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Herald Sun: Australia gets its first Children's e-Safety Commissioner
The government has appointed Alastair MacGibbon, a former AFP agent and eBay head of trust and safety, as its first Children’s e-Safety Commissioner.
The appointment of Mr MacGibbon, who is set to begin in the role from July 1, follows the passing of the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Act 2015 earlier this month. The legislation establishes the office of the Children’s e-Safety Commissioner within the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
Mr MacGibbon will be empowered to fine big social media companies up to $17,000 a day if they fail to remove cyber-bullying material targeted at children. He will also be able to issue internet trolls with formal notices to remove offensive material, and if they fail to do that, seek a court injunction or refer them to the AFP.
“Alastair will be responsible for advocacy, co-ordination of Commonwealth Government efforts in online safety, education, research, also administering the complaints system that will apply to cyber bullying,” Paul Fletcher, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications, toldTechnology Spectator.
"In the initial phase there will be a fair bit of work getting the office set up, and under the legislation there are some rulings and determinations that will still need to be made, we need to determine which social media services will be captured, and the definition of social media itself needs to be fleshed out. There's a fair bit of IT work involved too, and this is a fairly significant public advocacy role. Alistair will be keeping parents, children and indeed others such as teachers informed of best practices to stay safe online.
Mr MacGibbon worked for 15 years as an agent with the Australian Federal Police, including an appointment as founding director of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre.
Along with a number of private sector roles, including as senior director of trust, safety and customer support at eBay, Mr MacGibbon has also been a director of the Centre for Internet Safety at the University of Canberra since 2011.
"I think this role is important for many parts of the community, and that includes social media services themselves, clearly,” Mr MacGibbon said in an interview.
"They're the ones that have the greatest reach into the community we need to be protecting. But we also need to remember educators, and obviously children themselves. I'm not naive about how hard this will be. I've spent a long time in this space, I think it’s both an exciting and daunting role.
"Most importantly my role in the first instant will be about setting up the office, and putting a robust scheme in place. What we're dealing with here is very serious complaints. We need to have an effective regime, and make sure procedurally and mechanically we can take the complaints and service the public to the level that they would expect."
“The Coalition went to the 2013 election with a commitment to establish a Children’s e-Safety Commissioner and to establish an effective complaints system, backed by legislation, to get harmful material targeted at Australian children down fast from large social media sites,” Mr Fletcher said.
He said Mr MacGibbon was appointed from a "strong field" of candidates following a public call for nominations and a thorough selection process.
Mr Fletcher added the government was clear that it did not want to interfere with the business processes of companies like Facebook and Twitter.
“We want to have a close co-operative working relationship with social media companies, these are large organisations and we’ve certainly had dialogue with them about not intefering too much with their processes," he said.
“We've spent time in meetings and discussions with the people at companies like Facebook and Google who deal with complaints globally, here and in Silicon Valley. We’ve talked to them with a view to make this as minimally disruptive as it can be while giving effect to our policy intentions.
Mr MacGibbon pointed to research which found that over a 12-month period, one in five Australian children aged eight to 17 are exposed to cyber-bullying.
“The overwhelming message from the Australian public is that we must do more to protect Australian kids online -- it will be the mission of this office to do just that,” he said.
The Abbott Government announced funding of $10 million in the 2014-15 Budget to implement its Enhancing Online Safety for Children policy, including $7.5m to assist schools to access accredited online safety programmes, $2.4m to establish and operate the Office of the Children’s e-Safety Commissioner and $100,000 to support Australian-based research and information campaigns on online safety.
