Julie Inman Grant on how she’ll battle cyberbullying and why she turned down a job with the CIA
AUSTRALIA’S top cyber watchdog has revealed she was almost a spy for the CIA, but the insane job restrictions turned her off accepting the gig.
FOR Julie Inman Grant, life might have been very different if she had accepted her first job offer.
Fresh out of university at the dawn of the ’90s, the American was offered a position as a case agent with the CIA, and the self-described “mission-driven” woman was tempted. “I wanted to do psychological profiles of serial killers but they wanted to talk me into becoming a case agent — which meant that I wouldn’t be able to tell my friends and family what I was doing so that scared me off,” Inman Grant, now 49, tells Stellar.
“I wanted to do good in some other way.”
So she took on a mission of the most modern kind — Inman Grant is now Australia’s peak defender against the dark side of the internet.
As eSafety Commissioner, she is tasked with helping to protect Australians against online wrongs, including cyberbullying, image-based abuse (commonly known as revenge porn) and child sexploitation.
The mother of three, who moved here 18 years ago and married an Australian, sees the worst of the worst on the job every day.
The Office Of The eSafety Commissioner is the frontline defence: it hears from members of the public who have had their most intimate images shared online, or who are facing extreme cyberbullying.
“Gosh, I hope I can make a difference,” Inman Grant says.
“We need to recognise technology is here to stay. We need to work with and not against it and bring out the best of human nature online. If we vilify or demonise it, particularly among our kids, I don’t think we are serving anyone well.”
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She has witnessed the rise and rise of the internet first hand, since working for former congressman John Miller, from her home state of Washington, as a policy adviser in 1991 and 1992. She went on to work for Microsoft, and organised the first-ever White House Internet Online Summit under the Clinton presidency.
Microsoft brought her to Australia in 2000, and in 2014 she took up a role as director of public policy with Twitter.
When her “dream role” as Australia’s eSafety Commissioner came up late in 2016, she jumped at it.
“The kind of online safety issues we are tackling now have become the scourge of our time,” she tells Stellar.
“Every case we have coming in is different and there is no cookie-cutter approach. I feel lucky that we’ve got staff that will overturn every rock to get the best outcome.”
Inman Grant was raised by a single mother, Glenda, from age five on Bainbridge Island (west of Seattle), along with her younger sister Amy.
“There were times I had to fend for myself at a young age and look after my sister,” she says.
“I did learn to become self-sufficient.”
She says her parents — including her father and stepmother — were responsible for instilling her strong sense of social
justice.
“I had wonderful role models, including my mum, who struggled as a single parent, but also my dad, who advocated for stronger gun-control laws in the early 1990s and a stepmother who waged a 14-year gender-based class action suit against [the now-defunct] Northwest Airlines. Fighting for what is right became part of my DNA.”
Becoming a mother galvanised her passion for protecting children online.
“The love you feel for your children is like no other and when you understand that vulnerability and innocence that can be so recklessly and carelessly ripped away in a nanosecond if a child is online, it rips your heart out,” she says.
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When her first daughter Zoe, now 12, was born and she was working in the digital-crimes unit at Microsoft, Inman Grant says she became somewhat paranoid.
“You know what can happen and the kinds of sexual predators out there — and it does make you scared.”
In 2008, when working in Microsoft’s digital-crimes unit, Inman Grant faced a confronting case she still has not shaken.
“Until you see the most brutal images of abuse, you cannot even contemplate the kind of horror an adult can inflict upon a child. One image [of child abuse perpetrated by a father on his daughter] will never leave my mind. But it will always remind me of how important the work that my CyberReport team does. They are absolute heroes. They subject themselves to these kinds of images day in and day out, at tremendous personal cost, as they are so driven to save children and prevent their re-victimisation.”
The growing intrusion of technology into young lives worries Inman Grant, who says it is important for parents to try to get the balance right.
“I do worry about kids losing certain social graces,” she explains.
“I believe in the potential benefits of technology, but I also know the risks. I know how hard it is for busy parents to really get their heads around this.”
One of those risks is cyberbullying, a challenge Inman Grant says needs to be tackled by parents, schools and government together.
“Cyberbullying amongst peers is largely an extension of what is happening in the schoolyard. Parents are the frontline defence — they have to be engaged in their children’s online lives the way they are in real life. But I also understand the realities, and we are all responsible for handing over the iPad to use as the digital babysitter while we are cooking dinner,” she admits.
Asked to consider the future of the internet, Inman Grant says, “I recall watching The Jetsons back in the ’70s and, except for the spaceships, The Jetsons have arrived in our lives, with things like Skype and internet telephony. In 40 years’ time all of our devices, including toys and appliances, are going to be connected. We aren’t going to escape technology. So we need to figure out a way to make it a force for good.”
For help on cyber issues, visit esafety.gov.au.
Originally published as Julie Inman Grant on how she’ll battle cyberbullying and why she turned down a job with the CIA
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