[QUOTE=DrWilly;6930614]Law Enforcement Agencies having dedicated resources focused on "[u]Human Trafficking[/u]", etc., reminds me of a similar phenomenon from about 25 years ago. It has to do with some topic of unknown and undetermined "danger", for which NO ONE can argue the virtue of marshalling unlimited resources to be prepared to ATTACK the imminent dangers!
For those of you that are both, (A.) old enough, and (B.) intimately familiar with the Information Technology (I/T) business in the late 1990's, you may remember the paranoid focus on "[b]Y2K[/b]" and the desperate warnings of people who really didn't know any better and had no more facts than anyone else, but were in a position of assumed or presumed authority, and were touting the looming menace of computer systems "blowing up" on 01/01/2000, and leaving us all in the midst of an extended "digital winter", from which it would take, possibly, YEARS to recover! OMG! The horror!
In the face of that paranoia, I/T organizations had free reign to pretty much hire as many people as they wanted, as long as the headcount requisition was stamped with "Y2K Urgent", or some such bogus justification! I, personlly, was granted headcount tickets to hire more people than I knew what to do with... so I DID! LOL! Translate that phenomenon to the paranoia about the (actually totally unknown) "[u]Human Trafficking[/u] situation, and you end up with LE agencies staffing up to go solve the perceived, yet probably actually fractionally broad in scope, "problem".
For those of you either too young, or not familiar with the industry at the time, I'll add that the demon [b]Y2K[/b] boogyman was a giant non-issue, all through the relatively minor work to adjust some ancient COBOL programs to handle a 4 digit year designation. "Human Trafficking" rather seems equally overblown ... but remains a handy device to hire and apply resources to chase the ghost.
I'll end this by saying that actual Human Trafficking of individuals against their will is absolutely abhorrent and dispicable, and I'm fine with vigorous pursuit and prosecution of people benefitting from that practice. At the same time, to broadly apply that label to situations where girls are WILLINGLY working to make (a lot of) money, only serves to diminish the plight of the real and actual Human Trafficking victims, no matter how small that problem may truly be. Harumphhh![/QUOTE]Dr. Willy,
Great analogy. I certainly recall the Y2 K paranoia. I was working for a cell phone company and recall baby sitting the MTSO (Mobile Telephone Switching Office) waiting for all Hell to cut loose.
Regards,
H19.
