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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.
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'
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?
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
CallerID would have wrecked 25% of Columbo episodes if it had existed back then. "Won't somebody please think of the screenwriters" is an unusual take on technology changes!
I recently rewatched the original Day of the Jackal from 1973. The entire movie was the suspense of the police chasing him via a paper trail of hotel registrations and phone calls, and I couldn't help but think that the whole movie would have been over in about three minutes if SQL existed.
John
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.
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Hollywood was never really interested in how things happen.
"Keep him talking, we are tracing his call." is one I never understood.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.