Australian Government, Of All Places, Says Age Verification Is A Privacy & Security Nightmare

Policy

from the down-under-flipped-upside-down dept

In the past I’ve sometimes described Australia as the land where internet policy is completely upside down. Rather than having a system that protects intermediaries from liability for third party content, Australia went the opposite direction. Rather than recognizing that a search engine merely links to content and isn’t responsible for the content at those links, Australia has said that search engines can be held liable for what they link to. Rather than protect the free expression of people on the internet who criticize the rich and powerful, Australia has extremely problematic defamation laws that result in regular SLAPP suits and suppression of speech. Rather than embrace encryption that protects everyone’s privacy and security, Australia requires companies to break encryption, insisting only criminals use it.

It’s basically been “bad internet policy central,” or the place where good internet policy goes to die.

And, yet, there are some lines that even Australia won’t cross. Specifically, the Australian eSafety commission says that it will not require adult websites to use age verification tools, because it would put the privacy and security of Australians’ data at risk. (For unclear reasons, the Guardian does not provide the underlying documents, so we’re fixing that and providing both the original roadmap and the Australian government’s response below). The original roadmap was somewhat lukewarm on the idea of age verification, noting that the technology was still evolving and there were privacy and security concerns, and it sounds like those concerns convinced the government to avoid going the mandatory route:

On Wednesday, the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, released the eSafety commissioner’s long-awaited roadmap for age verification for online pornographic material, which has been sitting with the government since March 2023.

The federal government has decided against forcing sites to bring in age verification technology, instead tasking the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, to work with the industry to develop a new code to educate parents on how to access filtering software and limit children’s access to such material or sites that are not appropriate.

This alternative, educating parents on tools that they can use themselves, is much better and much safer, and it’s great to see Australia embrace it, especially at a time where much of the rest of the world has fallen in love with age verification technology despite its many, many, many flaws. As we’ve noted, in the US, age verification has become popular at both the state and federal levels, and among both Democrats and Republicans.

However, Australia appears to be a rare oasis of reasonableness on this issue.

“It is clear from the roadmap at present, each type of age verification or age assurance technology comes with its own privacy, security, effectiveness or implementation issues,” the government’s response to the roadmap said.

The technology must work effectively without circumvention, must be able to be applied to pornography hosted outside Australia, and not introduce the risk to personal information for adults who choose to access legal pornography, the government stated.

“The roadmap makes clear that a decision to mandate age assurance is not yet ready to be taken.”

Of course, in France, the Data Protection authority released a paper similarly noting that age verification was a privacy and security nightmare… and the French government just went right on mandating the use of the technology. In Australia, the eSafety Commission pointed to the French concerns as a reason not to rush into the tech, meaning that Australia took the lessons from French data protection experts more seriously than the French government did.

And, of course, here in the US, the Congressional Research Service similarly found serious problems with age verification technology, but it hasn’t stopped Congress from releasing a whole bunch of “save the children” bills that are built on a foundation of age verification. Blue states like California are pushing multiple bills around “age appropriate” design, that will require age verification (while pretending not to). Red states are even more aggressive in passing a wide variety of age verification laws, most of which are currently being challenged in court.

For what it’s worth, Australia’s eSafety Commission says it “welcomes” the government’s response.

But this should be a warning to US lawmakers. If even Australia recognizes that age verification technology is a problem for security and privacy, then surely they can see that the technology has serious problems and shouldn’t be mandated.

Filed Under: age verification, australia, security