We are demanding the cancellation of “Hacking for Humanity” on March 22, 2019, at the University of Pittsburgh. This event aims to “create prototypes to address the challenge of ending human trafficking.” But we feel this event will target and endanger consensual sex workers, women victimized by sexual violence, migrants, and trafficked people around the world, especially given the emphasis on “prosecuting perpetrators.”  

Female, trans, and nonbinary immigrants, and sex workers will be unfairly targeted by this collection of data. The event features a keynote by the president of Marinus, a company that develops facial recognition software for law enforcement which is already being used to target sex workers. Regardless of good intentions, such software will be used for the surveillance and prosecution of consensual sex work and will result in the increased abuse, harm, and prosecution of trafficked women. Because many victims of sex trafficking are arrested and deported for crimes related to sex trafficking, they will not be protected, but rather targeted by increased police surveillance.

SWOP (Sex Workers’ Outreach Project) has two key objections to the “anti-trafficking” policies which will be upheld and promoted at this event:

1. The failure to distinguish independent consensual sex work from sex trafficking
2. The assumption that law enforcement is the answer to ending sex trafficking

This event, and others like it, conflate sex work with sex trafficking. This conflation has been an intentional tactic in efforts to abolish all sex work through hyper-criminalization. Studies have consistently found appallingly high levels of violence and sexual assault reported by sex workers and trafficked women at the hands of police. In many jurisdictions, including our own, law enforcement refuses to investigate rape allegations made by sex workers and, in fact, threatens to arrest victims unless they claim to be trafficked.

We are demanding the cancellation of “Hacking for Humanity” on March 22, 2019, at the University of Pittsburgh because efforts to assist sex workers who want to exit the industry (especially victims of sex trafficking) are laudable, but increased police surveillance and criminalization is not the answer.