Canberra, Australia, Oct 28, 2019 / 17:34 pm
A government department in Australia has proposed the use of a face recognition system to curb underage access to online pornography, but the idea has been met with concerns over privacy.
The Department of Home Affairs wrote to a House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs that it could offer a "suite of identity-matching services," reported business tech news site ZDNet this week.
Among possible uses for this technology, the department emphasized the use of a face verification service to restrict teens and children from accessing online pornography. The system would match people's faces with their identification document in government records.
Current efforts to verify users' age on pornographic websites include requiring users to enter a date of birth or upload identification documents. However, the Home Affairs department said, these methods can be easily circumvented by minors entering a parent's driver's license information.