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

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

#11

Post by jcromartie »

dean wrote: post #10

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…

I could imagine a naive Bayes classifier would do the trick when it comes to figuring out which ads were written by the same person.

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

#12

Post by asdf_asdf_asdf »

llamataboot wrote: post #9

But what does the software /do/ ?

If they told you, maybe you'd try to defeat it or create your own version in furtherance of patronage. Instead just be aware:

There's software. Out there. Doing something. (and it's always watching)

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

#13

Post by jsprogrammer »

Jemaclus wrote: post #8

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…

People have been trying to do textual analysis to divine all kinds of things about the people who wrote the text. You'll even find papers in psychology or psychiatry journals claiming to be able to distinguish mental illnesses, based purely on a textual analysis. Also, all manner of religions are essentially founded on textual analysis.

It is correct to call such analyses, tools. They cannot give you answers that you can rely on. At best, they may give you hints of other places to look. However, one problem such analysis can run into is that when the signal (the patterns and templates that the analysis was looking for) disappears, the tool becomes rather worthless (in which case, you may want to consider how useful/correct-for-the-job the tool really was).

In the case described in the article, it seemed like an appropriate use of textual analysis.

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

#15

Post by learning_still »

"When I asked her how detectives differentiate Traffic Jam's data between trafficked victims and sex workers, she said that they rely on their intuition and knowledge of the community they protect."

It sounds like she's busting low class pimps, and hoping that a few of them are human traffickers.

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

#16

Post by ChuckMcM »

Fascinating article, trying to automate what the CIA would call an Analyst. Back when I was building my old computer collection I would read hundreds of ebay listings to find the "good stuff" and started to recognize sellers that listed under a variety of user names, or buyers who were also sellers. Just by the way they talked about the hardware, and did they call it by its "common" name or the product catalog name, etc. Never thought about making a resarch project out of it though.

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

#19

Post by com2kid »

dalacv wrote: post #17
dalacv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word

why the downvotes? I meant 'Word' like I agree: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Word

The Hacker News community discourages comments that do not add value to the conversation. Simple statements of agreeing are best handled through the up vote mechanism.
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