March 17, 2025
Holley Harris
Government Customer Success Manager
Human trafficking remains one of the most elusive and devastating crimes impacting vulnerable populations worldwide. Victims around the world are forced into servitude, debt, or slavery through the use of force, fraud, or coercion. Traffickers exploit individuals for various purposes, including sex work, forced labor under exploitative conditions such as debt bondage, forced participation in militias as child soldiers, and even surrogacy. The reasons behind trafficking are often deeply rooted in economic hardship, armed conflicts, and systemic inequalities that make individuals more susceptible to manipulation and exploitation, and it won’t go away on its own: human trafficking is the fastest-growing crime in the world.
As traffickers scale their operations by crossing jurisdictions and exploiting digital platforms, investigators are turning to open-source intelligence to surface early activity indicators and enable faster, more informed responses.
Human trafficking spans both physical and digital environments. OSINT provides investigative teams with a window into publicly and commercially available information that can help illuminate criminal networks, identify potential victims, and detect trafficking hotspots.
OSINT's strength lies in surfacing both proactive signals (early signs of trafficking activity) and reactive insights (contextual data following known incidents) from a wide variety of sources. From social media and forum posts to escort ads, public records, and associated images, OSINT can synthesize disparate information into unified, actionable insights.
Three Solutions That Power Trafficking Investigations
Human trafficking investigations are most effective when built around three core capabilities: entity investigations, situational awareness, and link analysis. Each level of analysis plays a distinct role in the investigative lifecycle and, in conjunction, forms a cohesive, end-to-end approach to disrupting trafficking activity.
Together, these tools enable teams to move from fragmented leads to actionable intelligence by illuminating patterns, prioritizing threats, and helping protect potential victims more effectively.
See for yourself how Skopenow can modernize your investigations.
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