Australians who watch adult content online might want to make note of a new plan suggested by the country's Department of Home Affairs. The department suggests that facial recognition technology be used to scan the faces of would-be porn viewers, confirming they are adults before allowing them to view the content, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. It would involve scanning a person's face and matching it to an image from an official document, such as a person's driver's license photo. The domestic security agency, in a regulatory filing to a parliamentary committee investigating the idea, also suggested the same process be used to restrict access to gambling sites, Perth Now reports. The plan is linked to a program the federal government has been pursuing for years, per Ars Technica.
That plan involves the Home Affairs Department storing driver's license, passport, and visa images in an "interoperability hub," which government agencies, telecom companies, and banks would be allowed access to in order to use facial recognition technology. But a bipartisan committee has asked for the proposed laws to be redrafted with additional safeguards; the UK abandoned a similar plan this month after issues including concerns that hackers could exploit such a system. As ZDNet reports, the Department of Home Affairs' so-called "Face Verification Service" needs the aforementioned biometrics legislation to be passed before it can become fully operational, but CNET reports the first phase was launched in 2016 with a database including citizenship images government agencies can access, and Ars Technica reports more images have since been added. (More Australia stories.)
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