Financing of Organised Crime: Human Trafficking in Focus

A victim service provider, or VSP, is a crucial partner in a human trafficking survivor's recovery. VSPs provide or connect survivors to resources such as medical care, legal services, employment opportunities, etc. In this work, we study VSP-survivor interactions from a computer security and privacy perspective. Through 17 semi-structured interviews with staff members at VSPs and survivors of trafficking, we surface the role technology plays in VSP-survivor interactions as well as related computer security and privacy concerns and mitigations. Our results highlight various tensions that VSPs must balance, including building trust with their clients (often by giving them as much autonomy as possible) while attempting to guide their use of technology to mitigate risks around revictimization. We conclude with concrete recommendations for computer security and privacy technologists who wish to partner with VSPs to support and empower trafficking survivors.

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Computer security and privacy in the interactions between victim service providers and human trafficking survivors

In working to rescue victims of human trafficking, law enforcement officers face a host of challenges. Working in complex, layered organizational structures, they face challenges of collaboration and communication. Online information is central to every phase of a human-trafficking investigation. With terabytes of available data such as sex work ads, policing is increasingly a big-data research problem. In this study, we interview sixteen law enforcement officers working to rescue victims of human trafficking to try to understand their computational needs. We highlight three major areas where future work in human-computer interaction can help. First, combating human trafficking requires advances in information visualization of large, complex, geospatial data, as victims are frequently forcibly moved across jurisdictions. Second, the need for unified information databases raises critical research issues of usable security and privacy. Finally, the archaic nature of information systems available to law enforcement raises policy issues regarding resource allocation for software development.

Understanding Law Enforcement Strategies and Needs for Combating Human Trafficking

Child trafficking and the European migration crisis: The role of forensic practitioners.

Trafficked persons are often re-traumatised by being criminalised for offences that they have committed as a result of their status as trafficked persons. This paper argues that in the absence of a binding international law model for the non-criminalisation of trafficked persons, there is no unified vision of non-criminalisation to which regional and national legislators may (or must) adhere. As a result, the existing provisions giving effect to the non-criminalisation principle at the regional level in Europe and the national level in the United Kingdom are deficient in two significant respects: first, they require that the offence was committed under a high degree of pressure (rather than being a direct consequence of the trafficking situation); and, secondly, they are qualified (because non-criminalisation is discretionary). A model is proposed for the non-criminalisation of trafficked persons in international law to be incorporated into the international legal framework through an amendment to the Trafficking Protocol in the form of an additional clause empowering trafficked persons to protect themselves against criminalisation by way of a positive defence; the trafficking defence.

The Trafficking Defence: A Proposed Model for the Non-Criminalisation of Trafficked Persons in International Law

The role of technology in the fight against human trafficking: Reflections on privacy and data protection concerns

Indonesia has enacted laws which provide mandatory protection for victims of human trafficking. It also has mandatory drug laws which, in some cases, lead to the death penalty. This legislative conflict together with investigative and prosecutorial failure risks the execution of human trafficked victims who are used as drug mules in organized crime. In countries where there is no statutory defence to criminal conduct, there is a need to approach criminal conduct in a way that protects victims. This includes mechanisms to ensure non-prosecution and non-punishment. The recent reprieve for Mary Jane Veloso, albeit temporary at the time of writing, is an opportunity for Indonesia to lead a new global approach to victim protection.

Felicity Gerry Qc

Papers

The role of technology in the fight against human trafficking: Reflections on privacy and data protection concerns

Is the law an ass when it comes to mules? How Indonesia can lead a new global approach to treating drug traffickers as human trafficked victims

A slippery and inconsistent slope: How Cambodia's draft cybercrime law exposed the dangerous drift away from international human rights standards