To think face scanning for age verification for porn is a great idea?

[AdamRyan]

The Government are considering how to prevent children from accessing porn and are looking into face scanning technology.

I think this is a good idea as we already use facial recognition for verification on banks etc and if people are adults they should not feel embarassed about their choice to watch porn so no problem.

Privacy campaigners are worried about potential for blackmail though. Wish they were as worried about men illegally uploading films of their OHs having sex with them....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67615719

IABU - I think porn doesn't need age verification/existing verification is good enough

IANBU - this is a good idea

Since when does internet banking involve facial recognition?

Lots of apps use it to open the app and use it
The technology is there and trusted, I don't see why not use it to verify porn users are over 18

UK ISPs would block non-compliant sites, as they do currently for content on the IWF child abuse image content list, terrorist-related sites, and for copyright infringing sites (such as the Pirate Bay). No UK-based ISP is going to take on the government on this one.

Of course it can all be worked around with VPNs and tor etc but an ISP block is pretty effective at deterring non-technically adept users.

I’d like to see platforms such as Twitter held to account more rather than enforce more face recognition everywhere.

Porn sites are open access, they host huge amounts of free stuff, so unless facial rec was worldwide, restrictions the UK alone puts on is meaningless.

A VPN blocks location and host of other stuff too.

Perhaps a better way would be to make ISPs monitor what users are watching? with a list of whats legal and whats not? and if the user blocks their public IP address, this is then reported & authorities can look into this on a randomised basis.
If your using a VPN for legal stuff not a problem.

Well yes, the content provider can of course implement location-based access controls, and can also block access from commercial VPNs. But there would be no incentive for an overseas company to do this, merely to comply to the law of country which has no jurisdiction over it.

The only way to block access to foreign sites will be at the ISP level (which I am sure they will do) but this does not block VPNs at all.

That’s not how facial recognition on a phone interacts with a bank account at all.

And how would a "no VPN policy" work for all the businesses and organisations who use them for essential reasons?

It's not just circumventing age limits and region locks on netflix.

They're one of the most important tools for security, networking and combatting censorship. Without it, journalism would suffer, wfh would no longer be possible and we'd have huge issues being able to work with offices abroad.

Why are people so happy to handover our rights for privacy for something that will not fix the issue!?

Good points here. I don't think any parent should ever just assume it's up to the government to stop their kids accessing porn. (I'm not saying the government shouldn't try!)

My other concern would be whether this might be extended to other content in time, e.g. political views that are outside the mainstream. I know this sounds a bit conspiracy theorist, but I do worry about the frequent bundling of porn and "other harmful content" in discussions. Where "other harmful content" is often not well defined.

As others have pointed out, it would take moments to circumvent. Useless safeguards are at best pointless and at worst actively damaging if they lull people into false security.

On a procedural point - legislation and regulation is almost always technology neutral. A requirement to have an age verification process is possible but specifying a single manner in which that could be achieved would be irregular.

So, what of people who are struggling with their sexuality? Perfectly example of why this is a mistake.

People are horrified at children using fingerprints to pay for school dinners.

The effects if the photos got hacked and released would be immense. All those scam emails you get blackmailing you about watching porn, could be legit.

To all the people saying ban it: I believe they tried that with drugs and murder.

Actually, they also tried it with porn: see the history of the Obscene Publications Act, and the reasons it failed.

But the knee-jerk response of the ban-brigade obviously knows better...

You don't even need a VPN to access these sites in the UK, despite them supposedly being "blocked" by ISP's.

This is yet another round of politicians who don't understand the internet legislating for the sake of being seen to be doing something, even though that something will be both unworkable and completely ineffectual.

You can not legislate on things which are completely outside your jurisdiction. The solution to minors accessing age-restricted content lies with better policing by those responsible for the minors at the user end. Everything else is just wishful thinking.

I’m not ashamed of having sex but I could be blackmailed if someone managed to get a recording of me having it.
Same if someone got footage of me undressing, or using the toilet. Not ashamed but also definitely don’t want it being released to the public.

Totally agree.

in order to set up fingerprint recognition on my phone, I have to use my thumb in the first place, there's not a fingerprint database for companies to cross check against. The same true for facial recognition. Which means the "face" used doesn't need to be a person's actual face, people can just use AI to get around this

Set it up and a few weeks later there will be a plethora of websites offering fake AI faces that work with facial recognition software

There will be absolutely need at all for anything as convoluted as AI fakes for workarounds, because any UK hosted site that implements this nonsense will immediately have an age-verification-free proxy set up that can be accessed freely from the UK in any case.

It's a nonsense idea that will achieve the square root of nothing.

Sure, a lot of the sites supposedly on the blocked list have mirrors that can easily be found, and it's a game of whack-a-mole for the ISPs and the IWF. But the government wants to be seen to be doing something, and an ISP block list will likely block younger children. It won't stop the hardcore porn-weasels of course, but that's not who they're after - they mainly want to stop 6 year olds with pig-ignorant parents who don't bother implementing content filters at the device or router level.

And of course, they do want to be seen to be "doing something."

Good luck with that.

Define “pornography”.

Some men (and maybe some women) are very into women’s shoes and feet, so they watch videos and look at photographs of feet and shoes. Is that “pornography”?

Is a woman posing in lingerie “pornography”? If so, how would that differ to a model on a store website modelling lingerie or a bikini?

Its alright saying ban, but it’s not as easy as that.

Many PCs and laptops don't have cameras.

Businesses and organisations aren't watching porn

I mean the porn sites could be required to ensure their UK based users 1) provide facial recognition 2) aren't on VPN

It's very interesting that when it comes to porn, fairly standard tech implementation becomes "too hard"

We all know the real reason is people will stop consuming as much if it becomes harder, which the porn industry doesn't want. And men don't want a record of their grubby viewing habits 😂

Banks are trusted, highly regulated entities with large information security teams, who have been used to protecting sensitive data for decades. Porn sites have no such resources, integrity or experience. I really wouldn't trust them with this data.

It always makes me laugh that we can tackle pirating of films, illegal watching of football, etc but porn is "too hard"

And that simultaneously children can get round Internet safeguards to watch it, so no point in those, but it's the fault of parents not putting better safeguards in place.

As much as I'd love to ban porn we can't. Humans are sexual beings and pornography and sexual iconography has existed since people first learned how to make marks. What we can do is make access to it safe by blocking it or putting restrictions on at ISP and VPN level. What we can do is bring back a sense of shame (but not shame) around sexual acts and behaviours in public, desexualise society and rightfully shame deviancy. What we can also do is educate our children on safe internet use and safe sexual practices and consent.