Remember when the government wanted to implement an age filter to all your favourite porn websites? It seems like wiser heads prevailed as that seems to have taken a back seat for for now. Until Peter Dutton and his Department of Home Affairs decided to pick the issue back up for some reason that is.
But rather than go with the age filter idea, ol’ mate Dutto decided the better option is to scan everyone’s faces before they get to indulge in some personal five-knuckle shuffle time.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Dutton and his Department of Home Affairs has suggested that the best way to stop all this underage porn watching that’s afflicting Australia right now is to use face scans to confirm people’s age before they’re allowed to access.
The idea is to have the face scan match a person’s photo that’s already recorded with Home Affairs, such as a driver’s licence, and this will act as an age verification system of sorts.
The idea is to have this voyeuristic proposal be lumped in with the Federal government’s separate proposed facial recognition scheme, which the Morrison government was scolded for and told to redraft after it was rejected in October by the joint intelligence and security committee over safety and privacy concerns.
Worrying comparisons to George Orwell’s 1984 aside, this hypothetical porn facial scan thing is a logistical and privacy nightmare. Not only will everyone need some sort camera, this system will create a huge database of all those Aussies who watch porn that’ll cause endless headaches should it all be leaked, which going by recent history is quite likely.
And even if Dutto and Home Affairs have a good solution to these issues, circumventing the facial scan won’t be all that difficult given all the tools we have at our disposal these days. When you’re preventing horny people from getting their fap on, no facial scan or age filter is going to stop them from getting to their porn.
But in the worst case scenario that Peter Dutton and Home Affairs figure out a way to spy on your sex life, expect a booming new black market to emerge in Australia involving the selling of USB sticks with porn on them.