Australia Will Not Force Adult Websites To Bring In Age Verification Due To Privacy and Security Concerns (theguardian.com) 76
The federal government of Australia will not force adult websites to bring in age verification due to concerns around privacy and security of the technology. The Guardian reports: 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.
"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."
The new tranche of codes will be developed by eSafety following the implementation of the first set of industry codes in December this year. The government will also bring forward an independent statutory review of the Online Safety Act in 2024 to ensure it is fit for purpose and this review will be completed in this term of government. The UK's approach to age assurance will also be monitored as the UK is "a key likeminded partner." The report suggested to trial a pilot of age assurance technologies, but this was not adopted by the government. The report also noted the government's development of a digital ID in the wake of the Optus and Medibank data breaches, but said it was not suggesting the government ID be used for confirming ages on pornographic websites.
"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."
The new tranche of codes will be developed by eSafety following the implementation of the first set of industry codes in December this year. The government will also bring forward an independent statutory review of the Online Safety Act in 2024 to ensure it is fit for purpose and this review will be completed in this term of government. The UK's approach to age assurance will also be monitored as the UK is "a key likeminded partner." The report suggested to trial a pilot of age assurance technologies, but this was not adopted by the government. The report also noted the government's development of a digital ID in the wake of the Optus and Medibank data breaches, but said it was not suggesting the government ID be used for confirming ages on pornographic websites.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Sites for toddlers sometimes ask the user to solve an arithmetic problem before letting them change the settings.
Adult sites could do something similar, but with a calculus problem to ensure they aren't preteens. Like "What is the Integral of x cubed."
Then ban them if they forget the constant of integration.
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Pre-pubescent teen sitting there dick in hand ready to go, and you want to hit him with a fucking math quiz?
Thought we wanted to validate demand, not eradicate it. Talk about your mood killers.
On the contrary. This may be a way to increase educational engagement. In fact, I suggest a new math problem before accessing each new video. They'll be raising the world's best engineers if they link math and sex at puberty! THINK OF THE POTENTIAL!
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I'd fail on that test if it were on a porn site and I were interested in going to a porn site (I'm not). My high school calculus class is so far in the past that I can just barely remember the name of the instructor! I think I could still obtain the derivative though! 2x? Well, maybe.
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Adult sites could do something similar, but with a calculus problem to ensure they aren't preteens.
Don't even think about the effect of a Pavlovian reaction in a maths exam.
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Adult sites could do something similar, but with a calculus problem to ensure they aren't preteens.
Don't even think about the effect of a Pavlovian reaction in a maths exam.
Or worse - finding out that some people have to log into Khan Academy to get "in the mood" before bed.
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Sites for toddlers sometimes ask the user to solve an arithmetic problem before letting them change the settings.
Adult sites could do something similar, but with a calculus problem to ensure they aren't preteens. Like "What is the Integral of x cubed."
Then ban them if they forget the constant of integration.
Kind of pointless, people rarely accidentally go to porn sites as the prudish tend to be directed away by safe search.
This is really just the Australian Government having a rare outbreak of common sense and realising two things:
1. Australian laws do not apply to entities outside Australia.
2. It's not the governments job to enforce some extremists version of morality.
However I expect this whole thing to start up again the next time a religious kook gets voted into power.
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No FB, X (Twitter), TikTok...etc...until you can prove you are 21yrs or older.
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Typical liberal trying to ban Republicans from the internet!
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Cool! (Score:4, Insightful)
Politicians taking a sensible decision after discussing with the affected industry, and technicians. I wish that was more common.
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This is probably a one-time fluke. They will go back to their crap shortly.
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Politicians taking a sensible decision after discussing with the affected industry, and technicians. I wish that was more common.
More likely, politicians seeing that Pornhub just happily pulled out of US states which required age verification and they are themselves worried they may actually have to try and convince their wives to have sex with their ugly selves rather than happily beating their own meat to some fetish video.
regulator != politician (Score:3, Insightful)
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Odd. The second paragraph said that it was a minister who released the information. Aren't ministers politicians?
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No, they are not, or not necessarily. Ministers are appointed by an elected government, but are not by themselves necessarily elected. They are civil servants, and are supposed to have an administrative role. They CAN be politicians, but ideally they should be experts in the matters handled by their ministry instead.
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Sorry, that's a Commonwealth specific definition, not all countries are the same. I didn't mean to indicate that as a Specific Australian case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The Internet Id. policy surfaced about 8 years ago and was quickly dropped. For some reason, Australians enjoy proving that teenagers are technology gurus: Usually by demonstrating some teenager that can already crack the service. So, online identity is a issue that politicians have avoided.
Remember, a few months ago, Slashdot reported that Australian (NSW) offline digital Id. could be faked.
Australia is starting to experience the same cyber-privacy breaches other countries have suffered, for the sam
Re: regulator != politician (Score:2)
Nice try but If you want to pass your dogma off as reason you came to the wrong place. We don't want to join your cult.
We understand pragmatism and we don't need sex or parenting advice from a 2000 year old book and a man in the sky.
I'll grant you one thing though. Your cult does seem to know a lot about grooming children.
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> Porn addiction is very real and very harmful.
Good luck with your campaign, you're preaching to a bunch of porn addicts on Slashdot, so I doubt you'll be well received here with such a position.
For the record, I agree with you. This is like saying because fake IDs exist, liquor stores shouldn't have to check any ID at all, for "privacy" reasons when selling alcohol. It shouldn't be an excuse.
At last! (Score:2)
At last! Some reasonable horse sense from a government in a purported liberal democracy that allegedly does a bit more than just pay lip service to protecting the civil rights of its citizens. Now, if only this kind of reasonability could be found in the various American state governments or in the U.S. Congress. The idiot actions du jour these days appears to be to see just how ridiculous legislatures can get when crafting, debating (if that's what they actually do!), and getting the governor to approve
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Believe me the current Australian Government doesn't give tuppence for your civil rights and neither do the State Governments.
Unless you identify as Aboriginal of course [but that doesn't apply if you are Aboriginal and live in the bush as life is just as bad as always despite the multiple billions of dollars ploughed into the Aboriginal Community, precious little of which actually gets near those who need it. Top of the Range Landcruisers for the "Agencies" aren't cheap you know].
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Is there a way to do this? (Score:2)
I know it's not totally practical with how things are today but what would an age verification system that could reliably verify a user age without significant anonymity compromise? Could adults be given some sort of anonymous token when receiving ID?
Re:Is there a way to do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh! Great idea! I'll just whip up a porn site, populate it with AI porn, advertise it like crazy, and then hook in with all the social media sites' trackers. Now I can reliably link "anonymous tokens" with user accounts on Facebook, pair a name to the token, and when a porn site is inevitably hacked—I can contact every user and show them the proof of what naughty things they were looking at, and threaten to send it to all their friends.
Am I using anonymous tokens right?
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How is that any worse than not verifying age with an anonymous token? Current porn sites have social buttons on them anyway.
Adding an anonymous token wouldn't compromise privacy any more than it already is. The issue is generating that token in a way that really is anonymous - it's basically impossible. Any kind of age verification is going to leave some evidence of who the person is.
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Thank you for actually answering.
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Exactly. Anonymizing the token doesn't stop it being trackable. You can't do verification without compromising users somewhere.
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Any kind of age verification is going to leave some evidence of who the person is.
Hmm... all we'd need is a bearer token that has been granted by someone who knows that you are of a certain age. As long as the grantee and the receiver do not know each other, it is about as anonymous as it can get. All the receiver would have to be able to is to verify that the token has been signed by the entity who knows the bearer.
If only someone could invent something like that.
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That's along the lines of what I was thinking. When you say turn 18 and get an ID the agency knows you are over age, they can assign you a token for use of verifying age online. This token doesn't have to be tied to your person or name or anything or even logged in any way outside of the fact that it was assigned for purposes of repeal and uniqueness, it's just generated on the spot and given to you.
I am sure there are pitfalls with this and it aint perfect but just looking for better here, not perfect.
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We could make it so the site trying to know whether you're old enough issues you a challenge, which you forward to the place that authenticated you and they sign it and verify that you're really who you claim to be... or in this case, that you're over 18.
Yes, I'm reinventing Oauth2 here, why do you ask?
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Oooh, so putting all the fancy eggs into one basket. I'm sure the authority would be absolutely secure and never be able to be hacked. I mean, it'd be terrible if they were since they would have a list of your details and every weird fetish site you've ever authenticated with.
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Why exactly would they have that list, unless they deliberately create it? And since it's a government entity, it's trivial to create a law that dictates they must not and they'll heed that.
Well, at least that's how our government here works, because they're afraid what happens when revision comes in and rips them a new one. Without that oversight, yeah, you might want to get a better government.
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By that logic, you cannot prove anything online. Of course my phone can be stolen, the passphrase associated with the "citizen card" online ID skimmed and you then have both factors you need to impersonate me. Yes. That's possible.
Since I happen to have close ties to the entity that runs this business for us here, I can say that at least in our little country there hasn't been a case where this happened. What did happen, twice so far even, was that some person was stupid enough to hand both things over to a
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> Am I using anonymous tokens right?
When has porn ever been anonymous to consume ?
Literally even Internet porn, your IP connects to their IP. Your ISP sees where you are connecting. Your DNS request betrayed you. Every backbone between you and the porn site knows where you are going.
VPN ? ExpressVPN knows. They know who you are. They know where you're connecting.
Porn consumption, even online, has never been anonymous. Why does it suddenly need to be ? So we don't protect children of all things ?
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It would be possible to generate a Class 3 user certificate. Class 3 means that the user's identity has been checked by two independent means that are considered robust. I have no doubt that a Class 3 certificate would therefore include age-related information that could be used to prove age. Such a certificate would be password protected, so it would be impossible to use the digital certificate without that password.
This would provide strong evidence of a person's identity and probably strong evidence of t
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As long as there is an unskipable "you are about to use a USER certificate to access this and unless you're really, really, REALLY sure what you're doing here, you might want to hit cancel!" alert that won't go away for at least 5 seconds, we can talk.
Otherwise we're just reheating an old security problem. Which we'll probably do anyway.
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No. It cannot be done. As long as porn exists, minors that wanted access could get it in some way and the others are not interested and hence unaffected (besides an occasional "equww, gross!" moment that does not do harm).
The whole thing is an artificially created moral panic and is not based on facts. There is no scientifically sound data that shows serious harm. There is scientifically sound data that shows the absence of it (from interviews-based studies). On the factual side, the only thing needed to pr
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I will try to look it up again but I have seen some studies that are pointing to the idea that exposure to pornography particularly in the under-14 age group is showing some negative psychological and sociological effects. Kids having access to the breadth and ease that it's available today is somewhat new so the whole field is still nascent but I don't see that as out of left field. I don't think you have to be a moral alarmist for the concept of "access to mass amounts of hardcore pornography on demand mi
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Please look them up. I strongly suspect these do not fulfill scientific standards.
Coomers rejoice! (Score:2)
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Hmm... sounds like *fapfapfapfapfap*
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> I think it's funny they mentioned they'd follow Britain and not the U.S. states that have decided this pathetic course of action. I guess people get the government they elect, so those states can save their own children, at the price of every adult's anonimity. After all what's more important? Parents that want a free nanny, or adults who vote for this pathetic kind of thing.
The thing that puzzles me most is... why do you need anonymity to view porn ?
Renting porn at the video store in the 80s/90s ? No
More failure to use common sense (Score:2)
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An interesting suggestion. Yeah, of the alternatives I've seen, yours would seem to be the most credible in terms of likely effectiveness.
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Before they make any laws, they should actually prove that porn is significantly harmful to minors. That proof is still not available and there are some rather strong indicators (from interviews with minors, exposing them to porn is illegal hence neatly preventing any actual research into the topic) it cannot be made available because it is not actually true.
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The only solution that's possible and will ever
A simple test (Score:2)
That easily separates out potentially harmful content from things which are obviously not. For example: Can a teenage art student (who is yet to be of legal age to have sex) still consent t
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Well, yes. But quite a few things on the TV news are deeply disturbing and unfit to be shown to children. Does that stop the news? No. So unless a comparable level is exceeded, there is no sane reason to make porn on the internet "prove you age" only. Now, I do not want porn to be shown in ads (except on porn-sites), I do not want it on the news, I do not want it on youtube (unless I opt-in first), and I do not want it in my search results as long as "safe search" is on.
I do agree that should there actually
What? Politicians looking at _facts_? (Score:2)
And before making really bad decisions, no less! Hell must have frozen over in Australia...
The real problem (Score:3)
The porn website would be as sure as they can be that the person watching was old enough, but would have no idea who the person is. But that's not what many politicians want: They want age verification that identifies you. That's the problem. That they want to combine something that is quite legitimate with something they shouldn't have any rights to.
BTW. Once your computer knows your birth date, it could also allow access to educational websites at a different age. So a 14 year old can learn about contraception, but not watch porn.
Meanwhile...the the US (Score:3)
They're rapidly working to ensure Americans have no privacy by enforcing sensitive data checks with ZERO regulation on data security. Authorizing governments to obtain massive amounts of information with oversight. Eliminating regulations on companies that collect this data. It's illegal for the government to spy on it's citizens but let's have the private sector do our dirty work for us? We didn't illegally search your data; it was given to us by a data partner. Doesn't matter your entire personal life and finances were exposed. You're a horrible person and don't deserve privacy.
I don't know why anyone keeps screaming about rights. The US is on it's way to an authoritarian dictatorship in which no one will have rights. Looking forward to being part of the axis of shit that will align us with and the resulting war that will divide this country permanently and probably cause chaos on the world stage.
All worth it so a handful of people can control the behavior of everyone. Freedom my ass. The only thing dumber than the people that force this shit are the idiots that vote for them. The ones that use threats of violence against their fellow citizens to get their way.
This country sucks. It's everyone's fault. 99% of the shit people said 30 years ago "would never happen because people are too smart"...IS FUCKING HAPPENING.
Also...it should be a parents job to raise kids...not the government's. These laws are being passed by people who complain about no one wanting to work for people that don't want to parent. I don't give two shits about your kids. Be a fucking parent.
cigarettes and spam and wild, wild... (Score:2)