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Your Hotel Room Photos Could Help Catch Sex Traffickers (cnn.com)
100,000 people people have already downloaded an app that helps fight human trafficking. dryriver summarizes a report from CNN:
Police find an ad for paid sex online. It's an illegally trafficked underage girl posing provocatively in a hotel room. But police don't know where this hotel room is -- what city, what neighborhood, what hotel or hotel room. This is where the TraffickCam phone app comes in. When you're staying at a hotel, you take pictures of your room... The app logs the GPS data (location of the hotel) and also analyzes what's in the picture -- the furniture, bed sheets, carpet and other visual features. This makes the hotel room identifiable. Now when police come across a sex trafficking picture online, there is a database of images that may reveal which hotel room the picture was taken in.
"Technology drives everything we do nowadays, and this is just one more tool that law enforcement can use to make our job a little safer and a little bit easier," says Sergeant Adam Kavanaugh, supervisor of the St. Louis County Multi-Jurisdictional Human Trafficking Task Force. "Right now we're just beta testing the St. Louis area, and we're getting positive hits," he says (meaning ads that match hotel-room photos in the database). But the app's creators hope to make it available to all U.S. law enforcement within the next few months, and eventually globally, so their app is already collecting photographs from hotel rooms around the world to be stored for future use.
"Technology drives everything we do nowadays, and this is just one more tool that law enforcement can use to make our job a little safer and a little bit easier," says Sergeant Adam Kavanaugh, supervisor of the St. Louis County Multi-Jurisdictional Human Trafficking Task Force. "Right now we're just beta testing the St. Louis area, and we're getting positive hits," he says (meaning ads that match hotel-room photos in the database). But the app's creators hope to make it available to all U.S. law enforcement within the next few months, and eventually globally, so their app is already collecting photographs from hotel rooms around the world to be stored for future use.
The vast majority of hotel rooms are not unique, they fit a specific floor plan for that chain of hotels. As well, the furniture, bedding, wall pictures - just about, if not everything is identical to many many other rooms in numerous locations.
I don't care to be tracked under the absolutely ridiculous claim that this will help stop human trafficking. Or maybe I'm just not THINKING OF THE CHILDREN.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
In other news the pictures are now in front of a generic white sheet.
This might be somewhat helpful, but there is one problem. Most budget chain hotels are remodeling in the following manner:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Every Motel 6 is going to look *exactly* the same. A few years ago my friend was traveling extensively for work. After a few weeks on the road, staying exclusively at Staybridge by Mariott, he would forget what town he was in, as every room was exactly the same, down to the artwork on the wall. He'd have to check the weather on his phone to get an idea of how long it would take to get to the work site from his hotel.
For the smaller, really cheap independent hotels this might be helpful, but most people going on vacation are staying at chains.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Can't they just install Samsung Smart TVs in every hotel and take the pictures themselves?
Why dont the police reply to the ad to find thr criminal?
Fuck off feds. I'm not going to help you create your surveillance database. Just because something can be used to stop crime, doesn't mean it can't also be used to oppress the innocent.
Reading the summary, I found myself wondering why the police don't just reply to the ad, asking to meet the person in the pictures. Wouldn't the person who posted the ad then set up a meeting where an undercover officer could just walk in and meet the trafficked person? Why go to the trouble of trying to guess the location (which is likely to be difficult given the sameness of many hotel rooms) when the criminals will actively try to set up meets with potential clients?
The pimps will just use old pictures. Behavior will change in a second and all that will be left is a useless service.
Stupid 'whack a mole'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Every new method of invoking voluntary recording helps the government keep ANYONE trying to stay off the grid find it that much more difficult to hide.
Just think about how many movies have come out in the last 20 years, and even RECENT TV shows/Movies whose plots break down immediately if a true Panopticon/Big Brother society exists. We are teetering on the brink of it, and one it is passed it won't be possible to regain the liberty we lost.
Chain hotel/motel 99% of the market
Every room looks like every other room in that chain brand.
You might be able to figure out which Hotel chain it belongs to but not likely the specific hotel.
You find the exact hotel room (unlikely, given that all the big chains look the same nowadays, but whatever).
Now what? You don't know when the photo was taken, so it could be months old. Guess what, hotels have different people in their rooms almost every single night. It's kind of the point of them.
3 months old = 90 people to investigate. The manpower to track down 90 different people (even assuming the hotel can ID them conclusively that far back because I've never provided ID to an hotel just to stay a night and I'm not sure someone abusing a child would either - don't you guys just walk in, ask for a room, pay cash, get the key?) is probably wasted if you saw the guy post the image.
And even if you prove the room to a court's satisfaction.
Check every person who stayed in that EXACT room.
Prove that some guy stayed there and used his card or whatever.
Then you still probably don't have enough evidence to convict anyway. He just says "No I didn't take that photo" and it's really hard to prove him wrong.
This is coming at it backwards. Even it worked perfectly and contained every hotel room in the country, and can identify them from just background features in any chosen photo, you're aren't going to gain anything from that by the time it's all worked out, and the reasonable doubt involved means it can't be used - on its own - for a conviction.
But the guy sent a message to a forum with a photo. You could do the old-fashioned thing and try to trace that connection and/or try to meet up with him, get more data from him. Which is instant guaranteed conviction if you can do that.
It's like having a database of sand-dunes in the Middle East. Too nondescript, too fluxing, too useless even if you pinpoint it down to the grain of sand.
I don't know why, but I'm creeped out by this. From a pragmatic perspective I don't see it being effective either. As many have pointed out, chains look the same, what matters is the individual ones. Aren't these usually under suspicion anyway? And aren't there a limited number of chains? Couldn't they just do all this before with a picture-book with 5 pages in it?
So I have to wonder, what are the true motives? I can't think of anything sinister they could do with this data or this excuse to leverage some sort of regulation or something... but maybe I'm just not evil enough to figure out what they are up to...
I also question that they are really going after "sex traffickers" as opposed to independent women who simply make their own choices about how to earn money.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As much as I'm a fan of law and order, clamping down on sex trafficking is way down on my priority list.
By and large - not all cases, certainly, but mostly - it's adults making consensual decisions about their own bodies.
That the article explicitly mentions an "underage girl" is an appeal to emotion by highlighting a specific case. This alone implies that there is *no* scientific evidence that cracking down on sex trafficking is useful or even cost effective. If there was (scientific evidence), the article would lead with it and it would be highly cited. The fact that the article is written with such an appeal implies that the scientific evidence is *against* legal enforcement, saying in effect "we know it's ineffective and harmful, but we want you to support it anyway. Think of the children!"
How unusual is this specific case? Would the law enforcement resources be better spent in education rather than enforcement? Is this effort easily made useless (by photographing against a sheet, for instance)?
We don't actually regulate sex trafficking very well, perhaps not at all. It only serves as a wedge that the police can use against the citizens. In the places where it's been legalized (Nevada), the criminal and health disadvantages have been eliminated - and if that situation would hold across the country, it implies that there is no sociological reason to criminalize that behaviour.
As a country, we waste a lot of time, effort, and money on useless endeavours, trying to regulate sex trafficking is one of these.
I have no interest in helping the police with any of them, especially if it's based on an emotional appeal without strong scientific reasoning.
"Right now we're just beta testing the St. Louis area, and we're getting positive hits," he says (meaning ads that match hotel-room photos in the database).
"Hits" or "False Positives" as they are known in statistics.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Perhaps you should ask them, then, instead of assuming you are "rescuing them."
It's not like the tools aren't readily available to translate. To anyone wishing to speak with them, or them.
Just because they don't speak the local language, or don't fluently speak it, doesn't mean that they aren't intelligent people making informed, consensual choices. You can't assume this, or you are automatically on the wrong side of liberty. If you are concerned, you need to ask.
When you are fortunate enough to have a personal resource — fitness, intelligence, beauty, athleticism, artistic insight, etc. — for which personal and consensual choice are the bounds employed, it is perfectly reasonable to leverage that to your personal advantage.
What is not reasonable is to dictate to others which of those resources, employed as specified, may be leveraged.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Instead of trying to crowdsource this in a crazy patchwork fashion based on the motivations of random travelers, shouldn't law enforcement ask the hotel chains to provide systematic pictures of their rooms, assuming this is a useful line of inquiry?
stick QR codes on everything. That will solve the issue. What was the problem again?
Any picture taken with a modern camera or smartphone has metadata built in including the GPS coordinates of the location it was taken. Shouldn't that be enough to find people? I doubt most people involved in this would be smart enough to sanitize their photos.
It just sounds to me like someone who wants to collect some money from the law enforcement community -- the ideas have been getting stranger the closer to the top of the Second Dotcom Bubble we get. Seems to me like good old fashioned police work, such as arranging to meet these people and arresting them there. Isn't that how they catch customers now? Going after prostitution is silly anyway -- there's nothing wrong with it and it's only illegal because of a big morality show.
There are a lot of Korean hookers that come over here just to work, then go back home. They are here to make money, they do work through agencies but they are not doing anything they did not plan to do.
You don't need to speak the same language to have sex, as many travelers have also found.
Can't wait to see scumbag lawyers playing the profiling card at a trial.
Maybe in the old days, but not so much anymore.
I've watched porn from time to time. And one thing that struck me was; starting around 2008 when the real estate and mortgage markets collapsed, quite a bit of porn started to be made in rented, high end houses. I mean really high end*. I'm pretty sure some were on or near the Pacific Coast Highway in or near Malibu. Like maybe Streisand's neighbors. And there's still quite a bit of speculative property on the market, which only remains out of foreclosure due to rentals and Airbnb.
*More than a few times I've thought as I watched this stuff that they really should move their naked asses so I can get a better look at the architecture or ocean view.
Have gnu, will travel.
Or, you know, hotels could take photos of their rooms as a matter of course and share them with police.
to back that up? Especially that a lot of the sex trafficking going on is people being brought in from third world countries?
What worries me about sex trafficking is those "consenting" adults. Kinda like how you used to be able to sell yourself into slavery in the form of indentured labor. But if you're at the point where you're selling yourself into slavery you're bargaining position is non-existent and you're probably not really consenting.
Now, if our government guaranteed every man/woman/child adequate food/shelter/health care/education/transportation/etc you might have a point. But with the way things are it's child's play to force people to do whatever you want...
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Why don't they just get the hotel operators to take a picuture of every room instead of crowd sourcing it to the public? Sheesh. Hotels.com could sponsor it under the guise that they'd have a picture of the room you are booking when you make a reservation.
You are not the police
Do not attempt to engage in their business
Do not delude yourself into thinking you are helping
All you are doing is laying pavement for more freedom to be taken away by setting a bad example about social boundaries.
Yes, most hotel rooms look alike, in a given chain.
But this app will provide YOUR location and date and time and phone info, so you can be in the police databases.
"Police find an ad for paid sex online"
Police calls phone number in the ad.
Real life is overrated.
just one more tool that law enforcement can use to make our job a little safer and a little bit easier
Sure! I'd love to work for the police state! And for free!
"We have over 100,000 people using the app right now, and we're hoping that more will join us to take action and fight this fight,"
I think a more productive use of everyone's time will be to monitor and document police activity. After all, police lie. They are corrupt and can't be trusted.
...starting whenever they want.
while going forwards they just put a sheet behind the girl.
but hey, it's all good. cause you know, children.
another manipulative con promoted by your friends in law enforcement.
- js.
Ever heard of sexting? There are plenty of schoolgirls posting "posing provocatively" on tumblr and it may be difficult to prove the photo was taken in a private residence. A pimp could use such a photo and send a 19 year-old instead. At the least, pimps will start taking photos that provide a 'private residence' vibe, which will be easy since prostitutes don't live in a hotel.
So what's the plan? Stake-out the room and hope the same room is used again, or the same hotel? This is more push-button policing. How about looking for the girl who's had her childhood sacrificed to profit a lazy parasite?
Are the police suggesting that traditionally non-violent criminals are now carrying guns? Criminals aren't the only lazy ones these days: Police don't want to do 'leg-work' any more.
Many such girls come from a neighbouring town, not another country. If they were from another country, they could be given asylum from further trafficking. It's never been explained how schoolgirls, who know the language and culture, can disappear so easily.
As an aside; several US states send underage prostitutes to prison, who being juveniles, don't get a permanent record. After being isolated by their pimp (and possibly by prison), those girls have trouble returning to normal society, particularly one which doesn't accept prostitutes or even promiscuous 15 year-olds. That, plus being harassed by the judicial system that 'freed' them, means many girls return to the job they know. A few arrests make the police look good but it takes a long-term effort by community services to break the life of crime. There's no glory in that.
...which is soon going to be torn apart by Trump's DOJ for fronting the CIA's child sex trafficking.
Every hotel on the planet posts pictures of their rooms online. This information is very easily accessible by police, it is public information that already exists.
I call baloney on this.
How will this help me find more young girls without going through the same expensive as fuck group of guys I normally go through?
Your just messing up their lives and giving them criminal records.
I think i would position my nude body in place of where the magic occured and rebate my life expectancy in a mass eruption of hysterical emotion like how ancient indians had sex over the graves of valiant warriors to reincarnate the deceased hero.
Well, at-least if it was a snuff film like pizzagate then the tortured soul might reincarnate.
I know that is what reincarnates internet trolls, kind of like sneaking into a patent trolls library room just to sement their book pages together with ejaculate.
Good Times!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A retired semi-offduty officer told me that for every legal non-working street camera publicle seen is among many more discreet non-legal street cameras. The evidence collection would be "not admissable" in court and so they wait until a grainy legal undermaintaned public camera gets a minutia of visual detail that will be flabbergastedly asserted in court with details so-obscured but by it's proximity and timeing of the illegal act observed.
The same was done about the San Bernardino psychologist's shooting whereas government agencies already illegally cracked the iPhone sevurity from Cellebrite but couldnt triangulate convincing evidence without exposing their security lease, and so the FBI relented to host a securty asset tgeater in court by pretending to endorse Apple Computers hardware as unbreachable and trying to pre-facto contract a lease from Cellebrite as pretending they never did business with Cellebrite before the shooting. incident occurred: the reality of the matter is every COP shop has contracted with Apple Computers an administrative code to any Emergency Dialer of a passcoded Apple Computers iPhone.
Every is security theater. They ask permission now for things tgey dont want to admit theyve always had, but. are lazier now to not tripple-think their evidentiary infrastructure to rely on obscure legal proximity evidences.
Haha...so funny I forgot to laugh.
-- William Gibson
From the quote at the bottom of the page.
Burn the witch, burn the witch, BURN THE WITCH!!
Seriously, getting people all huffy "for the children" (wait, that didn't sound right...) is a great way to crowdsource hotel room information for a new hotel review website. People may have been played.
There already exist a lot of hotel pictures in Google pictures and this application people have access to. Why bother creating a new application for this?
When challenging a much more advanced force, where head-to-head is a guaranteed loss, asymmetric fighting tactics almost always point to cheap attacks causing large financial cost on the part of your advanced adversary.
Cue the traffickers. A photo of a lure in a hotel room? The same hotel room? Not a green-screen photo of a different hotel room? So, for the cost of photoshop, a trafficker can not only elude the fbi, but also send them to a different hotel room, far far away?!
Great job.