When federal parliament passed a law last week banning young people under 16 from accessing social media, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese celebrated. Post on X, he said: “We are doing the whole lot we are able to to make sure the protection of our kids.”
Part of this commitment is to launch a test of age protection technologies to find out how best to implement the social media ban on under-16s and forestall young people under 18 from accessing online pornography sites.
The process is executed by a consortium led by a British company called the Age Check Certification Scheme. It has previously tested software for Australian troops in Afghanistan.
The process that the govt. says is a “key element” of its online security agenda and can begin next yr. Accordingly the project planIt examines “how different methods work in verifying a user’s age without compromising their personal information.” This, in turn, will help Australia “establish best practices and potential regulatory frameworks for superannuation”.
The process will involve roughly 1,100 Australians of various ages and cultural backgrounds. According to the Project planThere are three important technology options being tested.
So what exactly are these options – and what does the evidence say about their effectiveness?
Old age security technologies
The study evaluates the next three technology options.
Age verification – Using an individual's identification, similar to a digital ID card or an uploaded driver's license or passport. With this information, it is ready to ascertain an individual's stated date of birth – and due to this fact whether or not they are above or below a certain age limit.
Age estimate – Analysis of an individual's biological or behavioral characteristics which are known to alter with age, similar to: B. examining a photograph of her face or recordings of her voice. According to the project planthese systems sometimes “use machine learning and artificial intelligence and should be subject to configuration settings or age buffers to avoid false positives resulting from inherent performance errors.”
Age inference – This involves using known details a couple of person's circumstances to infer that they’re an adult, for instance because they’re married, have a bank card or mortgage, or have a government email address (.gov.au). .
Reliability concerns
These three technologies differ of their reliability, their potential for failure, and their potential unintended consequences when deployed widely.
Age verification using proof of identity (be it a digital ID or an uploaded driver's license or other physical documents) is more likely to be probably the most reliable – so long as the person presenting the ID actually has it. It stays unclear what protective measures prevent a 14-year-old from uploading his parents' birth certificate.
One option could possibly be to require people to take a live photo of their face in real time and upload that photo together with verified photo ID. Facial recognition technology could then confirm that the image is of the identical one that presented the ID by checking whether the face within the real-time photo matches that on the ID.
However, everyone knows how easy it’s fake A Live Snapchat image I’ll inform you that it could be difficult to prove whether a photograph was taken live. Therefore, such a screening should be done very rigorously to be effective on smart and motivated teenagers.
Age estimation technology likely also includes estimating an individual's age based on (supposedly) real-time photos or videos of their face. Even ignoring the difficulties in determining whether a photograph or video was taken live, such a technology is notoriously imperfect.
Previous review has shown that on average it differs by only 3.7 years from an individual's actual age. It's much more worrying leads Tweens and youths have a worse prognosis than adults over 20. Therefore, age estimation can fail right when it is required most.
We should expect similar challenges in age inference. However, additionally it is more likely to exclude many individuals, including young adults who still live with their parents and due to this fact shouldn’t have documentation similar to rental agreements or bank cards.
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Privacy concerns
The Age Security Trial includes assessing the privacy impact of every technology option. However, it’s unclear how well Australians understand these risks.
This is something that shall be way more difficult to evaluate within the study. Opinion poll from 2024 suggests that almost all people support old age security to stop children and young people from accessing social media or pornography online.
However, attitudes could change next yr as platforms use these technologies to implement the upcoming ban.
Regardless of what technology is used, it stays to be seen what number of Australians will ultimately be comfortable identifying themselves (whether with a digital or traditional ID, a photograph of their face or using their banking records) to access social media or adult content online.
