With an imminent report to be published detailing a roadmap for age verification on adult sites, Australia’s Communications Minister, Michelle Rowland has hinted at taking a holistic approach to rolling out a national digital ID and reforming the Privacy Act.
She stated the government is exploring digital identifiers to manage identity access across numerous government portfolios public-facing services.
“We’re working through this methodically” she said.
Parliament’s Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs in 2020 recommended stringent enforcement and compliance with mandatory age verification filters before viewers could access and view porn material online. Online pornography is commonly associated with negative impacts on young people’s development and often skewed ideas of relationships, sex, sexuality and even gender, justifying facial recognition technology despite some “troubling” views around privacy and unnecessary data retention.
A variety of age verification approaches seem to have been whittled down to the proposal of checks based on government-issued national ID that everyone can obtain, allowing at the same time access to a host of government sites.
She stressed she intends the report to quash user concerns of handing over their digital data:
“We’re in an environment in Australia where people are reticent to give over their data … We have every intention of bringing this to a conclusion and releasing the report,” Rowland said.
“The evidence was clear that exposure to online pornography is associated with terrible harms to young people’s health, education, relationships, and wellbeing,” the committee chair, LNP MP Andrew Wallace said.
In 2029 the UK dropped a total ban on holding websites accountable for not using facial recognition solutions to block minors amid privacy concerns.
