Mint engagement backs battle against child porn

As part of its engagement programme, Mint Asset Management has been talking to internet service providers about combatting the growing problem of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Thursday, April 25th 2024, 6:49AM

by Andrea Malcolm

Mint’s head of responsible investment Rachel Tinkler says she raised the matter with Spark last year after being made aware of the rising tide of inappropriate material by digital responsibility advocate group Make Sense Aotearoa.

Tinkler says from the perspective of ISP investors, keeping out child porn and objectionable material isn’t necessarily a material issue but it is part of a broader social issue.

She says it was useful to understand the technical aspects from an ISP point of view and to learn about the actions they were taking. This includes being part of the Department of Internal Affairs’ (DIA) independent reference group set up to maintain oversight of the running of the digital child exploitation filtering system (DCEFS).

The group also includes enforcement agencies, Internet user groups and the classification office, and looks at internet safety, child welfare and the prevention of sexual abuse and the preservation of human rights.

Tinkler says the engagement has been positive with Spark notifying Mint last month that it would be adopting part of the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) list - web pages and URLs which depict indecent images of children, advertisements or links to such content on a publicly available website. The list size fluctuates but typically contains 6000 websites at any time and is updated twice a day.

Spark will adopt the domain part of the list meaning any domains identified as being entirely made up of child abuse content will now be blocked on Spark’s servers, over and above its current DIA filtering system.

Mint says it will continue conversations with One NZ, which already had network filtering that Spark didn’t have but which hadn’t adopted the IWF list.

Mint also supports changes in the policy landscape to tackle the issue of child sex abuse material. Last month Tinkler attended the presentation to parliament of a 10,000 signature petition by Makes Sense Aotearoa for better management in this country of CSAM and objectionable material.

In March Tinkler was appointed as co-chair of RIAA Aotearoa’s collaborative working group. Another co-chair is yet to be appointed. Tinkler says the Aotearoa group will increase NZ-focused collaboration, stream submissions and workflow and apply learning from other RIAA working groups (first nation peoples, human rights, and nature) to New Zealand.

Tags: Mint Asset Management