Palantir was founded by a number of PayPal alumni and a group of
computer scientists from Stanford. The company’s technology grew from
data analytic and visualization systems invented while at PayPal to cite
fraud. But after 9/11 the founders received funding from the CIA's
venture arm In-Q-Tel and decided to apply their technology to the areas
of counterterrorism and intelligence.
What Palantir is allowing The Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network to do is to make all the data it gathers useful. And in the case of human trafficking, the data the hotline collects becomes useful in two distinct ways: the first for immediate response, and the second for pattern recognition.
The immediate response comes when a sex trafficking victim or a forced laborer manages to call or send a text into an operator at the hotline.
“When you’re talking about someone who is taking a big leap of faith to call a hotline number from a sticker on a bathroom and say, ‘My pimp’s asleep; my pimp’s passed out,’ and have someone there in seven minutes to help that person rather than 17 minutes--that window of opportunity can close very rapidly, and so each moment you can hasten that process is very, very valuable,” says Jason Payne, philanthropy engineer at Palantir. “The core workflow that we’re providing is helping the call specialist comprehend their toolkit of options better and faster.”
In the case of immediate response like this, Palantir’s technology lets a call center operator pull up a Java or HTML 5 web app that maps where the victim is calling from. The operator can then do a radius search around that area to find what partnerships they have with NGOs or law enforcement agencies and use a histogram to look at the data they have about each of those to find the best match and then facilitate a linkup.
In addition to powerful search and mapping tools, data is automatically pushed to the hotline operator instead of having to manually pull it. For example, if a caller is describing the service station on the side of the road she is calling from, data of possible matches are pushed onto the operator’s screen as she inputs more information from the caller. In this way, Palantir’s technology allows hotline specialists to achieve rapid spatial context in two minutes instead of the five or seven minutes it would take if they had to access three or four different databases to find that information.
All of these search questions, whether it be a statistical search, a keyword search, a geographic search, can be saved and run in the background automatically,” Payne says. “When a hotline analysts logs in in the morning they see new information that matches those people. Using that easier capability to comprehend the data, they’re able to look at what trafficking networks are in play to better understand where networks are active and where they’re not.”
And it’s the power of using big data to understand trafficking networks where the second part of Palantir’s technology comes in: the ability to discern patterns in human trafficking so real-world resources such as law enforcement initiatives, government legislation, and NGO field work can be better allocated to fight it.
- More Here from Michael Grothaus and he is (rightly) very angry, so HELP until this hell on earth is eradicated:
And if you’re reading this--or if you ever have the soul-crushing yet eye-opening experience of talking to a trafficking victim--and that makes you realize that hell does exist on earth, and it makes you angry, but at the same time makes you feel helpless, know that you don’t need to be a legislator, or a software engineer, or in law enforcement to make a difference in the fight against slavery.
Increased awareness matters. And awareness isn’t going to increase about the slave trade unless you tell people; unless you take action. Show people this article. Tweet it. Share it on Facebook. Visit Polaris’s, LaStrada’s, and Liberty Asia’s websites. Check out the sidebars in this article to find out more ways you can help.
But above all, get angry, stay angry, and tell people about slavery. You don’t need to have a $3 million grant to make a difference. You don’t need big databases or powerful analytic tools. All the technology you need to spread this information is in your hands, as you read this, right now. So do it.
What Palantir is allowing The Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network to do is to make all the data it gathers useful. And in the case of human trafficking, the data the hotline collects becomes useful in two distinct ways: the first for immediate response, and the second for pattern recognition.
The immediate response comes when a sex trafficking victim or a forced laborer manages to call or send a text into an operator at the hotline.
“When you’re talking about someone who is taking a big leap of faith to call a hotline number from a sticker on a bathroom and say, ‘My pimp’s asleep; my pimp’s passed out,’ and have someone there in seven minutes to help that person rather than 17 minutes--that window of opportunity can close very rapidly, and so each moment you can hasten that process is very, very valuable,” says Jason Payne, philanthropy engineer at Palantir. “The core workflow that we’re providing is helping the call specialist comprehend their toolkit of options better and faster.”
In the case of immediate response like this, Palantir’s technology lets a call center operator pull up a Java or HTML 5 web app that maps where the victim is calling from. The operator can then do a radius search around that area to find what partnerships they have with NGOs or law enforcement agencies and use a histogram to look at the data they have about each of those to find the best match and then facilitate a linkup.
In addition to powerful search and mapping tools, data is automatically pushed to the hotline operator instead of having to manually pull it. For example, if a caller is describing the service station on the side of the road she is calling from, data of possible matches are pushed onto the operator’s screen as she inputs more information from the caller. In this way, Palantir’s technology allows hotline specialists to achieve rapid spatial context in two minutes instead of the five or seven minutes it would take if they had to access three or four different databases to find that information.
All of these search questions, whether it be a statistical search, a keyword search, a geographic search, can be saved and run in the background automatically,” Payne says. “When a hotline analysts logs in in the morning they see new information that matches those people. Using that easier capability to comprehend the data, they’re able to look at what trafficking networks are in play to better understand where networks are active and where they’re not.”
And it’s the power of using big data to understand trafficking networks where the second part of Palantir’s technology comes in: the ability to discern patterns in human trafficking so real-world resources such as law enforcement initiatives, government legislation, and NGO field work can be better allocated to fight it.
- More Here from Michael Grothaus and he is (rightly) very angry, so HELP until this hell on earth is eradicated:
And if you’re reading this--or if you ever have the soul-crushing yet eye-opening experience of talking to a trafficking victim--and that makes you realize that hell does exist on earth, and it makes you angry, but at the same time makes you feel helpless, know that you don’t need to be a legislator, or a software engineer, or in law enforcement to make a difference in the fight against slavery.
Increased awareness matters. And awareness isn’t going to increase about the slave trade unless you tell people; unless you take action. Show people this article. Tweet it. Share it on Facebook. Visit Polaris’s, LaStrada’s, and Liberty Asia’s websites. Check out the sidebars in this article to find out more ways you can help.
But above all, get angry, stay angry, and tell people about slavery. You don’t need to have a $3 million grant to make a difference. You don’t need big databases or powerful analytic tools. All the technology you need to spread this information is in your hands, as you read this, right now. So do it.
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