MIL-OSI Export

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joel Scanlan, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Law; Academic Co-Lead, CSAM Deterrence Centre, University of Tasmania

In the 2024–25 financial year alone, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation received nearly 83,000 reports of online child sexual abuse material (CSAM), primarily on mainstream platforms. This was a 41% increase from the year before.

It is in this context of child abuse occurring in plain sight, on mainstream platforms, that the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, requires transparency notices every six months from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta and other big tech firms.

The latest report, published today, shows some progress in detecting known abuse material – including material that is generated by artificial intelligence (AI), live-streamed abuse, online grooming, and sexual extortion of children and adults – and reducing moderation times.

However, the report also reveals ongoing and serious safety gaps that still put users, especially children, at risk. It makes clear that transparency is not enough. Consistent with existing calls for a legally mandated Digital Duty of Care, we need to move from merely recording harms to preventing them through better design.

What the reports tell us

These transparency reports are important for companies to meet regulatory requirements.

But the new eSafety “snapshot” shows an ongoing gap between what technology can do and what companies are actually doing to tackle online harms.

One of the positive findings is that Snap, which owns SnapChat, has reduced its child sexual exploitation and abuse moderation response time from 90 minutes to 11 minutes.

Microsoft has also expanded its detection of known abuse material within Outlook.

However, Meta and Google continue to leave video calling services such as Messenger and Google Meet unmonitored for live-streamed abuse. This is despite them using detection tools on their other platforms.

The eSafety report highlights that Apple and Discord are failing to implement proactive detection, with Apple relying almost entirely on user reports rather than automated safety technology.

Apple, Discord, Google’s Chat, Meet and Messages, Microsoft Teams, and Snap are not currently using available software to detect the sexual extortion of children.

The biggest areas of concern identified by the commissioner are live video and encrypted environments. There is still insufficient investment in tools to detect live online child sexual exploitation and abuse. Despite Skype (owned by Microsoft) historically implementing such protections before its closure, Microsoft Teams and other providers still fail to do so.

Alongside the report, eSafety launched a new dashboard that tracks the progress of technology companies.

The dashboard highlights key metrics. These include the technologies and data sources used to detect harmful content, the amount of content that is user reported (which indicates automated systems did not catch it), and the size of the trust and safety workforce within the companies.

How can we improve safety?

The ongoing gaps identified by the eSafety Commissioner show that current reporting requirements are insufficient to make platforms safe.

The industry should put safety before profit. But this rarely happens unless laws require it.

A legislated digital duty of care, as proposed by the review of the Online Safety Act, is part of the answer.

This would make tech companies legally responsible for showing their systems are safe by design before launch. Instead of waiting for reports to reveal long-standing safety gaps, a duty of care would require platforms to identify risks early and implement already available solutions, such as language analysis software and deterrence messaging.

Beyond detection: the need for safety

To stop people from sharing or accessing harmful and illegal material, we also need to focus on deterrence and encourage them to seek help.

This is a key focus of the CSAM Deterrence Centre, a collaboration between Jesuit Social Services and the University of Tasmania.

Working with major tech platforms, we have found proactive safety measures can reduce harmful behaviours.

Evidence shows a key tool, which is underused, is warning messages that deter and disrupt offending behaviours in real time.

Such messages can be triggered when new or previously known abuse material is shared, or a conversation is detected as sexual extortion or grooming. In addition to blocking the behaviour, platforms can guide users to seek help.

This includes directing people to support services such as Australia’s Stop It Now! helpline. This is a child sexual abuse prevention service for adults who have concerns about their own (or someone else’s) sexual thoughts or behaviours towards children.

Safety by design should not be a choice

The eSafety Commissioner continues to urge companies to take a more comprehensive approach to addressing child sexual exploitation and abuse on their platforms. The technology is already available. But companies often lack the will to use it if it might slow user growth and affect profits.

Transparency reports show us the real state of the industry.

Right now, they reveal a sector that knows how to solve its problems but is moving too slowly.

We need to go beyond reports and strengthen legislation that makes safety the standard, not just an extra feature.

The author acknowledges the contribution of Matt Tyler and Georgia Naldrett from Jesuit Social Services, which operates the Stop It Now! Helpline in Australia, and partners with the University of Tasmania in the CSAM Deterrence Centre.

Joel Scanlan is the academic co-lead of the CSAM Deterrence Centre, which is a partnership between the University of Tasmania and Jesuit Social Services, who operate Stop It Now (Australia), a therapeutic service providing support to people who are concerned with their own, or someone else’s, feelings towards children. He has received funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology, the eSafety Commissioner, Lucy Faithfull Foundation and the Internet Watch Foundation.

– ref. Big tech companies are still failing to tackle child abuse material online – https://theconversation.com/big-tech-companies-are-still-failing-to-tackle-child-abuse-material-online-274857

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/big-tech-companies-are-still-failing-to-tackle-child-abuse-material-online-274857/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ahmed Uzair Aziz, PhD Candidate in Māori Studies, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

This story begins with a 160-year-old cottage, sited in a vortex of overlapping histories, and becomes the tale of a city itself.

The green and cream weatherboard house at 18 Wynyard Street is a rare survivor of the old dwellings that once lined this central Auckland lane.

These days it houses the University of Auckland’s James Henare Research Centre, dedicated to empowering Māori in the Te Tai Tokerau region.

But the cottage was originally built in the 1860s to provide housing for married British army officers during the land wars raging at that time.

The street was named after Colonel Robert Henry Wynyard, the commanding officer of British armed forces in the 1850s and acting Governor of New Zealand for a year.

Wynyard lived among other colonial officers in Officials Bay, which was visible from Wynyard Street back then. The Māori name for the bay is Te Hororoa, the “slipping away”.

It was a short stroll from Wynyard Street to Te Hororoa before extensive land reclamation between the 1870s and 1920s. Now, the shoreline is covered in asphalt and named Beach Road.

Despite the massive changes in the area over the past 160 years, stories have surfaced from the earth beside the cottage on Wynyard Street.

Lost history and reclaimed land

Around 2007, when buildings to the south of the cottage were demolished to make way for the university’s business school, an archaeological team found a midden containing traces of earlier Māori life: obsidian flakes, chert and greywacke tools, and a bird-bone awl that may have been used to make dog-skin cloaks.

The archaeologists noted that Te Reuroa pā once stood at the top of Constitution Hill, near where the Auckland High Court now stands.

In nearby Albert Park, there was also a significant settlement, the Ngāti Whātua kāinga (village) of Rangipuke, and a fortified pā called Te Horotiu.

Māori are believed to have valued the hilltop because the elevated site was good for growing crops and easy to defend, while two freshwater streams ran into the bays below.

In the 1840s, British military barracks were built at what became Albert Park. Albert Barracks grew to a nine-hectare military compound, which the early British used to secure their position against Māori.

Part of the basalt wall that once circled Albert Barracks still snakes through the university grounds.

Read more:
Books of mana: 10 essential reads for Waitangi Day

Before European histories begin, the whenua (land) beside the cottage might have been used by Māori for preparing flax and food, and making garments.

The earth under our feet is full of fragments. But it’s difficult to reclaim the past in this part of Auckland because reclaiming land for a new shoreline involved digging up hills where Māori once lived and worked.

Parts of Tāmaki Makaurau were flattened beyond recognition, then concreted over in the process of becoming Auckland city.

The Wynyard Street cottage has also changed over the years. It was restructured in the 1920s by Malcolm Draffin, one of the architects of the Auckland War Memorial Museum in the nearby Domain.

The house later glimpsed the limelight during a brief season when it became a theatre. British movie star Vivien Leigh (who played Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind) visited in 1962 and the venue was named in her honour.

But the owner and manager of the Vivien Leigh Theatre was jailed for his homosexuality and the theatre doors slammed shut before a single show was staged.

Later in the 1960s, the university bought the building. Education and anthropology departments took over the space until it became a Māori research centre in 1993.

A door to the past and future

By a curious coincidence, the James Henare Research Centre is named after Sir James Henare, the great-grandson of Colonel Robert Henry Wynyard.

But hold on for a plot twist.

Sir James was the son of Taurekareka Henare, whose father Henare Wynyard was the son Robert Wynyard had fathered out of wedlock with a Maōri woman.

Taurekareka changed the family name from Wynyard to his father’s Christian name, Henare, as a means of aligning with his whakapapa (genealogy), which led back to the great warriors Kāwiti and Hone Heke.

In 1845, Taurekareka’s grandfather Robert Wynyard had fought in the British army that attacked Ruapekapeka pā in Northland. The Māori defending the pā included Kāwiti and Hone Heke.

That left Taurekareka looking back at a history in which his ancestors did battle. He chose the Māori side when he dropped the surname Wynyard and became a Henare.

Taurekareka’s son James (later Sir James) was a Ngāti Hine rangatira (chief) born in the Bay of Islands. He served as commanding officer in the Māori Battalion in World War II and later became a champion of Māori education and the kōhanga reo movement.

A man of great mana, he helped Ngāti Whātua Orākei during their Waitangi Tribunal claim in the 1980s. After he died in 1989, Ngāti Whātua leaders asked if his name might be given to the new centre.

Thus the name Henare returned to claim ground on Wynyard Street. Sir James’ son, Bernard Henare, is now chair of the centre.

In the 1990s, Ngāti Porou master carver Pakaariki Harrison created two pou and a lintel for the entrance to the centre.

The whakairo (carving) physically and symbolically transformed the house into a whare for its official opening in 1994. Several years ago, the pou were removed for restoration by Pakaariki’s son, Fred Harrison. The carvings will be returned to cloak the whare early in 2026.

Number 18 Wynyard Street is shrouded in layers of the past that build to the future. Maybe one day its doors will open onto Henare Street instead.

Ahmed Uzair Aziz has worked as a researcher and administrator at the James Henare Research Centre. He is a recipient of the University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarship.

– ref. This central Auckland cottage tells a remarkable tale of the city’s bicultural history – https://theconversation.com/this-central-auckland-cottage-tells-a-remarkable-tale-of-the-citys-bicultural-history-274005

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/this-central-auckland-cottage-tells-a-remarkable-tale-of-the-citys-bicultural-history-274005/

SPECIAL REPORT: By Jason Brown

Fast-paced electronic music pumps in the background as a rapid montage of moving images flash across the screen.

In a 20 second video, French sailors hunker down in an inflatable speeding over swells.

Another sailor, in bright red shorts, is lowered from a helicopter onto the vessel’s back deck. Captured crew with faces blurred are held in a galley, as bags full of drugs are pulled from below deck and loaded onto pallets for lift-off.

“Throwback to the latest drug seizure at sea by the French Navy, as if you were part of it,” reads the social media caption from French armed forces, documenting last month’s drug seizure by the frigate Prairial.

What the video does not show
French sailors dropping 4.87 tonnes of cocaine into the ocean near the Tuamotu group, north-east of Tahiti. Tossing drugs overboard may be a time-honoured tactic for drug smugglers at sea — but a new one for authorities.

“This record seizure is a successful outcome of the new territorial plan to combat narcotics developed by the High Commissioner of the Republic in French Polynesia,” reads a statement on their website.

Record seizure — worth at least US$150 million — and record disposal, in record time.

One raising questions worldwide.

Why?
“Why won’t France open an investigation after the seizure of these 5 tons of cocaine?” reads the January 20 headline in the French edition of Huffington Post.

Prosecutors in Tahiti emphasised the costs faced by French Polynesia if it were to prosecute all drug traffickers.

“Our primary mission is to prevent drugs from entering the country and to combat trafficking in Polynesia,” said Public Prosecutor Solène Belaouar. As “more and more traffickers transit through our waters we must address the issue of managing this new flow.”

Belaouar told French media that prosecuting drug cases locally costs 12,000 French Pacific Francs a day, or about US$120 per person.

This new concern about costs came as the French territory winds up another drug trafficking case. Under those estimates, the conviction of 14 Ecuador sailors caught smuggling in December 2024 would represent around US$600,000.

Last Thursday, they had their appeal against trafficking 524 kilos on the MV Raymi dismissed, meaning their jail sentences of six to eight years are confirmed. Costs of this case compare with the US$93 million spent between 2013 and 2017 constructing a new prison, Tatutu de Papeari,  with a capacity of 410 inmates in Tahiti.

A question sent via social media about the drug dump went unanswered by ALPACI, Amiral commandant la zone maritime de l’océan Pacifique.

Overall, drug seizures by French forces worldwide have increased dramatically.

A total of 87.6 tons of drugs were seized in 2025 in cooperation with state services, including local police, customs and the French Anti-Drug and Smuggling Office (OFAST), nearing twice the previous record of 48.3 tons set the year before, in 2024.

Those statistics seem unlikely to quieten concerns about the new cost-cutting strategy.

Sunny day
Boarded on a sunny day on January 16, the MV Raider carried a crew of 10 Honduran citizens, with one from Ecuador. All faced lengthy jail terms if convicted.

Instead, French authorities let all 11 go, allowing the crew to resume their journey on the offshore supply ship. That decision contrasts with the high-profile approach sometimes taken when it comes to illegal fishing boats, with many captured and resold or set on fire and sunk at sea.

Dozens of public social media comments in French Polynesia and the Cook Islands questioned the disposal of the drugs at sea, with some calling for the ship’s seizure. Tahiti news media were the first to question the decision to catch and release.

“4.87 tonnes of cocaine . . .  but no legal action taken,” Tahiti Nui Television noted as the news broke a few days later.

At first, French authorities claimed the seizure took place in international waters or the “high seas”.

Lead prosecutor Belaouar told TNTV that “Article 17 of the Vienna Convention stipulates that the navy can intercept a vessel on the high seas, check its flag of origin, ask the Public Prosecutor, and the High Commissioner is involved in the decision, if they agree that the procedure should not be pursued through the courts, and that it should therefore be handled solely administratively.”

However, TNTV also quoted legal sources as stating the drug seizure of 96 bales took place within the “maritime zone” of French Polynesia.

Ten days after first reports of the seizure, Belaouar was no longer talking about the “high seas”, instead claiming the need for a new strategy to handle drug flows.

Drug ‘superhighway’
“The Pacific has become a superhighway for drugs”, Belaouar asserted, adding that “70 percent of cocaine trafficking passes through this route.”

Those differing claims raised questions in Tahiti, and 1100 km to the south-west, when the briefly seized vessel, the MV Raider, turned up off Rarotonga broadcasting a distress signal.

Customs officials told daily Cook Islands News the vessel was reporting engine trouble, and confirmed MV Raider was the same vessel that had been intercepted by French naval forces with the drugs on board.

Live maritime records also show the tug supply boat as “anchored” at Rarotonga.

Aptly named, the Raider caught official attention before passing through the Panama Canal, with a listed destination of Sydney Australia.

Anonymous company
Sending a small coastal boat some 14,000 km across the world’s largest ocean drew attention on a route more usually plied by container ships up to nine times longer.

Also raising questions — the identity of the ship owners.

A signed certificate uploaded online by an unofficial source appears to show that the last known ownership traces to an anonymous Panama company named Newton Tecnologia SA.

That name also appears in a customer ranking report from the Panama Canal Authority, with Newton Tecnologia appearing at 541 of 550 listed companies.

Under Panama law, Sociedad Anonomi — anonymous “societies” or companies — do not need to reveal shareholders, and can be 100 percent foreign owned.

A review of various databroker services show one of the company directors as Jacinto Gonzalez Rodriguez.

A person of the same name is listed on OpenCorporates in a variety of leadership roles with 22 other companies in Panama, including engineering, marketing, a “bike messenger” venture, and as treasurer and director for an entity called “Mistic La Madam Gift Shop.”

However, Newton Tecnologia SA does does not show up in the same database, or searches of the country’s official business registry.

A similarly named company is registered in Brazil but is focused on educational equipment, not shipping, with one director showing up in search results at community art events.

‘Dark fleet’
Registered with the International Marine Organisation under call sign 5VJL2, the MV Raider is described as a “Multi Purpose Offshore Vessel” with IMO number: 9032824.

Online records indicate that the ship was built in 1991 in the United States, with a “Provisional Certificate of Registry” from the Togo Maritime Authority dated only two months ago, on 19 November 2025. With a declared destination of Sydney, Australia, the Raider and its Togo certificate are valid until 18 May 2026.

According to maritime experts, provisional certification is a red flag that allows what industry sources term the “dark fleet” to exploit open registries. This “allows entry on a temporary basis (typically three to six months) with minimal due diligence pending submission of all documentation,” according to a 2025 review from Windward, a marine risk consultancy.

“Vessels then ‘hop’ to another flag before the provisional period expires.”

Where there’s smoke
Windward listed Togo as being among ship registries that flagged ships with little to no oversight, along with Antigua and Barbuda, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Belize, Cameroon, Comoros, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Hong Kong, Liberia, Mongolia, Oman, Panama, San Marino, São Tomé and Príncipe, St. Kitts and Nevis, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Vietnam.

In the Pacific, other registries noted by Windward as failing basic enforcement include Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Palau, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Previously registered in Honduras, the July 2023 edition of the Worldwide Tug and OSV News reports that GIS Marine LLC, a Louisiana company, sold the Raider in 2021 to an “undisclosed” interest in Honduras.

Other records indicate GIS Marine acted as managers but the actual owner was a company called International Marine in Valetta, Malta. The only company with a similar name at that address, International Marine Contractors Ltd, is shown as inactive since 2021.

For now, though, the Raider is among tens of thousands of ships operating worldwide with “provisional certification” — allowing ships to potentially skip regulations requiring expensive maintenance and repair.

That may have been the case for the Raider, with Rarotonga residents filming what one described as “smoke” rising from the ship a day after issuing a distress call.

Where there’s drug smoke, there’s usually a bonfire of questions afterwards.

Including from José Sousa-Santos, associate professor of practice and head of the University of Canterbury’s Pacific Regional Security Hub, who told Cook Islands News that since the vessel was intercepted in French Polynesian waters “it falls under French legal jurisdiction”.

Jason Brown is founder of Journalism Agenda 2025 and writes about Pacific and world journalism and ethically globalised Fourth Estate issues. He is a former co-editor of Cook Islands Press.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/french-shrug-off-cocaine-case-costs-with-new-smugglers-strategy/

By Coco Lance, RNZ Pacific digital journalist

As Waitangi Day commemorations continue drawing people from across Aotearoa and around the world to the Bay of Islands, Te Tii Marae has become a gathering point for Indigenous ocean leadership from across the Pacific.

Taiātea: Gathering of the Oceans held its public forum yesterday, uniting more than 20 Indigenous leaders, marine scientists and researchers from Australia, Canada, Cook Islands, Hawai’i, Niue, Rapa Nui and Aotearoa.

The forum forms part of a wider 10-day wānanga taking place across Te Ika a Māui (North Island).

With a focus on the protection and restoration of Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean, kōrero throughout the day centred on the exchange of knowledge, marine protection, ocean resilience and the accelerating impacts of climate change.

A key message remained prevalent throughout the day – the moana is not separate from the people, but a living ancestor, and a responsibility carried across generations.

‘Continue that path of conservation, preservation’
Hawaiʻi’s Solomon Pili Kaho’ohalahala, co-founder of One Oceania, a former politician, and a respected elder, framed his kōrero around the belief that there is no separation between human and nature — “we are all one”.

For Kaho’ohalahala, being present at Waitangi has been a powerful reminder of the links between past, present, and future.

“Waitangi is a very historical place for the Māori people,” he said. “It is where important decisions were made by your elders.

“So to be here in this place, for me, is significant.”

“We are talking about historical events that have happened to our people across Oceania, preserved by the elders who had visions to create treaties . . .  decisions that were going to be impactful to the generations to follow,” Kaho’ohalahala said.

“It brings the relevancy of these conversations. They are what we need to negotiate and navigate the challenges we face in the present. The purpose for this is, ultimately, no different to the kupuna (Hawai’ian elder), that this was intended for the generations yet unborn,” he added.

Kaho’ohalahala also reflected on the enduring connections between indigenous communities across oceans.

“To be a part of this conversation from across the ocean that separates us, our connection by our culture and canoes is to help us understand that we are still all connected as the people of Oceania.

“But we need to be able to reiterate that, and understand why we need to emerge from that past to bring it to our relevancy to these times and issues, to continue that path of conservation, preservation, for those unborn.”

She said Waitangi was the perfect backdrop to encourage these discussions. While different cultures face individual challenges, there is a collective sense of unity.

“One of our key pillars is nurturing our future tamariki, and the ways of our peu tupuna, and nurturing stewardship and guardianship with them as our future leaders,” Castledine said.

“It’s about reclaiming how we perceive our ocean as being an ancestor, as a living organism, as whānau to us. We’re here at Waitangi to stand in solidarity of our shared ancestor and the responsibility we all have for its protection,” Castledine said.

She said people must be forward-thinking in how they collectively navigate environmental wellbeing.

“We all have a desire and a love for our moana, our indigenous knowledge systems of our oceans are critical to curating futures for our tamariki and mokopuna,” she said.

“We want to ensure that generations that come after us will continue to be able to feed generations beyond all of us. It’s about safeguarding their inheritance.”

“This is [an] opportunity to learn about common challenges we may have, and how other nations and indigenous leaders are facing those challenges, and what successes they’ve been having,” she said.

“It just makes sense that we have a relationship, and that we build that relationship.”

She noted the central role of the marine environment for her people.

“It’s not lost on me that my people are ocean-going people as well. We rely on the marine environment.

“Our salmon is the foundation and the backbone of our livelihood and the livelihood of all other beings in which we live amongst. I’m a world away, and yet I’m still sitting within the Pacific Ocean.

“So the work I do at home and how we take care of our marine environment impacts the people of Aotearoa as well, and vice versa. And so it just makes sense that we have a relationship, and that we build that relationship, because traditionally we did,” she added.

Following the public forum, indigenous leaders will visit haukāinga in the Tūwharetoa and Whanganui regions for further knowledge exchanges and to discuss specific case studies.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/05/indigenous-and-pacific-leaders-unite-at-waitangi-with-shared-messages-on-ocean-conservation/