International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 96

Human Trafficking Network Investigations: The Role of Open Source Intelligence and Large-Scale Data Analytics in Investigating Organized Crime Leah F. Meyer and Louise I. Shelley 1 Leah F. Meyer founded the Human Trafficking Intelligence Project to research human trafficking and equip investigators with tactically relevant tools to uncover trafficking operations. She previously worked on DARPA’s Memex project as Project Manager and Investigative Analyst, providing investigative support to law enforcement and building software to investigate human trafficking. She worked with the international NGO, Polaris, building the BeFree SMS hotline and serving as Regional Specialist for the National Human Trafficking Hotline, developing case response and building capacity for law enforcement, service providers, and government agencies to serve human trafficking victims. Email: [email protected] Louise Shelley is the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Endowed Chair and a University Professor at Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University. She founded and directs the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC). Her most recent books include Dark Commerce: How a New Illicit Economy Threatens our Future (PrincetonUniversity Press, 2018), written while an inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellow 2015-2017, Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective (Cambridge 2010). She is the recipient of the Guggenheim, NEH, IREX, Kennan Institute, Fulbright, and Rockefeller Fellowships. Email: [email protected] Abstract This paper examines the migration of trafficking for sexual exploitation to the web and explores open source research techniques, analytical tools, and datasets used to uncover a Chinese organized crime network engaged in human trafficking. Memex, a US government research program that produced a large dataset and software application tools, provided surface and deep web intelligence through escort advertisements and sex buyer review forum posts to law enforcement investigators. The tools provided visualizations 1 The research done for this paper by Louise Shelley was done under the NSF grant: EAGER:ISN: A New Multi-Layered Network Approach for Improving the Detection of Human Trafficking, Award Number: 1837881. 87