Greg's Corner

Facial recognition being used to help stop trafficking

Previously, we posted about how Amazon’s facial recognition software, called Rekognition, is being sold to police departments around the country. Many civil liberty groups have protested the police use of the software as they feel it is ripe for abuse. However, like many tools, one person’s abuse can be another person’s salvation. One startup is using the Rekognition software to help rescue victims of human trafficking.

Marinus Analytics is a startup that was founded by CEO Emily Kennedy that develops tools to help stop human trafficking. While attending Carnegie Mellon University, Ms. Kenedy developed a program called Traffic Jam that uses artificial intelligence to help identify trafficking victims. What once could take a police investigator days to do, Traffic Jam could do in a fraction of that time. More recently, Marinus Analytics added a feature called Facesearch to Traffic Jam which is based on the Rekognition software. Facesearch allows police to use a photograph of a trafficking victim or missing person to the Traffic Jam database in order to help locate the victim. It’s the science of fantastical TV crime dramas come to life.

Ms. Kennedy has even said with the federal seizure of Backpage, Traffic Jam will continue to adapt to new online sources. We commend Ms. Kennedy for her dedication and innovation in the fight against human trafficking and we’ll add that it’s refreshing to see a startup try to accomplish real change in the world rather than trying to cash in on whatever the latest social trend is.