Encryption won't help abusers, says Meta

Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

At a parliamentary hearing into how law enforcement can tackle child exploitation, committee chair Julian Simmonds referenced Australian Federal Police's belief that encryption would restrict Meta's ability to detect and refer incidents of child abuse material.

The committee heard Meta referred more than 21,000 incidents to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children between July 2020 and June 2021, a number the AFP expects to drop with encryption.

Ms Davis, who noted already-encrypted WhatsApp made more than 400,000 reports of suspected child abuse material last year, said Meta was taking a three-pronged approach.

She said that included focusing on initial harm prevention by measures such as defaulting minors' accounts to private settings and making it more difficult for suspected accounts to view minors.

Meta will also make it easier for users to report suspected child exploitation and add additional layers of control, including the ability to blur photos.

"We're really quite confident we will still be able to make numerous actionable reports to law enforcement," Ms Davis said.

But Mr Simmonds said law enforcement estimated 60 per cent of its referrals would no longer be possible once encryption is the default across Meta's platforms.

Ms Davis noted while the debate was framed as privacy against safety, "privacy is essential to safety".

Labor MP Anne Aly asked when Meta's messaging platforms were encrypted, how it could penetrate closed groups of potential criminals.

"(These) services … allow people to set up a closed group where they can share these images, like going into a room and closing the door and locking it behind you, then sharing those images with each other," she said.

"Nobody in there is going to report it because they are part of that group."

The hearing continues.