Analyst uses technology to take down sex traffickers

Photo caption:  Kara Smith displays the logo for DeliverFund […] (Courtesy of Kara Smith). Article by Joline Gutierrez Krueger.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — She scrolls through photos online of women and girls in various stages of disrobe and degradation, apologizing now and then for the graphic nature of what I am seeing. Their faces are contorted in what I assume to be expressions of enticement, but they seem more sad than sexy, more resigned, the eyes vacant and dilated. Many of the photos show no faces, these women and girls reduced to body parts. Kara Smith spends hours going through these photos and the social media sites from which they came. She knows some of the females by name, has followed some for years. She knows where they live, where they travel, what they eat, the slang they use, the tattoos they are branded with, the tattoos they have tried to cover.

She knows they are enmeshed in the dark, dirty world of human trafficking, and that the internet is a breeding ground for traffickers, who find their prey and ply their trade online. For Smith, who tracks down these traffickers, the internet is her hunting ground. […]

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