Improving misspelled word solving for human trafficking detection in online advertising data

Social media is used by pimps to advertise their businesses for adult services due to easy accessibility. This requires the potentially computational model for law enforcement authorities to facilitate a detection of human trafficking activities. The machine learning (ML) models used to detect these activities mostly rely on text classification and often omit the correction of misspelled words, resulting in the risk of predictions error. Therefore, an improvement data processing approach is one of strategies to enhance an efficiency of human trafficking detection. This paper presents a novel approach to solving spelling mistakes. The approach is designed to select misspelled words, the replace them with the popular words having the same meaning based on an estimation of the probability of words and context used in human trafficking advertisements. The applicability of the proposed approach was demonstrated with the labeled human trafficking dataset using three classification models: k-nearest neighbor (KNN), naive Bayes (NB), and multilayer perceptron (MLP). The achievement of higher accuracy of the model predictions using the proposed method evidences an improved alert on human trafficking outperforming than the others. The proposed approach shows the potential applicability to other datasets and domains from the online advertisements

Forensic science in combat of human trafficking

Although Forensic Science has become a crucial part of the investigation of many types of crime, the low number of scientific publications on the usage of Forensic Science to eliminate Human Trafficking or to speed up crime investigation, has given rise to the idea of conducting research on the role of Forensic Science in the investigation of Human Trafficking cases. The following literature review aims at judging the current importance of Forensic Science in solving and preventing Human Trafficking cases, at gathering ideas for the introduction of novel techniques and at identifying gaps of research within this field. For this purpose, a wider view, also addressing socio-economic topics, was applied

Human trafficking 2.0 the impact of new technologies

Magister Legum - LLMHuman history is traversed by migration. This manifold global phenomenon has shaped the world to its current state, moving people from one place to another in reaction to the changing world. The autonomous decision to permanently move locations represents only a segment of what is considered to be migration. Routes can be dangerous, reasons can be without any alternative, displacements forced, and journeys deadly. Arguably the most fatal of all long-distance global migration flows, the transatlantic slave trade has left an enduring legacy of economic patterns and persistent pain. Whilst the trade in human beings originated centuries before, with Europe’s long history of slavery, this event represents an atrocious milestone in history. In a nutshell, European colonialists traded slaves for goods from African kings, who had captured them as war prisoners

The Janus-Faces of Cross-Border Crime in Europe

Europe is changing rapidly, which may also have a bearing on its criminal landscape. This does not mean that all sorts of new crime are emerging: a large part of the crimes remains profit-oriented and is committed by known modus operandi. That is the old face of crime. Amidst the traditional landscape new faces of crime can be identified. The internet is such a new face which emerges among others in the sex industry. This is as old as the human race, with all the related abuses and exploitation. But the internet gives it also a new face because of its broad reach and related opportunities, negative as well as positive. This volume provides other examples of this two-faced Janus head of crime. Old criminal trades, such as the illegal cigarette market, synthetic drugs and criminal exploitation of human labour, but also new criminal specialisations, new professional and industrial skills developed by ‘old’ ethnic minorities on various crime markets in central Europe. Meanwhile, the on-going illegal migrations continue to exert their influence on the perception of crime: while the actual prevalence of most types of crime decreases, fear of crime continues to increase. The flow of migrants is unrelated to this outcome but it impacts nevertheless on the perception of crime. This volume of the 18th Cross-border Crime Colloquium, held in Bratislava in the spring of 2017, contains the peer-reviewed contributions of 22 European experts and up-and-coming researchers. Their chapters cover a broad field of crime in which the double faced Janus head can be discerned: illegal migrants, criminal markets, corruption, money laundering and organised crime, highlighting many new aspects

Using US Artificial Intelligence to Fight Human Trafficking in Europe

editorial reviewedHuman trafficking is keeping pace with new technologies, but so is its repression. Nowadays, artificial intelligence (AI) systems support the daily work of law enforcement authorities in detecting and investigating trafficking schemes. These systems were developed, and are used primarily, in the United States of America (US). As the fight against human trafficking is a worldwide priority, they are often exported from the US or replicated. Yet, so far, little research has been done to examine how (US) policies and values might be embedded in these specific systems. This article argues that the spread of US tools using artificial intelligence to combat human trafficking hinders the autonomy of foreign States. Particularly in the European context, these tools might challenge national criminal sovereignty as well as Europe’s digital sovereignty. The article highlights the US policies surrounding human trafficking that are embedded in these AI systems (legal definition, political priorities and decisions) and the lack of adequate consideration of existing European standards. These are meant to protect human rights while developing and using AI systems, i.e. the protection of personal data and control over technical standards