1

Robert Shainsky

Dr. Santosh Khadka

English 113B

30 March 2020

Human Trafficking through the Internet

The UN describes "trafficking in people, by means of a threat or the use of force and other

types of intimidation, kidnapping, theft, and humiliation, misuse of powers or weakness or the

procurement or reception of compensation or rewards for a person having custody over him to

gain the consent of the United Nations. The usage shall entail at least abuse of any slaves or

modes of sexual assault, forced labor or facilities, slavery or slavery-like acts, servitude or organ

destruction.”(M. Chertoff, 2015). Trafficking of human beings is an illegal action that is also

highly coordinated, crosses regional boundaries, and meets laws. This lucrative industry is being

run by smugglers using new technologies to hide their illegal activity with no risk of getting

captured. Technological advancements easily offer us more secret locations, actions, and plans of

criminals, while concealing their identity.

Online – A human trafficking network. The use of the Online not only has provided our

society with easy access to information but has also allowed organized crime through more swift

and effective forms. Robert Hannigan, Head of Information for the British Government, has

confirmed that sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp are "a choice for terrorists and

offenders to promote and monitor.” (E. Jardine, 2015). Although these companies are in some

way supporting the servers and the web for the black market to prosper, human life should be a

priority in law enforcement and all private parties should be overlooked. These offenders
 2

primarily go after human trafficking, as social media sites “connect” people easier. According to

a questionnaire sent to over 15 people, out of the responses, these are what people feel about the

web:

Fifty years ago, to buy content and media, you had to go to the nearest convenience shop.

However, some things in person back then would potentially be bought with a social stigma; the

practice of having to go and shop means that someone else knows how to pay, which offers a

direct barrier to their order. Media and content can be found on the Internet in today's world.

When someone can buy internet material now, they will do so in the comfort of their own house.
 3

To follow this example; none will ask, and a significant rise in the use of the internet today

destroys the necessary barrier.

More competition has been developed and consumer needs generated by quick exposure to

online media, some of which become particularly obvious, allowing people to imagine

themselves digitally. The Internet, in conjunction with these factors, provides smugglers with a

profitable climate. Battle the New Drug asserts that 25 percent of all requests from search

engines are for mischievous content (B. Westlake, 2012).

 4

The web – a sales site on the regular internet is another alternative for criminals to market

their victim's services.

Many illicit networks can be easily reached online in a matter of clicks using sites such as the

Backpage, Craigslist, and Facebook. Digital advertising is not the only way smugglers market

their products, but it is also a key factor for many smugglers to ensure internet advertisement
 5

takes place in as many ways as possible. Some also convince their victims to waste time with

actual and specific photo Identities online ads. Fake pictures are commonly used for covering

underage abuse. Thorn, an NGO created by Aston Kutcher and Demi Moore, has commissioned

a report on the role of software in trafficking to support technology in fighting human trafficking

and the sexual abuse of children. 63% of the respondents registered online sales (S. Kara, 2011).

The Web – A Recruitment Network Traffickers are often using the web as a platform for

assisting victims with their recruitment. Traffickers use social media to gain information on

victims and create falsified accounts to develop virtual connections and promote trafficking for

potential victims.

Traffickers are, sadly, talented professional technicians. In his novel, Kevin Mitnick

discusses the way social engineers earn their victims 'trust. "The Art of Deception" (Luz Estella,

2008). They obtain confidential data by “innocent” inquiries, which make the victim feel like we

understand them, and give a wrongly intimate feeling. We should know if the hopes and desires

of the victim are so useful to the abuser. Eventually, they try to collect provocative pictures of

individuals that can be exploited and threatened to get to meet the victims. All of them are

victims of human exploitation and new media. Everything mentioned so far is trafficking in

persons or on the Internet but there is one more place which lurks deep below all, the deep web.

This is the web part that search engines such as Google and Bing can not easily reach. That

is where our everyday internet activities usually will not take place most of the time. Yet the web

is more than the eye sees. There are more than 500 times the total network size of the Internet (P.

Åström 2004). This is known as the deep web and includes the web portion that cannot be

scanned. It's another web site-section known as the dark web.

 6

The Internet is deliberately kept hidden and offers the ideal excuse for trade in human beings.

The dark network almost guarantees its users privacy through the use of onion encryption

technologies. Links to encrypted onion pages (with the onion domain) were distributed across

layers, as the name suggests. The identification address of a device is encrypted on each layer of

the user's IP address and transferred to another voluntary server and, therefore, the next layer.

Because only the last IP address on the target website is supplied during the trip, the website

never knows who it interacts with. A search tool named Tor can be reached through the dark web

(K. D. Mitnick, 2002).

Tor records these onion layers and leads the searcher without any trace to the appropriate

website. Tor does not report search, and at this point, there is also no sign of activity. The Hidden

Wiki also contains a list of what is discovered on the dark web, such as the actions of murder,

weapons dealerships, human testing, and pedophilia. Gareth Owen has discovered that 4 in 5

searches on the dark web contain sexual predator conduct at the university in Portsmouth. The

internet has its crypto currency, Bitcoin, which offers anonymous payments and prepayment
 7

cards for services, and technology giants such as Facebook continue to make Tor's services

accessible.

The Dark Web is used for terrorism, and the Surface Internet also has a positive hand. The

dark web is used for criminal activity. The factor that makes things good or bad is human. The

US Naval Research Laboratory was initially founded by Tor, open electronic correspondence in

2002. It helps share information anonymously for journalists, informants, and government

employees whose life is in danger.

The dark network also draws another party called hacktivists demonstrating beyond the

rule. A hacktivist collective dubbed 'Anonymous' joined hands to hack Lolita Paradise, a website

that markets child exploitation photos to pedophiles. This organization approached the hosting

firm to delete the content and openly released information of over 1500 pedophiles when they

declined. While that may sound positive on the surface, it wasn't done by legal means and was

instead a reputation and embarrassing tactics, which police investigations might have interfered

with. It will, however, demonstrate that the dark web is not private.

Any strong development in cybercrime combat software is expected on the web and the

dark web. Spotlight is a platform developed by Thorn with Visual Logic in collaboration, which

screens the information accessible on the website, and analyzes and uses this material to classify

law enforcement cases (Digital Reasoning, 2015). This focuses on trafficking in children and

effectively increases police response times by consolidated data. Because cyber fraud is decently

recent, new organizations should be set up to track and make collective efforts to ensure

transparency. This is highly important since no “one” person controls the Internet. The Global

Internet Governance Commission (GIC) was set up in January 2014 to formulate and facilitate a
 8

global framework for Internet governance (E. Jardine, 2015). The core fields are electronic civil

rights, freedom of speech, and collaboration on cybercrime.

International Child Sexual Exploitation Database (B. Westlake, 2012) is developed by the

United Nations International Police Organization (INTERPOL). This is a regional policing-based

database. To extend the copyright identification system to the detection of child misuse, Google

has been partnering with the National Centre for Lost and Abused Children. Also, Microsoft has

been working to create PhotoDNA through NCMEC to evaluate various photographs to detect

updated child content models easily.

For example, in the modern world, combating trafficking is a new and ever-changing area.

Trafficking of human beings cannot be tackled on a civil or scientific basis alone. The

collaboration of intergovernmental collaboration, social innovation, and technologies will be the

focus of preventive action. This includes men, and so the manipulation of human relationships is

at some stage involved; whether it's a trafficker's promise to a better life or a violation to physical

contact. (Luz Estella, 2008).

The following suggestions should be taken as guidelines for more active participation in

this field; Similar research conducted by Thorn on technology in the recruiting, exploitation and

selling of victims of domestic child trafficking, (Thorn 2015) will become part of the anti-

trafficking policy of every country, to understand how criminals use the Internet to hire and

exploit victims. This provides evidence on keywords used by smugglers to change the

destruction and retrieval of large quantities of material that is available to the public. Spotlight

currently supplies law enforcement authorities in the United States with tools. In the growing

region, this technology should be established nationally. Anti-trafficking efforts in each country

should be aimed at government funds. Advertisements on the national helpline will be put on all
 9

search engine pages. If criminals target victims as advertisers, this approach warns offenders on

how they can obtain assistance. Announcements should be prepared for the victim. International,

national, and domestic legislation and Internet access transparency include global policy. The

Internet governance debate will involve Anti-trafficking organizations as they will lead to the

intelligence profiling of traffickers and help recognize patterns in keywords. Police departments

must prepare and respond to cybercrime at the local level. Once prosecutions are done in court,

they will provide further analysis of cybercrime so that information is logged for further

reference. Cybercrime Treaties must be established amongst nations. The government must

collaborate with private companies offering information technology to allow investigation

policing to continue (E. Jardine 2015).

Some of the infrastructure used now is used for traffickers. Smugglers knowingly use both

the surface web and the deep web to market and employ people in connection with their crimes.

There's a lot to be done as efforts are starting to tackle trafficking as a cybercrime. This research

includes a better understanding of the crisis, technical growth, preparation, and policy

collaboration at the global level. These networks that facilitate trade in human beings should be

torn up, and cybercrime stopped and held accountable by offenders.

Work cited

M. Chertoff, T. Simon, The Impact of the Dark Web on Internet Governance and Cyber

Security, “Center for International Governance Innovation and Chatham House”

Publishing House, Canada, 2015;

 1
0

E.Jardine, The Dark Web Dilemma: Tor, Anonymity and Online Policing, “Center for

International Governance Innovation and Chatham House” Publishing House,

Canada, 2015;

B. Westlake, M. Bouchard, R. Frank, Comparing Methods for Detecting Child Exploitation

Content Online, “European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference (2012)”

Publishing House, 2012: pp. 156-163;

S. Kara, Supply and demand: Human trafficking in the global economy. “Harvard

International Review” Publishing House, Summer 2011, p 66-71;

Luz Estella Nagle, Selling Souls: The Effect of Globalization on Human Trafficking and

Forced Servitude, “Wisconsin International Law Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2008”

Publishing House, 2008 pp. 131-162;

P. Åström. Beyond all Tolerance: A growing problem demanding new countermeasures,

"Save the Children" Publishing House, Sweden, 2004; 7. K. D. Mitnick, W. L. Simon

The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security, "Wiley Pub"

Publishing House, Indiana, 2002;

E. Jardine, The Dark Web Dilemma: Tor, Anonymity and Online Policing, “Center for

International Governance Innovation and Chatham House” Publishing House,

Canada, 2015, p. 11.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/8851242/The-Hidden-Wiki-an-internet-

underworld-of-child-abuse.html

20 https://www.wearethorn.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Survivor_Survey_r5.pdf

accessed today 29.03.2020.

 1
1

http://www.digitalreasoning.com/buzz/using-tech-to-find-victims-of-child-sex-

trafficking.1719834 accessed today 30.03.2020.

Image 2: https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/how-to-get-on-the-dark-web/

Image 1: https://wearesocial.com/blog/2019/01/digital-2019-global-internet-use-accelerates