Canada’s proposed Bill S-209, which addresses online age verification, is currently making its way through the Senate, and its passage would be yet another mistake in tech policy.
The bill is intended to restrict young peoples’ access to online pornography and to hold providers to account for making it available to anyone under 18. It may be well-intentioned, but the manner of its proposed enforcement – mandating age verification or what is being called “age-estimation technologies” – is troubling.
Globally, age-verification tools are a popular business, and many companies are in favour of S-209, particularly because it requires that websites and organizations rely on third parties for these tools. However, they bring up long-standing concerns over privacy, especially when you consider potential leaks or hacks of this information, which in some cases include biometrics that can identify us by our faces or fingerprints. […]
Manwin is based out of Montreal, i.e. Pornhub. I can’t see this passing. Canada is quite literally the porn capital of the world, trust me I know I worked for 3 separate porn companies here in Canada. I just don’t see it happening.
I’d rather this type of legislation not even be entertained in Parliament and treated the same way as if someone tried to propose banning oxygen. I’ll be writing to my MP tomorrow and I encourage everyone reading this to do the same. If you let them take a centimetre of our privacy, they’ll take an entire kilometre.