CL Tel partnered with the nonprofit Guardian Group last March to create Operation IFAST, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) Fighting Against Sex Trafficking, an initiative working to unify ISP staff, law enforcement and the public and get them to join the fight. Since then, CL Tel’s Chief Operating Officer Chris Lovell has taken this initiative to the national level.
Lovell said that the internet was created to share knowledge and connect people around the world and CL Tel is proud to be a part of that. Unfortunately, he said the internet is also used for some of the most unthinkable evil, people being manipulated, exploited and sold for sex, and that created a moral dilemma for him.
“I became aware of this nonprofit organization called Guardian Group a few years ago. They are a nonprofit that’s staffed by former law enforcement, military, Special Operations personnel and intelligence professionals,” Lovell said. “They’ve taken the skills they developed to find victims of human trafficking, identify their whereabouts and package the information to give to law enforcement. That just really resonated with me…because I think that we collectively, as internet service providers, have a responsibility to do something about this.”
CL Tel announced their three-step anti trafficking initiatives in March 2023. First, using Guardian Group’s free online training, the entire CL Tel staff were trained to recognize the signs of human trafficking. Second, Lovell reached out to the Clear Lake and Mason City police chiefs and the County Sheriff to inform and connect them with the Guardian Group. Third, they held a community event in which the law enforcement officers talked about the sex trafficking issue.
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline there have been more than 600 cases of human trafficking in Iowa since 2007 and the internet is the most common place where the victims were recruited and exploited.
Lovell’s long term vision was to take their local efforts and scale it nationwide. “Because there are nearly 3,000 ISPs, community based providers like us across the country. Imagine the impact that could blossom if companies all over the country committed to training their staff, connecting their local law enforcement leaders with Guardian Groups, and then raised funds and awareness to fund these analysts who go out and find victims,” Lovell said.
The initial framework isn’t quite a year old, but Lovell has already taken Operation IFAST to the state association, the Iowa Communications Alliance composed of 120 member companies just like CL Tel. He said the ICA Board of Directors have pledged their support and it will soon roll out across the state.
That meeting and support was instrumental to the last phase. Lovell presented Operation IFAST and his grass-roots initiative at the Feb. 10-11 meeting of the National Telecom Cooperative Association in hopes of getting their sponsorship, “… so they will roll this program out to their 850 member companies,” Lovell said.
“It’s come about very quickly and there’s a lot of momentum to move the ball forward. Hopefully we’ll have some exciting news to share soon. Hopefully the board will approve national sponsorship of it and we’ll be off to the races nationally. It’s really exciting and it brings a lot of additional purpose to what we do. I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
