“I say to myself, ‘My god, the lawyer for this dirtbag predator is smarter and more sophisticated than the cops are’,” the co-founder of the
Human traffickers and sexual predators often use high-end technology and increasingly take advantage of encryption to protect the details of their crimes, Walsh said. And even if they didn’t, law enforcement officials, especially in smaller cities and towns, lack the budget and the access to the technological tools that would speed up the investigation and aid in the prosecution of the offenders.
“We are the biggest admirers of law enforcement,” Carmil said. “However, they are understaffed, underequipped, and, at any point of time, regardless of how much the government will give them, they are under constraints. They always need to do more with less.”
“The system really helps us with doing our jobs faster,” said Nielsen, adding that one smartphone could contain more than 250,000 images to process. Rather than having an investigator look through those images and sort them, Cellebrite’s Pathfinder software can handle it, while also linking them to locations, as well as other data from other smartphones or other cases.
The Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office used the Cellebrite technology last weekend as part of the multi-agency Operation Interception to help rescue children being trafficked, as many visited the area due to the College Football Playoff national championship held in nearby
“When you fight corruption globally, you have to have an overwhelming amount of evidence that is difficult to sweep under the rug,” Parker said. “You have to make the case a slam dunk and I’m telling you, in all the experience I have had over the last 13 years… in hundreds of cases of human trafficking, when we leverage Cellebrite technology and we introduce that technology into the judicial process, the success level is significantly higher.”
Walsh said he hopes that the increased access to technology can help level the playing field against those preying on children.
He said the
“We should have 2,000 people working on those calls,” Walsh said. “We should have 100 branches across the United States.”
Experts say that not only are there now more human traffickers, but they are also technologically savvier.
“The pimps of the day, the gangs of today are way smarter than the sex trafficking gangs of the past,” Walsh said. “They’re way more dangerous. They move faster. They have encrypted files. They’re smart. And law enforcement just can’t keep up with them.”
Cellebrite’s Carmil said government has the responsibility of funding law enforcement so that they can better protect children and quickly search for those that are missing.
However, he said corporations and nonprofits need to do what they can as well.
“I’ve got kids.
_____
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
, source