Hope for Justice, supported by Intel®, is inviting anti-trafficking stakeholders into a collaborative partnership for the Private Data Exchange project, leveraging confidential computing as an innovative data collaboration tool in the fight against human trafficking.
“The Private Data Exchange project is an incredibly exciting opportunity for agencies in the space of anti-trafficking to work together to leverage confidential computing to the benefit of our sector. This shared endeavour is led by practitioners, supported by technological experts and informed by best practice, with victims and survivors remaining firmly at the centre of our innovation. We invite you to join with us.”
Tim Nelson, Chief Executive Officer, Hope for Justice
Since its launch in 2022, the Private Data Exchange project team has identified significant challenges facing data collaboration across the counter-trafficking sector.
Human trafficking case data is complex, personal, and sensitive, relating to the personal experiences of those who have been subjected to some of the worst human rights abuses. It recounts details of a person’s vulnerability, serious trauma and health conditions. This data also contains evidence of criminal acts, evidence that must be preserved to secure successful prosecutions and convictions. Most importantly, it contains personally identifying information, locations, and legal statuses of victims and survivors, that could place them at risk of harm should confidentiality be breached.
Together, these challenges mean that the burdens of data protection can seem so complex, litigious and sensitive, that organizations find it challenging to even consider the sharing of data with one another.
The Private Data Exchange project is a research, design and innovation initiative to overcome these challenges. It has already demonstrated innovative use cases enabled through Confidential Computing, and has turned a thought-exercise into a tangible proof of concept with viable platform prototype built on Intel® Software Guard Extensions (SGX). The project uses the sector-leading data framework of the Human Trafficking Case Data Standards (HTCDS), and has been tested using dummy data.
Intel video explaining more about the project
The project demonstrates three proven benefits of a Confidential Computing platform to aid counter-trafficking data collaboration:
- All data is encrypted and secured with an encryption key. The information can only be viewed by the user who has uploaded it (the data owner). No other person or system can gain unauthorized access, preserving privacy and data sovereignty.
- Victim or survivor case records that hold data matches or similarities with those of another organization can be identified and flagged via a weighted-match scoring algorithm, to mark cases for further action without compromising data privacy or security. This enables legitimate and secure collaboration on linked incidents when required.
- The encrypted data of all agencies can be aggregated across the entire dataset and analyzed to derive accurate live reporting via an Insights Dashboard. Reports are generated without revealing any of the sensitivities relating to the underlying data, meaning manual anonymization is not needed.
Bringing the Private Data Exchange to full reality will require multiple agencies across civil society, academia, and governing institutions to contribute their expertise, time and resources to collaboratively develop a suitable platform. That is why Hope for Justice and Intel® are inviting counter-trafficking organizations into a collaborative partnership and consortium to drive the project forward. This includes organizations who hold and collect data at the case level, as well as governing or multilateral organizations who are considered stakeholders to high-level reporting and analysis.
The Partnership invites data protection experts to support the ongoing alignment of technical development with emerging best practices in privacy regulation and compliance. Finally, the Partnership is seeking investment from donors, foundations and corporate funds, to help build financial sustainability into the core of project impact and to support the active participation of frontline agencies. This is a critical opportunity for the technology sector and the counter-trafficking sector to work together to make new strides in the fight against human trafficking.
“As security technology creators, we have both the responsibility and the opportunity to help protect every person’s data and privacy. We’re seeing this occur through confidential computing advancements – the innovations we are bringing forward today will help us facilitate change and soon become the standards for how we operate tomorrow.”
Daniel Gutwein, Director of Education, Intel
Read the full briefing document and report:
