Traffic Jam, a program that helps track prostitution rings by using public data

Some happy medium between this title and the original title could be found.

Much better.

Word

Clever. One of the more interesting challenges that I've run into in the last few years is just the sheer amount of raw data out there. It's mind-boggling how many problems can be solved if we could sift through that data quickly, from human trafficking down to weather. I'm particularly fascinated by her intuition that writing patterns and templates can identify pimps. I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to come to that conclusion.. but now that it's out there, it's obvious.

I wonder what other problems we can solve with the same toolset.

This is interesting. The article doesn't talk about she implemented the Traffic Jam program, but it does discuss how she came to 'know' sex ads, as way to keep tabs on pimps.

""I would literally just spend hours on these websites, looking at ads, getting a sense for what was the norm," she said. She began to pick up the nuances of every post, understand how a template was made, and get a feel for the different voices behind these ads."

I don't know how this information fits with her implementation, but I was reminded of an old article by Paul Graham "A Plan For Spam" (http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html), where he talks about automating the process of detecting spam using Bayesian Filtering.

"I think it's possible to stop spam, and that content-based filters are the way to do it. The Achilles heel of the spammers is their message. They can circumvent any other barrier you set up. They have so far, at least. But they have to deliver their message, whatever it is. If we can write software that recognizes their messages, there is no way they can get around that."

Substitute the spam message for the sex message, and we're talking about the same thing. It would be an interesting exercise to try Bayesian Filtering on sex ads, or any other kind of message, to see where it leads.