“They are crimefluencers, and are motivated by anarchy and hurting others, with most of their victims pre-teen or teenage girls,” Barrett will say according to speech notes provided by her office.
The warning about the criminals finding victims on social media comes as tech giants Snapchat, TikTok and Meta told parliament they would comply with the government’s under-16 ban despite their concerns about the effectiveness of the world-first measure.
Ella Woods-Joyce, Public Policy Lead, Content and Safety, TikTok, appears via videolink (bottom left) during a hearing on the Internet Search Engine Services Online Safety Code.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“We will comply with the law, even though we believe it has been unevenly applied and risks undermining community confidence in the law,” Snap Inc’s senior vice president of global policy Jennifer Stout told a Senate inquiry examining the laws.
“We know this will be difficult for young people who use Snapchat to communicate with their closest friends and family.”
The social media ban is set to come into effect on December 10, and will ban children under the age of 16 from social media apps, forbidding accounts on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, X and YouTube. It’s unclear if Discord and Roblox will be covered by the ban.
Barrett became the first woman to lead the federal police when she took on the top job at the start of this month, replacing Reece Kershaw.
Describing the emerging criminal networks as a “new and disturbing front in traditional gendered-based violence”, Barrett will say: “The motivation of individuals within these networks is not financial nor is it for sexual gratification– this is purely for their amusement, for fun – or to be popular online without fully understanding the consequences.
“These groups have a similar culture to multiplayer, online gaming culture, and hunt, stalk and draw-in victims from a range of online platforms.”
The young men – typically aged between 17 and 20 – groom their victims online and then force them to perform serious acts of violence on themselves, their siblings or pets.
“In this new, twisted type of gamification, perpetrators reach a status or new level in their group when they provide more content showing more extreme acts of depravity and sadism,” Barrett will say.
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“And in some cases, perpetrators trade their victims with each other, just like in an online game.”
Young girls who have low self-esteem, mental health disorders, a history of self-harm or eating disorders are particularly vulnerable to becoming victims, she will say.
Barrett’s warning echoes that of Britain’s National Crime Agency, which said earlier this year that young people were being lured into “sadistic and violent online gangs, where they are collaborating at scale to inflict, or incite others to commit, serious harm”.
The AFP has set up Taskforce Pompilid – named after a spider-hunting wasp – to identify, disrupt and dismantle these emerging online criminal networks.
“A sub-group within the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group has also been established to target these groups,” she said, referring to the powerful intelligence sharing network comprised of Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada.
Barrett will go on to say that Australia is facing intense strategic competition, as nation states team up with criminals to undermine social cohesion.
“For example, an individual we suspect is responsible for a number of tobacco-related arsons in Australia, is a person of interest in the investigation into the alleged politically motivated arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue,” she will say.
“That person is a national security threat to this country.
“Of all the alleged criminals accused of threatening Australia – he is my number one priority, and I have tasked my most experienced criminal hunters to target him.”
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This masthead revealed in August that Australian authorities suspect Kazem Hamad of conspiring with foreign spies to carry out the firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue in a development that has led to Iranian diplomats being expelled from Canberra.
Hamad and his right-hand man, suspected drug trafficker Ahmed Al Hamza, have based their criminal operations out of Iraq and Iran.
Federal and state counter-terror investigators in Victoria first made links between Hamad – who is also suspected of being behind a campaign of murder and arson connected to the battle to control Australia’s lucrative illegal tobacco market – and the December firebombing of the synagogue in early January.
Meanwhile, Tuesday’s Senate inquiry hearing into Australia’s social media ban took a tense turn when NSW Nationals Senator Ross Cadell asked TikTok about the company’s culture “when it comes to bullying and intimidation”, saying his office had been contacted to ask him to tone down his line of questioning during an earlier Senate inquiry this month.
Cadell questioned whether TikTok was “not just a bullying behemoth” that was frustrated it wasn’t getting its way, saying the member of his staff he believed was intimidated did not receive an apology until the platform was compelled to attend today’s inquiry. Woods-Joyce rejected the claim.
TikTok representative Ella Woods-Joyce replied: “I’m not aware of the details that you’re talking about. What I can say is that the team needs to operate professionally and appropriately at all times, and I have confidence that that’s what we do.”
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