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Digital ID

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

Published

4 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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China announces “improvements” to social credit system

Published on April 5, 2025

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MXM logo  MxM News

Quick Hit:

Beijing released new guidelines Monday to revamp its social credit system, promising stronger information controls while deepening the system’s reach across China’s economy and society. Critics say the move reinforces the Communist Party’s grip under the banner of “market efficiency.”

Key Details:

  • The guideline was issued by top Chinese government and Communist Party offices, listing 23 measures to expand and standardize the social credit system.
  • It aims to integrate the credit system across all sectors of China’s economy to support what Beijing calls “high-quality development.”
  • Officials claim the new framework will respect information security and individual rights—despite growing global concerns over surveillance and state overreach.

Diving Deeper:

China is doubling down on its social credit system with a newly issued guideline meant to “improve” and expand the controversial surveillance-driven program. Released by both the Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council, the document outlines 23 specific measures aimed at building a unified national credit system that will touch nearly every corner of Chinese society.

Framed as a tool for “high-quality development,” the guideline declares that credit assessments will increasingly shape the rules of engagement for businesses, government agencies, and individual citizens. The system, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), has already played a role in shaping China’s financial services, government efficiency, and business environment.

Critics of the social credit system have long warned that it serves as an instrument of authoritarian control—monitoring citizens’ behavior, punishing dissent, and rewarding obedience to the Communist Party. By integrating credit data across all sectors and enforcing a “shared benefits” model, the new guideline appears to entrench, not ease, the Party’s involvement in everyday life.

Still, Beijing is attempting to temper foreign and domestic concerns over privacy. The NDRC emphasized that the system is being built on the “fundamental principle” of protecting personal data. Officials pledged to avoid excessive data collection and crack down on any unlawful use of information.

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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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