The New York Times - 12.09.2019

A14 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

SYDNEY, Australia — The vid-
eo showing the murder of 51 peo-
ple in Christchurch carries both
an offensive title, “New Zealand
Video Game,” and a message to
“download and save.”
Appearing on 153news.net, an
obscure site awash in conspiracy
theories, it is exactly the sort of
online content that Australia’s
new law criminalizing “abhorrent
violent material” says must be
purged. But that doesn’t mean it’s
been easy to get it off the internet.
“Christchurch is a hoax,” the
site’s owners replied after investi-
gators emailed them in May.
Eventually, they agreed to block
access to the entire site, but only
in Australia.
A defiant response, a partial vic-
tory: Such is the challenge of try-
ing to create a safer internet, link
by link.
In an era when mass shootings
are live-streamed, denied by on-
line conspiracy theorists and en-
couraged by racist manifestoes
posted to internet message
boards, much of the world is
grasping for ways to stem the
loathsome tide.
Australia, spurred to act in
April after one of its citizens was
charged in the Christchurch at-
tacks, has gone further than al-
most any other country.
The government is now using
the threat of fines and jail time to
pressure platforms like Facebook
to be more responsible, and it is
moving to identify and block en-
tire websites that hold even a sin-
gle piece of illegal content.
“We are doing everything we
can to deny terrorists the opportu-
nity to glorify their crimes,” Prime
Minister Scott Morrison said at
the recent Group of 7 summit
meeting in France.
But will it be enough? The video
of the Christchurch attack high-
lights the immensity of the chal-
lenge.
Hundreds of versions of footage
filmed by the gunman spread on-
line soon after the March 15 at-
tack, and even now, clips, stills
and the full live-stream can be
easily found on scores of websites
and some of the major internet
platforms.
The video from 153news alone
has reached more than six million
people on social media.
Australia is pitching its strategy
as a model for dealing with the
problem, but the limits to its ap-
proach have quickly become clear.
Although penalties are severe,
enforcement is largely passive
and reactive, relying on com-
plaints from internet users, which
so far have been just a trickle. Re-
sources are scarce. And experts in
online expression say the law
lacks the transparency that they
say must accompany any effort to
restrict expression online.
Of the 30 or so complaints inves-
tigators have received so far that
were tied to violent crime, terror-
ism or torture, investigators said,
only five have led to notices
against site owners and hosts.

“The Australian government
wanted to send a message to the
social media companies, but also
to the public, that it was doing
something,” said Evelyn Douek,
an Australian doctoral candidate
at Harvard Law School who stud-
ies online speech regulation. “The
point wasn’t so much how the law
would work in practice. They did-
n’t think that through.”

A Hierarchy of Harmful Content

The heart of Australia’s effort sits

in an office near Sydney’s harbor

that houses the eSafety Commis-

sion, led by Julie Inman Grant, an

exuberant American with tech in-

dustry experience who describes

her mission as online consumer

protection.

Before the law passed, the com-

mission handled complaints about

other online harms, from cyber-

bullying to child sexual exploita-

tion. But while the commission’s

mandate has grown, its capacity

has not. It has just 50 full-time em-

ployees and a budget of $17 million

for this fiscal year.

Lawmakers have said they will

consider increasing resources,

but at the moment, the team en-

forcing the law consists of only

seven investigators.

Inside a room with frosted win-

dows and a foosball table, the

team reviews complaints. Most of

the flagged content is relatively

benign — violence from war, or

what investigators describe as

versions of a naked toddler being

bitten in the groin by a chicken.

“There are a lot of things we

can’t do anything about,” said Me-

lissa Hickson, a senior investiga-

tor.

Experts say that is the problem

with relying on complaints, which

is what social media platforms

like Facebook and Twitter do as

well. Enforcement can be haphaz-

ard.

A better model, some argue, is

evolving in France, where officials

have said they want to force inter-

net services to design risk-reduc-

tion systems, with auditors mak-

ing sure they work. It’s similar to

how banks are regulated.

Australia’s new law takes an ap-

proach more in line with the way

the world fights child pornogra-

phy, with harsh penalties and in-

vestigations led by the same team

that handles images of child sexu-

al exploitation.

Worldwide, after decades of

evolution, that system is robust.

Software called PhotoDNA and an

Interpol database rapidly identify

illegal images. Takedown notices

can be deployed through the IN-

HOPE network — a collaboration

of nonprofits and law enforcement

agencies in 41 countries, including

the United States.

In the last fiscal year, the Cyber

Report team requested the re-

moval of 35,000 images and vid-

eos through INHOPE, and in most

cases, takedowns occurred within

72 hours.

“I think we can learn a lot from

that,” said Toby Dagg, 43, a former

New South Wales detective who

oversees the team.

Experts agree, with caveats.

Child exploitation is a consensus

target, they note. There is far less

agreement about what crosses the

line when violence and politics are

fused. Critics of the Australia law

say it gives internet companies

too much power over choosing

what content should be taken

down, without having to disclose

their decisions.

They argue that the law creates

incentives for platforms and host-

ing services to pre-emptively cen-

sor material because they face

steep penalties for all “abhorrent

violent material” they host, even if

they were unaware of it, and even

if they take down the version iden-

tified in a complaint but other iter-

ations remain.

Mr. Dagg acknowledged the

challenge. He emphasized that

the new law criminalizes only vio-

lent video or audio that is

produced by perpetrators or ac-

complices.

But there are still tough ques-

tions. Does video of a beheading

by uniformed officers become ille-

gal when it moves from the

YouTube channel of a human-

rights activist to a website dedi-

cated to gore?

“Context matters,” Mr. Dagg

said. “No one is pretending it’s not

extremely complicated.”

Calls for Transparency

and Collaboration

Immediately after the Christ-

church shootings, internet service

providers in Australia and New

Zealand voluntarily blocked more

than 40 websites — including hate

hothouses like 4chan — that had

hosted video of the attacks or a

manifesto attributed to the gun-

man.

In New Zealand, where Prime

Minister Jacinda Ardern is lead-

ing an international effort to com-

bat internet hate, the sites gradu-

ally returned. But in Australia, the

sites have stayed down.

Mr. Morrison, at the G7, said the

eSafety Commission was now em-

powered to tell internet service

providers when to block entire

sites at the domain level.

In its first act with such powers,

the commission announced Mon-

day that around 35 sites had been

cleared for revival, while eight un-

identified repeat offenders would

continue to be inaccessible in Aus-

tralia.

In a country without a First

Amendment and with a deep cul-

ture of secrecy in government,

there is no public list of sites that

were blocked, no explanations,

and no publicly available descrip-

tions of what is being removed un-

der the abhorrent-content law.

More transparency has been

promised by officials in a recent

report, and some social media

companies have pledged to be

more forthcoming. But Susan Be-

nesch, a Harvard professor who

studies violent rhetoric, said any

effort that limits speech must re-

quire clear and regular disclosure

“to provoke public debate about

where the line should be.”

To get a sense of how specific

complaints are handled, in early

August a reporter for The New

York Times submitted three links

for investigation:

■A Facebook post showing a gun

used in the Christchurch attacks.

■Footage of the Christchurch at-

tacks found on a site based in Co-

lombia.

■A message board post referring

to the alleged Christchurch at-

tacker as a saint.

Investigators said the last item

“did not meet the threshold” and

was not investigated. For the

Christchurch footage, a notice

was sent to the site and the host-

ing service. The first complaint

was referred to Facebook, which

removed the post.

Over all, the process was cau-

tious, but clearly defined by who-

ever reports a problem.

Two of the five complaints that

led to action by the Cyber Report

team involved the beheading of

Scandinavian tourists in Morocco

by Islamic State supporters. One

involved images from the murder

of Bianca Devins, a 17-year-old

girl from New York state, and the

final pair involved the Christ-

church attack footage — one of

which was submitted by The

Times.

Of the five, one site has blocked

access (153news), two sites or

their hosting provider removed

the material, and two sites have

not yet responded.

Given that limited impact, the

question Australia’s approach still

can’t answer is whether govern-

ments that are eager to act can

muster a more robust, transpar-

ent and careful form of internet

cleanup.

“It’s tremendously important

for humankind that we find ways

of making and enforcing norms of

behavior online,” Ms. Benesch

said. “And companies have not

been much help.”

Australia Threatens Jail Time for Violent Content Online, Link by Link

By DAMIEN CAVE

Charlotte Graham-McLay contrib-
uted reporting from Wellington,
New Zealand.

Above, the eSafety Commission’s offices in Sydney. Julia Inman Grant, left, an American with tech

industry experience, is the commissioner. She describes her mission as online consumer protection.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNAMARIA ANTOINETTE D’ADDARIO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Three citizens of Australia are
being held in Iran, the Australian
government said on Wednesday,
confirming the detentions as fric-
tions remain high between Tehran
and Western nations over the im-
periled 2015 accord limiting its nu-
clear program.
The Australian government
said it was providing consular as-
sistance to the families of those
detained, and it reminded trav-
elers that they risk arbitrary de-
tention when visiting Iran. The
government provided no other de-
tails, citing privacy requirements.
The Times of London, which
first reported the detentions, said
the three people jailed were a
British-Australian blogger and
her Australian boyfriend, as well
as a British-Australian academic.
The newspaper said that the
couple was taken into custody
about 10 weeks ago, and that the
scholar was detained earlier and
had since been sentenced to a dec-
ade in prison on unknown
charges.
The paper reported that the
blogger and the academic were
being held at Evin Prison in
Tehran, in the same ward that
houses female prisoners such as
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a
British-Iranian woman who was
detained in 2016 on charges of spy-
ing.
The detentions of the blogger

and the scholar are the first in

years in which Iran has held Brit-

ons who do not also have Iranian

citizenship, the newspaper said.

The British government said in

a statement Wednesday that its

foreign secretary met with the Ira-

nian ambassador and raised “seri-

ous questions” about dual nation-

als detained in Iran. It gave no in-

formation about specific cases.

In April, the Iranian foreign

minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif,

publicly proposed a prisoner ex-

change with the United States,

and raised the cases of Ms. Za-

ghari-Ratcliffe and an Iranian

woman being held in Australia.

Iran has detained several dual

and foreign nationals in recent

years, including at least four

Americans.

“We have an Iranian lady in

Australia who gave birth to a child

in prison,” Mr. Zarif said during a

discussion at a think tank in New

York, adding that the case in-

volved the purchase of transmis-

sion equipment for an Iranian

broadcasting company.

“That’s her charge,” he added.

“She has been lingering in an Aus-

tralian jail for the past three

years.” He said that the United

States had requested that the

woman be extradited, and that

Washington had not responded to

the Iranian overtures on a pris-

oner swap.

Tensions have spiked between

Iran and the West after President

Trump withdrew the United

States from the 2015 nuclear deal

and reimposed punishing sanc-

tions last year. In July, Britain and

Gibraltar seized an Iranian ship

they accused of carrying oil to

Syria, and Iran retaliated by de-

taining a British-flagged tanker in

the Strait of Hormuz.

Last month, Australia agreed to

join an American-led mission to

police the strait against Iranian

threats. The fledgling coalition

also includes Britain and Bahrain.

The family of Ms. Zaghari-Rat-

cliffe confirmed that she and the

British-Australian blogger were

being held in the same ward at

Evin Prison. The blogger came

out of solitary confinement a few

weeks ago, the family said.

Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 41, had

lived in London for more than a

decade before she was detained in

Tehran while trying to return to

Britain; she had been in Iran vis-

iting family with her young

daughter.

At the time, she was a program

director at the Thomson Reuters

Foundation — a charity independ-

ent of the media conglomerate

Thomson Reuters. She was ac-

cused of plotting to overthrow

Iran’s government. Her family

and the foundation have vig-

orously denied the charge.

Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s hus-

band, Richard Ratcliffe, said that

the British Foreign Office had not

given the family information

about the other British nationals

being held, but that the families

and their representatives in Par-

liament were pressing for a joint

meeting with Dominic Raab, Brit-

ain’s foreign secretary.

“The U.K. government needs to

be transparent about what is go-

ing on and its responsibility to pro-

tect its citizens,” Mr. Ratcliffe said

in an emailed statement. “And it

needs to work better with other af-

fected countries — so that the Ira-

nian government truly under-

stands this practice has to stop.

Hostage diplomacy is not O.K.”

Tulip Siddiq, a member of Par-

liament for Ms. Zaghari-Rat-

cliffe’s constituency, tweeted

about the situation on Wednesday,

saying Iran’s action “once again

ups the stakes.”

“This is a wake-up call for our

prime minister, government and

ministers that they must act ur-

gently to bring our innocent citi-

zens home,” she wrote.

Rights groups worry that the

latest arrests are part of a trend of

arbitrary detentions of Western-

ers in Iran.

Eilidh Macpherson, a spokes-

woman for Amnesty International

UK, said that the arrest of foreign-

ers in Iran was a pattern that was

“becoming increasingly alarm-

ing.”

“We’re concerned that these

two British-Australian nationals

may have been subjected to seri-

ous human rights violations, in-

cluding denial of access to a law-

yer and even torture or other ill-

treatment,” she said in a state-

ment, and she urged the British

government to take action.

Three Australians Are Being Held in Iran, Government Says With a Warning

Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife is being held in Tehran, at the Iranian Embassy in London in June.

PETER SUMMERS/GETTY IMAGES

By JAMIE TARABAY

and MEGAN SPECIA

Iliana Magra contributed report-
ing.