Australia, in keeping with its penal history, has a long record of paranoid officialdom and paternalistic wowsers. Be it perceived threats to morality, the tendency of the populace to be corrupted, and a general, gnawing fear about what knowledge might do, Australia’s governing authorities have prized censorship.
This recent trend is most conspicuous in an ongoing regulatory war being waged against the Internet and the corporate citizens that inhabit it. Terrified that Australia’s tender children will suffer ruination at the hand of online platforms, the entire population of the country will be subjected to age verification checks. Preparations are already underway in the country to impose a social media ban for users under the age of 16, ostensibly to protect the mental health and wellbeing of children. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 was passed in November last year to amend the Online Safety Act 2021, requiring “age-restricted social media platforms” to observe a “minimum age obligation” to prevent Australians under the age of 16 to have accounts. It also vests that ghastly office of the eSafety Commissioner and the Information Commissioner with powers to seek information regarding relevant compliance by the platforms, along with the power to issue and publish notices of non-compliance.
While the press were falling over to note the significance of such changes, little debate has accompanied the last month’s registration of a new industry code by the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant. In fact, Inman Grant is proving most busy, having already registered three such codes, with a further six to be registered by the end of this year. All serve to target the behaviour of internet service companies in Australia. All have not been subject to parliamentary debate, let alone broader public consultation.
Inman Grant has been less than forthcoming about the implications of these codes, most notably on the issue of mandatory age-assurance limits. That said, some crumbs have been left for those paying attention to her innate obsession with hiving off the Internet from Australian users. In her address to the National Press Club in Canberra on June 24, she did give some clue about where the country is heading: “Today, I am […] announcing that through the Online Safety Act’s codes and standards framework, we will be moving to register three industry-prepared codes designed to limit children’s access to high impact, harmful material like pornography, violent content, themes of suicide, self-harm and disordered eating.” (Is there no limit to this commissar’s fears?) Under such codes, companies would “agree to apply safety measures up and down the technology stack – including age assurance protections.”
With messianic fervour, Inman Grant explained that the codes would “serve as a bulwark and operate in concern with the new social media age limits, distributing more responsibility and accountability across eight sectors of the tech industry.” These would also not be limited in scope, applicable to enterprise hosting services, internet carriage services, and various “access providers and search engines. I have concluded that each of these codes provide appropriate community safeguards.”
From December 27, such technology giants as Google and Microsoft will have to use age-assurance technology for account holders when they sign in and “apply tools and/or settings, like ‘safe search’ functionality, at the highest safety setting by default for an account holders its age verification systems indicate is likely to be an Australian child, designed to protect and prevent Australian children from accessing or being exposed to online pornography and high impact violence material in search results.” This is pursuant to Schedule 3 – Internet Search Engine Services Online Safety Code (Class 1C and Class 2 Material).
How this will be undertaken has not, as yet, been clarified by Google or Microsoft. The companies have, however, been in the business of trialling a number of technologies. These include Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) cryptography, which permits people to prove that an aspect of themselves is true without surrendering any other data; using large language models (LLMs) to discern an account holder’s age based on browsing history; or the use of selfie verification and government ID tools.
Specialists in the field of information technology have been left baffled and worried. “I have not seen anything like this anywhere else in the world,” remarks IT researcher Lisa Given. This had “kind of popped out, seemingly out of the blue.” Digital Rights Watch chair, Lizzie O’Shea, is of the view that “the public deserves more of a say in how to balance these important human rights issues” while Justin Warren, founder of the tech analysis company PivotNine, sees it as “a massive overreaction after years of police inaction to curtail the power of a handful of large foreign technology companies.”
Then comes the issue of efficacy. Using the safety of children in censoring content and restricting technology is a government favourite. Whether the regulations actually protect children is quite another matter. John Pane, chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), was less than impressed by the results from a recent age-assurance technology trial conducted to examine the effect of the teen social media ban. And all of this cannot ignore the innovative guile of young users, ever ready to circumvent any imposed restrictions.
Inman Grant, in her attempts to limit the use of the Internet and infantilise the population, sees these age restricting measures as “building a culture of online safety, using multiple interventions – just as we have done so successfully on our beaches.” This nonsensical analogy excludes the central theme of her policies, common to all censors in history: The people are not to be trusted, and paternalistic governors and regulators know better.
Also by Dr Binoy:
Diplomatic Merchandise: Exploiting the issue of Palestinian Recognition
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“messianic fervour, Inman Grant“
I do wonder if Grant’s background includes right wing, conservative US Christianity.
The ALP seems to have form in picking overly aggressive and biased people for roles such as this. Another example is the antisemitism commissioner.
Both of these unelected people appear to have a lot of power and influence more so than our MPs.
As a lifelong IT professional, I’m puzzled as to how this can be implemented in a non-intrusive way. I don’t want my right to privacy to be ridden over by a moralising agency.
Are Porn Hub etc and NewCorp’s mooted kid’s news going to be restricted?
Here’s an idea – how about parents and schools become the guardians for children, and teach them how to use the internet safely, monitor their behaviour and pull them up is they accessing unsuitable material ? If mum and dad can see what you’re doing at all times, they can stop you before it hurts. This might also go some way to addressing online bullying.
I’m an old lady but none of our children were ever allowed a PC or any other device in their bedrooms so we could always see what they were googling. Too many very young people have smart phones these days imo but those phones should ALWAYS be monitored by a parent.
per the context of the leading essay, sorry to be the contrarian but the genie is well & truly out of the bottle, heading after that horse that’s bolted before the stable doors were locked, and trying on the way to not step on the cat that’s out of the bag.
It’s an utter fiction to assert that after ~25 years of PC and nearly 20 years of smartphone availability and an age of tech-savvy kiddies who’ve been flooded with these technologies from birth that suddenly the thought police can get everything back under control.
VPNs, false IDs… whatever it takes, the kids will work out a workaround.
Beyond about 6 years old, Kids as always are self-censoring. They make their own ‘moral’ decisions based upon discussions with their peers and others, including their educators, and fundamentally by the views, advice and constraints of their siblings and adult relatives – most particularly their parents.
And their decisions may be temporary experimental decisions, reactive defiance, or compliance with those of greatest / wisest influence upon them. Whilst they are essentially social creatures, they are quite capable of much reckoning, and tend to have an innate tendency to take action to prevent harm to themselves and their surrounds. Like us all, they will day-to-day reflect on their experiences, and make their decisions when alone, and then keep their own counsel.
Circumscribing their ability to experience and interact seems to be a suppression of their learning and reckoning processes, accompanied by the altogether inadequate explanation of “that’s the law”.
It would seem that these ‘laws’ have been made by adults who reflect on their own, and the adult community’s niches, seeking and/or allowing themselves to be ‘perverse’ and ‘corrupted’.
Perhaps some adult’s inability to face this, and openly have a detailed discourse with ‘children’ about all these matters is what gives rise to the universal imposition of such strictures.