Human trafficking is credited with being the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world. This sort of criminal activity generates hundreds of billions in profits and exploits millions of victims around the world. Human trafficking is quite accurately referred to as modern-day slavery and it's estimated by the International Labor Organization that there are at least 20+ million victims globally.
And a new app is looking to help in trying to end the suffering, by providing a platform for users to take pictures of their hotel rooms and store, in the hopes that it might offer some insight into the locations of kidnapped victims whereabouts etc.
Individuals involved in this sort of criminal enterprise will commonly post the pictures of their victims that they have and very often those victims are seen in different hotel rooms. If connections can be made, thanks to the data compiled by TraffickCam, then it might help lead to some new arrests and prosecutions.
It's a free app that is available for iPhone and Android users. There is also a webapp available for those who want to post but who don't want to install any app on their phone. So far they have collected over 1.6 million pictures, covering roughly 150,000+ hotels, from the more than 900,000 users who have downloaded the app. TraffickCam stores the GPS location of the photograph taken but other than that it's said that they don't store any personally identifying information. Also, images that include people are going to be declined from the database.
Today, one might wonder what kind of successful hotel, motel, b&b etc isn't online, and hasn't posted photos of their room online, and it's true that many of them have. Their photos are already included in the database, but the app is helpful in gathering data of places that obviously might not be included and have readily available photos.
The new app was developed by the Exchange Initiative which is an organization that was founded by the Nix Conference & Meeting Management, along with help from others. Currently, Nix leads the fight against ending sex trafficking in hotels worldwide.
pics:
pixabay
theconversation
traffickcam
sources:
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/77394/1/WHO_RHR_12.42_eng.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking
http://lifehacker.com/traffikcam-fights-human-trafficking-with-an-app-you-can-1790564650
http://www.exchangeinitiative.com/traffickcam-faq
http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_182109/lang--en/index.htm