Australian authorities have served Apple, Microsoft and the owner of Facebook and Instagram with world-first legal orders to come clean on what – if anything – they are doing to detect and report child sex abuse material or face fines of more than half a million dollars a day.

Apple made the fewest reports of child exploitation of any tech giant last year, with just 160 instances reported to a US database last year despite many of its 2 billion users having access to FaceTime, and the live-streaming of abuse having proliferated since the pandemic.

Australian authorities have served Apple, Meta and Microsoft with legal orders to come clean on what they are doing to detect and report child sex abuse material.Credit:Bloomberg

Late on Monday notices were also issued to Snap and Omegle under the new laws, which empower Australia’s eSafety Commissioner to compel organisations to explain the steps they are taking to combat online child exploitation and abuse.

Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said there was little to suggest companies that knew their platforms were weaponised by abusers were doing much to stop it. “No one has yet put the companies’ feet to the fire, saying, ‘what are you doing?’” she said.

“I don’t think we know the true scale and scope of the problem. We can’t know the scale of child exploitation until we know what the platforms are doing to detect abuse. We can’t be an effective regulator if we’re constantly trying to regulate with blind spots.”

The existing data is self-reported to the US-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. Last year, Apple reported 160 instances. Omegle, which connects people for “random chats” with strangers, reported 46,924.

Microsoft, which owns Skype – believed to be used widely in the live-streaming of abuse – reported 78,603 cases. Instagram, owned by Meta – which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp – reported 3.4 million instances. LEGO System reported 37 and Microsoft Xbox reported 170.

Australia’s move will be watched internationally. There has been bitter debate, especially in the United States, over whether child security should trump privacy. Apple has previously elected not to search for abuse images to protect its users’ privacy.

Federal eSafety commissioner Julie Inman GrantCredit:Rhett Wyman

Decisions over which companies received the first tranche of notices were based on considerations such as the number of complaints to e-Safety, the company’s reach, and how much information is already public. More orders are likely to be issued.

Inman Grant said some in the sector had an attitude that if they were not aware of the problem, they were not responsible for it, even though some organisations had technology that could track and pull down dangerous material.

Each company will be asked different questions to elicit information that is not publicly available. “We’ve got a range of questions for Meta and WhatsApp, in terms of where they’re scanning, what they’re scanning, how they’re scanning,” Inman Grant said.

The responses will also be examined on a case-by-case basis. If the companies are found to be non-compliant after 28 days, they can be fined $550,000 a day.

“In my experience, having worked in the industry [at Microsoft for 17 years], companies are moved by anything that challenges their revenue, anything that harms their reputation, and any significant regulatory threats,” Inman Grant said.

The internet has led to a booming online child exploitation industry, involving both shared and live images. “For the past 15 years there’s been a trade in livestreaming child exploitation material,” Inman Grant said.

“With lockdowns around the globe, what we started to see was the Philippines at the epicentre of pay-per-view child abuse material. Now we have so many video conferencing platforms that can facilitate that sexual abuse material.”

NSW Police Detective Superintendent Jayne Doherty, the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad Commander, said officers “welcomed any opportunity to help identify, target and prosecute persons involved in the abuse of children”.

Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the reporting from the companies would “help inform future government decisions around what needs to be done to protect Australians online, and improve transparency to the public”.

Apple faced a significant backlash from privacy advocates last year when it flagged a new feature, CSAM, that would scan iCloud photo libraries against known child sexual abuse material (photos that have been validated by at least two agencies).

The company’s website no longer makes reference to the CSAM technology. It has added a new feature, involving an intervention if users search for child exploitation material on its search tools. The interventions explain “that interest in this topic is harmful and problematic, and provide resources from partners to get help with this issue”.

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