Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking
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TraffikCam is an app where people from all over the world can upload photos of their hotel rooms, which are then cross referenced by police to photos of locations where sex trafficking has occurred. This is a fantastic idea. Note that you need to upload the photos while you are in the hotel room, because the app confirms the location to make sure that the photos are of the hotel rooms that you claim them to be.
http://www.techly.com.au/2016/07/15/help-fight-sex-trafficking-uploading-photos-hotel-room/
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That is cool. Thanks!
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That's a great idea, we use hotels all of the time all over the world. So we'll be sure to be using that.
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How does this help to prevent or stop these acts?
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@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
How does this help to prevent or stop these acts?
Allows photos of crime scenes to be mapped to locations.
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@DustinB3403 Did you read the article?
Quoted:
"The system then allows police to cross-reference all the photos loaded by users with photos pulled from sex-trafficking cases.The program looks for similarities between the sex-trafficking photos and the crowd-sourced photos, in an attempt to positively identify the locations in question."
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@Dominica I did read the article, and I get the cross referencing of the photos, but that doesn't stop or prevent these acts.
At most it might get the hotel owners in trouble, which is great, because this is an bad experience for everyone.
But it doesn't stop or prevent it from happening.
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@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@Dominica I did read the article, and I get the cross referencing of the photos, but that doesn't stop or prevent these acts.
At most it might get the hotel owners in trouble, which is great, because this is an bad experience for everyone.
But it doesn't stop or prevent it from happening.
It gives police the ability to track traffickers to within inches or where they operate.
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Being able to track where they have been helps find patterns etc. of hopefully who they are and where to find them.
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@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@Dominica I did read the article, and I get the cross referencing of the photos, but that doesn't stop or prevent these acts.
At most it might get the hotel owners in trouble, which is great, because this is an bad experience for everyone.
But it doesn't stop or prevent it from happening.
Okay, so you need to think a little more broadly about this. Police have photos of people committing sex trafficking crimes, not photos taken by police, photos taken by criminals that the police then get hold of. If the police can identify where the photos were taken, then they might discover where to look to arrest sex traffickers that have not yet been caught.
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@Minion-Queen said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
Being able to track where they have been helps find patterns etc. of hopefully who they are and where to find them.
This is a big one. Defining trends can help you find where they are going to go next.
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@coliver said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@Minion-Queen said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
Being able to track where they have been helps find patterns etc. of hopefully who they are and where to find them.
This is a big one. Defining trends can help you find where they are going to go next.
And find hot spots. A certain city or town or village might have no idea that they have trafficking going on. It raises awareness which can raise funding. And it gives the police trending information which can increase predictability. It's big data... it's all about getting enough info to put into BI processing engines so that computers can predict where things can, do and will happen.
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@Dominica said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@Dominica I did read the article, and I get the cross referencing of the photos, but that doesn't stop or prevent these acts.
At most it might get the hotel owners in trouble, which is great, because this is an bad experience for everyone.
But it doesn't stop or prevent it from happening.
Okay, so you need to think a little more broadly about this. Police have photos of people committing sex trafficking crimes, not photos taken by police, photos taken by criminals that the police then get hold of. If the police can identify where the photos were taken, then they might discover where to look to arrest sex traffickers that have not yet been caught.
I agree, it's a good idea and tool to use, but any hotel in the world is a possible scene for something like this.
And to argue my point one step further, sex trafficking doesn't only occur in hotel rooms, but in "odd" places, like the back of restaurants, clubs, vans etc.
It is a good idea, and hopefully it stops it from occurring, I don't argue that.
My point is though, that just because cops have two sets of photos (or more) to look at doesn't prevent something from happening, more over the police are going to have to stakeout or setup entrapment operations at all of these suspected locations.
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@coliver said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@Minion-Queen said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
Being able to track where they have been helps find patterns etc. of hopefully who they are and where to find them.
This is a big one. Defining trends can help you find where they are going to go next.
Yup. Keep in mind this is a huge issue all over the world. So tracking no matter where you visit is really important.
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@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@Dominica said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@Dominica I did read the article, and I get the cross referencing of the photos, but that doesn't stop or prevent these acts.
At most it might get the hotel owners in trouble, which is great, because this is an bad experience for everyone.
But it doesn't stop or prevent it from happening.
Okay, so you need to think a little more broadly about this. Police have photos of people committing sex trafficking crimes, not photos taken by police, photos taken by criminals that the police then get hold of. If the police can identify where the photos were taken, then they might discover where to look to arrest sex traffickers that have not yet been caught.
I agree, it's a good idea and tool to use, but any hotel in the world is a possible scene for something like this.
And to argue my point one step further, sex trafficking doesn't only occur in hotel rooms, but in "odd" places, like the back of restaurants, clubs, vans etc.
It is a good idea, and hopefully it stops it from occurring, I don't argue that.
My point is though, that just because cops have two sets of photos (or more) to look at doesn't prevent something from happening, more over the police are going to have to stakeout or setup entrapment operations at all of these suspected locations.
There is an organization that trains Truckers now to have them keep an eye out. http://www.truckersagainsttrafficking.org/
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@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@Dominica said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@Dominica I did read the article, and I get the cross referencing of the photos, but that doesn't stop or prevent these acts.
At most it might get the hotel owners in trouble, which is great, because this is an bad experience for everyone.
But it doesn't stop or prevent it from happening.
Okay, so you need to think a little more broadly about this. Police have photos of people committing sex trafficking crimes, not photos taken by police, photos taken by criminals that the police then get hold of. If the police can identify where the photos were taken, then they might discover where to look to arrest sex traffickers that have not yet been caught.
I agree, it's a good idea and tool to use, but any hotel in the world is a possible scene for something like this.
And to argue my point one step further, sex trafficking doesn't only occur in hotel rooms, but in "odd" places, like the back of restaurants, clubs, vans etc.
It is a good idea, and hopefully it stops it from occurring, I don't argue that.
My point is though, that just because cops have two sets of photos (or more) to look at doesn't prevent something from happening, more over the police are going to have to stakeout or setup entrapment operations at all of these suspected locations.
It's not about a single incident, not really, this is about collecting enough data to figure out trends and be able to send it through a system to figure out where people most likely are. If we remove hotels as a safe haven, which it has been found they are, then they move to other locations that are much more public. Restaurants, clubs, even vans have hundreds of more eyes on them then a hotel room.
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@scottalanmiller said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
How does this help to prevent or stop these acts?
Allows photos of crime scenes to be mapped to locations.
So just in several side-bar conversations at the moment.
Now this makes sense, presumably GPS location with hotel name etc or even room number.
But again, this doesn't prevent the crime. It just makes it so the people that are in this business have to find other ways to try and continue.
(I know I sound awful for even saying it, and I don't support the trafficking business at all)
Knowing where this occurs is different than preventing it. To me I'd consider this a "Minority Report" kind of scenario. At least that is what I see this trying to be.
Knowing something is likely to occur here, and to stop it, before it happens.
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@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@scottalanmiller said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
How does this help to prevent or stop these acts?
Allows photos of crime scenes to be mapped to locations.
So just in several side-bar conversations at the moment.
Now this makes sense, presumably GPS location with hotel name etc or even room number.
But again, this doesn't prevent the crime. It just makes it so the people that are in this business have to find other ways to try and continue.
(I know I sound awful for even saying it, and I don't support the trafficking business at all)
Knowing where this occurs is different than preventing it. To me I'd consider this a "Minority Report" kind of scenario. At least that is what I see this trying to be.
Knowing something is likely to occur here, and to stop it, before it happens.
Yep, that's exactly what this is doing, either by design or accident. By being able to determine trends you can likely stop these crimes before they happen. Granted there needs to be a system in place to do this analysis.
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@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@scottalanmiller said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
How does this help to prevent or stop these acts?
Allows photos of crime scenes to be mapped to locations.
So just in several side-bar conversations at the moment.
Now this makes sense, presumably GPS location with hotel name etc or even room number.
But again, this doesn't prevent the crime. It just makes it so the people that are in this business have to find other ways to try and continue.
(I know I sound awful for even saying it, and I don't support the trafficking business at all)
Knowing where this occurs is different than preventing it. To me I'd consider this a "Minority Report" kind of scenario. At least that is what I see this trying to be.
Knowing something is likely to occur here, and to stop it, before it happens.
It does prevent crime. This is how law enforcement agencies stop crimes. It doesn't stop the crime that triggered the first "hit" in the database, it stops more in the future. Nothing stops crimes that already happened, the goal is to stop new ones.
yes, knowing where things are likely going to happen is what police have tried to do since day one. The first time people identified a bank as a likely target, that's what they were doing.
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@coliver said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@scottalanmiller said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
@DustinB3403 said in Upload hotel room photos to fight sex trafficking:
How does this help to prevent or stop these acts?
Allows photos of crime scenes to be mapped to locations.
So just in several side-bar conversations at the moment.
Now this makes sense, presumably GPS location with hotel name etc or even room number.
But again, this doesn't prevent the crime. It just makes it so the people that are in this business have to find other ways to try and continue.
(I know I sound awful for even saying it, and I don't support the trafficking business at all)
Knowing where this occurs is different than preventing it. To me I'd consider this a "Minority Report" kind of scenario. At least that is what I see this trying to be.
Knowing something is likely to occur here, and to stop it, before it happens.
Yep, that's exactly what this is doing, either by design or accident. By being able to determine trends you can likely stop these crimes before they happen. Granted there needs to be a system in place to do this analysis.
Hadoop
