Bimodal technology can stop human sex trafficking

Please like this article to spread awareness. Republished due to linkedin link routing issue. 

As a technology researcher, the Ashley Madison breach is interesting because of the nature of the site and what was learned from the disclosed data. However, the fact that men are the primary users strikes me as a symptom of a sickness that plagues society. Taking the data and cross-linked it with my contacts on LinkedIn and other contact lists, my intuitions about a few people were validated. The interesting part is the general implications of male sexuality and confirmation once again; men are the primary buyers of sex. What was more sinister was the anonymity that is afforded by the Internet in conjunction with this behavior. There was a benefit to the practice of slavery due to race; you could identify evil more clearly. Human trafficking does not have this benefit, thus it takes more than a civil war to affect the slave trade, its the changing of hearts and minds as that is the invisible front this battle is raging on.

Sports and tech are huge contributors to the illicit sex trade industry. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to a tech conference and have watched the sex workers move in. Then on cue a highly paid sales guy or developer gets “a little action”. Their biggest concerns are catching an STD or their wife finding out. A few years ago, while at a conference, I spoke to an acquaintance that is a law enforcement investigator about a particular type of crime called Human Trafficking. This individual discussed a specific case the left me shaken and caused me to think about this subject more deeply.

The buyer was a salesman who liked to relieve the stress of a bad quarter on his “treat”. This buyer has three kids at home between six and thirteen years of age. This buyer also bragged to his friends about how he “made that hooker scream.” Little did he know or care, his moment of pleasure was with a minor who was beaten later that night and ended up almost dead in an alley. She was beaten because she did not turn enough tricks to fulfill her quota her pimp set. She failed to meet her quota because the buyer physically injured her and choked her several times until she lost conscious. The buyer caused internal bleeding and the buyer and the pimp did not care. Thanks to technology, they were able to identify the buyer because of the video surveillance system camera. From what I was told, this individual is spending the next 25 years in jail and his kids will not have their father in their life. This is one of many real life events that young girls and women get trapped into because of various circumstances, but only because the markets exist. Suppliers see this as an easy way to make cash. This 14 year old ran away because of an abusive situation at home. With in 48 hours she was on the streets trying to get money for food. A person took her in to “protect” her. He took a needle and drugged her. With in a week she was addicted to heroin. With in a month she was in a mental cage and her life was completely controlled to the point where she believes that these were her choices and her pimp was her protector. Commonly these children protect the adults who are harming them the most.

Human trafficking is a business. Markets exist everywhere in the world. However, it is sad when the very freedoms that we love in this country are the very means by which people are made slaves. Let me give you a background that I hope you share with ten other people today. Education is the key to combating human trafficking. If you have a daughter, sister, mother or cousins, think of the pain they would feel if they were entrapped in a psychological cage they could not escape from and forced into the sex trade.

The first way to start to differentiate between human smuggling versus human traffic is human smuggling is a crime against the state. This specifically means a violation of state laws. Human trafficking is a crime against a person.

Human trafficking is a business that sells humans or their parts. Most human trafficking victims are sold as sex slaves, forced labor, organ donors and many other offensive “product” categories.

Examples of this behavior are in the news everyday. People tend to filter information and are desensitized to the realities in their own community. Last year children in Mexico were taken from a school and were about to be shipped overseas to help fuel the growing trend of medical tourism. Literally these kids were going to be kept alive until a buyer purchased their organs.             They would be killed for their liver, kidneys or heart. Gangs are moving from selling drugs to selling people. This is because there is less jail time; the “product” can sell more than once. Like a business they are trying to diversify and sex has one of the biggest addressable markets.

A common misconception is that human trafficking is a problem that mainly effects foreigners coming to this country. Many victims are runaways from different socio-economic backgrounds; this is not a specific black, white, Hispanic or Asian problem. The problem does not care about if daddy was rich or mommy is a yoga instructor. According to the Nation Center for Missing and Exploited Children: The average age a child enters the sex trade in the U.S. is 12 to 14 years old. Males are a year younger on average at 11. In 2013 it was estimated according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that 1 in 7 runaways end up in commercial sex slavery. In 2014 that number jumped to 1 in 6. It is important to note that this usually occurs with in 48 hours of being on the streets.

Men are the primary consumers of the forced sex trade. Porn is considered the “gateway drug” that desensitizes men to the realities and harm associated with that industry. Coupled with the entertainment industry of violence, the pleasure centers in the brain are rewarded through virtual reality that would see people locked up or on death row in real life. If we take into account a survey that reports an average of 6.3 hours a week playing video games and combine it with a well know video game that publishes statistics that directly makes money on killing virtual humans, discovered a startling realization. Utilizing the top 100 and bottom 100 kills per game average of the well-known video game, I estimated that over a ten year period a young mind would virtually have killed over 184,652 times.

The corporate world and the military utilize simulators to sharpen and influence behavior during real events. The question is why do we dismiss video games and repeated utilization of pornography as independent and non-inclusive impacts into why mass shootings occur and women are victimized?

With violence and sex being the way to make money both on the streets and in Hollywood, sex and violence primarily consumed by males in conjunction with a consumerist society seems to be good corollary to start investigating with on the “Why?”.

Though this corollary does not imply causation; there are numerous studies that do support the claim of visual stimuli do have a greater effect on males. Violent video games and pornography enable boys and men to reward their brains through temporary control. This reinforced behavior naturally looks like a cause for many dysfunctional behaviors that appear to becoming more common as observed by national events.

Men, who watch porn, end up objectifying women and have a high potential to purchase sex. In 2014 a study was released that concluded the following (sourced from Psychology Today):

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/tech-support/201407/what-porn-does-intimacy

• Porn-free relationships are stronger, with a lower rate of infidelity.
• Watching porn diminishes relationship commitment.
• The fantasy alternative leads to real-world cheating.

Human Trafficking is a business; it is easier to buy sex online than to engage in normal courting behavior. Real world cheating often ends up involving prostitutes, which is estimated to be made up of 70% women, 40% of those entered as a minor, and 92% would leave if they saw a way out.

It is well documented that men and women respond differently to visual stimuli (Rupp & Wallen, 2007). Advertisers realize this and make advertisements to hit specific demographics. These same methods should be utilized to help buyers empathize with the victims of their habits.

We will get back to that in a moment. Modern society has created a toxic environment for women. Through years of oppression the pendulum has swung to a point that sexual freedom is viewed as a primary source of empowerment for women. Women now have the same sexual freedom as men, but different biological consequences. If men and women think about sexuality differently, then this difference can be leveraged to create exploitation from both sexes. Both men and women have responsibilities. There have been countless studies that indicate that clothing and general visual stimuli heightened the viewer’s state of arousal in both male and female. Males typically become more aroused and more focused on visual stimuli as confirmed through functional magnetic resonance imaging (FRMI) studies that demonstrate rewards for the brain just by looking at pictures that you would find on a magazine cover or on an online advertisement. These affects were observer in heterosexual males versus females.

If we look at these points and combine them with the rewards of sexual and violent entertainment promoted as norms in society, then it should not be hard to build a sense of how buyers are initiated into our society, the associated reinforcement of behavior by their peer groups and the resulting market that is created because sex and violence hungry consumers fuel the sex trafficking market.

Males have created the market. However, this does not equal that the whole of the American culture is a culture of rape, like I hear often by others who are interested in solving this problem. What we have is a global crisis that goes back for the majority of documented history. We cannot escape our biology, but we can mitigate the destructive behaviors to others that stem from it.  

Technology does make consumption of “things” easier and this goes for sex trafficking buyers connecting with their victims. This is exactly the bimodal aspect of technologies. Guns do not destroy a life unless someone pulls the trigger or in the case of technology clicks the mouse. This, however, is only part of the problem. Fundamentally we have to change our thinking to see the real problem. The gun debate is fueled by the lack of consensus and willingness to address the first cause (for example a mentally ill person in society). The same problem exists for conversations to be had about human trafficking as it is not good for political polls or business. To connect many of the points, while the ocean is being boiled to create clouds for entertainment, has to do with the “violation of human rights” as it relates to privacy. Companies are making sure their user data is protected. However, the bi-modal aspect technology is realized by the duality associated with privacy. Companies create privacy technologies; those companies also have to accept that this is the means that human traffickers will utilize to get product to market.

While visiting gotnews.com to read an article, two advertisements popped up. The first was for a site that is known for sex trafficking, and the ad read: “Sweet Chinese Women are Ready to Date U”. The second was to advocate stopping Twitter censorship. Well the ad placement algorithm most likely picked up an ad based on my searches. Researching human trafficking can defiantly take you to some places on the Internet that are the allegorical “ghettos” (I do not utilize incognito mode to keep a record on my virtual machine). However, the advertiser, who happened to be Google, made money off a site that promotes activities that are harmful to almost everyone involved accept them. In farness Google and other tech companies do combat human trafficking, to what degree, depends on perspective. The website making money by placing the ad is contradicting its own “standards” by allowing this type of content to show up. How can you have an ad criticizing censorship by Twitter and then promote the exploitation of a person’s dignity?

I can envision the public relations responses now: “We value all people regardless of race, ethnicity, creed and gender. We don’t control the content of our advertisers and we will be in contact with them to determine if we can prevent this issue in the future.”

Ultimately, the main question is why this was not thoroughly reviewed up front? Like security there has to be awareness and empathy for people to make it their cause.

Most organizations gather data to find new and creative ways to make money. Well, this is my recommended approach to solving this problem. Yes, my approach does offend my constitutionalist views, but I am OK with that because it does not violate natural law. The free market is the solution to human trafficking.

We know the laws are not going to be fixed anytime soon. Most laws lack common sense and are poorly applied due to apathy and budgets. Law enforcement typically does not have teams dedicated to deal with human trafficking. Drugs interdiction task force makes more money through asset seizers for departments resulting in more funding. As someone who believes in the free market (not to be confused with the greed market), I believe that corporations who can benefit and should take an initiative to stop human trafficking. Here is what I think is a good first steps:

For all legitimate corporations there are two specific benefits for proactively fighting human trafficking. The first benefit is directly related to the marketing recognition as being human traffic free. This in the beginning will influence customers to choose your product over those who are not. When everyone jumps on the bandwagon, the benefits extend into other areas of the business. Increased stability workforce through reduced family conflict rooted in the mistreatment of women. This also could lower sexual harassment lawsuits, as there can be a sizable argument made for the incidents related to sexual objectification of people and sexual harassment lawsuits.

Then technology companies have a greater role to play. For the ease of delineation let us view five categories that can directly impact this subject in different way: Hardware manufacturers, Service Providers, Ad-tech, Virtual Entertainment and Augmented Reality manufacturers.

Technology hardware manufacturers should not employ services or manufacturing facilities that utilize forced labor. This seems like common sense but places like China have been notorious for slave labor. This happens to be where a lot of hardware products are manufactured because it is cheaper. Cheaper does not mean that human trafficking is going on, but the race to make products cheaper has, and will, continue to lead to exploitation.

Service Providers should team up with Ad-tech to leverage machine learning to build anonymous profiles (which is being done in advertising) to promote empathy for victims of violence and sexual exploitation. Through improved machine learning techniques, service providers using model signaling to Ad-tech can pay for data that helps them target their customers better. This will also help with detecting trends that lead to the purchasing of victims for sex. You can over time, without jail time (which does not help) shape views and bring dignity to people who are in the current buyer mind set. This type of collaboration could enable improved information peer arrangements, which will lead to new and non-illicit ways to make money. It could also be theorized that there would be a reduction in malware traffic associated with these types of sites going across provider networks. One other aspect is to require authentication to validate age before traffic is permitted to leave a walled garden to go to these websites. A couple of years ago I developed a model for a mutual authentication and reputation system. This could be shipped with browsers to enable a mechanism to inject ads to help educate and more importantly, provide an empathic perspective for victims.

Yes, this can be viewed as my shift to the dark side of thought police, but I do not see it that way. Rational people should want to hear both sides of the story. If they do not want it they can move providers or browsers to feed their needs and thus, a signature can be created and as a result corporations can choose the security level they need to enforce. After all it is known that for some of the top sites, according to researcher Conrad Longmore (https://blog.dynamoo.com/2013/04/top-porn-sites-lead-to-malware.html), that you have a 53% chance of coming in contact with malware. The justification is to filter out threats based on research. Browsers that have a built in reputation system and prevent visiting known sites can be included as a permit policy. The mechanism for this is something I will write about later as this research is still underway.

Virtual Entertainment companies (movie, gaming and others) that provide content for young children should not be allowed to market or display content that is specific for adults in the same setting. I can not tell you how many times, even with the parental settings set on my Xbox, that my autistic daughter asks me about a woman who is half naked and bloody onscreen. This is typically a horror movie advertisement pop up because we are getting close to Halloween. This completely bypasses what I want in my home and thus the visual display of violence and sex creeps into my child’s mind.

Go online and look at the titles and the images that are specifically crafted to get a particular buyer, then show them to your kids if you think they do not cause any damage. To take this to the next level augmented and virtual reality companies will continue to change reality and the bi-modal aspects of these technologies will be abused.

The ads for Oculus and the Microsoft Hololense are being hailed as a breakthrough. The videos and initial creations are designed to help engineering and the entertainment industry. At the same time we ignore the other cases in which these technologies will be utilized and could evolve to. The perfect simulation of Call of Duty could manifest itself in reality when someone can augment reality while walking through a school and being desensitized to blowing their teachers and classmates away. A sex bot with the ability to overlay faces from the photo you took earlier in the day can make for a really creepy horror flick plot. Eventually these realities will manifest outside to harm someone else especially as the mentally ill and the already desensitized society begin to loose fundamental empathy. People I know are scared to send their kids outside and not motivated to get involved because the world is dangerous. However, mommies little monster just got Call of Duty Hardline and Grand Theft Auto for his birthday, at the age of six. He will defiantly be well balanced for the streets as he virtually brutalizes hookers and innocent bystanders and laughs about it. Parent say: “It is just a game…”

Augmentation technologies can actually become a huge problem for humans if they primary case is not one focused on improving education, learning and technical trades. Entertainment and sexual augmentation should be banded by treaty until we understand the cause and effects of this technology the effects on the brain, and the implications are understood and consented to. Augmentation technologies that address the occipital lobe may be socially fatal.

There are many variables that contribute to the exploitation of people. Buyers, are the reason the markets exist and currently hyper-scale technologies, augmentation technologies and mobile technologies will continue to move the producer and provider closer together and increasing the buyers access and satisfaction which in turn fuels further exploitation.

If you would like more information on human trafficking there are many organization out there.

https://www.polarisproject.org/index.php

Disclaimer: This article does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my opinion.