Privacy and verification

The discussion here appears to be about,
at one end of the internet content providers,
and at the other end a user accessing content.

The government or some of those who support the government are seeking to step into the middle of this arrangement. All for a worthy cause of restricting access to mature age services and content?

How does anyone with confidence know whether a particular item of content accessible through the internet meets or fails certain criteria?

How does anyone assure the identity of the physical being acting as a user of the internet?

It all seems too hard, if not also too silly to even contemplate.

Despite knocking back a 5G supplier, it appears Australia has a keen desire to learn from the same place.

As close as is possible, China has a model that for all intents and practical purposes controls what a user can access. It does this by monitoring all sites and content, actively blocking many sites, or imposing strict control over the content providers. How successfully China can trace back to any user, might be less well understood. National security might be at risk for them to reveal more!

Is Australia going to follow the same path?
With likely a similar level of government control required, the only difference might be the overt motivation or selling point from government.

Alternative
If we are going to block access, there are considered alternatives by which access to restricted mature age content might be authorised.

The government could legislate to require prospective customers to register initially in person complete with 100 point ID. In return each provider would be required to provide a unique user ID and two factor authentication for access. Yes, it puts an end to anonymous online access. Isn’t that the core issue though. Proof of age, which is identity, vs no controls.

The government does not need to know, other than facilitating, the service initial identification. Banks already do it. Perhaps they might become the service providers? Don’t trust the banks? How does anyone pay for these services or collect their winnings?

Penalties to apply to approved users who lose or do not keep their gambling or prawn habit ID’s secure? I did type prawn, what ever that is? :grin:

P.s. I fear most more items might be added, and subject to restricted access this becoming a matter for decisive political debate.

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The AIFS link says “Younger children (those aged 9-12) are particularly likely to be distressed or upset by pornography” but nowhere - that I could find - does it tell us what percentage of those children had recently encountered porn.

Including 9-year-olds with 16-year-olds very much muddies the waters. One size does not fit all.

Where a parent considers it appropriate to filter the internet on such a device, the filtering should be enabled on the device itself. That will work no matter where the device is or how it is connected to the internet - and deals with the greatest possibilities for unsupervised access. I am mainly thinking about portable internet-connected devices like smartphones and tablets.

If multiple children at different ages share the one computer then just about all technological solutions struggle - filtering doesn’t really work (except to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator) and age verification also doesn’t work.

It is always a possible answer - and usually a courageous one - in the face of demands to “do something”.

Doing nothing is exactly what the government did the last time they went after online porn.

I couldn’t really see where it described any method at all.

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One option might be to pass a law simply making it illegal for an Australian bank to provide a credit card to a person under the age of 18. The 100 points of id already means that the bank knows whether you have reached the age of 18.

That largely puts the Commonwealth government on firm legal ground and avoids the problem of overseas web site operators not giving a crap what the Australian government says. (While in theory a child might still apply to a foreign bank to get a credit card, a bank is a business that has an incentive to manage their risk and a random child overseas is not a good credit risk - and the practicalities of having an account available to pay the card off each month would suggest that few children would succeed. The costs are rather unpleasant too.)

More items already have been added to the government’s hit list (as compared with last time).

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Enabling parental controls such as Family Group in Microsoft can allow individual control of almost all your childrens access. Just means setting them all up with individual accounts. Nothing of course is perfect but much of the task has been made easier over the years.

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And if a user walks away without locking or logging out? It is hard enough at work …

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Of course, as I said nothing is perfect. Make them use screen locking on timer or similar will help but it can still be abused. What the Govt entertains is very heavy handed and bad implementation in my opinion as well with imperfect results as a consequence.

As I say to my adult children about their children’s access to online content, it requires education and review, not setting and forgetting.

The following are some help subjects about Family Group control:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026341

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12439

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12441

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4027332

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From the report (and ignoring for a moment the biases of the authors, two of whose research backgrounds are linked to their names):

Young males are more likely than females to deliberately seek out pornography and to do so frequently.

The best approach for parents, caregivers and teachers responding to children’s exposure to pornography is to encourage open communication, discussion and critical thinking on the part of children, while educating themselves about the internet and social media.

Parents and caregivers are less likely to be intimidated by online risks if they are informed and take an active role in their children’s digital lives.

So this report, which appears to be by some people who are quite ‘anti-pornography’, doesn’t suggest some sort of Internet filter; it says parents need to step up!

In Australia, just under half (44%) of children aged 9-16 surveyed had encountered sexual images in the last month. Of these, 16% had seen images of someone having sex and 17% of someone’s genitals.

Wait - what is a sexual image that doesn’t involve genitals? Are we talking breasts? If so, are male breasts and female breasts considered equal? What about pictures of breast-feeding?

Oh, and…

Parents tend to overestimate exposure to pornography for younger children and underestimate the extent of exposure for older children.

While:

In the absence of other information, pornography can be the main source of a young person’s sex education.

Digging a little deeper for the “44%”, one finds near the bottom of the page that:

The content in this Research Snapshot has been taken from Quadara, A., El-Murr. A., & Latham, J. (2017). The effects of pornography on children and young people: An evidence scan. Melbourne, Australian Institute of Family Studies.

That is, the more complete report. Based upon looking at ‘the evidence’, as chosen by the research team.

Now I’m a little lazy, and could not be bothered reading the entire report plus its 119 page appendix. Instead, I did a simple search of both for that 44% (actually, for just 44 to make the search more tiresome but also more likely to find a reference). The only place it appears is as quoted above! There is no footnote, no end note to provide any further information, making the number on the face of it unsupported by the evidence.

Just to be clear, this is not about parental supervision; it is about parental guidance.

If multiple people share a computer then they should be managed via different accounts - regardless of their age!

Again - education… and embarrassment. If you find that your son has left his account unlocked, change his wallpaper to Hannah Montana or whatever kids hate today. (Make sure that only the administrator has access to do this.) After a few such episodes you will find the accounts are carefully guarded.

In short, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution or government intervention that will actually ‘fix’ the ‘problem’ - but an enormous number of risks associated with the proposal. Even if you have absolute trust in the current government, what about the next one? Or the one after that? With a maximum of three years between federal elections, we could very quickly find ourselves with a totally untrustworthy government that has all the data collected by its trusted predecessors.

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UK lifestyle blogger Hannah Witton did a video about the UK plans for a porn ID. One of the proposals, besides using drivers licences and passports, was the ability to purchase a porn pass from newsagents. It also won’t of affected social media sites like Reddit. MindGeek was/is going to paid by the UK government for it’s age verification software. MindGeek also owns many of the world’s most well known porn sites. MindGeek can also sell their age verification software to other sites.

A VPN is also a good way to get around age verification.

This is Hannah’s video. There are reference links in the description, including one linking to the NSPCC: (full disclosure: I support Hannah through Patreon): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gODgQan9oJY

This video also touches on “Won’t someone think of the children” debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tcjvDcrplE

I still remember when a certain men’s magazine had a what was then legal 16yo centrefold, and the then Howard government rightfully changed the law to allow 18+ models only.

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I have a friend who allows her grandchildren (ages 14 and 11) to use her computer. I set up accounts for them, and one for her, as well as the admin account… so what happens? Its just too much trouble to log out and have them log in to their own accounts. Some people just don’t get it.

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A few months ago I sold an item on ebay but the buyer went missing and did not pay and did not respond to friendly reminders. He became belligerent when I reported him for non-payment but as events unfolded he discovered some of his son’s mates were using his computer and made the bid as well as some troubling, threatening and unfriendly remarks. He now has a black mark on his ebay history and has learnt a bit about account security.

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Interesting the separate point about the UK suggestion of purchasing a pass from a newsagent.

A VPN however changes everything. Or does that just create one more excuse for government to seek to manage VPN access and use too. Big corporates might object though?

Plenty of thoughts so far that would make great public submissions?

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Maybe an alternative solution would be to mandate the installation and activation of parent controls on all devices as default, and these controls can only be suspended for a session when age verification is used. The controls could be extended to VPNs to prevent a child’s use of them. he controls would also need to be embedded in the OS to prevent their removal. This would however mean all OS developers would need to be onboard.

This would mean that an adult could temporarily suspend for a session (either timed, period of inactivity or next logged out) reducing the likelihood of children gaining access through unprotected devices.

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I haven’t yet seen it mentioned yet, but porn providers themselves harvest a LOT of data from their users. If we presume it’s impossible to block this content at an ISP level, the next step that will likely be investigated is making porn providers require a proof of age. Which effectively hands them a data identity on a silver platter

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Age verification at the user end! So simple to bypass. So annoying if you are 67 years old with no kids at home.

It may also be relevant that many young adults/teenagers, do have needs to interact with the workforce, education and financial services from younger than 18 years. The early teenage years are critical in so many ways. Rebellion is so easily instilled and so much more difficult to reform?

Plenty of shared knowledge available. Steve’s books, ‘Raising Girls’ and ‘Raising Boys’ offer great insights to childhood behaviour and relationships.

Substituting autocratic controls at parental level for a proper parental relationship might not be the best for our future. The alternative also suggests a return to the days of the chastity belt, and protective codling till 21 years of age.

Why ruin something for the majority that do their best and are not at risk?

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This already happens. A good example if child proof caps required on hazardous/toxic household products or medicines, pool fences etc. Likewise in the future for button batteries security which Choice is championing as mandatory across all products likely to be able to be accessed by children.

In relation to child proof caps/lids, it could he easiiy argued that parents should monitor their children so that they don’t access such products (e.g. put out of reach, place in a locked cabinet, watch their children at all times etc). Such measures prove not to be universally accepted and itis easier to modifythe product to reduce a risk than assume parents/all adults will be responsible.

Sometimes all consumers are impacted, if it is in the betterment of a particular risk group such as children. Children often can’t protect themselves and don’t know the risks or expectations of others. Many adukts are also not responsible enough to mitigate such risks (or risks can’t be mitigated without a form of intervention or control) This is why sector wide controls have and will continue to be adopted.

No one likes change, but on the same hand most of the community also want to protect those who can’t protect themselves.

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Or, use a device that already has parental controls. The iPhone already has parental controls. Use them if you want. Don’t use them if you don’t want. (I can confirm that they work, on limited testing, strictly for research purposes.)

Because the iPhone is such a walled garden and closed product, there is little to no realistic concern about the parental controls functionality being “removed”. (I mean if the 8-year-old can write replacement firmware never mind about bypassing Apple’s firmware signature verification then ASIO will be offering him or her a job.)

There is no need to prevent use of VPN on the client device. VPN on the client device won’t help if the client device itself is blocking restricted content (as happens when you enable the parental controls).

This is hugely contentious. People with a certain worldview would like to change the world to fit their worldview by default.

Fortunately this is a false dichotomy. When you buy your smartphone, the vendor can ask you what you want? You can buy with parental controls enabled initially. You can buy with parental controls disabled initially. You can’t buy without making a choice one way or the other. Either way the parental controls functionality is baked in anyway (so if you buy with parental controls disabled, you can change your mind later, and likewise if initially enabled).

Could Apple be persuaded by the Australian government to give you that buying option? Who knows? But a lot more likely than millions of porn sites putting in age verification.

It’s not that big a deal to enable parental controls yourself. Just a few taps on the screen. Perhaps Apple could be persuaded to include a small sheet of paper telling people how to enable parental controls.

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I think most smartphones now do - I just can’t find the setting on my Android phone right now because I have never needed it. Windows has Family Options, and presumably so does Macintosh.

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To sum up:
Q. Is there a problem?
A. Possibly.

Q. Will the proposal solve the problem?
A. Probably not.

Q. Will the proposal introduce mechanisms that can be abused?
A. Yes.

Q. Can we trust our government and authorities to not abuse the mechanisms?
A. History suggests not.

Q. Can we trust all possible future governments and authorities?
A. No.

Q. Is this a good idea?
A. No

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One more:

Q. If there is a problem, are there better ways to solve the problem?

A. Yes

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Q. If there’s a problem, then is the issue we’re talking about actually the problem?
A. Probably not.

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