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Digital ID

Age of online privacy coming to an end as Australia adopts digital ID

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Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Defends Controversial Online Age Verification Digital ID Methods

Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner (to her critics – the country’s chief censor), has attempted to explain how Online Safety Amendment – Social Media Minimum Age Bill 2024 – will be enforced.

The bill mandates online age verification, and bans minors under 16 from using social platforms, in what is described as “the strictest crackdown” yet in the world – with many in the world, no doubt, looking at how things pan out in Australia before they make their own restrictive moves.

The “small” question that remains to be answered Down Under now is – how does the government propose to determine the age of a person using an online platform, before the government orders them to be banned?

Grant may be trying to sell one method as less invasive, less potentially harmful, and otherwise controversial than another – but they appear to be as bad as each other, only in different ways.

“There are really only three ways you can verify someone’s age online, and that’s through ID, through behavioral signals, or through biometrics,” she told NPR.

The “ID” route means that every internet user would have to provide government-issued documents to platforms, revealing their real-world identity to these platforms and anyone else they’re in business with (such as governments and data brokers) and ending online anonymity for everyone.

And that, in fact, is the only sure-fire way to determine someone’s age. The other two produce estimates. The biometrics Grant mentions refer to uploading selfies to companies like Yoti, who then guess a user’s age.

Related: The 2024 Digital ID and Online Age Verification Agenda

Better than the “ID” method – that is, if you believe it’s a good idea for minors, or anyone, to just hand over biometric data to third parties.

Then, there are “behavioral signals” – and it sounds positively bonkers that a government would entertain the idea of deploying such technology on/against its citizens.

Grant said she met with yet another third party in the US – “an age assurance provider” – this unnamed company doesn’t monitor and analyze your facial features, but hand gestures. For age verification.

Like so: “Say you do a peace sign then a fist to the camera. It follows your hand movements. And medical research has shown that based on your hand movement, it can identify your age.”

One way to look at all this is that tech is being developed to step up online surveillance, while a flurry of “think of the children” laws may be here to legitimize and “legalize” that tech’s use.

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Digital ID

Trudeau gov’t secretly polling Canadians to gauge their acceptance of planned digital ID

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Department of Immigration commissioned a pollster to ask Canadians how comfortable they would be with a ‘digital version’ of their passport, despite multiple parliamentary committees having rejected any sort of national ID system.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s immigration ministry has been secretly asking Canadians via surveys if they would accept a mandatory national identification program that likely would require each citizen to always have a type of “digital” passport on them.

Canada’s Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s department, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter, commissioned a company called Advanis Inc., an Ontario-based pollster, to poll Canadians on its “Passport Client Experience Survey.” This poll has been ongoing since December of last year, with pollsters targeting “clients who applied for a passport.”

The main question the poll asked was, “How comfortable would you be sharing a secure digital version of the passport within Canada as an identity document?”

Thus far, the Department of Immigration has not commented about its poll.

The poll comes despite multiple parliamentary committees having rejected numerous times any sort of national ID system, noting how such a system would be extremely costly.

One of Canada’s former privacy commissioners, Robert Marleau, in a 2003 report titled “Why We Should Resist A National ID Card For Canada,” called any type of national ID card “the most significant privacy issue in Canadian society.”

“A national identification card would require an elaborate and complex national identity system with database, communications networks, card readers, millions of identification cards and polices and procedures to address a myriad of security, privacy, manageability, and human factor considerations. The costs associated with such a system would be enormous. Just creating it could cost between $3 billion and $5 billion with substantial additional costs to operate it,” he observed.

When it comes to a national digital ID system, as reported by LifeSiteNews last week, a briefing note from members of Trudeau’s cabinet claims that a national digital ID system is “easier” and “securer” than traditional identification but insists it will remain “optional.”

The contents of the briefing note come after federal regulators previously disclosed they are working on digital credentials for Canadians despite the fact that MPs have repeatedly rejected the proposal over safety concerns, as reported by LifeSiteNews.

However, critics have warned that with a “digital ID, there is no public consensus, only collusion,” and that the purpose of such a system is to eliminate “choice” in favor of “coercion and contradiction to confuse our cognition towards total control.”

The Conservative Party has repeatedly warned Canadians about “mandatory digital ID” systems. While the Trudeau government insists this program will be optional, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to introduce a new bill that would “expressly prohibit” digital IDs in Canada.

Poilievre is also opposed to a federal digital dollar, plans for which are currently on hold.

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Digital ID

Trudeau government claims digital ID system would remain ‘optional’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

A briefing note from members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet claims that a national digital ID system is “easier” and “more securer” than traditional identification, but insists it will remain “optional.”

According to Blacklock’s Reporteran October 30, 2024 briefing note titled Digital Credentials Issue And Verify Request For Information, said that “Digital credentials support a quicker, easier, safer, more secure and more cost effective way to access services digitally,” and that their implementation “would allow the Government of Canada to offer the use of digital credentials on an optional basis”  

The contents of the briefing note come after federal regulators previously disclosed they are working on digital credentials for Canadians despite the fact MPs have repeatedly rejected the proposal over safety concerns, as reported by LifeSiteNews.

Shared Services Canada, a federal IT department, is developing “digital credentials” for things like Social Insurance Numbers, the Canadian equivalent of America’s Social Services number, which one needs to work legally. 

The October 30, 2024 note is dated just two days after Shared Services Canada had disclosed to contractors that it was “working to establish digital credentials” for the public.  

On the other hand, the Conservative Party has repeatedly warned Canadians about “mandatory digital ID” systems. While the Trudeau government insists this program will be optional, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to introduce a new bill that would “expressly prohibit” digital IDs in Canada. 

Poilievre is also opposed to a federal digital dollar, plans for which are currently on hold.

Digital IDs and similar systems have long been pushed by globalist groups like the World Economic Forum under the guise of ease of access or security.

However, critics have warned that with a “digital ID, there is no public consensus, only collusion,” and that the purpose of such a system is to eliminate “choice” in favor of “coercion and contradiction to confuse our cognition towards total control.” 

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