Human trafficking is a form of present-day slavery involving the illegal transport of humans by force or deception for sexual exploitation, labor, or other activities that help others benefit financially. Traffickers deceive men, women, and children from every corner of the world and force them into several exploitative situations every day.
Worldwide, one in four human trafficking victims are children. However, in several poorer regions of Africa, they make up the majority of trafficked persons. Women, on the other hand, make up two-thirds of the world’s human trafficking victims. It is estimated that as many as 1,000,000 people are being trafficked each year globally.
One of the most effective ways to identify a trafficker or a criminal network is to follow the financial trail they have left behind. With proper training and guidance, financial institutions and a few non-financial businesses can identify illicit finance related to human trafficking and report potential cases. Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative (ATII) is one such organization assisting Financial Institutions, Money Services Businesses, and Cryptocurrency Exchanges with implementing Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Protection programs within their Compliance, AML (Anti Money Laundering), CTF (Counter Terrorist Financing, Sanctions Screening, KYC (Know Your Customer) Onboarding, and Risk & Fraud departments. ATII provides them with typologies, training, and assistance with integration in their daily process and procedures.
ATII also provides the necessary training to several law enforcement agencies in advanced concepts like Digital Forensics, Blockchain Forensics, Darkweb Intelligence, Open-Source Intelligence, and various other investigative techniques.
A Veteran Leader
With over two decades of experience in the technology industry, Larry Cameron is the Chief Information Security Officer at the Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative (ATII) and an OSINT Investigator for the National Child Protection Task Force.
Larry says, “I was already in the Child Protection field prior to joining the company. It just made sense to be doing it with other like-minded individuals. Anyone with a different thought process is not in it for the right reasons and should re-evaluate their career path.”
He is also a certified Digital Evidence Investigator, Mobile Device Investigator, Certified Cryptocurrency Investigator, Triage Investigator, CipherTrace Certified Examiner, and holds over 50 other Industry, IT, and Security certifications.
Larry started his career in Electronic Data Systems and worked on several contracts, including MCI/Worldcom, Hewlett Packard, and Bank of America. Then he moved on to work for Research in Motion (RIM), 2011 Canada Games, and then to Data Center, Cloud Computing (IaaS & SaaS), Consulting, Forensics, and Virtual CISO engagements. Besides serving Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative as CISO, he also serves as the Blockchain Forensics lead for the National Child Protection Task Force, a Computer Forensics Professor at St. Lawrence College, and Head of Cyber Security for the Cyber Rights Organization at the United Nations.
Larry is a trainer at Interpol for several of their operations, including WEKA II, which rescued 700 victims and arrested over 300 perpetrators. He co-founded the Anti-Human Trafficking Cryptocurrency Consortium to foster a collaborative relationship with companies that generally see themselves as competitors like Cryptocurrency Exchanges, Bitcoin ATMs, and Blockchain Forensics & Analytics companies, as well as local, state, federal, and international law enforcement.
Team Culture
Being a non-profit, ATII promotes innovation and creates new approaches to combat human trafficking and protect the vulnerable. Many of its members have been or know someone affected by these heinous crimes at some point in their life. Everyone at ATII supports each other, the public, and law enforcement, with quite a few volunteers who want to help with investigations, projects, or operations.
Few Thoughts About CSR
ATII’s mission is: We help financial institutions promote corporate social responsibility through increasing awareness, facilitating intelligence integration & technology advancement, and encouraging strategic data collaboration – to combat human trafficking. The whole organization if formed around CSR – it’s in our DNA. Our job is to make it easy, safe, and verifiable for financial institutions to level up their CSR policies and procedures. Without actively practicing corporate social responsibility, businesses are less inclined to put people and planet first.
Working for an Equal World
In the future, ATII will create new tools, curate new data, and train law enforcement. The non-profit aims to build its Fusion Center to provide quick incident response on high-priority cases and find digital breadcrumbs that can help solve cases. It will also develop courses through a grant to train the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Forces. This will give them more advanced knowledge to investigate and respond to these crimes quickly.