‘Children matter more than tech industry jobs’
Expert says safety must be top priority of Government
THE ‘threat of tech companies pulling out of Ireland’ should have no influence over calls for tougher legislation to protect children online, a leading cyber expert has told an Oireachtas committee.
Dr Mary Aiken, who is campaigning for a review of the Government’s decision to set the age of digital con- sent ‘be looking at 13, said at investments the State shouldn’t when we have 13-year-old children to protect’.
It came after Labour TD Seán Sherlock said that he was concerned that ‘Mr or Mrs Facebook’ would be ringing up the Taoiseach and ‘threatening to pull out’ of the country if Ireland started ‘legislating or creating innovations that would provide the necessary blockages and filters’ to protect children under 16.
The exchange took place at the Oireachtas Children and Youth Affairs Committee yesterday, as Dr Aiken, an adviser to the European Cyber Crime Centre at Europol, and UCC professor Barry O’Sullivan gave evidence in support of their call to set the digital age of consent to 16, in line with EU recommendations.
The Data Protection Bill 2018, which enshrines an Irish digital age of consent at 13 years old, has been submitted to the Seanad and is currently under consideration. The online experts said they are ‘unequivocally’ opposed to the age being set at 13. The digital age of consent is the age at which a person can consent to terms and conditions of online tech firms and service providers. In his submission, Prof O’Sullivan said that Germany, France and the Netherlands have adopted a very protective stance on the digital age of consent, opting to go with the default EU age, which is 16. He argued that tech companies are being held to a greater standard of accountability by governments outside Ireland. ‘There is nothing Mary and I have suggested that makes Ireland any more difficult an environment for them (tech companies) to work in as France, Germany and the Netherlands,’ he said.
‘We shouldn’t be afraid of that. These people are being held to a much greater standard in other jurisdictions and it isn’t an issue.’
Dr Aiken, who is calling on parents to contact their local representatives in relation to the issue, said that Irish children are being offered less protection than their European counterparts.
‘Why do French, German or Dutch children get treated better than Irish children?’ she asked.
The meeting comes after Dublin man Matthew Horan, 26, was last month jailed for seven-and-a-half years for blackmailing young girls into sending him sexually graphic photos and videos.
Dr Aiken said recent cases of child abuse and exploitation over the web are just the beginning.
‘This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s coming. I can say that unequivocally,’ she said. ‘We are facing a tsunami of these cases coming down the line.’
Both experts argued for the digital age of consent to be 16 and emphasised that this should not be conflated with denying children a right to information online.
‘Companies can collect, record and share a child’s home and school address, their location, their date of birth, their photos, phone number, their likes and dislikes, who they know, and the content of their conversations, including messages sent privately,’ said Prof O’Sullivan.
‘Not only does this present a security risk to the individual child, but, by association, it also presents risk to the family.’
And Dr Aiken said: ‘We are living through the largest unregulated social experiment of all time. In time, when we have enough evidence to show the damage, then governments will begin to pay attention – then we will try and undo a damaged generation.’