Australia’s Department of Home Affairs has suggested the use of facial recognition to prevent minors from accessing pornography and gambling websites.
The domestic security agency’s proposal came as part of an ongoing inquiry into the effectiveness of various age verification systems for websites offering adult content and digital gambling. The inquiry was launched last month by a parliamentary committee of the federal House of Representatives.
The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security invited the public to submit ideas for better age verification practices that could be implemented in Australia.
The Department of Home Affairs floated the idea that an existing facial recognition database could be used to verify that people who seek to watch pornography or place a punt online are of legal age.
In 2016, the Australian federal government launched its Face Verification Service (FVS), which was initially used by various government departments and the Federal Police to share and match photos of people who sought citizenship in Australia.
The Department of Home Affairs told the committee charged with reviewing effective age verification options that it could be a good idea to expand the existing database and subject everyone who tries to watch porn or gamble online to scans to compare their face with faces already in the database and match it with an ID.
The security agency said that “this could assist in age verification, for example by preventing a minor from using their parent’s driver licence to circumvent age verification controls.”
Privacy Concerns
As per the Department of Home Affairs’ plan, the data in the FVS could also become available to private sector organizations, such as banks and telecoms. The proposal faced heavy criticism by privacy campaigners who said that, if implemented, it could lead to mass surveillance and an egregious breach of individual privacy.
The Department of Home Affairs’ idea came to light just a couple of days after the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security slapped down related identity-matching services bills. The committee said that the pieces of legislation should be redrafted to include stronger privacy protections and other safeguards against potential misuse of sensitive data about Australian citizens.
In 2018, Australia referred the ninth-highest amount of traffic to popular adult video website PornHub, with Australian visitors spending an average 10 minutes and four seconds per visit. According to PivotNine tech consultancy firm Justin Warren the idea of using facial recognition to prevent teenagers from accessing porn sites was “stupid” and “would never work.” He went on that there were “so many things wrong with this idea, it’s hard to comprehend how it got out into the public.”
Last month, the UK government abandoned plans for the introduction of a nationwide age verification system for online pornography after years of technical glitches and difficulties with the implementation of the policy that would have required porn websites to use different methods to ensure that their users were of legal age. In the UK, too, the idea was condemned by privacy advocates.
Source: Australian porn viewers may be subject to face scans following federal government proposal, 7News.com.au
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