Child sex abuse cops alarmed by Meta move

Global law enforcement chiefs have gathered in Brisbane and strategised on how to fight a recalcitrant Meta’s decision to expand encryption at the expense of protecting children.

AFP Commander Helen Schneider is closely monitoring the impacts of Meta’s expanded encryption. Picture: Matthew Poon

Global law enforcement chiefs have gathered in Brisbane and strategised on how to fight a recalcitrant Meta’s decision to expand encryption at the expense of protecting children.

An international alliance of 15 agencies known as the Virtual Global Taskforce and including Britain’s National Crime Agency and the Australian Federal Police workshopped how to respond to the tech giant’s encryption plans and its expected severe impacts on child abuse investigations.

Vital reports of children being abused will plummet following Meta’s global rollout of default end-to-end encryption on Facebook and Messenger that began in December, investigators have warned.

Privacy advocates have supported the expansion of encryption, but Britain’s NCA deputy director for child sexual abuse and taskforce co-chair Wendy Hart said impacts on the detection and prevention of child abuse were being closely monitored.

“Meta has only recently encrypted in the UK (in) January so we’re yet to see the effects of it come through in the reporting to us,” Dr Hart said. “We are concerned that by introducing end-to-end encryption and lessening the protections that they currently have for children, that we won’t be able to protect as many children on the streets of the UK.”

Meta says default end-to-end encryption will mean “nobody, including Meta, can see what’s sent or said, unless you choose to report a message to us”.

Mark Zuckerberg’s company maintains that encryption improves safety and security for users, and has said it expects to continue to provide more reports to law enforcement than its peers.

US-based social media companies are required to report child sexual abuse material to the Nat­ional Centre for Missing and ­Exploited Children but child abuse content shared on Facebook and Messenger that would have previously been detected will now be invisible.

The NCA last year said Meta’s enhanced encryption “would result in the loss of the vast majority of reports of detected child abuse currently disseminated to UK police each year”, with an expected 92 per cent drop in reports from Facebook and an 85 per cent drop from Instagram.

Child abuse investigators and campaigners in March told The Australian that to counter public criticism, Meta may increase reporting to law enforcement but provide information that is of no investigative value.

The chief of the AFP-led Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, Helen Schneider, confirmed she was closely watching for reduced actionable information in child abuse reports.

From November, Commander Schneider will take over as chair of the Virtual Global Taskforce, whose members include Interpol, US Homeland Security Investi­gations, the FBI, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Dutch National Police and Philippines National Police and National Bureau of Investigations.

The Virtual Global Taskforce meets twice a year and was a “very strategic alliance” where law enforcement agencies could get a global picture of emerging risks and threats to children, she said.

“We haven’t actually seen the impact of end-to-end encryption yet really come into the AFP-led ACCCE,” Commander Schneider said. “We’re still waiting to assess what that is. We are monitoring that very closely.

“Our concern is we want to make sure that any report we get through the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children has the quality we need to be able to action it, to be able to identify offenders and children and make sure we can remove children from harm. That’s always our priority. Anything that could jeopardise that is of great concern to the AFP and global law enforcement.”

Grooming of young children through social media and video games, and the “sextortion” or sexual extortion of youths who are tricked into sending intimate photos to strangers are among the major challenges.

Australia’s online safety regulator, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, last year named Meta’s Instagram as well as Snapchat as the most frequently targeted sites for sextortion.

Commander Schneider said: “We reiterate strongly to companies like Meta, and others, that they play a crucial role and have a key responsibility in making sure children are safe when they’re using their platforms.”

Artificial intelligence has also emerged as a tool to create realistic child abuse material, while sex offenders are continuing to prey on children overseas through travel and live-streaming online.

Dr Hart said deep fake videos of children being abused were already so convincing they were tying up the limited resources of victim identification experts.