How Anti-Trafficking Technologies Affect People, Privacy, and Policing

What is it about?

This study looks at technologies designed to help detect and prevent human trafficking and asks an important question: do these tools always help, or can they also cause harm? Using interviews with law enforcement officers, developers, and anti-trafficking experts in the United States and the United Kingdom, the research examines both the benefits and the unintended negative effects of anti-trafficking software. The findings show that these technologies can support investigations, save time, and help identify trafficking patterns. However, they can also raise serious concerns, including risks to privacy, misidentifying people as traffickers or victims, and harming already vulnerable groups such as sex workers. The study highlights how these risks are often overlooked during design and deployment. By applying a Responsible Research and Innovation approach, the paper provides practical recommendations to help designers, policymakers, and practitioners develop and use anti-trafficking technologies more carefully. The aim is to ensure that these tools genuinely protect victims and society while reducing the risk of unintended harm.

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Photo by Nick Romanov on Unsplash

Photo by Nick Romanov on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This work is unique because it moves beyond technical performance to examine the real-world social, ethical, and legal consequences of anti-trafficking technologies. Rather than assuming these tools are inherently beneficial, it systematically investigates both their intended benefits and their unintended harms using direct insights from practitioners, developers, and experts working in the field. The study is timely given the rapid expansion of AI-driven and data-intensive tools in policing and social justice, alongside growing concerns about privacy, bias, and accountability. By applying a Responsible Research and Innovation framework, it offers one of the first structured, empirical assessments of how these technologies affect victims, sex workers, and wider society in practice, across both US and UK contexts. The difference this work makes lies in its practical contribution. It translates expert experiences into concrete design and use recommendations that can inform policymakers, developers, and organisations deploying anti-trafficking tools. This helps ensure that future technologies are not only effective, but also responsible, proportionate, and centred on minimising harm while genuinely supporting those they are intended to protect.