Digital Servitude

This Article addresses the phenomenon of digital servitude—forced labor practices facilitated by information and communications technology (ICT). With advances in technology and the internet, scholars and advocates have observed the rise of technology-facilitated human trafficking. Yet, disproportionate focus has remained on online sex trafficking, including commercial sex websites and online recruitment, despite ample research on work, technology, and digital surveillance. This Article seeks to fill this gap by shedding light on how technology intersects with involuntary servitude and forced labor claims in the United States. By analyzing federal pleadings in civil and criminal labor trafficking cases, it provides new insights about how technology can facilitate forced labor and how trafficking law can evolve to take into account the modern realities of servitude.

     In particular, this Article posits that federal labor trafficking statutes, with modest interventions, can play an important role in addressing technology-facilitated labor trafficking in the United States. Since the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment, U.S. federal courts have interpreted labor trafficking to include a wider range of coercive conduct. Congress also has imbued federal remedies with key features, like extraterritorial jurisdiction and third-party liability, that permit a potentially expansive reach. Additionally, trafficking claims, unlike other employment and contract remedies, do not require an employee-employer relationship and, thus, can apply to a broad range of workers, including independent contractors and temporary workers. For these reasons, this Article argues that federal human trafficking statutes can provide an important legal remedy and a powerful expressive tool to combat technology-facilitated forced labor.