Domain-Specific Search Engines for Investigating Human Trafficking and Other Illicit Activities

Abstract

Web advertising related to human trafficking (HT) activity has been on the rise in recent years. Question answering over crawled sex advertisements to assist investigators in the real world is an important social problem involving many technical challenges. This article will describe the problem of domain-specific search (DSS), a specific set of technologies that can address these challenges, drawing on cutting-edge techniques developed over three years of DARPA-funded research conducted in collaboratively academic (e.g., the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute), government (e.g., NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and industrial (e.g., Uncharted) settings to assist analysts and investigative experts in the HT domain. Specifically, the article will describe the background, main principles and challenges of building a DSS in illicit domains and the general architecture of a DSS designed for illicit sex advertisements on the open web. The article will conclude with the scope of future research in this area.