Using anti-terror expertise to fight human trafficking in Ukraine – Washington Times

OPINION:

Russian President Vladimir Putin's barbaric war in Ukraine has spawned a humanitarian catastrophe. But the tragedy is even greater than the Russian military's indiscriminate bombing of residential neighborhoods, hospitals and schools which has already resulted in thousands of civilian deaths.

The Kremlin's nightmarishly brazen attacks have also caused a refugee crisis, with almost 7 million Ukrainians fleeing their homes at their own peril. With Ukrainian men between the ages of 18-60 required to remain in the country to fight, women and children who successfully escape the battlefield are at dangerously high risk from human traffickers. The refugees are often without money and unable to speak the local language, leaving them even more vulnerable to exploitation from human traffickers, who ruthlessly prey upon the weak and unprotected.

State Department Principal Deputy Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Dr. Kari Johnstone has been ringing the alarm bells since the Feb. 24 invasion began, warning it has put “millions of refugees and displaced persons at high risk of human trafficking.” Rooting out the bad guys is extraordinarily difficult because the traffickers often disguise themselves as “volunteers” offering to help the victims with transportation, food or shelter.

Even before Russia began raining down hell on Ukrainian civilians, the U.S. worked with Ukraine and the European Union to enhance anti-trafficking measures, including information campaigns to warn about the dangers of human trafficking.

Human trafficking groups rely on the internet for profit. And the proliferation of smartphones has proven to be a force multiplier for human exploitation.

And that is where DeliverFund, with a mission of equipping, training and advising law enforcement, brings its considerable expertise as a nongovernmental organization leader in the fight against human trafficking. When human traffickers advertise their victims on the internet, they expose themselves to detection.

DeliverFund founder and CEO Nic McKinley, who served in U.S. Air Force Special Operations and the CIA, has assembled a team that includes former CIA, FBI, NSA and Defense Department intelligence officers, all with deep expertise in running intelligence collection and targeting operations. The Dallas-based group describes itself as a “nonprofit intelligence organization.”

DeliverFund's personnel makeup reflects the parallels between fighting human trafficking and fighting the world's worst terrorist organizations, for which DeliverFund employees were responsible during their government careers. DeliverFund enables and refines the ability of law enforcement officials to target those who are buying and selling the trafficked victims.

But the target set extends beyond Ukraine and other overseas locations. DeliverFund has deployed a team to Poland, the host for over 3 million Ukrainian refugees, and exposed trafficking operations across Europe, some with ties back to the U.S.

“It's not just an ‘over there' issue,” Mr. McKinley told me recently.

Human trafficking is all too prevalent in the U.S. as well. Mr. McKinley described the case of “Noah,” a 12-year-old boy to whom traffickers gained access through a gaming console. Noah thought he was talking to another boy his age. In fact, the human trafficker manipulated Noah to obtain his address, arriving there pretending to be the father of his virtual friend.

DeliverFund's team found and fixed Noah's location two states away in a matter of hours. Law enforcement rescued the boy and arrested the traffickers.

DeliverFund says its success is based on its targeting methodology and enormous database. DeliverFund created a watch list for human traffickers as well as the first machine-learning algorithm targeting human traffickers in cyberspace. DeliverFund produces thousands of targeting packages each year.

Mr. McKinley became aware of the scourge of human trafficking while serving in military special operations and at the CIA. He worked with one source in particular, who was reporting on a terrorist engaging in human trafficking to generate a supply of young children he could use as guinea pigs to calibrate the detonation strength of his suicide bombs.

Mr. McKinley had an epiphany: Human trafficking was not part of the intelligence community's formal mission, but he could bring the agencies' capabilities to the mission of countering human trafficking. And so in 2014, he launched DeliverFund.

At first, DeliverFund was reaching out to law enforcement to offer training, data and software. Now it is law enforcement asking DeliverFund for the critical assistance, on which their mission increasingly relies.

But there is a role for the federal government as well.

While DeliverFund serves as law enforcement's force multiplier, our elected officials would do well to focus their attention on the social media companies, which face no liability when children are trafficked through their platforms. Lawmakers should waste no time in crafting legislative solutions for denying human traffickers access to social media platforms in cyberspace where they establish contact, surreptitiously groom relationships and exploit their victims.

• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. Follow him on Twitter @DanielHoffmanDC.