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It is essential that once identified, relevant targeted multilevel response mechanisms are in place, using judiciary and social tools, to ensure efficient preventive actions, investigations, and, in turn, successful prosecutions. Such mechanisms must focus on linking activities in the cyberworld with the protection of real-life (potential) victims and the interception of real-life criminals in the physical world.
The project will take advantage of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) for investigations and prevention, to design and deliver structured responses to THB online activities. The outcomes of OSINT analysis will provide leads for (a) judiciary and LEAs in the area of investigation, integrating data on suspicious activities into the cycle OSINT-HUMINT-SIGINT; and for (b) private organisations, in the area of prevention, using OSINT data to design campaigns based on Behavioral Targeting ads, Data Matched Targeting, and Location Targeting, as a form of social prevention online.
TOOLS
It is essential that once identified, relevant targeted multilevel response mechanisms are in place, using judiciary and social tools, to ensure efficient preventive actions, investigations, and, in turn, successful prosecutions. Such mechanisms must focus on linking activities in the cyberworld with the protection of real-life (potential) victims and the interception of real-life criminals in the physical world.
The project will take advantage of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) for investigations and prevention, to design and deliver structured responses to THB online activities. The outcomes of OSINT analysis will provide leads for (a) judiciary and LEAs in the area of investigation, integrating data on suspicious activities into the cycle OSINT-HUMINT-SIGINT; and for (b) private organisations, in the area of prevention, using OSINT data to design campaigns based on Behavioral Targeting ads, Data Matched Targeting, and Location Targeting, as a form of social prevention online.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
INTERCEPTED carefully addresses the supply and demand side of THB, ensuring that all actors facilitating trafficking can be better brought to justice and increasing the potential for (potential) victims to be identified and protected and the earliest possible stage.
Objective 1: Elicit variation in the way the internet is used along the trafficking chain according to target victims’ profiles and types of exploitation.
While increasing resources are invested in understanding the use of the internet by traffickers, and with that the counter measures that can be implemented, little attention has thus far been dedicated to how this varies depending on the type of targeted victim profile (with particular reference to gender, age, nationality, and disabilities) or the type of exploitation (such as in different fields of the labour market or for forced adoption and surrogacy).
Objective 2. Design an early interception tool specifically targeting the recruitment of victims and advertisement of services.
INTERCEPTED will design law enforcement tools that build on sound, extensive, and current data in order to affectively prevent and counter the trafficking of various victim profiles, in all its forms. Furthermore, a detailed methodology will be established for the updating of semantic banks according to changing trends and traffickers’ own adaption of language used, in order to design and deliver targeted responses to online THB.
Objective 3: Enhance the capabilities of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) and Judiciary in public-private cooperation through the planning of OSINT Targeted counter-THB Campaigns.
INTERCEPTED uses OSINT as a tool for targeted counter-THB campaigns in the framework of an enhanced public-private cooperation to prevent and fight THB. The tool will target three broad typologies of platforms, social media, including Facebook, Myspace, Skype, WhatsApp and Vkontakte.
Objective 4. Establish a common European mechanism for the detection and reporting of suspected online recruitment or advertisement material, fostering strengthened multi-agency cooperation and rapid cross-border responses and ensuring successful use of digital evidence in court.
The mechanism should build upon new and strengthened partnerships of public bodies and civil society from across Member States in order to enhance rapid responses to changing trends in modi operandi of traffickers. The mechanism will include a state-of-the-art methodology for safeguarding data preservation and hashing digital clues and evidence to ensure their integrity and admissibility in court.
Objective 5. Strengthen the digital capacities and knowledge base of law enforcement.
INTERCEPTED will develop and implement highly specialised training for law enforcement and judicial practitioners working in the field of counter trafficking and related fields. Training will focus on ensuring coordination across the full cycle of countering digital trafficking, from detection and reporting, to investigating and prosecution, all the while embedded in a system of victim protection and the prioritisation of victims’ rights. Finally, a toolkit will be developed in collaboration with law enforcement and judicial practitioners for private internet providers in order to better equip them for coordinated action with public bodies and civil society.
Download INTERCEPTED fact sheets with all the basic and pertinent information related to the project.
