Congress must stop human trafficking from evolving with technology
As governments and law enforcement officials step up their intervention efforts, technological advancements keep human traffickers one step ahead.
In the State Department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s preface noted that the “crime, corruption and violence” fueled by the “scourge” of human trafficking is growing by the year thanks to technology.
“[Human trafficking] distorts our economies and harms our workers. And it violates the fundamental right of all people to be free,” Blinken wrote.
This year’s report says data from several countries last year uncovered “drastic increases in online commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking, including online sexual exploitation of children and demand for and distribution of child sexual abuse material.”
And, as governments and law enforcement officials step up their intervention efforts, technological advancements keep human traffickers one step ahead.
Cindy Dyer, the ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, referenced this tension in her testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday, noting that “traffickers use digital technology in perpetuating and facilitating human trafficking” and those same digital tools can also be used “to monitor and combat this heinous crime.”
According to the report, dating apps and social media are frequently being used as databases for predators to recruit their next victims. Traffickers also “advertise false jobs on social media platforms that are actually human trafficking schemes, transfer cryptocurrency to other traffickers and perpetuate online scam operations.” They also “leverage encrypted messaging and digital currencies” to avoid being caught when selling explicit content online.
On the brighter side, the report also emphasizes how technology is being used to fight back.
It highlighted a September effort led by the Netherlands and supported by EUROPOL, 26 countries and several law enforcement agencies to find online spaces where traffickers recruit victims that resulted in the arrest of 11 suspected traffickers and the discovery of 45 potential victims.
Another was the 2023 INTERPOL-led Operation Synergia, which "targeted human trafficking rings linked to cyber scam centers" and sparked the "search and seizure of 1,300 malicious servers and electronic devices, shutting down 70 percent of identified cybercrime command servers while the remaining 30 percent are under investigation.
AI-powered tools such as Project Arachnid, which is run by the Canada-based Center for Child Protection, detect child sexual abuse material online and request its removal. The GraceCity App, created in Sacramento, “can canvass thousands of first responders and provide users with useful resources including nearby NGOs, medical professionals, social workers, and therapists.”
Additionally, it notes cross-collaborative digital anti-trafficking efforts, such as the International Organization for Migration’s Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative. This database “brings together anti-trafficking organizations from around the world to make human trafficking data publicly available in a central, accessible online platform.”
Unfortunately, the report also says “NGOs have traditionally underutilized such tools due to lack of knowledge, access, expertise, and funding.”
A retrospective helps us see that change is possible and is taking place worldwide. One example is the progress made through the U.S.-Philippine Child Protection Compact Partnership. The State Department recognized Samson “Sam” Inocencio as a 2024 TIP Report Hero — the highest anti-trafficking award from the U.S. government — for partnering with the Philippine government to enhance the justice system and civil society's response to trafficking.
Inocencio is the national director of International Justice Mission Philippines and regional vice president of International Justice Mission’s program against the online sexual exploitation of children. (Full disclosure: I am International Justice Mission’s director of policy and advocacy.)
Despite the honor, much work remains. Although there has been significant and sustained progress in the Philippines, recent research by the International Justice Mission and the University of Nottingham Rights Lab estimates that nearly half a million Filipino children were trafficked to produce child sexual abuse material in 2022 alone.
We cannot rely solely on the efforts of individual governments, bilateral engagement or public/private collaboration to adequately address the tidal wave of violence against children on the internet. It’s simply not enough.
This comes at a timely moment for U.S. policymakers, who have been increasingly attentive to the crisis of children being exploited online. The existence of the problem is clear — but are there plausible solutions to combat violence enabled by such a vast and rapidly evolving target?
What’s clear is any solution must include greater regulation of existing and emerging technologies.
“Technology companies play a pivotal role in protecting victims and vulnerable individuals from being exploited through the use of their online platforms and must be part of the solution to combat human trafficking,” according to the report. Congress must pass laws to appropriately incentivize this influential sector to be a part of the answer to this epidemic.
Passage of the EARN IT Act, which would “create a National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention” to “develop best practices for interactive computer services providers (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) to prevent, reduce and respond to the online sexual exploitation of children,” would be a significant step toward the goal of protecting children and adults from sexual abuse and exploitation online. Critically, the bill would introduce a new incentive for tech companies to detect, report and remove child sexual abuse material, including new or “first-generation” material.
The EARN IT Act would also help improve the quality of reports submitted by tech platforms to the CyberTipline by directing platforms to report “any available facts or circumstances sufficient to identify and locate each minor and each involved individual.” The bill highlights the importance of including information in reports that could help identify or locate a child who may be actively being exploited — namely, an email address and IP address related to “the involved minor.” Existing law only notes the priority of specific information for a suspected perpetrator but not the child who is a suspected victim.
My colleagues at International Justice Mission have seen the value in detailed and holistic report content through recent work training law enforcement officials to investigate CyberTipline reports in the Philippines, Malaysia, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Kenya. This granular policy change would make the law more child-focused and victim-centric and would allow law enforcement to triage and act on reports more efficiently, ultimately leading to more victims being brought to safety and offenders prosecuted.
Progress in the fight against technology-facilitated trafficking is possible, but Congress needs to bring Silicon Valley further along to truly see systemic change in combatting this global crime.
Nate King serves as director of policy and advocacy for the International Justice Mission.