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.

Comments

Bullshit.

[Frosty Piss]

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.

Re:Bullshit.

[misexistentialist]

And what is the purpose of this technical solution anyway? Police see an online ad but can't find the location of the "trafficked girl"...when all they'd need to do is call and ask!

Re:Bullshit.

[thegarbz]

The vast majority of hotel rooms are not unique

As someone who pretty much lives out of hotels, you're wrong. Even within chains, even within states, the decoration of each room is pretty much unique to a building.

I don't care to be tracked under the

blah blah blah didn't read the article blah blah blah don't know how this even works blah must be evil gubbmint tracking me blah.

Re:Bullshit.

[TroII]

As for the "boy", he was 17 years old, with a history of selling himself for sex/drugs.

And as for the Senator, he's married with children and has a history of pushing anti-gay and anti-marijuana legislation. Then he gets caught in a motel with an underage boy and marijuana. It's just another example of the incredible projection and hypocrisy that infects the Republican party to its core. Anytime a conservative starts yelling about outlawing something, look closely because he's probably doing a lot of that thing himself.

Re:Bullshit.

[SuricouRaven]

It might affect the Republicans more because they are more focused on condemning things as immoral, but it's really just a human thing - self-loathing. People hate something about themselves, and the only way they can feel any better about it is to very loudly and publicly condemn it - and pledge to themselves that last night was the last time they'll do that, really.

Neat idea with one problem...

[JBMcB]

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.

Re:Neat idea with one problem...

[thegarbz]

Even chains often differ significantly.

The trick is that traffickers must limit themselves to the very specific chains like Motel 6, and then hope they are in one which hasn't recently had an update that makes it different to all the others.

But then even the clue that traffickers prefer a given chain narrows down search results dramatically.

Vault 7

[telchine]

Can't they just install Samsung Smart TVs in every hotel and take the pictures themselves?

Pointless

[HornWumpus]

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'.

It's Double Bullshit

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:It's Double Bullshit

[bill_mcgonigle]

I wonder how many young non-English speaking Asian hookers fall into that category?

Why wonder? Legalize it, have a $10 license, issue work visas and check their ID.

Boom, you've solved the trafficking problem. Only problem is the Puritans who will be offended by the "insult" to their religion (that other people don't believe in), but they should go move to a place with Sharia if they want to be coddled by religious laws -- it's far more important to rational people to end trafficking than to preventual consensual sex for money.

Low priority

[Okian Warrior]

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.

False Positives

[TechyImmigrant]

"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.

Non English speakers

[fyngyrz]

I wonder how many young non-English speaking Asian hookers fall into that category?

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.

Re:Non English speakers

[fyngyrz]

Generally, they're making the informed, consensual choice to sell themselves rather than starve to death.

Your plumber makes the informed, consensual choice to dig into your toilet and root about in your waste rather than starve to death. I wrote software rather than starve to death. McDonald's employees make fast food and take extremely low wages in order not to starve to death. We all make these choices; we value them in various ways, depending on our personal outlook.

That's not a great choice.

If it's not a great choice for you, that's fine, then perhaps you'd want to try really hard not to make that choice. But don't tell others it's not a great choice. Ask them if it's a great choice. If they say no, and you can offer them an alternative they agree is better, by all means, feel free to do so.

How about we provide basic social services and jobs to those in need

Totally in favor of this. Unfortunately, we're presently under the thumb of people who are not.

so that prostitution becomes a real choice

Prostitution is a real choice, just as much as anything else is. Perhaps you're confusing it with slavery, which is something else again (and very, very rare, despite the current agitprop.)

instead of one that's essentially forced on the vast majority of those who do it?

We all have to work, unless we're born rich or we want to starve. That's the only extent to which prostitution is "forced" on anyone. Or in other words, pretty much the same as everything else that involves innate skill and suitability.

More than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

You have any stats

[rsilvergun]

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...

Why don't they....

[ai4px]

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.

Try this

[dabadab]

"Police find an ad for paid sex online"

Police calls phone number in the ad.

Sign me up!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What do you expect?

[plover]

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.