Bitcoin & AI: Trap for Sex Traffickers
Rebecca Portnoff from Berkley University created an algorithm that can track sex traffickers with the help of Bitcoin.
Many prostitutes do not offer their services voluntarily. They are often abducted, sold and forced into prostitution. This range of services is shifting more and more to the Internet in order to offer the prostitutes convenient and secure access to human goods. Bitcoin and science can help distinguish sex trafficking from voluntary services and uncover the people behind it.
Step 1: the offer
There are a lot of websites with sex offers. One of the largest in the world is the classifieds site Backpage.com. Previously, detectives had to manually read thousands of ads a day to find out where sex trafficking might be involved. This is very time-consuming and, of course, very stressful for the psyche of these readers. But what is the evidence for sex trafficking? If one and the same author creates many ads with many different sex offers, the probability is high that among them are involuntary sex services.
Step 2: Artificial intelligence
Rebecca Portnoff from the University of California, Berkeley, and her team have developed an algorithm using machine…
