The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is using big data to develop techniques for combating sex trafficking, according to a London Post article, cited in Salon.
DARPA’s project, led by Christopher White, uses data culled from the public web to find patterns and reveal trafficking rings.
In the article, White described how DARPA identified an online sex trafficking network operating out of Dubai.
“We saw ads that were connected together and the things they had in common were things like email addresses, phone numbers and images. The odd part was noticing how many locations they were appearing in, and that they were appearing all at the same time,” he said. “And so there was a question, ‘Why are all these ads appearing at the same time in all these places?’ And it turned out it was a recruitment network to try to find high-end escorts.”
