Cellebrite donates AI investigative tools to nonprofits to help find missing children faster

Cellebrite DI, Ltd

NEW YORK -- NEW YORK (AP) — John Walsh, advocate for missing children and longtime host of “America’s Most Wanted,” said he feels outmanned by criminals all the time – especially in the courtroom.

“I say to myself, ‘My god, the lawyer for this dirtbag predator is smarter and more sophisticated than the cops are’,” the co-founder of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children told The Associated Press. “They don’t really know the technology.”

Human traffickers and sexual predators often use high-end technology and increasingly take advantage of encryption to protect the details of their crimes, Walsh said. And even if they didn’t, law enforcement officials, especially in smaller cities and towns, lack the budget and the access to the technological tools that would speed up the investigation and aid in the prosecution of the offenders.

Cellebrite DI, Ltd., wants to change that. The provider of digital tools that help law enforcement and private firms find and follow investigative leads on Friday launched “Operation Find Them All” – an initiative where the firm will donate its technology to nonprofits that help find endangered children, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the nonprofit The Exodus Road, which fights human trafficking around the world. The NASDAQ-traded company — which reported revenue of $85 million for the third quarter of 2023, up 17% year over year — will also make a financial donation to those organizations, as well as Raven, a political nonprofit that raises awareness of the threat of child exploitation online.

Yossi Carmil, Cellebrite’s CEO, said the FBI had nearly 360,000 cases of missing children in 2022, while the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received more than 32 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation that year. Knowing that his company had the technology that could help children in trouble, Carmil said he felt Cellebrite had to do what it could.