In September, an Australian government committee asked for ideas on how to make it harder for minors to access online porn.
Now, another government body — the Department of Home Affairs — has submitted a response to that inquiry. Its totalitarian solution: start scanning porn viewers’ faces, and matching them up with government photos, to verify their ages.
Home Affairs — essentially the Aussie version of the United States’ Department of Homeland Security — is currently developing a Face Verification Service that would confirm a person’s identify by matching their face to a photo in a government identification document, such as a driver’s license.
In its one-page submission to the Social Policy and Legal Affairs Committee, Home Affairs notes that the system “could assist in age verification, for example by preventing a minor from using their parent’s driver [license] to circumvent age verification controls.”
The submission doesn’t explain exactly how this age verification would work or address potential problems with it. What happens, for example, if an adult wants to open a porn site on a device without a camera? And what’s to prevent a minor from holding up a photo of an adult to bypass the verification process?
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