U.S. State Department says technology hindering fight against human trafficking

Human traffickers today use encrypted messaging, digital currencies, and other technologies for catching victims and hiding their operations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday. He added that social media is fuelling false narratives about what sorts of victims human traffickers target. It’s not only women and girls who are affected, he said. Blinken added that law enforcement officials are also using high-tech tools to track down the traffickers and rescue their victims.

He spoke Monday as the State Department released an annual report about efforts to stop human traffickers in the United States and internationally. The report analyzes both the known activities of human traffickers and the different ways law enforcement and the private sector seek to counter them.

What do modern traffickers want? A growing trend is the trafficking of people for their organs, according to the State Department. Traffickers coerce and seduce individuals into situations where the traffickers can then remove organs from that person to sell to someone else. That is different from simply trafficking organs illegally, according to the State Department.

How are law enforcement officials using technology to track down traffickers? The State Department credited non-governmental organizations with pioneering the majority of technology advances aimed at cracking down on human trafficking. NGOs are also well-positioned to build relationships with technology and finance companies that help spread awareness about how to prevent human trafficking.

Many cases have begun by law enforcement personnel monitoring online platforms for suspicious content, the State Department said. It suggested that law enforcement agencies utilize artificial intelligence and other data analytics methods to discover traffickers more quickly. The report noted two international police operations that involved the arrest of almost a dozen traffickers and the seizure of thousands of servers and hardware used by scammers.

What sorts of ways, exactly, are traffickers using technology in new ways? Traffickers often use social media platforms, dating apps, online advertisements, and gaming platforms to discover and groom potential victims, according to the State Department. Traffickers create fake business websites to lure victims into accepting fake jobs that are pretexts for entrapment in criminal enterprises. The crooked businesses include online gambling, romance scams, and bogus cryptocurrency investments. Some human traffickers find individuals online and seduce them into sending images or videos of a sexual nature, which then become leverage for making further demands.

It’s not just adults who are targeted. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on Monday reported that thousands of children per year are falling victim to sextortion scams. Specifically, financial sextortion scams have targeted teenage boys, according to the center. In such cases, the scammers demand money from the teenage boys in exchange for not publicizing sexual images of them.

Dig deeper: Listen to Bonnie Pritchett’s report on The World and Everything in It podcast about how anti-trafficking organizations saw increased support following the release of the movie The Sound of Freedom.