Anyone who wants to watch porn in Australia will very likely have to identify themselves soon. The country wants to prevent children from seeing inappropriate images.
The country’s plans are to expand its existing digital identity program to include online age verification for viewing porn and using gambling sites. They follow an age verification study that was completed in February and came with six recommendations.
According to ZDNet, the government has now decided to have the local digital transformation agency work on a system that allows for the introduction of age verification on third-party sites.
“While there are no easy solutions for online safety, technologies such as age verification, age assurance and age prediction are developing rapidly. When used in conjunction with filters and other proactive settings, they can play a role in limiting the exposure of harmful content to children,” the Australian government said.
It is not the first time Australia has considered such privacy-invasive measures. At the end of 2019, a proposal was already on the table to use facial recognition before people were allowed to watch porn.
The government emphasizes that a digital identity is a valuable tool for checking one’s age. It says it wants to protect young people and protect people’s privacy in a digital environment.
However, the question remains about how realistic the government’s ambitions are. Such age verification may be of use with commercial porn sites. However, in practice, there is just as much erotic material circulating on sites that do not have pornography as their main target.
With a bit of search, you can also find many erotic images on Twitter and other social media. Not to mention imagery circulated in a private context, whether desired or not or with permission. Implementing such an age check efficiently would, therefore de facto, also mean that you would have to identify yourself almost everywhere online as an Australian.
