New Zealand Police are frustrated despite new grooming law

New Zealand Police are frustrated despite new online grooming law

Monday, April 24th, 2023

New Zealand Police are frustrated that end-to-end encryption on social media platforms is a significant barrier to identifying online sex offenders despite a new law that targets online grooming.

The Child Exploitation Offences Amendment Bill passed into law recently, making it illegal for adults to lie about their age or identity to meet up with a minor or to communicate with them intending to cause harm.

Previously, a defendant had to have met or travelled to meet the young person they had targeted – or arranged or persuaded that young person to travel to meet them. The new law is a significant shift in policy that broadens the scope of criminal offences related to child exploitation.

However, the police are expressing concern that end-to-end encryption of online chat streams prioritises privacy over protection, making it more difficult for them to identify and track online sex offenders.

As part of the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT), New Zealand police are calling on social media platforms to recognise their responsibility to protect children and to prioritise robust safety systems to safeguard them from online sexual abuse.

End-to-end encryption is used by platforms like Facebook, Signal and WhatsApp to protect messages or data sent from one device to another, and only the intended recipient can open the messages. This protection makes it challenging for law enforcement agencies to access communication where they believe crimes are being committed.

In 2022 the government established a cross-agency working group to analyse the problem, tasked with producing a final report by mid-2023. The VGT comprises 15 law enforcement agencies cooperating with industry and non-governmental organisations focused on child sexual abuse.

Prolific child abuser used Facebook

According to the task force, one of the UK’s most prolific child sexual abuse offenders, David Wilson, used Facebook to contact thousands of children by pretending to be a teenage girl. He manipulated victims to send sexually explicit material of themselves and, in some cases, blackmailed victims into abusing their siblings and friends.

The successful prosecution of Wilson was possible because law enforcement could access the evidence contained within over 250,000 messages through Facebook. In an end-to-end encryption environment, it is highly unlikely this case would have been detected.

In 2020, Justice Minister Andrew Little and the Five Eyes security group called on social media companies to allow governments to access encrypted data. Australia recently passed legislation permitting the government to force businesses to share data protected by encryption, citing that over 95% of its counter-terrorism targets use encrypted communications.

Police recommend that parents talk about their children’s online activities, supervise them, and research and understand app settings, including privacy settings. They encourage parents to be approachable if their child needs help and emphasise that speaking to them or any other trusted adult is okay if something doesn’t feel right.