Age Assurance Part of Kids Online Safety Solution, Panelists Say
Age assurance can be a crucial step in online safety for children, so long as it’s done carefully and in a privacy-preserving way, said experts during a Public Knowledge event Monday. However, they warned that age assurance should be part of a larger response.
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The Family Online Safety Institute believes age-assurance technology has advanced enough that it can be used in "a privacy-preserving way," said Marissa Edmunds, state policy lead at FOSI. Yet legislation shouldn't require specific age-assurance methods, she added. Legislation should not "set out one particular way to do age assurance.”
Edmunds said flexibility should be part of legislation that "we all would, I think, really, really love,” which is “a data privacy bill at the federal level ... so that there can be a little bit more of that trust built to be able to implement an age-assurance mechanism.”
Shae Gardner, director of policy and research at LGBT Tech, agreed and noted that a federal privacy framework would benefit adults and children alike. “Right now, it feels like we're trying to piece together a building, but we've missed the ground floor,” she said.
IAPP Vice President Caitlin Fennessy echoed a similar sentiment during a webinar Aug. 20, where panelists said more privacy input is needed in the fragmented push for age verification (see 2508200021).
Edmunds agreed that data privacy should include adults and children. "We would all love more and increased protections for our data.”
Gardner highlighted a contradiction in discussions about online safety and data privacy. “Out of one side of the mouth, we're hearing that these social media platforms cannot possibly be trusted with our data ... and then out of the other side, that we need to provide them with our government identification.”
Because of this, Edmunds said, education is key to increasing awareness about available methods and ensuring trust in the legislators and legislation around any kind of age assurance. A federal privacy law would also serve as a good basis for trust in the government as well.
“We are obviously very concerned about [age verification] becoming identity verification,” as “it is [a] very slippery slope,” Gardner added. A core question is: “How do you actually determine that someone is who they say they are on social media?”
Other privacy organizations have noted recently that while age assurance is well-meaning, the implementation of it can be harmful (see 2509050046).
Ava Smithing, director of advocacy and operations at Young People’s Alliance, said an Australian study that looked at many different methods of age-verification technology showed it's "technologically feasible to age verify without impeding on privacy and requiring people to upload government IDs.” Uploading IDs “should never be the answer, ever.”
The Australian government review independently validated 48 age-assurance provider claims, and found the sector to be innovative and dynamic, but still cautioned that usability, risk management and system interoperability could be better (see 2509010001).
Though online safety “does not start or stop with age assurance,” it is “100% part of the conversation," Edmunds said. While "it all comes down to age assurance ... it's never going to be a silver bullet,” she added, noting the importance of media and digital literacy. "There are always going to be use cases and instances where [age assurance] is ineffective [or] invasive.”