In October 2023, the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse & Neglect convened an historic conference. A key focus was “21st Century Child Abuse.” Technology makes our lives easier, more enjoyable and more connected, but it also puts a child’s safety at greater risk than ever before. Child abuse has changed in the 21st century due to technology. We must adjust our strategies to adapt to the Digital Age.
In 2023 there were 5.4 billion people, 2/3 of the world’s population, on the Internet.1 UNICEF estimates that “1 in 3 internet users is a child.” During the COVID pandemic, online sexual exploitation of children increased substantially according to the Internet Watch Fundation.3 NSPCC Chief Executive Sir Peter Wanless wrote, “Online grooming is taking place at unprecedented levels and only concerted action will turn the tide on this tsunami of preventable abuse.4
Today, 21st Century Child Abuse is a multi-faceted crisis: production and distribution of child sexual abuse images; online sexual solicitation and grooming of children; live-streaming child sexual abuse; sharing sexual images of children; “sextortion” — extorting money or sexual favors from a child by threatening to disclose images or information the perpetrator has about the child; exposing children to violent or sexual content; child trafficking or smuggling; cyberbullying; promotion of suicide or self-harm; discrimination, racism and xenophobia; hate crimes; and more. It is a complex and growing problem. And the risks and harms are massive.
How did we get here, to this point at which technology has become such a double-edged sword? A key speaker at that 2023 Conference was Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s brilliant eSafety Commissioner. Her Kempe talk can be watched here.
Julie and Australia are global pioneers for meaningful, balanced, common-sense regulation. Julie has called for global adoption of Safety by Design: in other words., building safety into the basic product design of technology products.
Julie also argued that there is an obligation for tech companies to address the misuse of their platforms to harm children. She acknowledges that some companies have taken extraordinary steps voluntarily, but asks, is voluntary good enough? In any voluntary effort, some companies are not going to participate, and the efforts of others will be inadequate.
Julie called this our “Seat Belt Moment.” A generation ago, at the urging of advocates like Ralph Nader, governments began to mandate commonsense safety protections into product design, innovations like seat belts. Many industries opposed these requirements, but the end result has been millions of lives saved and no harm to the core product. In fact, these regulations actually strengthened the products and their business models.
Hopefully, this is our “Seat Belt Moment.” Leading the way is Australia. But others are joining the effort. Today, there is a Global Online Safety Regulators Network, led by Julie and Australia, but which also includes the UK, whose new Online Safety Act has come into force;
Ireland, Fiji, South Africa, Korea, and France. Observers include Canada, Germany and New Zealand.
There is real movement. But there is also growing opposition, largely over the question of whether adopting such standards would compromise the tech industry’s move to end-to-end-encryption (E2EE) in the name of protecting user privacy.
Last November, Australia’s eSafety Commission proposed draft standards.3 that would require the operators of cloud and messaging services to detect and remove known child abuse and pro-terror material “where technically feasible,” as well as disrupt and deter new child abuse and terror material. The Commission emphasized that it “does not advocate building in weaknesses or back doors to undermine privacy and security on end-to-end encrypted services.”
We strongly supported the standards, but the standards generated massive opposition from tech companies, expressing concern that their adoption would jeopardize encryption and lead to “mass government surveillance.”
As a result of that debate the proposed standards were weakened somewhat, but the debate continues. A recent Op Ed by Julie Inman Grant in The Australian argued that the real dystopian future would be one where “adults fail to protect children from vile forms of torture and sexual abuse, then allow their trauma to be freely shared with predators on a global scale.” She concludes, “that is the world we live in today.”
We are fervently pro-privacy, but ask, “Whose privacy?” What about the privacy of the child victims, images of whose abuse will remain on the internet forever unless we take action? We are not anti-encryption, but simply argue that it must be made compatible with reasonable child protection, not solely focused on protecting the rights of the abuser. It must be balanced with protecting the vital rights of the child.
Our hope is that more countries will take note of Australia’s courageous leadership, and will take action and enact new law. And we hope these legislative responses will be consistent with one another and enable the emergence of common international standards for protecting the world’s children against 21st Century Child Abuse. Doing nothing and solely depending upon voluntary action by some is simply not good enough.
~Ernie Allen & Warren Binford
