Europe’s Age Verification Push Raises Privacy Issues Beyond Data Confidentiality
Governments around the world are rushing to mandate age verification online, covering everything from social media harms to gambling and pornography, in the name of protecting children.
Critics have built a substantial case against these mandates. A coalition of 438 security and privacy scientists collectively called it “dangerous and socially unacceptable to introduce a large-scale access control mechanism without a clear understanding of the implications that different design decisions can have on security, privacy, equality, and ultimately on the freedom of decision and autonomy of individuals and nations.” And the non-profit European Digital Rights (EDRi) deems age verification “a short-sighted measure: it does not help young people navigating online spaces, it can disproportionately limit children’s rights, is invasive, excludes a large portion of the population beyond children, and ultimately lacks effectiveness due to easy circumvention.”
While this backlash is warranted and important, age verification tools are not an isolated case, but part of the wider field of digital “trust technologies” gaining rapid momentum.
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