Australians Could Soon Have to Prove Their Age Before Watching Porn

A tranche of documents has revealed that two government agencies may be working together to trial age verification protocols for online porn. From where they’re sitting, it’s a simple pitch: wall off porn to protect children from accidentally seeing harmful content online. 

But privacy advocates warn they could end up exposing vulnerable groups to even greater levels of risk, and subject all Australians to serious government overreach. 

According to documents obtained by The Canberra Times, the Office of the eSafety Commissioner is currently working with the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) to expand trials of age verification technology – currently limited to online gambling and purchases of alcohol online – to all porn websites for Australian users.

One document included in the tranche, according to the Times, showed that the DTA suggested the eSafety Commissioner begin age verification trials for online gambling and alcohol sales late last year.

For porn, though, trials wouldn’t begin until between April and June this year – and could even experiment with the use of facial recognition technology, according to senate estimates notes prepared for eSafety commissioner Julie Inman-Grant last October. 

Samantha Floreani, program lead at Digital Rights Watch Australia, told VICE that even if the government doesn’t give thought to the potential harms that accompany a move like this, they should consider the fact that most age verification technology isn’t all that accurate, and is easily bypassed with the help of a VPN. 

“Online age verification is not the same as flashing your ID at the bottle shop. Almost all of the current ways to verify a person’s age online require them to upload extra personal information, to use invasive and error-prone facial recognition technology, or, in this case, to interact with a government agency,” Floreani said. 

“This information doesn’t just disappear, so we need to be thinking about what happens to our data, who has access to it and for how long, and what it’s being used for,” she said. 

“Facial recognition tech is [also] well-known to be less accurate on faces of women, non-binary people, and people with darker skin tones. So it’s entirely plausible that whole groups of people may have trouble even using the technology.”

The Australian government isn’t alone in its pursuit of building an age verification framework to stop children from watching porn. On Tuesday, the UK announced that it will forge ahead with a similar plan, introducing amendments to its contentious Online Safety Bill to bring commercial porn sites – spanning user-generated platforms, like OnlyFans, and more common “tube” sites – within the Bill’s scope.

As it stands, both Australian government agencies reportedly involved in the trials denied the trials were even underway. A spokesperson for the DTA denied the agency’s involvement in anything described in the documents, telling VICE the agency “is not pursuing any trials of age verification.”

Over at the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, it was suggested the agency wasn’t “involved in any age verification trials relating to pornography” but had commissioned a “roadmap” for trials similar to those described in the documents obtained by the Times, in response to recommendations made by a parliamentary committee in 2020.

“Through the AV roadmap consultation process, eSafety continues to build its understanding of a broad range of age verification, age assurance and other online safety technologies, to inform the roadmap and its recommendations,” a spokesperson for the eSafety commissioner told VICE. 

“eSafety is focused on identifying how technical measures can be privacy preserving, minimise sharing of personally identifiable information and are able to demonstrate privacy, security and safety by design. eSafety has not yet formed a view on the use of any particular technology,” he said. 

Even still, the federal government has tallied a questionable track record on surveillance transparency. Floreani said you don’t need to cast your mind all too far into the past to lose confidence in the government’s approach – or its denials.

In 2020, it was revealed by the ABC that the Australian Federal Police had been making use of Clearview AI, a New York-based surveillance tool that allows users to search faces stockpiled across a database containing billions of photos taken, or “scraped” from platforms like Facebook and Instagram. 

According to emails obtained by the ABC as part of a Freedom of Information request, it was revealed that one police officer “tested” the software using images of herself as part of a free trial. On a separate occasion, another officer used the app on their personal phone without the necessary information security approval required. 

It’s an approach that has continued on into 2022 as well, Floreani pointed out. 

“In January this year, the Department of Home Affairs issued a tender for a provider for Identity Matching Services, presumably to assist in the rollout of their national facial recognition database,” Floreani said. 

“But the legislation that would make doing this lawful hasn’t passed yet and was actually rejected by a parliamentary inquiry on the basis of privacy and security concerns,” she said. 

Floreani said her view, and that of Digital Rights Watch, is one of major concern, particularly when you consider the ability for government agencies and other private companies to make the link between a person’s identity, and their activity online. 

“This may sound far-fetched, but there are numerous examples of the Australian government having poor digital security practices, or mishandling Australians’ personal information,” Floreani said.  

“It is only reasonable that people would look at the government’s track record and feel worried that their information might fall into the wrong hands or later be used for a different purpose – like spying on activists,” she said. 

“Any system which logs, records or otherwise documents individuals’ access to pornography or other restricted material makes us all less safe and is an unjustifiable invasion of our privacy. It is completely unreasonable for the government to act as mediators between individuals and the most sensitive parts of their online lives.”

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