The consensus on censorship
Anyone hoping a Conservative government would put a halt to the incessant creep of online censorship, surveillance and controls brought in by big brother — er, I mean, prime minister — Justin Trudeau, is in for a rude awakening.
Asked by reporters this week if the Tories would require adult entertainment websites to implement age-verification systems, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s answer was straight and to the point: “Yes.”
The Conservatives previously demonstrated their openness to imposing draconian rules on our already over-regulated internet last year, when they sponsored Bill S-210 in the House of Commons, and then joined the regulation-loving NDP and Bloc Québécois in passing it on second reading.
Known as the “protecting young persons from exposure to pornography act,” Bill S-210 would make it an offence, punishable by a fine of up to $500,000, for porn sites to operate without implementing “a prescribed age-verification method.” Exactly what those methods would be is not laid out in the bill, and would be up to government mandarins to figure out.
Poilievre’s office said his party is not in favour of digital IDS. And Conservative MP Karen Vecchio, who sponsored the bill, said that, “There should be no direct collection of identity documentation by the site publisher from the pornographic site, no age estimates based on the user’s web browser history and no processing of biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying or authenticating a natural person.”
This leaves few viable options. Some American states have enacted similar laws requiring users to upload copies of their driver’s licences. The downside is that this exposes people to identity theft and other abuses — especially in an industry characterized by an abundance of sites whose ownership is not always clear and criminals who commonly disguise malware as adult content.
And it will likely do little to prevent underage people from viewing pornography, as photographs of government IDS are far easier to forge than the real thing. Not only can this be done by a tech-savvy youngster using Photoshop, there has already been at least one case of a website selling Ai-generated fake IDS capable of bypassing online age-verification measures.
Other options include using facial-recognition software to access users’ webcams to determine age, which is even more creepy, and requiring viewers to submit their credit card information. Yet most adults are going to be leery about handing their credit card to some random porn site, fearing they will be charged a subscription fee or that their banking information will be sold to the highest bidder on the dark web.
As it stands, visiting an adult website entails minimal risk. But if users are forced to register with their personal information and credit cards, they are left at the mercy of unscrupulous site owners and hackers with a history of targeting pornographic websites.
Given that all these systems have serious privacy implications, legitimate sites that strive to comply with the law, and the sex workers making a living from the safety of their homes, will take a financial hit — Montreal-based Pornhub saw its traffic drop by 80 per cent after Louisiana required the use of its digital ID to access online porn — while shadier sites that operate in eastern Europe and elsewhere will continue to do business as usual.
In order to try to prevent such practices, S-210 would allow the government to set up an agency to monitor compliance, and give it the ability to petition the Federal Court to force internet service providers to block websites that are found to be flouting the law.
The bill does make an exception for content that “has a legitimate purpose related to science, medicine, education or the arts.” But the line between art and pornography is not always clear. Former United States Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart once famously admitted that there is no objective standard by which to judge obscene material, stating merely that, “I know it when I see it.”
This is not the standard we should want our laws to be based on. Nor do we need government bureaucrats dictating where the line between artistic expression ends and pornography begins.
Make no mistake: online age-verification laws are de facto censorship regimes. S-210 would create a whole new bureaucracy to monitor the internet for content the state deems to be too obscene for minors and give it the ability to block adults from accessing otherwise legal content. This is not dissimilar from how things operate in Communist China, and it would not be at all surprising if other types of content eventually get blocked by Canada’s growing censorship apparatus.
Pornhub, one of the few Canadian success stories of the digital age, has already said it would consider pulling out of Canada if the bill passes. Others will surely follow suit, forcing Canadians with even a modicum of technical knowledge, including youth, to spoof their locations by using a VPN or route their internet traffic through Tor. Many will begin searching for adult material on the dark web, which is rife with child pornography, violent imagery and other unsavoury content.
Bill S-210 may never become law, but the Liberals’ long-awaited online harms bill, which is expected to be tabled next week, is likely to go even further. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have any opposition parties willing to take a stand against this type of privacy-invading, job-killing legislation. Or anyone to state that it is parents who should be responsible for what their children do online, not the government.
ONLINE AGE VERIFICATION LAWS ARE DE FACTO CENSORSHIP REGIMES.