Porn is more popular today than ever. It is watched by the majority of people all over the world. However, watching porn in Australia may soon be hard for citizens. It has been learnt that Australia is the 8th biggest consumer of porn in the world. The authorities, the federal government agency has been trying their maximum best to make it hard for the minors to access online pornography.
A federal government agency has now proposed that Australians be face-scanned before they watch online porn. Yes, you read it right! They would scan porn viewers’ faces and then they match them up with the government photos in a bid to cross-check their ages. Auckland Transport’s staggering $4.5m project could mean as many as 8000 cameras watching the entire city.
“This could assist in age verification, for example by preventing a minor from using their parent’s driver’s licence to circumvent age verification controls,” a discussion paper was released by the Department of Home Affairs, headed by Minister Peter Dutton.
The paper further adds: “Whilst they are primarily designed to prevent identity crime, Home Affairs would support the increased use of the Document and Face Verification Services across the Australian economy to strengthen age verification processes.”
Home Affairs, which is the Aussie version of the United States’ Department of Homeland Security is now developing a Face Verification Service that would actually confirm a person’s complete identification details by matching their face to a photo in a government identification document, like the driver’s license.
In its one-page submission statement to the Social Policy and Legal Affairs Committee, Home Affairs adds 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.”
It would be quite interesting to see whether Australia will take Home Affairs up on its suggestion to use face scans for age verification process on pornographic sites.
The one-page submission doesn’t explain how this age verification would work or sort out the problems with it.