Five Eyes nations unite to fight online child-sex abuse

Australia has signed up to the first ­global guidelines for tech companies to deal with child-sex abuse on their platforms.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton announces measures against online sexual exploitation in Washington with US Attorney-General William Barr. Picture: AFP

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has hailed “a new page” in the fight against online child-sex abuse after security ministers from the Five Eyes intelligence network approved the first ­global guidelines for tech companies to deal with child abuse on their platforms.

The agreement, announced on Friday in Washington, will push tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, to do more to shut down all forms of child exploitation on their platforms, including live streaming and sharing of child-sex abuse.

The decision by the Five Eyes partners — Australia, US, Canada, Britain and New Zealand — to pool their substantial cyber ­resources and prioritise the issue recognises the alarming proliferation of such crimes and their borderless nature.

US Attorney-General William Barr said a global response “was necessary to protect children around the world and make sure there was no safe space on the internet for offenders to ­operate”. “This is the first time that our five nations have collaborated in this way to protect children against on line exploitation,” he said.

The Five Eyes governments issued a veiled threat in 2019 that unless tech companies did more to combat online child-sex abuse, they were prepared to use legislative means to compel the companies.

Instead, the countries have agreed on a set of 11 landmark “voluntary principles” for how tech companies should investigate and deal with child-sex abuse on their platforms.

“They can serve as a baseline for the rest of the industry to use and hopefully build upon,” Mr Barr said.

Mr Dutton, who attended the launch in Washington, ­described the move as very significant but said there were “many more to take” to protect online child abuse.

He said the Australian Federal Police last year received ­almost 17,000 reports involving online child-sex abuse, including live streamed sex abuse.

Mr Dutton has clashed with tech companies in the past for failing to provide the Five Eyes alliance with backdoor access to read the encrypted messages of pedophiles.

He said on Friday Australia would continue to work closely with its Five Eyes partners and also with tech companies to better identify and combat the horrors of online child abuse. “I hope it represents a new page that we can work together to defeat this scourge,” Mr Dutton said.

The 11 voluntary principles include requiring companies to seek to combat both known and new child-sexual abuse material and take actions and report it.

It also requires them to seek to combat online grooming as well as advertising, recruiting or soliciting a child for sexual abuse.

Companies will seek to identify and combat live streaming and to prevent search results from unearthing child-sex abuse material.

“Our goal is the prevention of child-sex exploitation and abuse (and) to this end our five governments, having consulted widely with a wide range of stakeholders including as leading group of industry represen­tatives, have developed this set of voluntary principles,” the governments said in a statement.

“The principles aim to provide a framework to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse, and are intended to drive collective action.

“It is anticipated they will evolve over time.

“Only by strengthening collaboration among governments, industry and others and drawing on our collective skills and ­resources will we achieve the safe online environment that our children and the global community expect and deserve.”

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia