Canada’s Conservative Party is signalling support for legislation that would mandate age verification for users seeking access to online pornography sites, though officials are also distancing the party from rules that would require digital identity verification.
Pierre Poilievre, who leads the Conservatives’ opposition party to the current Liberal government, was asked this week whether his government would require porn websites to implement age verification. “Yes,” was his answer, without elaboration. But his office later issued a statement asserting that the Conservative Party does not support mandating digital ID.
The Conservatives, together with the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois, have already backed proposed legislation that would require age verification for users seeking access to online pornography; but in commenting on the bill in Parliament, Conservative MP Karen Vecchio specifically stated that “there should be no direct collection of identity documentation by the site publisher from the pornographic site, no age estimates based on the user’s web browser history and no processing of biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying or authenticating a natural person.”
Those requirements would seem to put online pornography publishers in a difficult spot, though they appear to leave the door open for age estimation tools, such as the biometric technology that London-based Yoti has offered to various online platforms.
Poilievre’s affirmation of an age verification scheme is important in Canada’s current electoral and political context. The country is slated to hold elections by October of 2025, with the possibility of an earlier election being triggered well before then; and the Conservatives currently have a significant lead in recent polling.
The country also has a public-private coalition working on infrastructure for a national digital ID program. While the Digital ID & Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC) does not appear to have made a great deal of substantial progress since its founding in 2012, its work is active and ongoing, with selfie-based biometrics specialist Mitek having joined the group last month.
Sources: The Canadian Press, CTV News
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February 21, 2024 – by Alex Perala
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