Rescue Forensics, a web intelligence company dedicated to helping the government fight crime, has joined the Winter 2015 batch of YC. Read more about what they’re building:
“Human trafficking is no longer on the streets where police can observe and monitor it,” he said. “It’s gone to the Internet.”
After finishing law school, Ryan Dalton and co-founder Brandon Hamric started working part-time on tools that could filter, track and record escort listings for potentially suspicious behavior involving minors. They applied for Y Combinator and vowed that if they got in, they would quit their jobs and do this full-time as a company, calling it Rescue Forensics.
Basically, Rescue Forensics builds search software that helps law enforcement officials collect and document online evidence that could be used to prosecute traffickers in court. The company itself doesn’t make any judgments about what might constitute illegal trafficking behavior. That’s up to investigators to determine, as there are adult women who want to do sex work and aren’t being trafficked.
But Rescue Forensics does provide a way to document and manage listings that can quickly pop up and disappear on Craigslist or other listing sites across an entire region. Dalton said that so far, nine victims have been rescued.
