The question of effective age verification in Canada increasingly has ramifications beyond the beaver. There is ongoing debate on whether or not age assurance measures for adult content online violate privacy rights, or make it easier to suppress LGBTQ+ content and other material geared for marginalized groups. Critics say a draft age verification bill introduced by Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne is a “dog’s breakfast” of legal issues and potential rights violations – despite the senator presenting evidence that age verification can be effective, accurate and privacy-preserving.
Critics continue to insist age verification is ineffective despite evidence
Writing for the Canadian Bar Association, Dale Smith quotes an allegation by Aislin Jackson, policy staff counsel at the BC Civil Liberties Association, that in drafting Bill S-210, Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne “appears to have worked with the age verification industry” and “took its assurances around things like age-estimation AI as being workable without privacy infringement.”
One would hope a senator drafting an age verification bill would consult the age verification industry, and it is true that Sen. Miville-Dechêne has engaged with age verification providers and advocates. Their statistics, she says, should be more than enough to shoot down the notion that age verification is not technically feasible without serious privacy violations.
In a Substack post from March 2024, written in response to a Globe and Mail editorial about Bill S-210, Miville-Dechêne notes developments on age assurance in the EU and UK, and quotes the Age Verification Providers’ Association’s brief to the Senate testifying that “age verification can be designed to protect completely the identity of the users, by separating the age verification process from the age restricted websites which apply it, and by not retaining any personal identity data after checks have been completed.”
S-210 ‘most dangerous Canadian Internet bill you’ve never heard of’: Geist
Objections from legal and civil rights experts say the legislation falls victim to the trap of believing technology can fix everything.
However, they often fall back on the “ineffective” argument, fail to factor in retention, refer to outdated testing data, or outright conflate biometric methods with privacy violations.
For instance, frequent digital rights commentator Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has argued that “it may be in the future that some of the technology that is envisioned will be more effective and will be able to address some of these issues, but at the moment, this kind of technology largely boils down to two mechanisms – requiring users to upload highly sensitive information like government-issued IDs as proof of age verification, and age estimation, where you engage in facial scanning.”
Regulators, operators, parents share responsibility for kids online: MP
Adding to the tensions are parallel efforts by Conservative MPs to push their own legislation on age verification for adult content. A recent post from Michelle Rempel Gardner, member of Parliament for the Alberta riding of Calgary Nose Hill, lays out her case for Bill C-412 – “a vision for what protections should be offered to children to keep them safe online, while preserving Canadian privacy and empowering parents.”
“Bill C-412 proposes a clear, immediate legislated duty of care for online operators to keep kids safe when they’re online,” Rempel-Gardner says. The legislation “seeks to square the circle of age verification while ensuring user privacy by setting forth obligations for operators to use technology like computer algorithms to detect, within the reasonable ability of current technology, a user’s age.” She points out that, in general terms, many platforms already estimate their users’ age for targeted advertising.
To keep kids safe online, says Rempel-Gardner, Canada needs the government, operators and parents each to play a role, and for clear guidelines to be established. “I realize this bill may provoke rigorous debate over things like the age at which a minor should be able to be online without any parental consent, the definition of what constitutes an online operator, what fines should be leveled against operators that break the rules, or what the duty of care of an operator should be,” she says. “That’s a very good thing, and long overdue.”
Alignment on global age assurance regulations could clear up confusion
The loophole of VPNs, the definition of “unlawful content,” the ability for victims to access to gather evidence for legal recourse if their image is posted: there are plenty of questions around implementing age verification. Although regulation is not the only ingredient needed to make the sauce work, it is a key part of the base.
For its part, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) says in a release that it has joined other global regulators in moving towards “a more common international approach to the data protection and privacy implications of age-assurance methods.”
A international joint statement issued by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office on behalf of regulators in Gibraltar, the Philippines, Argentina and Mexico, is part of ongoing efforts by data protection authorities to align on standards for age assurance.
The OPC is preparing to develop its own policy and guidance on age assurance, which Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne says “can be one important way to protect children, both from inappropriate or harmful online content, and the risks that may arise from the collection and processing of their personal information.”
Article Topics
age verification | biometrics | Canada | data privacy | digital identity | face biometrics | legislation
