Australia proposes face verification for watching online porn

MANILA, Philippines – Australia has a new proposal for a law to curb usage of pornography on the internet. A proposal by the country’s Department of Home Affairs is looking to put facial scans in place before a user can access porn sites or gambling sites, in an attempt to curb minors from accessing this content, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Coupled with a database accessible through a “Face Verification Service,” this scan would be compared to already existing pictures to ensure that the person is both who they claim they are, as well as be old enough to allowed to access it. “This could assist in age verification, for example by preventing a minor from using their parent’s driver license to circumvent age verification controls,” the department is reported to have said in its proposal to parliament.

Australia also plans to log the names and identities of their citizens that access these contents, as well as a database accessible to many third parties, including private entities which may pose some privacy risks. 

It remains to be seen how well it could be put in place in Australia as the UK has received push back from its population when something similar was executed in their country, eventually abandoning it. – Rappler.com