic
opportunity, a lack of access to education can often drive
people into situations of exploitation, and we need to think
through how we can solve those while simultaneously looking at
creative and new ways to deploy tech.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And Ranking Member Lucas will
now be recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would say that
not only the oral testimony today but the written testimony
submitted by all of our panelists is very compelling.
And I'd like to focus for a moment, Ms. Rajan, on your
written testimony. You make it very clear that trafficking is
an inherently commercial enterprise, that financial
intervention in human trafficking has the potential to increase
the risk for traffickers, reduce the profit, and reduce the
vulnerability to trafficking within particular communities.
Then you describe how Polaris has partnered with PayPal to
create the first financial intelligence unit housed within an
antitrafficking organization. I'd like to get your thoughts on
how that partnership has worked between Polaris and PayPal. Is
it working as you envisioned? And, if so, is it an effort that
could be scaled to more broadly impact the financial side of
illicit trafficking?
Ms. Rajan. Thank you so much for your question. The work
we're doing at PayPal is very cutting-edge because we're the
first antitrafficking organization to house a financial
intelligence unit in-house. And this work is actually quite
nascent. And because I lead our technology group, I'd love to
connect you with our Director who actually runs that program.
But I think you're touching upon a broader question, just
how can we scale these technologies in the fight against human
trafficking? And I think one of the key problems that we're
seeing is there are organizations that have deep subject matter
expertise on human trafficking, and then there are tech
companies with deep knowledge expertise on how the technologies
work. And there are very few that are able to do both. And
Polaris is unique in the sense that we do have our team that
does understand deeply how human trafficking works. We have
technologists and engineers and data scientists who understand
the technology and, most importantly, we have survivors at our
organization who understand what survivors and victims actually
need. But that requires funding, and that requires investment
to be able to bring these two disciplines together.
And I think it's really important and I just wanted to
agree with what my fellow panelists have been saying, that what
we've been seeing in this movement is just really an
understanding of the problem, and now we need to continue to
fund the creation of solutions, which requires support from the
public and private sector.
Mr. Lucas. Absolutely. Ms. Kennedy, in your written
testimony you stated more research and development funds are
needed to identify and combat illicit funding channels that
sustain organized crime groups. Where could this funding come
from, and what types of research and development should we be
looking into? And is there space for technology to be developed
to help detect and disrupt? That's a very open-ended question--
--
Ms. Kennedy. Absolutely.
Mr. Lucas [continuing]. But your insights are broad.
Ms. Kennedy. Sure. Thank you for the question. So I can
tell you a little bit about the types of cyber fraud that we're
seeing, which I think is just one slice of what some of the
other panelists are probably also seeing. So when we're looking
at these online classified ads, we're seeing a recent increase
in fraudulent postings, so this is, for example, where someone
might copy and paste the same ad selling commercial sex
across--and it's posted across every single city in the
country, and it's posted at the same exact time on the same
exact day. Now, that's likely not a real group that's offering,
you know, typical services, and it may not even be a
trafficking group that actually has a group of victims that
they are exploiting. This is an example, we believe, of
automated phishing and cyber fraud. So the idea is that
potential buyers might contact that ad, give their payment
information, and then someone on the other end will take the
money and provide no services.
And the thing about this and why we think it matters is
that it's automatable, and therefore, it's scalable. So these
groups can actually take in a large amount of financial proceed
at a large scale and, like I said, post it all across the
country. And so we currently have the ability to pretty much
tell the difference between quote/unquote real human activity
and this kind of automated cyber fraud activity.
And as far as next steps, we're currently looking into
Federal partners, probably State prosecutors perhaps, who want
to turn these leads into full-scale investigations because
obviously that's not what we do.
And then I think as far as what research is needed, I
think there's just more research needed to understand the
problem so that we can prevent it because obviously right now
we're talking about a reactive response. So I think there's
more research to be done around the prevention side.
Mr. Lucas. Absolutely. Thank you very much. And Mr.
Chairman, my time is expired, and I yield back nothing.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. Representative McAdams,
you're recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. McAdams. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate
our Committee's attention to this really pressing issue of
human trafficking, particularly the horrible new ways that
perpetrators have found to target and to exploit children
online.
I'm sure that most of the panelists here are familiar with
The New York Times series that began reporting last year on the
surge in online child sex abuse and materials, the first time
that many in the general public I think became aware of the
scope of this issue. And The Times reported that in 2018 there
were a record 45 million reports of online child sex abuse
materials to the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children. NCMEC reported that in 2019 reports to the cyber tip
line surged to 69.1 million. The FBI reported also earlier this
year that COVID-19 school closures and stay-at-home orders
increased risk factors for child exploitation, kids spending
more time on devices, kids not spending time with mandatory
reporting adults like teachers or school nurses, and kids
seeking connection and validation on social media. And, you
know, parents can and should do what they're able to do to
instill safe online practices in their kids, but that's not
foolproof against sophisticated exploiters who are out there.
And with this increasing screen time, I as a lawmaker but
also as a father of four young children, I want to be sure that
we do everything to understand the issues that are facing our
kids and empower law enforcement with technology and the data
that they need to stop abuse.
So my question I guess first for Ms. Kennedy, traffickers
and abusers use social media to identify, to recruit, and groom
victims for exploitation, particularly young children. How are
companies and artificial intelligence technologies such as
Marinus Analytics and Traffic Jam disrupting this practice on
social media? And also I guess related, what challenges do
technologies, companies, and law enforcement face with the
broader use of end-to-end encryption in messaging apps and
others?
Ms. Kennedy. Sure. Thank you for the question. So just to
clarify, my company, we're not so much experts in child sexual
abuse material or child porn, but I think that--and probably
Ms. Rajan could speak to this more--that the increased use of
encryption is challenging because we're seeing recently much of
this--and not just the child sexual abuse material but also on
our end of expertise, the sex trafficking material move onto
the deep and dark web, so deep of course being behind pay walls
or logins, and then the dark web being the dark web.
And so I think this is a challenge because if we can't see
where this, you know, either abuse or recruiting is happening,
how can we actually combat it or prevent it? So I think there's
a lot more research needed in those areas, and I'll probably
defer to the other panelists as well to answer your question.
Mr. McAdams. Yes, maybe, Ms. Rajan, do you want to add
anything there?
Ms. Rajan. Sure, thank you, Congressman, for the
question.
As I mentioned, we cover all forms of sex--of trafficking,
including sex and labor, and I do want to acknowledge some of
our partners in the field at the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children who work specifically on this issue but
also a company called Thorn that really focuses on how
technology can be applied here. And I think they'd be fantastic
partners to reach out to about this specific issue.
I want to take a moment and address the question around
social media because at Polaris we do have a lot of data on how
social media is both used to exploit victims and survivors but
also how it could help. Over--in 2019 we saw that 847 likely
victims of trafficking reported to the trafficking hotline that
they were actually recruited into the sex or labor trafficking
situation using online platforms, just dating sites, social
media, and online chat rooms. And once they were in the
trafficking situation, social media is actually used as a means
of control. In fact, in one study that we conducted with
survivors, Polaris found that 34 percent of respondents
indicated that their traffickers restricted their social media
use.
But having said all that, I think social media can also
play a really important role in providing support and access to
services. In that same survey, 19 percent of survivors stated
that social media played a role in their exit, so certain
features of social media can be particularly critical for
survivors such as disappearing messages, location discovery,
and as well as selecting subgroups and follower groups. I think
social media companies can actually do a lot to help in the
fight against human trafficking in terms of promoting resources
like the human trafficking hotline. And I think Congress can
play a huge role in incentivizing social media companies to
take action, including through oversight.
Mr. McAdams. Thank you. In just my closing seconds I want
to also mention legislation that I'm working on with
Congressman Anthony Gonzalez, who I see on this call right now,
to look at financial patterns and movement of money and how we
might be able to identify patterns in illicit trafficking
activities through examination of financial networks as well.
So thank you, and I yield back.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And the Chair will now
recognize Representative Balderson for 5 minutes.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you, Chairman Foster and Chairman
Stevens, for holding this hearing.
And my first question is for the whole panel. Anybody can
jump in. Ohio has ranked as high as fifth across all States in
human trafficking cases. This is an issue that we deal with
every day in Ohio, and I'm committed to working with my
colleagues to eradicate this despicable criminal behavior and
help victims regain their freedom.
We already know that many victims are trafficked through
our Nation's airports. As a Member of the T&I (Transportation
and Infrastructure) Subcommittee on Aviation and the Science
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, I want to know more
about this problematic intersection between trafficking in
persons and air travel. What more can we do to help catch
traffickers misusing our Nation's air transportation system to
move victims? And anyone may jump in that can answer that
question on the panel.
Ms. Darnton. I'm happy to start. This is Hannah Darnton.
I think that one of the key things that we've seen through
groups such as The Code and others is training for individuals
working within--throughout the transportation industry, so
being able to identify cases of human trafficking, of child
exploitation is key to being able to flag them for further
support and use of that data.
So I think looking at how we could provide overarching
training within these industries would be key, and ensuring
that it's specific to the types of transportation so that the
employees that may be seeing these instances would be able to
actually address them and call the relevant authorities.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you, Hannah. Would anybody else like
to add anything?
Ms. Rajan. I think you're hitting on a really important
point, which is how do we educate corporate partners on what to
look for and the warning signs. I want to acknowledge one of my
colleagues at Polaris who spends time actually doing corporate
trainings on human trafficking 101. And this, again, is
something that really is important to explain to folks how
human trafficking looks like, what it doesn't look like, and
what are ways that they can contribute to solving this problem
with us.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you. My follow-up question would be
with law enforcement so close and onsite, are there any
technologies your groups are working on that could be used to
identify victims of human trafficking and help them while they
are being transported via air? OK. Go ahead.
Mr. Daggett. I'll take a go at that. You know, there's--
when you have travelers, you know, coming through the air
system, there are, you know, key details that we know about
individuals. There's probably, you know, information that could
be correlated to learn a little bit more about those
individuals. You know, we know there are strong indicators of
people being associated with, say, like the foster care system
and other types of things. So there probably could be some red
flags that are done as, you know, a part of that type of
investigation.
I think in general one of the challenges is is there's a
gap between, you know, a lot of the tools that exist in
technology that works on the open internet, and then once you
get inside a government or a law enforcement or an
investigative context when there's, you know, dramatically
different data streams and data bases that don't talk to one
another, and we've talked a little bit about information-
sharing, but with our inability to correlate between those, we
miss connecting some of the dots.
Mr. Balderson. OK. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I
can't see my time, but I will yield back my remaining time.
Thank you.
Chairman Foster. You have one and half minutes if you're
interested.
Mr. Balderson. Well, I do have one more question dealing
with flight attendants. For anybody, again, is there any
training out there for flight attendants and other airline
personnel who might have, you know, more prolonged interaction
with potential victims?
Ms. Rajan. I'll comment on this. I think, again, one of
the main points we believe at Polaris is that survivors and
victims know what's best for them. And I think one of the most
important things that folks can do is guide them to the
National Human Trafficking Hotline where they can actually
speak to hotline advocates who can help them navigate what the
best option for them is and recognizing that there is not just
one path to justice or to freedom and that we really need to
think about this in a survivor-centered and victim-centered
way.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you very much for your response.
Madam--excuse me, Mr. Chairman, I yield back my remaining time.
Thank you.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And we'll now recognize
Representative Gonzalez for 5 minutes.
Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you,
everybody, for your participation in this incredibly important
hearing. This has actually been one of the few things that
well, on this Committee it's not unusual for bipartisan work,
but this is one area where I think we have done a good job.
Obviously, there's much more to do, and I look forward to
continuing to work with my colleagues on this issue.
Ms. Rajan, I want to start with you. You talked about how
encryption can protect survivors. And I think that maybe runs
counterintuitive to my own instincts, but I thought it was
compelling. And in particular you talked about it in the
crypto-space and how law enforcement can sort of map out an
entire ring of traffickers. My question is in the traditional
crypto-space, so the Bitcoin world, can we identify the
traffickers? I know we can map it, but can we actually go in
and say, OK, here's who's doing this and then law enforcement
can go in and physically intercede?
Ms. Rajan. Thank you, Congressman, for the question.
You're absolutely right. This has been a puzzling debate for me
because I think the argument has been posed as an either/or on
how cryptography can actually help or harm survivors.
To go into the Bitcoin example, I think the--again, the
important piece to recognize is because it's a currency that
requires a way to legitimize it, these transactions are public.
And while your wallet ID may be private, as some--in some
situations I need to share that with you so that you can
transfer me money. And because human trafficking is ultimately
driven by profit, it is in the incentive of a trafficker to
share that wallet ID.
And so, again, I want to acknowledge folks at the company
Chainalysis that really are experts on this particular problem
on how can you actually create an open data set and using this
open source intelligence to really map out a suspect or a high-
profile predator or illicit business that has been using
cryptocurrency to facilitate these transactions. And I really--
I can send you some of the work that they've done that really
actually shows how they've actually dismantled crime networks
using this technology.
Mr. Gonzalez. Yes, that would be really interesting. I
would love it if you could submit that.
And then I guess a follow-up, would it be easier, harder,
or indifferent to the law enforcement element of this if the
cryptocurrency were a central bank cryptocurrency? So, you
know, if the Fed got into this verses Bitcoin, or is it
indifferent in your eyes?
Ms. Rajan. I think that is a great example around our
financial intelligence unit work at Polaris and one of the
examples that I've written in my testimony around homomorphic
encryption which, again, poses a separate question, which is
how do we protect the privacy of banks and their customers and
just citizens in general? And so I think regardless of whether
it's centralized or not, these financial transactions are
really important pieces of the criminal aspect of it because
that is where essentially the evidence lies. It's in the
transaction itself. And so I think really focusing on those
pieces and trying to hold the perpetrators who are profiting
off of this, rather than focusing on how we can criminalize the
survivor and victim, is paramount for us in this fight. And I
think it's really critical to understand how anti-money
laundering systems work and the technologies that can do this
in a really safe and private way.
Mr. Gonzalez. Great. And then shifting to Mr. Daggett, so
you describe how, you know, the ``data are currently time-and
human-intensive to analyze with limited purpose-built
technology to assist, leading to missed connections and lost
opportunities for interdiction and justice.'' I just read that
from your written testimony. With respect to the existing tech
suite that's available, what is the most extensive value add?
Is it it cuts down the amount of time, or is it it connects
dots that currently are being looked at in a manual way? Just
sort of run me through how specifically the purpose-built
technology that can assist here.
Mr. Daggett. Sure. You know, one great example is, you
know, picking up on your last question about, you know,
cryptocurrency and whether it should be, you know, centralized,
you know, the lifeblood of an investigation and a prosecution
is the ability to compel records--business records. The
challenge there is that those records from all the different,
you know, businesses and agencies come back in a multitude of
different formats, and some of these can be scanned documents
that are not searchable. Other ones can be large voluminous
amounts of financial or telecommunication transactions, and so
you have a lack of tooling to be able to read that data and
analyze it. You also have a lack of training on individuals who
are dealing with that, and then a lack of knowledge management
in terms of figuring out what does an organization know and how
do they connect those dots and how do they put them together?
I think it's one of the reasons you see that, particularly
on State and Federal investigations, these investigations take
multiple years to complete because it is so labor-intensive to
work with the data because of its heterogeneity and
[inaudible]. So there's a lot of capabilities that have been
built in other sectors that could be tailored to some of these
specific data and these specific connections that would really
make a difference for investigators and prosecutors.
Mr. Gonzalez. Great. Thank you for that. Mr. Chairman,
great hearing. Thank you for convening this. And I yield back.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And, Representative Weber
will be recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Great hearing, I
agree, and I'm going to start with, is it Anjana Rajan?
Ms. Rajan. It's pronounced Anjana Rajan.
Mr. Weber. OK. Thank you for that. When I was in the
Texas legislature back in 2009 to 2012 I guess that's before I
got demoted to Congress. We had House Bill 4009, which did a
lot to help recognize human trafficking and to teach and train
our law enforcement agencies exactly what to look for that all
of these victims, especially the young girls weren't
necessarily guilty of wanting to be, you know, prostitutes if
you will.
So we realize Texas, you probably know this working with
Polaris, has 25 percent of the Nation's human trafficking in
the country. We're very focused on that, a lot that needs to be
done. What Ranking Member Lucas said is incredibly correct.
Your testimony is very compelling. You make a lot of good
points in it. I've got probably 20 minutes worth of questions,
Bill, so excuse me for that.
But one of the questions I have, and I've used that number
888-373-7888 I can't tell you how many times. It's easy to
remember, a good number. You talked about the national traffic
hotline. Are you able to track the data on where they got that
number? That's a specific question for you first.
Ms. Rajan. It sounds like you're asking do we know how
people are referred to the hotline.
Mr. Weber. Correct.
Ms. Rajan. Yes, I think part of what we want to make sure
is that we build technologies that are ubiquitous and easy to
access. You know, I think part of what is really important when
designing technologies for survivors is oftentimes--and I'm
guilty of this myself as an engineer--overengineering rather
than really thinking about what survivors want. I think it's
really important to always start with user-centered design and
really ask yourself what--where are survivors or users
accessing this information, and where can they get it?
I would love to refer you to our Director of the National
Human Trafficking Hotline who can give you a lot more detail on
the types of data we capture on the hotline particularly, but I
think you're bringing up a great point, which is how do we make
sure that the tools and services we create actually get used by
the people in need.
Mr. Weber. Well, that's exactly correct. In your
testimony you make the statement that it is common for
survivors to choose to connect with a service provider for
wraparound before deciding if they're going to go to law
enforcement, which we understand that because one of our things
on House Bill 4009 was to train and put together a coalition of
NGOs, nongovernment organizations, providers if you will, and
law enforcement for training that said just because you pick up
a young girl or young boy, too, doesn't always mean they're
willfully there. In fact, we train them how to look for things.
You said in your testimony that the national began
operating in 2007. 9,943 situations of trafficking have been
shared with a hotline directly. How recent is that data? You
don't say how recent it is. 9,943, you say it began in 2007,
but how recent is that number?
Ms. Rajan. So that statistic that I referenced in my
testimony is a cumulative look at the data that we have since
we've operated the National Human Trafficking Hotline. And I
think the fact that you're--sorry, go ahead.
Mr. Weber. OK. Well, thank you for that. And I'm getting
a little short on my time. You also talk about cryptographic
reporting, and then you go through four systems, threshold
based, zero trust, human legal, firewall, multiple calibrated
options. And under the human legal firewall you make the
statement the record is unlocked by a person who can establish
privilege and block this information. Who decides who that
person is?
Ms. Rajan. That's a great question. So in my testimony I
reference a type of system that can help vulnerable
communities. And while the system doesn't exist yet for human
trafficking, I have seen--I have built systems in my past work
for victims of sexual assault. I think the main point that we
wanted to address was when a person is coming forward with
vulnerable information about their sexual assault or their
exploitation, there are many risks. The threat model is
incredibly complex. And when you can create the technical
systems that understand the broader system of why survivors
need to get--access information before they come forward, you
can really think through what that looks like.
Now, this obviously has to be applied very carefully in
each situation, whether it's in the sexual assault space or
combating domestic terrorism or looking at human trafficking,
but, again, this was a hypothetical suggestion of how this
might be applied similarly in human trafficking.
Mr. Weber. Well, thank you for that. And quickly, Bill,
before I yield back, that's a good point because we don't want
to give any ammunition to those who say this is a violation of
privacy. We want to be as safe and succinct as we can to
protect [inaudible]. And, Mr. Chairman, thank you, and I yield
back.
Chairman Foster. Thank you. And, Representative Beyer
will now be recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Beyer. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
You know, one of the areas of acute interest to me is
ethical AI and facial recognition technology. So earlier this
year, I introduced the Stop Biometric Surveillance by Law
Enforcement Act, which would prohibit Federal agencies from
using police body cams with biometric data collection
capabilities, including facial recognition. It would prevent
States and localities from purchasing body cams with these
capabilities using Federal dollars.
This bill introduction came after Amazon and other tech
companies created temporary moratoria on police use of their
facial recognition software because there are so many false
positives. And this is giving the Congress time to regulate
where needed.
But the moratorium had two exceptions, one of which was
Marinus Analytics to use the service to help rescue human
trafficking victims. So, Ms. Kennedy, in your testimony you
talked about developing AI for social impact. Have you
incorporated ethical considerations of facial recognition
technology into your platform also?
Ms. Kennedy. Sure. Great question. So, you know, I think
there's important--it's important that we think really
carefully about not just facial recognition but all different
types of AI and how they're used by our society, right? And
we've talked about false dichotomies recently, and I think
there's a similar one with facial recognition where when we
talk about it in the public space, I feel like it's kind of--
there's two extremes that are usually talked about. One is a
total ban of all those technologies, and the other extreme is
total unregulated use.
And I think that there is a really important middle ground
for their use, particularly in intervention against--in violent
crimes against women and children, which we're talking about
today. But I think it's important that our lawmakers do put
important legislative guardrails around the use so that we're
not on either of those two extremes.
And obviously this is an ongoing conversation, but I think
it's really important, you know, whether it's barriers to use
or scripts, trainings, and punishment for misuse of technology
or maybe a mix of both, but I think those are some of the
things that we should consider.
Mr. Beyer. Great. And thank you for helping us point out
the need for balance between a total banning and complete un-
regulation. And we've been in the unregulated, so we're moving
back in the right direction I think. And obviously, it's
different from--to protect the victims than it is for picking
up people in an airport.
Ms. Kennedy. Absolutely.
Mr. Beyer. Yes. So, Ms. Rajan, first of all, I'm very
impressed that you're a triathlete and you have your jersey on
the wall behind you. But you talked about the unique properties
of blockchain technologies and this whole notion that if you
can know the wallet addresses, you can build the data set, you
can literally decompose or deconstruct the entire criminal
network. What does Congress need to do to make that happen?
Ms. Rajan. Thank you, Congressman. I think they need to
understand how the technology works. I think it's one of these
examples of tech policy being a really important part of how we
think about other policy issues. And so I think when we look at
some of the debate that's happening on how we should regulate
or not regulate cryptocurrency, again, I keep coming back to
this false dichotomy, which is we are missing the power of how
we can actually serve this mission when we understand how these
technologies are used.
And so my--I think that what's really fantastic about
hearings like this and Committees like yours is that we're
taking the time to help legislators understand the real detail
and implication of these technologies and how they can be best
used.
Mr. Beyer. And, you know, if not now, if you can tell
people like Chairman Foster and me what legislation we should
write or what appropriations amendment we should do to help
move that forward, that would be really exciting. I've been to
Davos many times in the last couple of years. Every time, every
storefront along the main street of Davos is about blockchain,
and so finding ways to use that in a constructive way would be
terrific.
And then are you at all concerned about the current
discussion on amending Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act and what risk that would pose to encryption
mechanisms? Would that help or hurt the fight against human
trafficking?
Ms. Rajan. We could probably chat about this for hours,
and I'd be happy to chat with you offline and kind of give you
a more thoughtful answer on how we can think about this and
other pieces of legislation.
Mr. Beyer. OK. Thanks. Well, we'll seek for that offline
opportunity to talk about it because it is complicated, but
it's important. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Foster. Well, thank you. And before we bring the
hearing to a close, I wanted to thank our witnesses for
testifying before the Committee today. I'm just checking to
make sure I'm not in fact muted.
The record will remain open for 2 weeks for additional
statements from the Members and for any additional questions
the Committee may ask of the witnesses.
The witnesses are now excused, and the hearing is now
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m., the Subcommittees were
adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Ms. Anjana Rajan
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Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
Statement submitted by Kayse Lee Maass, Ph.D.
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