​Often times, when thinking of trafficking, it is easy to think of the issue as one that happens in other places of the world. Not something that happens in our own backyard. In reality, this is a local issue that happens right here in Toronto. According to Status of Women Canada, over 90% of trafficking cases are domestic in Canada. This means those trafficked come from within our boarders and are trafficked within our boarders. The other 10% of women are trafficked from outside our country. It is important to be aware of the situation around us.
 
Important Stats
According to Toronto Police Services, since 2013, there have been:

• 1,972 charges laid
• 954 occurances
• 281 Arrests
• 220 Victims
• 47 convictions

All of this, in Toronto alone.
 
Current Climate
Since the beginning of November 2018, two Toronto men have been pressed with human trafficking charges. Tal Amdurski and Kalib James Rahi. Their photos are below, respectively.

​Tal has been charged on 8 accounts. According to the press release, the girl pressing charges met Tal on social media in June 2018 when she was coerced into the sex trade. The girl was transported to various hotels in the GTA where she was expected to perform sexual services. 
 
 
The photo above is another man by the name of Kalib James Rahi has also been arrested here in Toronto.  This man has allegedly forced two women into the sex trade throughout Ontario and Quebec.  He is also alleged to have sexually assaulted these women on multiple occasions.
 
What’s Being Done
Covenant House Toronto has opened up a home specifically for survivors of human trafficking called Rogers Home. This home is meant to fill the gaps in Covenant House’s urban response program.  Nearly 4 years ago covenant house designated 2 beds specifically for survivors of trafficking, though the beds are at 100% capacity at all times.
 
Rogers Home will offer 6 beds to women between the ages of 16 and 24.  The space will have 24/7 supervision and allow women to stay up to 2 years as they make plans for their future. Since the first conviction in Toronto under human trafficking laws in 2014, trafficking has been a hot topic in Toronto with Covenant house at the forefront.
 
What More We Can Do
It is important to remember that trafficking is not just a global issue, but also a local one.  With over 200 survivors identified in the past four years and only 8 beds being provided by Covenant House it is obvious that there is a need for more space for survivors.  At Fight4Freedom we have cast vision for one day opening our own safe house for survivors of trafficking. We are hoping for this day and can use all the help we can get. Please keep us in your prayers.

The majority of human trafficking victims are children and women between the ages of 18 and 24 with 43% of them being sold into the sex trade.  The masterminds of these criminal operations gross approximately $32 billion per year. 
 
Traditional detective work is not conducive to this level of crime. Luckily tools such as datamining, mapping and computational linguistics are being used by governments, NGOs and the like to further anti-trafficking goals.
 
Historically, technology has been used by traffickers to their advantage.  Traffickers use social media and online advertisements to lure and recruit vulnerable populations into their trafficking rings. The trafficker will then turn around to use media as a vessel to sell their victims online.
 
Fortunately, over the past decade there have been a few organizations coming to the forefront, using technology to fight trafficking rather than aid it. Fighting fire with fire. Thorn, The Polaris Project and Microsoft’s PhotoDNA are all doing great work to fight trafficking online.
 
Thorn
Thorn came into being into being in 2009 through its creators Ashton Kutcher and his ex-wife Demi Moore. The organization developed the spotlight tool, a tool specializing in fighting trafficking of juveniles. This tool is available to law enforcement, allowing officers to gather data from online sex advertisements. The tool allows officers to build a data archive of records from escort ads. It also uses machine learning to analyze escort data and proactively identify suspicious ads. Studies show a 43% reduction in investigation time. Thorn has various corporate partners to aid in their pursuit including Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft.
 
The Polaris Project
National Human Trafficking Hotline was developed by Polaris. This is a toll-free hotline used to assist victims 7 days a week in over 200 languages. The hotline can be accessed via email and has an online tip option. Thus far, Polaris has received over 72,000 calls and has identified over 8,000 victims.
 
The Polaris Project has been a heavy-hitter in combating human trafficking in North America.  The organization, along with Thorn, partnered with SalesForce to develop the National Human Trafficking Hotline textline. Victims can text “BeFree” for a discreet and time efficient way to identify themselves to authorities.
 
 
Microsoft’s PhotoDNA
This software aids in identifying children who are sexually exploited online.  The technology works by computing a unique code that represents the image.  It then converts the image into black and white, breaks it down into a grid and can analyze the image based on intensity of gradient.
 
The technology was then donated to Project Vic.  Project Vic works to streamline investigative workflows and narrows the focus of child pornography law enforcement by filtering the material found on offenders’ computers. The project “fingerprints” photos to be uniquely identified. Using robust data sets, the project can uniquely identify photos making it easier to decipher from the children who have and who haven’t been found.
 
In Conclusion,
 
With trafficking being such a vast organized crime, law enforcement needs all the help it can get to work toward freeing those in slavery. Organizations such as Thorn, The Polaris Project and Mircosoft are utilizing their technology expertise to aid in the fight against trafficking. 

​FOSTA-SESTA was a bill passed in the United States late March 2018.  FOSTA-SESTA stands for “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” and “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act” respectively. The bill is suggested to be the biggest legal movement in the way of human trafficking in recent history. Since coming into law the bill has made waves across the internet.
 
Why it’s Important
FOSTA-SESTA is an important bill because it fills a gap in the previous Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This particular bill, established in 1996, was penned with the explicit purpose of making the legal system in the United States lenient toward the tech industry. Section 230, as it’s come to be known, stated that anyone who ran a website was not responsible for third party posters. As an example, if someone were to post a video of you jaywalking on YouTube, it is not YouTube’s responsibility to penalize you for jaywalking. 
 
Therefore, sites such as the late backpage.com and craigslist’s (in)famous personals page were filled with posts from sex-traffickers without anyone being held accountable. Section 230 essentially allowed the internet to become the wild west that it is today.
 
FOSTA-SESTA came to inception primarily because of backpage.com. In 2016, executives of the website were arrested for pimping a minor, pimping and conspiracy to commit pimping.  Prosecutors claimed that backpage.com had come to fruition with the intent of facilitating illegal sex-work. Though the claim was overruled in court due to Section 230.
 
Who Supported it
The bill was a bi-partisan agreement, meaning it was co-sponsored by both the democratic and republican party.  Representative Mimi Walters of the Republican Party stated that websites such as backpage.com had become “store fronts” for sex-trafficking.
 
Advocacy groups such as the New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking called this a “ground breaking bill”.  The Coalition sees it as a positive means to bring justice to victims.
 
The bill has been getting support globally, as well. The UK is reportedly ready to pursue a similar act and has attracted many politicians. A group of members of the UK parliament have come together in a bi-partisan coalition to work toward banning any website having to do with sex-work.
 
Backlash
Though many believe this bill is a step forward, there has been a lot of backlash. Many suggest that this will move sex-work from an online platform back to the streets. For the sex-worker who is making the choice to be in the industry it could make it more challenging for her/him to screen Johns, therefore, increasing vulnerability. It is suggested that pimps will be able to take advantage of the legislation by exploiting those who can no longer work independently without the aid of the internet.
 
Though there’s been a lot of talk about the bill, it was passed just less than six months ago making it difficult to say what the long term effects will be.  We’re hoping that this will put a slow on human-trafficking, but there is still work to be done yet.