>> Announcer: Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering .conf2017. Brought to you by Splunk. >> Welcome back. Here on theCUBE, we continue our coverage of .conf2017, Splunk's get together here with some 7,000 plus attendees, 65 countries, we're right on the showfloor. A lot of buzz happening down here and it's all good. Along with Dave Vellante, I'm John Walls. We are live, as I said, in our nation's capital, and we're joined by a guest who represents her organization that is a member of the Splunk4Good program. We're going to explain that in just a little bit, but Sherrie Caltagirone is the founder and executive director of the Global Emancipation Network, and Sherry, thanks for being with us. We appreciate your time. >> Thanks so much for having me on, John. >> So your organization has to do with countering and combating global trafficking, human trafficking. >> That's right. >> We think about sex trafficking, labor trafficking, but you're a participant in the Splunk4Good program, which is their ten year pledge to support organizations such as yours to the tune of up to $100 million over that ten years to all kinds of organizations. So first off, let's just talk about that process, how you got involved, and then we want to get into how you're actually using this data that you're mining right now for your work. So first off, how'd you get involved with Splunk? >> Absolutely. It was really organic in that it's a really small community. There are a lot of people in the tech space who I found really want to use their skills for good, and they're very happy to make connections between people. We had a mutual friend actually introduce me to Monzy Merza, who's the head of security here at Splunk, and he said, "I'm really passionate about trafficking, I want to help "fight trafficking, let me connect you with Corey Marshall "at Splunk4Good." The rest is really history, and I have to tell you, yes, they have pledged up to $100 million to help, and in products and services, but what's more is they really individually care about our projects and that they are helping me build things, I call them up all the time and say, "Hey let's brainstorm an idea, "let's solve a problem, "let's figure out how we can do this together, and they really are, they're part of my family. They're part of GEN and Global Emancipation Network. >> That's outstanding. The size of the problem struck me today at the keynote when we talked about, first off, the various forms of trafficking that are going on; you said up to two dozen different subsets of trafficking, and then the size and the scale of 25 to 40-some million people around the globe are suffering. >> Yeah. >> Because of trafficking conditions. That puts it all in a really different perspective. >> You're right. Those weren't even numbers that we can really fathom what that means, can we? We don't know what 20 million looks like, and you're right, there's such a wide discrepancy between the numbers. 20 million, 46 million, maybe somewhere in between, and that is exactly part of the problem that we have is that there is no reliable data. Everyone silos their individual parts of the data that they have for trafficking, all the the different stakeholders. That's government, NGOs, law enforcement, academia, it's all kinds. It runs the gamut, really, and so it's really difficult to figure out exactly what the truth is. There's no reliable, repeatable way to count trafficking, so right now it's mostly anecdotal. It's NGOs reporting up to governments that say, "We've impacted this many victims," or, "We've encountered so-and-so who said that the "trafficking ring that they escaped from had 20 other people "in it," things like that, so it's really just an estimate, and it's the best that we have right now, but with a datalet approach, hopefully we'll get closer to a real accurate number. >> So talk more about the problem and the root of the problem, how it's manifesting itself, and we'll get into sort of what we can do about it. >> Yeah. It's really interesting in that a lot of the things that cause poverty are the same things that cause trafficking. It really is, you know, people become very vulnerable if they don't have a solid source of income or employment, things like that, so they are more willing to do whatever's necessary in order to do that, so it's easy to be lured into a situation where you can be exploited, for example, the refugee crisis right now that's happening across Europe and the Middle East is a major player for trafficking. It's a situation completely ripe for this, so people who are refugees who perhaps are willing to be smuggled out of the country, illegally, of course, but then at that point they are in the mercy and the hands of the people who smuggled them and it's very easy for them to become trafficked. Things like poverty, other ways that you're marginalized, the LGBTQ community is particularly vulnerable, homeless population, a lot of the same issues that you see in other problems come up, creates a situation of vulnerability to be exploited, and that's all trafficking really is: the exploitation of one individual through force, coercion, fraud, position of authority, to benefit another person. >> These individuals are essentially what, enslaved? >> Yeah. It's modern day slavery. There's lots of different forms, as you mentioned. There's labor trafficking, and that's several different forms; it can be that you're in a brick factory, or maybe you're forced into a fishing boat for years and years. Usually they take away your passport if you are from another country. There's usually some threats. They know where your family lives. If you go tell anyone or you run away, they're going to kill your family, those sorts of things. It is, it's modern day slavery, but on a much, much bigger scale, so it's no longer legal, but it still happens. >> How does data help solve the problem? You, as an executive director, what kind of data, when you set the North Star for the organization from a data perspective, what did that look like, and how is it coming into play? >> Well, one of the benefits that we have as an organization that's countering trafficking is that we are able to turn the tables on traffickers. They are using the internet in much the way that other private enterprises are. They know that that's how they move their product, which in this case is sadly human beings. They advertise for victims online. They recruit people online. They're using social media apps and things like Facebook and Kick and Whatsapp and whatnot. Then they are advertising openly for the people that they have recruited into trafficking, and then they are trying to sell their services, so for example, everyone knows about Backpage. There's hundreds of websites like that. It runs the gamut. They're recruiting people through false job advertisements, so we find where those sites are through lots of human intelligence and we're talking to lots of people all the time, and we gather those, and we try to look for patterns to identify who are the victims, who are the traffickers, what can we do about it? The data, to get back to your original question, is really what is going to inform policy to have a real change. >> So you can, in terms of I guess the forensics that you're doing, or whatever you're doing with that data, you're looking at not only the websites, but also the communications that are being spawned by those sites and looking to where those networks are branching off to? >> Yeah. That's one of the things that we really like to try to do. Instead of getting a low-level person, we like to try to build up an entire network so we can take down an entire ring instead of just the low fish. We do, we extract all the data from the website that we can to pull out names, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, things like that, and then begin to make correlations; where else have we seen those phone numbers and those addresses on these other websites that we're collecting from, or did this person make a mistake, which we love to exploit mistakes with traffickers, and are they using the same user handle on their personal Flickr page, so then we can begin to get an attribution. >> John: That happens? >> Absolutely. >> It does, yeah. >> Sherrie: Without giving away all my secrets, exactly. >> Yeah, I don't to, don't give away the store, here. How much, then, are you looking internationally as opposed to domestically, then? >> We collect right now from 22 different countries, I think 77 individual cities, so a lot of these websites are usually very jurisdictionally specific, so, you know, like Craigslist; you go into Washington state and click on Seattle, something like that. We harvest from the main trafficking points that we can. We're collecting in six different languages right now. A lot of the data that we have right now is from the U.S. because that's the easier way to start is the low-hanging fish. >> What does your partner ecosystem look like? It comprises law enforcement, local agencies, federal agencies, presumably, NGOs. Will you describe that? >> Yeah. We do, we partner with attorneys general, we partner with law enforcement, those are the sort of operational partners we look for when we have built out intelligence. Who do we give it to now, because data is useless unless we do something with it, right? So we we build out these target packages and intelligence and give it to people who can do something with it, so those are really easy people to do something with. >> How hard is that, because you've got different jurisdictions and different policies, and it's got to be like herding cats to get guys working with you. >> It is, and it's actually something that they're begging for, and so, it's a good tool that they can use to deconflict with each other, 'cause they are running different trafficking-related operations all the time, and jurisdictions, they overlap in many cases, especially when you're talking about moving people, and they're going from one state to another state, so you have several jurisdictions and you need to deconflict your programs. >> Okay, so they're very receptive to you guys coming to them with they data. >> They are; they really want help, and they're strapped for resources. These are for the most part, not technically savvy people, and this is one of the good things about our nonprofit is that it is a staff of people who are very tech-savvy and who are very patient in explaining it and making it easy and usable and consumable by our customers. >> So if I'm an NGO out there, I'm a non-profit out there, and I'm very interested in having this kind of service, what would you say to them about what they can pursue, what kind of relationship you have with Splunk and the value they're providing, and what your experience has been so far. >> It's been wonderful. I've been over at the Splunk4Good booth all day helping out and it's been wonderful to see not only just the non-profits who have come up and said, "Hey, I run a church, "I'm trying to start a homeless shelter for drug-addicted "individuals, how can you help me," and it's wonderful when you start to see the light bulbs go off between the non-profit sector and the tech sector, between the philanthropic organizations like Splunk4Good, the non-profits, and then, we can't forget the third major important part here, which is, those are the tech volunteers, these are the people who are here at the conference and who are Splunk employees and whatnot and teaching them that they can use their skills for good in the non-profit sector. >> Has cryptocurrency, where people can conduct anonymous transactions, made your job a lot more difficult? >> No, it hasn't, and there's been a lot of research that has gone into block chain analysis, so for example, Backpage, all the adds are purchased with Bitcoin, and so there's been a wonderful amount of research then, trying to time the post to when the Bitcoin was purchased, and when the transactions happen, so they've done that, and it's really successful. There are a couple of other companies who do just that, like Chainalysis, that we partner with. >> You can use data to deanonymize? >> That's correct. It's not as anonymous as people think it is. >> Love it. >> Yeah, exactly. We love to exploit those little things like that. A lot of the websites, they put their wallets out there, and then we use that. >> Dave: You're like reverse hackers. >> That's right. It's interesting that you say that, because a lot of our volunteers actually are, they're hacker hunters. They're threat and intel analysts and whatnot, and so, they've learned that they can apply the exact same methods and techniques into our field, so it's brilliant to see the ways in which they do that. >> Dave: That's a judo move on the bad guys. >> Exactly. How long does this go on for you? Is this a year-to-year that you renew, or is it a multi-year commitment, how does that work? >> It's a year-to-year that we renew our pledge, but they're in it for the long haul with us, so they know that they're not getting rid of me and nor do they want me to, which is wonderful. It's so good, because they help, they sit at the table with me, always brainstorming, so it's year-to-year technically, but I know that we're in it together for the long haul. >> How about fundraising? A big part of your job is, you know. >> Of course it is. >> Fundraising. You spend a lot of time there. Maybe talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah, absolutely. Some of our goals right now, for example, is we're really looking to hire a full-time developer, we want a full-time intelligence analyst, so we're always looking to raise donations, so you could donate on our website. >> John: Which is? >> Which is globalemancipation.ngo. Globalemancipation.ngo. We're also always looking for people who are willing to help donate their time and their skills and whatnot. We have a couple of fundraising goals right now. We're always looking for that. We receive a lot of product donations from companies all over the world, mostly from the tech sector. We're really blessed in that we aren't spending a lot of money on that, but we do need to hire a couple of people so that's our next big goal. >> I should have asked you this off the top. Among your titles, executive director and founder, what was the founder part? What motivated you to get involved in this, because it's, I mean, there are a lot of opportunities to do non-profit work, but this one found you, or you found it. >> That's right. It's a happy circumstance. I've always done anti-human trafficking, since my college days, actually. I started volunteering, or I started to intern at the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University, which was a legislative-based program, so it was really fantastic, traveling the world, helping countries draft legislation on trafficking, but I really wanted to get closer and begin to measure my impact, so that's when I started thinking about data anyways, to be able to put our thumb, is what we're doing. Working. How are we going to be able to measure success and what does that look like? Then I started volunteering for a rescue operations organization; the sort of knock down the doors, go rescue people group, and so, I really liked having the closer impact and being able to feel like hey, I can do something about this problem that I know is terrible and that's why it spread. A lot of the people I worked with, including my husband, come from the cyberthreat intelligence world, so I feel like those ideas and values have been steeped in me, slowly and surely, over the last decade, so that just ages myself a little bit maybe, but yes, so those ideas have been percolating over time, so it just kind of happened that way. >> Well, you want to feel young, hang around with us. (laughing) I should speak for myself, John, I'm sorry. >> No, no, you're right on, believe me. I was nodding my head right there with you. >> Can you comment on the media coverage? Is it adequate in your view? Does there need to be more? >> On trafficking itself? You know, it's really good that it's starting to come into the forefront a lot more. I'm hearing about it. Five years ago, most of the time, if I told people that there are still people in slavery, it didn't end with the Civil War, they would stand at me slackjawed. There have been a few big media pushes. There's been some films, like Taken, Liam Neeson's film, so that's always the image I use, and that's just one type of trafficking, but I'm hearing more and more. Ashton Kutcher runs a foundation called Thorn that's really fantastic and they do a similar mission to what I do. He has been able to raise the spotlight a lot. Currently there's a debate on the floor of the Senate right now, too, talking about section 230 of the CDA, which is sort of centered around the Backpage debate anyway. Where do we draw the line between the freedom of speech on the internet, with ESPs in particular, but being able to still catch bad guys exactly. The Backpage sort of founder idea. It's really hot and present in the news right now. I would love to see the media start to ask questions, drill down into the data, to be able to ask and answer those real questions, so we're hoping that Global Emancipation Network will do that for the media and for policy makers around the world. >> Well it is extraordinary work being done by an extraordinary person. It's a privilege to have you on with us, here on theCUBE. We thank you, not only for the time, but for the work you're doing, and good luck with that. >> Thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it. >> You bet. That's the Global Emancipation Network. Globalemancipation.ngo right? Fundraising, always helpful. Back with more here on theCUBE in Washington D.C., right after this. (electronic beats)