Hamilton 1

Human Trafficking Speech

Lindsay G. Hamilton
Nevada State College
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Human Trafficking Speech

Imagine.
Desperately searching for a better life.
Imagine.
Putting your trust into a total stranger.
Imagine.
Selling your life without even knowing you did.
This world is built upon the backs of the people who were hoping their lives could
amount to something better. They put their trust into someone who promised them their dreams,
but all they got was a street corner to work on. It is idealistic to think that slavery ended in 1989,
when the coutnry of Maritania became the last country to outlaw the practice. However, this
concept of slavery morphed into a serpant that weaves itself in and out of our lives, constricting
us into the dependency of its’will. This serpant is named human trafficking. Due to the
advancements of technology, traffickers are utilizing online networks to facilitate their crime due
to the lack of a proper algorithm on social networking sites, they utilize online communities and
online shopping spaces, and payments are hard to track due to the loopholes in the online
banking system. Through an increase of the monitornization of the internet, and through an
increase in awareness of how human traffickers utilize technologies, we can prevent and protect
ourselves from being taken down by the serpent.
We are living in a new digital age, and nowadays, it is nearly impossible to find someone
who does not participate in the wares of social media in some way. Teenagers are the biggest
perpetrator of this technology blight. In a study done by the Pew Research Center (2018), “95%
of teenagers own a smartphone, and 45% of them admit to being online constantly while 44%
say they go online multiple times a day”. A new era has begun where people are living their lives
through the ones and zeros, and with this comes an increase in online interactions; however,
anybody can be hiding behind the persona they display on a screen. Human traffickers are
utilizing social media and the internet to facilitate their crime because they are able to gain the
trust of young and vulnerable people, and they learn how to exploit and isolate them from their
loved ones. One of the current issues with our social media system is that it does not have a
 Hamilton 3

proper algorithm in place to target and track suspicious behavior. However, a system was
designed by Yang Yang, a graduate student from Notre Dame, to address this issue. This system
would be able to filter through social media posts to identify suspicious posts that could contain
sensitive information about human trafficking. This will prevent posts, that could potentially
prove to be useful in stopping human trafficking, from being burried amongst the thousands of
posts from all other users.
With an increased regulation of social media, people become concerned that their privacy
rights will become violated; however, the irony of the situation cannot be ignored. People are
concerned with privacy on social media, but they are already posting elements of their life onto
the internet, and on the internet everything lives forever and can be accessed by anyone at any
time. By posting on their accounts, people are already exposing life to the public. With Yang’s
algorithm in place, social media would not be violating one’s privacy no more than it already is.
An algorithm will simply ensure that a system would be in place where suspicious activity and
post can be monitored. This could potentially save a multitude of people from falling victim to
the abuses cause by human trafficking.
Internet forums have provided a space for people to connect through shared interests, but
what happens when these people are interested in sexually exploiting children? Well, these
people have their own online communities as well. The issue of children being sexually
exploited over the internet is nothing new, this system of abuse has roots dating back to the
1990s (Mendel, 2016). It is not just online communities that are helping to facilitate human
trafficking by providing a safe space for perverted people to live out their fantasies, traffickers
themselves are using websites and social media to advertise their business. In 2006, a Las Vegas
man, Marcus Sewell, was arrested for advertising two underage girls on Craigslist (Lotonero,
2011). This is not an isolated case. Many people have been accused of using the internet as a
means to sell their victims by using the new technology as a way to advance their business. Easy
access to victims of human trafficking as well as communities in which perpetrators openly
abuse victims is creating an issue of human trafficking inflitrating our lives without people even
knowing that it is. Many companies even allow human traffickers to advertise their crimes, and
the evidence of people being abused and violated is going unnoticed. Human trafficking already
has a grip on all of us, and we do not even realize it does.
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Human trafficking is a multi-million dollar industry. If money is able to be tracked, than

how come human trafficking is still an issue, and how comr traffickers and the people who are
facilitating trafficking are able to continue to walk freely amongst others? This crime is able to
be continued due to the increased use of wire transfers between the criminals. Wire transfers are
a way to exchange money over the internet. Human traffickers have come up with ways in which
they are able to obtain money from people over the internet without it leaving a trail, meaning
they get off scot free. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication,
handles 5 trillion dollars in wire transfers a day. Within these 5 trillion dollars, is hiding the
tainted money of human traffickers. These payments are hard to track because traffickers will
often set up a bank account under a fake business name, or even under the name of one of their
victims (Polaris, 2018). This ensures that they are able to remain anonymous in the payments.
As many other criminal businesses so often do, human trafficking finds a way to be a part
of our everyday lives by exploiting social networks and other technological advancements. The
internet is like a river, everyone is flowing with the system, making stops here and there along
the way, but underneath us lies a world that many of us do not even know about. We only see
what is happening on the surface, but right underneath us countless numbers of people are being
exploited and taken advantage of to provide money for others. The victims are simply pawns that
are trapped in a system through the power of fear. By talking about the issue, people will be able
to be aware about how the internet and social media can impede into our everyday lives and
could possibly pose a danger to us and our freedoms.