Upload 4 Photos and Discreetly Contribute to the Fight

And by that, we don’t mean that you actually run a sting operation. All you need to do is click four simple photos of whichever hotel room you are staying in and that’s it.

How It Works

A U.S. based social action organization, Exchange Initiative, and researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have come up with TraffickCam. The users just have to download it and click four photos of their hotel room. These photos are then uploaded to the U.S. national database’s large repository of stills of victims found in hotel rooms. The analysts, using special program, compare the photos with other database hotel images to determine which hotels are a base of such illegal activities. It is definitely an intelligent app that lets its users contribute to the fight against human trafficking while being discreet.

The photos are compared on the basis of room carpet, kind and make of furniture, interior design and window view. The comparison returns names of potential hotels where the image might have been taken.

Why It Is A Very Important App?

Sex trafficking is today one of the most widespread illegal business that feeds on the helplessness of its victims. Girls as young as 10 years are forced into it. The UNICEF says that about 3 lac children from America and 1.2 million from other parts of the world are forced into this business annually. Early testing of TraffickCam returned 85% accuracy in identifying hotel rooms and solving cases of missing victims. This proves that if given a chance, TraffickCam can make a huge contribution in this fight. Exchange Initiative is thus reaching out to bag-packers, businessmen, sports teams and other such frequent travellers to click photos of whichever hotel they go to.

This app is available for both iOS and Android.

Takeaways:-

• S. based Exchange Initiative and researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have come up with TraffickCam.
• The users upload four photos of the hotel room they checks into. These photos are uploaded to U.S. National Database.
• The analyzers compare these images with large database of ‘victims in hotel’ images and, depending on hotel interiors, check for matches.
• TraffickCam has shown 85% accuracy in identifying hotel rooms.