Melbourne: The Australian government is planning to propose the use of facial recognition for watching online pornography. The government is mulling such a move to verify that those who watch such stuff have attained legal age.
The current laws and regulation in Australia is not enough to prevent minors from watching pornography. Hence the government is considering proposals that would require people to prove their age before watching the material.
Under the proposal which has been proposed by the home department of the government of Australia, a computer user’s face would be matched to images from official identity documents. However, it has not been said, how the user would provide his facial image, or whether he will have to do it at the beginning of each online session.
The proposal however, drew immediate objections from a large number of people. Many said that such a move would be an infringement on Australian citizens’ privacy policy. The Department of Home Affairs did not respond to questions about the proposal.
The proposal comes as a growing number of American cities are debating the use of facial recognition systems in surveillance by police departments, with San Francisco becoming the first major American city this year to ban the technology.
At this point, the proposal is just on paper. The Aussie parliament is yet to approve a central identity database that the Department of Home Affairs wants to use in a national face-matching system. The system could be used to identify criminal suspects whose images are captured on surveillance cameras.
Agencies
