The federal government is getting ready to force Australians to prove their identity to services like Facebook, Reddit, OnlyFans and TikTok through an age verification process.
As it stands, there’s no standard way for Australians to prove their age or identity online. A 2020 report from the House of Representatives social policy and legal affairs committee recommended the Digital Transformation Agency develop a standard for online age verification.
It also asked the eSafety Commissioner to create a plan for how to mandate age verification for online pornography. The commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has said her office will come up with a plan by the end of 2022 and has been given the powers under the new Online Safety Act to implement such a system.
Last month this plan became even more ambitious. The draft of the online privacy bill released by Attorney-General Michaelia Cash and Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention David Coleman requires all social media platforms to “take all reasonable steps” to verify a user’s age — in effect, demanding that platforms can prove somehow exactly who is using their platforms.
How does online age verification work?
Leaving aside the broader debate about how to mitigate risks to young Australians from online pornography or gambling, the premise of an “accurate and effective” method of online age verification is a lot more difficult — and potentially troublesome — an idea than it may at first seem.
When Australians need to prove their age to enter a pub or see an age-restricted movie, they’re able to hand over something like a driving licence, proof-of-age card or passport to a staff member who checks the person is who they say they are.
Doing the same thing online is more complicated, says Edith Cowan University’s associate dean (computing and security) Professor Paul Haskell-Dowland. He says there are a number of technical challenges for obtaining and verifying information provided by someone online.
Traditionally, online service providers like porn websites have either asked people to input their date of birth or provide credit card details to screen out children. Both of these are easily foiled by either providing false information or using someone else’s credit card details. Haskell-Dowland says one of the major challenges for a more accurate age verification system is proving that someone using a computer is who they say they are: “To the web server at the other end, you are completely unknown, there is no way to know without some validation.”
That’s where the idea of using something like facial recognition or other biometrics comes in — ideas explicitly mentioned by Inman Grant as potential options for mandatory systems to access online pornography.
Why are people worried about it?
Naturally the idea of having to scan your face before watching porn worries some. If age verification is mandated for any social media platform, proving your identity also means creating a digital trail between your online activity and your real world identity. Digital advocacy groups and academics argue that online anonymity is crucial, particularly for marginalised groups, and is an important part of self expression.
Proving your online identity also creates a potential privacy risk. If users must upload identification documents to every social media platform, each time increases the chances the data is leaked and released. If a major platform’s security was breached, the exact information that was used to prove an Australian’s identity could be used to imitate them elsewhere online.
There’s also questions about who will be responsible for determining identities. In September, the Digital Transformation Agency announced it had entered into a partnership with Mastercard as part of its development of a digital identity scheme. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted in 2020, credit card companies have become de facto internet censors — Mastercard and Visa can decide to cut off someone’s finances like they did with WikiLeaks and countless sex workers.
Creating a system where anyone can prove their identity requires consideration of the many permutations, like how to work with Australians who don’t have a driver’s licence or passport. These systems would also need to be flexible to work with all kinds of systems and use cases. And, as Haskell-Dowland points out, running and maintaining a system is likely to be extremely technically sophisticated and expensive.
While the idea of online age verification seems simple, the execution is fraught for privacy and security. But regardless of the issues, the government has signalled it’s full steam ahead with the plan — with details to be figured out later.
This lot of incompetent fools keep on inventing new ways of doing ‘stupid’.
Identity theft is already a problem on the internet. This legislation, even if it can be made to work, will provide just one more reason to steal another person’s identity, and will push the price of theft services even higher, thus providing even more incentive for the crime.
Yay for free enterprise entrepreneurs?
Promoting a very wide range of perverted, evil, and oppressive laws is as much a part of the class war of neoliberalism as its relentless attacks on wages, working conditions, social services, and our future.
Observe how casually “ISIS “terrorism” in Australia” has been abandoned as the justification for the recent sets of evil and oppressive laws. Now we have a sudden concern for crime (carefully excluding the criminal misuse of funds by politicians), then for the supposed need to verify age. Neither has not so far sensibly justified any extra laws at all. Similarly successive justifications were trotted out for the criminal and illegal war of aggression against Iraq by Messrs Blair, Bush, and Howard.
ALP/DLP support for all such things ensures that the dominant conservative parties have been allowed to enjoy oppression law diarrhoea, as they build their police state.
I see a business opportunity. A dummy of Scomo and his personal details and I am sure we will be able to sell thousands ++ on the internet.
I do not enter my correct date of birth anywhere except on secure sites, such as banking sites. I would certainly not provide my passport or any other id to social media sites. And I will have no sympathy for anyone who is scammed through doing so. Have some common sense.
whelp, at least the VPN companies will be happy
How good is this Government, trying to implement laws that control peoples individual right. Like a Dictatorship taking control of eveeything.
Yet! Whwn it is questuoned on underhand dealings, corruption, dirty deals it applies different sets of rules.
Dirty inept underhanded along with deceitful. Tme is up for this dirty lot and thus should be broadcast loudly by everyone who is concerned about freedom!