New Australian laws to stop child sex abuse, terror content among tech giants

Tech giants will have to actively prevent the spread and storage of child sexual abuse and violent terror content under world-first laws taking effect in Australia.

Exclusive: Tech giants will have to actively prevent the spread and storage of child sexual abuse and violent terror content under world-first laws taking effect in Australia that do not require companies to weaken or breach encryption.

Fines of up to $49.5 million await file and photo storage services like Apple iCloud, Google Drive and Microsoft One Drive, messaging apps like WhatsApp and social media platforms where messages are a prominent feature, such as Instagram, if they do not comply with the new standards taking effect on December 22.

In an exclusive interview eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she was confident Australia’s regulations “thread the needle” on protecting privacy — with no companies required to breach encryption — while ensuring abusive and harmful material was not proliferating online unchecked.

“What we’ve done is ensured a broad range of rights are being protected, but technology companies will not be able to hide behind the shield of ‘I can’t see it, so I’m ... turning a blind eye’,” she said.

Ms Inman Grant said even though encrypted services had technological exmeptions, they were not “absolved” from the responsibility to reduce the sharing and storing of child sex abuse and terror content.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“We do not expect you to break or weaken encryption, but we do expect you to provide alternative plans of action in terms of how to disrupt and deter.”

Ms Inman Grant said platforms like WhatsApp had already succesfully demonstrated the ability to identify harmful content by looking at metadata and behavioural decisions that are not encrypted.

“And we’ve just had Apple roll out in Australia, nudity detection on device,” she said.

“If youcan use it for nudity detection ... that can certainly be expanded to child sexual abuse material.”

Ms Inman Grant also welcomed moves by tech companies to take “direct complaints” as many previously did not have any public reporting mechanisms where a person could raise concerns about content.

In another world first, the new standards will also cover so-called “nudify apps” that use generative AI to create pornography or “nudify” images without effective controls to prevent the generation of material such as child exploitation and abuse content.

These open source apps would also face huge fines if they do not take steps to prevent their technology from being used to create abusive content.

Ms Inman Grant said one of the most popular apps of this type currently has a description that a user can “just give a girl’s body type and her age and will generate an image in seconds”.

“That’s basically blatantly advertising creating child sexual abuse material at whatever your predeliction is,” she said.

“There are currently no guard rails or prohibitions from doing that right now.”

Originally published as New Australian laws to stop child sex abuse, terror content among tech giants