This facial recognition technology could help stop online child trafficking

Emily Kennedy spent her undergrad years reading child sex-trafficking ads. 

She wanted to understand their ticks: Why was this ad formatted that way? Why did the same ads often have different phone numbers? Kennedy knew that this kind of analysis could unravel at least a portion of sex-trafficking business. And after she graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University, she built a system to do just that. 

Traffic Jam, which was developed by Kennedy's company, Marinus Analytics, has for years detected patterns in sex-trafficking ads and used them to help police find trafficked children and arrest traffickers. The system took a big step up on Tuesday, though. Read more...