NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — John Walsh, an advocate for missing children and longtime host of “America’s Most Wanted,” says he constantly feels let down by criminals — especially in the courtroom.
“I say to myself, ‘My God, this dirtbag predator’s lawyer is smarter and more sophisticated than the police,’” says the co-founder of the National Center for Missing & Exploited children told The Associated Press. “They don’t really know the technology.”
Human traffickers and sexual predators often use high technology and are increasingly using encryption to protect the details of their crimes, Walsh said. And even if they didn’t, law enforcement officials, especially in smaller cities and towns, lack the budget and access to the technological tools that would speed up investigations and aid in the prosecution of offenders.
Cellebrite DI, Ltd. wants to change that. The provider of digital tools that help law enforcement and private companies find and track investigative leads on Friday launched “Operation Find Them All” — an initiative in which the company will donate its technology to nonprofits that help find endangered children, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the nonprofit organization The Exodus Road, which fights human trafficking around the world. The NASDAQ-traded company — which reported revenues of $85 million in the third quarter of 2023, up 17% year over year — will also make a financial donation to these organizations, as well as to Raven, a political nonprofit that increases awareness of the threat. of child exploitation on the internet.
Cellebrite CEO Yossi Carmil said the FBI had nearly 360,000 missing child cases in 2022, while the National Center for Missing & Exploited children received more than 32 million reports of suspected sexual exploitation of children that year. Knowing his company had the technology that could help troubled children, Carmil said he felt Cellebrite should do what it could.
“We are the greatest admirers of law enforcement,” Carmil said. “However, they are understaffed and under-equipped, and at any time, no matter how much the government will give them, they are under pressure. They always have to do more with less.”
Kent Nielsen, digital forensics investigator for the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office in Texas, said his department is currently using Cellebrite technology to process data collected from cellphones, as well as the AI-powered software to analyze the data to find potential leads.
“The system really helps us do our work faster,” says Nielsen, adding that one smartphone can hold more than 250,000 images to process. Instead of having a researcher look through those images and sort them, Cellebrite’s Pathfinder software can handle this, while also linking them to locations, as well as other data from other smartphones or other cases.
The Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office used Cellebrite technology last weekend as part of multi-agency Operation Interception to rescue trafficked children as many were visiting the area for the College Football Playoff national championship taking place in nearby Houston was held. Nielsen said seven girls were rescued and 23 arrests were made.
Matt Parker, co-founder of The Exodus Road, said he saw the difference one piece of Cellebrite technology made when investigating the human trafficking of Rohingya Muslims in Malaysia in 2015. Through ‘Operation Find Them All’, Parker hopes Cellebrite technology to other countries, even if governments have not previously prosecuted human trafficking cases.
“Fighting corruption worldwide requires an overwhelming amount of evidence that is difficult to sweep under the rug,” Parker said. “You have to make the case a slam dunk and I’m telling you, with all the experience I’ve had over the last thirteen years… in hundreds of human trafficking cases, when we use Cellebrite technology and we introduce that technology into the in legal proceedings, the level of success is considerably higher.”
Walsh said he hopes greater access to technology can help level the playing field against those who prey on children.
He said the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children employs approximately 450 employees at its headquarters in Virginia and has five other offices across the country. In 2022, it received more than 110,000 calls about missing children – a 16% increase from the previous year.
“There should be 2,000 people working on these calls,” Walsh said. “We should have 100 locations in the United States.”
Experts say not only are there more human traffickers now, but they are also technologically savvy.
“The pimps of the past, the gangs of today, are much smarter than the sex trafficking gangs of the past,” Walsh said. ‘They are much more dangerous. They move faster. They have encrypted files. They are smart. And the police just can’t keep up with them.”
Cellebrite’s Carmil said the government has a responsibility to fund law enforcement so they can better protect children and quickly search for missing children.
However, he said businesses and nonprofits should also do what they can.
‘I have children. John (Walsh) has children. We are also citizens and parents,” Carmil said. “This is a sacred mission. It goes beyond just the money.”
_____
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits is supported by the AP’s partnership with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.