Big Data to stop crimes
Big data is expanding much more quickly than most people even think. Every week there are news stories on how different industries are using big data. In the past few weeks there are news about big data use in healthcare, agriculture, government and retail industry and how it change the way businesses are conducted. According to the industry, big data is used everywhere from large to medium sized companies to take advantage of this new technology. A senior manager said: “It is so new, few companies know about it or have skills to do it so this is a great opportunity to seize the market and push the competitors out. If they are not using big data in their business, either they better be hurry or prepare to file for bankruptcy as they are far behind and may never catch up.”
In the past few years, Google is one of few companies that have extensively using of big data analytics. Yesterday Google announced that they are using big data analytics to identify human trafficking groups in many countries. The company believes big data can collect information about how these criminal groups kidnapped children, women and men and sent them to work as slaves, or sell them into prostitutions in places in Asia, Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe etc. Google also partner with Palantir Technologies and Salesforce.com to build a data-sharing platform for identifying global patterns on the operations of these human-trafficking trades. Data about emergency phone calls, the ages of the victims, their home countries, and the types of criminal activities they have been forced into will be collected and shared between all members of the alliance, and government agencies. Google believes that by analyzing these data, it can match it with similar data across borders from other trafficking emergency hotlines to know where the human-trafficking-related crime is originating and how law enforcement can intervene.
Despite all the efforts of government law enforcement, there are very little information about the illegal flow of humans forced into the sex trade or into slave labor or even killed to have their organs extracted and sell. However, Google believes Big Data can collect enough data, analyze them and predict their movements then report to government about these crime gangs’ activities. A Google manager explained: “Nine months ago, we set out to collect, map, expose, and disrupt the workings of illicit networks of organized crime, narcotic-trafficking, organ harvesting and human trafficking. We are working very closely with law enforcement agencies in many countries and it has been very effective to catch criminals.” Another government officer said: “There are correspondent among criminal groups regarding how many victims they have, the ages of children to young adult, their gender (males, females etc.); there are search queries on phone numbers, addresses, type of illicit business, type of organs they need to sell, the prices customer are willing to pay; address of customers and their phones; their meeting places etc. There are so many data such as emails, phone records, pictures, videos etc. that can be collected, analyzed, and generate valuable information. Google and its partners are using their complex big data analytics to match it with similar data across borders from emergency hotlines, police reports to build a comprehensive and timely picture of where the human-trafficking-related crime are happening and how law enforcement can intervene.”
The use of Big Data by Google and their partners is an extremely important first step toward use of these systems for the benefits of humankind that lead to the abolition of slavery and other crimes.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
