Immigration inspectors, circa 1924. Wikipedia. Public Domain.
Last year the shining jewel of the US Defense Department, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), announced that it was joining the fight against human trafficking as part of its national security mandate. The agency that helped to create the Internet has developed a programme named Memex to scour the deep web—the part of the Internet ignored by commercial search engines like Google—for evidence of criminal activities. According to DARPA: “The use of forums, chats, advertisements, job postings, hidden services, etc., continues to enable a growing industry of modern slavery.” DARPA invited proposals for computer science programmes interested in helping to shed light on the darker corners of the Internet. Artur Dubrawski, a senior systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, was awarded one of these prestigious contracts. He noted, “Originally, we looked for ways to help victims of human trafficking, but we quickly realized the best way to help victims would be to help law enforcement.”
