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Digital ID

Age of online privacy coming to an end as Australia adopts digital ID

Published

2 months ago

3 minute read

 

 

By Didi Rankovic

 

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Defends Controversial Online Age Verification Digital ID Methods

Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner (to her critics – the country’s chief censor), has attempted to explain how Online Safety Amendment – Social Media Minimum Age Bill 2024 – will be enforced.

The bill mandates online age verification, and bans minors under 16 from using social platforms, in what is described as “the strictest crackdown” yet in the world – with many in the world, no doubt, looking at how things pan out in Australia before they make their own restrictive moves.

The “small” question that remains to be answered Down Under now is – how does the government propose to determine the age of a person using an online platform, before the government orders them to be banned?

Grant may be trying to sell one method as less invasive, less potentially harmful, and otherwise controversial than another – but they appear to be as bad as each other, only in different ways.

“There are really only three ways you can verify someone’s age online, and that’s through ID, through behavioral signals, or through biometrics,” she told NPR.

The “ID” route means that every internet user would have to provide government-issued documents to platforms, revealing their real-world identity to these platforms and anyone else they’re in business with (such as governments and data brokers) and ending online anonymity for everyone.

And that, in fact, is the only sure-fire way to determine someone’s age. The other two produce estimates. The biometrics Grant mentions refer to uploading selfies to companies like Yoti, who then guess a user’s age.

Related: The 2024 Digital ID and Online Age Verification Agenda

Better than the “ID” method – that is, if you believe it’s a good idea for minors, or anyone, to just hand over biometric data to third parties.

Then, there are “behavioral signals” – and it sounds positively bonkers that a government would entertain the idea of deploying such technology on/against its citizens.

Grant said she met with yet another third party in the US – “an age assurance provider” – this unnamed company doesn’t monitor and analyze your facial features, but hand gestures. For age verification.

Like so: “Say you do a peace sign then a fist to the camera. It follows your hand movements. And medical research has shown that based on your hand movement, it can identify your age.”

One way to look at all this is that tech is being developed to step up online surveillance, while a flurry of “think of the children” laws may be here to legitimize and “legalize” that tech’s use.
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Digital ID

Wales Becomes First UK Testbed for Citywide AI-Powered Facial Recognition Surveillance

Published on February 23, 2025

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Wales is that part of the UK the authorities have picked as the testbed for the first citywide deployment of what some consider to currently be the most radical form of mass biometric surveillance in public places – “AI”-powered live facial recognition.
What is likely to be the reason behind the “trial,” privacy campaigners are warning, is the eventual permanent deployment of this type of biometric surveillance throughout the country.
South Wales Police said that Cardiff will be covered by a network of CCTV cameras with facial recognition tech embedded in them, while the excuse is providing security during the international Six Nations rugby event. But the police also characterized the move as “semi-permanent.”
This appears to be a distinction between what the police in the UK have used thus far to carry out surveillance based on live facial recognition: vans with one camera.
The decision to move to position a host of cameras in the central zone of Cardiff makes this a significant expansion of the technique.
And while the police are reassuring citizens that expanding live facial recognition “really enhances” law enforcement’s ability to do their job –  the Big Brother Watch privacy group slammed the move as a “shocking” development and the creation of an “Orwellian biometric surveillance zone.”
And while capturing everyone’s biometric data, and in that way, according to Big Brother Watch’s Senior Advocacy Officer Madeleine Stone, turning Brits into “walking barcodes” and “a nation of suspects” – in terms of solving crime, this is proving to be a waste of public money.
“This network of facial recognition cameras will make it impossible for Cardiff residents and visitors to opt out of a biometric police identity check,” Stone underlined.
And yet, over the three years that live facial recognition has been in use at sporting venues (only) – the use of the technology has not led to any arrests.
“No other democracy in the world spies on its population with live facial recognition in this cavalier and chilling way,” Stone warned, adding, “South Wales Police must immediately stop this dystopian trial.”
The technology works by capturing the faces of every person passing through an area covered, in real time, to then compare them to a database of those described in reports as “wanted criminals.”
However, when South Wales Police spoke about who is on their “watchlist,” it also included people “banned from the area” and those “who pose a risk to the public.”
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Carbon Tax

Mark Carney has history of supporting CBDCs, endorsed Freedom Convoy crackdown

Published on February 20, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Carney also said last week that he is willing to use all government powers, including “emergency powers,” to enforce his energy plan if elected prime minister.   

World Economic Forum-linked Liberal Party leadership frontrunner Mark Carney has a history of supporting central bank digital currencies, and in 2022 supported “choking off the money” donated to the Freedom Convoy.

In his 2021 book Value(s), Carney said that the “future of money” is a “central bank stablecoin, known as a central bank digital currency or CBDC.” 

He noted in his book that such a currency would be similar to current cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, but without the private nature afforded to it by its decentralization.   

“It is simply untenable in democracies that the core of the monetary system could be based on forms of electronic private money whose creators control large blocks of the currency, like Bitcoin,” he wrote. “Cryptocurrencies are not the future of money.”

Carney noted that a CBDC, if “properly designed,” could serve “all the functions to which private cryptocurrencies and stablecoins aspire while addressing the fundamental legal and governance issues that will, in time, undermine those alternatives.” 

Expanding on his worldview in relation to CBDCs, Carney suggested that “fear” can be taken advantage of to shape the future of money.

“With fear on the march, people were willing to surrender to Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan’ such basic rights as the freedom to leave their homes,” he wrote. “And so it is with money. People will support the delegation to independent central banks of the tough decisions that are necessary to maintain the value of money provided the authorities deliver monetary and financial stability.” 

Some Canadians are alarmed by the prospect of CBDCs, a fear that only worsened after the Liberals under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau froze hundreds of bank accounts it deemed were importantly linked to the 2022 Freedom Convoy. 

During the Freedom Convoy, Carney wrote in an op-ed for the Globe and Mail, “Those who are still helping to extend this occupation must be identified and punished to the full force of the law,” adding that “Drawing the line means choking off the money that financed this occupation.” 

In addition to his comments on CBDCs, Carney has a history of promoting anti-life and anti-family agendas, including abortion and LGBT-related  efforts. He has also previously endorsed the carbon tax and even criticized Trudeau when the tax was exempted from home heating oil to reduce costs for some Canadians.  

Carney also said last week that he is willing to use all government powers, including “emergency powers,” to enforce his energy plan if elected prime minister.   

The Liberal Party of Canada will choose its next leader, who will automatically become prime minister, on March 9, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he plans to step down as Liberal Party leader once a new leader has been chosen.     

In contrast to Carney, Poilievre has promised that if he is elected prime minister, he would stop any implementation of a “digital currency” or a compulsory “digital ID” system.   

When it comes to a digital Canadian dollar, the Bank of Canada found that Canadians are very wary of a government-backed digital currency, concluding that a “significant number” of citizens would resist the implementation of such a system.  

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