How Taking Pictures of Your Hotel Room Helps the Fight Against Human Trafficking
Those online hotel reviews might make a bigger impact than you think. Thanks to TraffickCam, taking pictures of your hotel room can now help law enforcement identify where human traffiking victims are being held (h/t: Shannon). The free TraffickCam App lets you enter your hotel name and room number and upload 4 pictures of the room which are then compared to “hundreds of pictures, in every city around the United States, posted online, that show victims of trafficking, in hotel rooms posed on beds.â€
The idea for the app is a collaboration between researchers at Washington University and the Exchange Initiative, a non-profit formed by Nix Conference and Meeting Management after one of their employees recognized a victim’s location from the hotel background.
I think it’s a great idea, but always a little leery about making information that detailed, like my room number and the rough dates I was there, widely available to the government. (Even though I do post lengthy hotel reviews online).
What about you? Is this an app you’ll be using?
Fascinating!