Yesterday, the Australian Government released the eSafety Commissioner’s long-awaited roadmap for age verification for online pornography. We are pleased to see that the federal government will not force websites to implement age verification as a result of concerns about privacy and the lack of maturity of the technology.
Age verification is rife with privacy and digital security risks, as well as critical effectiveness and implementation issues. We welcome this sensible announcement from the Australian government.
We have been fighting this proposal for close to three years. Over that period, we made eight submissions related to online safety and age verification, advocated in the media, participated in many consultation roundtables and workshops with government and industry, and collaborated with other privacy and security advocates, researchers, and community groups.
This win shows that when we raise the alarm and put pressure on government we can stop harmful and invasive tech policy proposals. We need to keep up the fight to protect human rights, wellbeing and safety.