Backpage.com, an online classified service, is currently enmeshed in a federal legal battle and congressional scrutiny for its role in facilitating an online market for commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking and its unwillingness to cooperate with federal lawmakers to make changes to prevent such exploitation.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the largest regional trade deal in history. Talks to create the TPP began over seven years ago and it was finally drafted on October 5, 2015. The twelve member countries, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States and Vietnam covers 792 million people and make up 40 percent of the world’s economic activity.
For a long time technology has been seen as a detriment to victims of trafficking. Whether through GPS tracking to determine a person’s location or by threatening to post photos that may stigmatize an individual on the internet, or through local sale platforms such as Backpage.com, traffickers have used technology to sabotage, manipulate, and maintain control over victims.
However, more recently, anti-trafficking activists have turned technology around, using big data and sophisticated algorithms to aid trafficked persons. We will focus on three recent breakthroughs that indicate the anti-trafficking movement’s turn for technology.