Australia and the United Kingdom co-sign Online Safety and Security Memorandum of Understanding

From the Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland’s media release:

Australia and the United Kingdom have today co-signed an historic Online Safety and Security Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), ushering in a new era of bilateral cooperation between the two countries to support safer and more positive experience online.

The first arrangement of its kind, the MoU has a broad focus and encompasses a wide range of digital online safety and security issues, including illegal content, child safety, age assurance, technology facilitated gender-based violence, and addressing harms caused by rapidly changing technology, like generative artificial intelligence…

…The MoU will be taken forward by the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the Australian Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (DITRDCA), in collaboration with other relevant departments and agencies on both sides.

From the text of the MoU:

Strategic objectives:

Under this MoU, both Participants will take a comprehensive approach to online safety and security, recognising the economic, social and individual benefits that stem from a safe and secure online environment. This MoU will also contribute to mitigating the risks of harm in a rapidly-developing technological landscape - ensuring the protection of the public by reducing long-standing and novel causes of harm, in particular the harms experienced by children, women and other persons or groups in vulnerable situations, while maintaining capabilities in a way that protects privacy, and does not limit freedom of expression or stifle innovation.

Minister Rowland is on a trip to the UK and Europe leading the Australian delegation to the 2024 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, amongst other things.