“In 2023, it’s the end of access to pornographic sites for our children”. The Minister Delegate in charge of Digital Jean-Noël Barrot announced that France will impose an age verification tool in order to block minors from accessing pornographic sites. A “certificate of majority” will be introduced in September 2023 “to end this scandal and uphold the law once and for all”. A legal and technical challenge that should not, as many Internet users fear, infringe their privacy, he says.
The outlines of this project, developed for nine months, will be unveiled in the coming days by the CNIL (National Commission for Computing and Liberties) and ARCOM (Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority). Jean-Noël Barrot said Sunday February 5, 2023 daily The Parisian that this “solution technique” should be able to “enforce age limits that exist in our law, but are not sufficiently enforced online”. The solution is unique and “France is the first to offer it in the world”, he rejoiced.
Contenting themselves at present with displaying a declaration of honor on their home page, pornographic sites will be “really” obliged to control the age of their users. “They will have to conform to it under penalty of seeing their diffusion prohibited on the national territory”.
Protecting Children Without Invading Privacy
The law already provides for the obligation for these platforms to verify the age of their users. Article 227-23 of the Penal Code punishes the exposure of minors to pornography. Nevertheless, the legal and technical systems put in place until then have proven to be ineffective. Since October 2021, an implementing decree allows ARCOM to give formal notice to sites that do not comply with the law. The former CSA can also ensure the reliability of the technical process “put in place” by the publisher of the pornographic content.
The law has always been “critiqued” because, in the opinion of the lawyer specializing in digital law, Etienne Drouard, the texts provided that the verification process be carried out by the sites. “This involved giving them identification elements of an Internet user”. This is a “problem of balance between the protection of minors and respect for privacy”claiming that no “Democratic State has not found the solution in this configuration”.
In 2022, ARCOM, after several formal notices, took legal action to request the blocking of five pornographic sites for not having prohibited access by minors. The trial in Paris resulted in mediation between the two parties.
In their defence, the lawyers of these platforms explained that it was “very difficult to find a satisfactory solution for controlling the age of Internet users”. Asked by The crossThomas Rohmer, founder of the Observatory of parenthood and digital education (OPEN), recalls that “several age verification tools already exist but none has been approved by the CNIL”. The same dilemma arose: infringe the law and respect for privacy or expose children to this content. “How can we understand that the hierarchy between the protection of personal data and the protection of children is done to the detriment of children?”.
Among the proposed solutions was the use of a bank card. A proposal rejected by the CNIL, because such an approach involved the transfer of identifying elements to pornographic sites.
The Cnil and Arcom, we learn, have asked – it’s been almost a year – specialized companies to develop solutions to confirm the majority of an Internet user without revealing his identity. “It will work a bit like the control requested by your bank when you make an online purchase, except that this certificate of majority will be anonymous”, affirmed the Minister Delegate in charge of the Digital Transition.
This digital certificate will request a mobile application, on which an Internet user wishing to access a pornographic site will have to confirm his majority. Operators or Internet service providers may be called upon for this purpose.
Porn while waiting to target other sites?
“This identity provider could be public like FranceConnect, or private like a bank or an Internet service provider, which have the age of its customers”, explains Olivier Blazy, professor of computer science at the polytechnic school, in a statement to The cross. This “third party” would be able to provide the porn platform with the age of the user without revealing their identity. The operators, on the other hand, will not know if he wants to connect to a porn site.
Verifying the age of Internet users is a dilemma faced by several Western countries. The technical solutions proposed are often intrusive, infringing the right to privacy. In Australia, the possibility of scanning users’ faces using facial recognition capable of expressing their age has been proposed. In Louisiana, since January, users can no longer access X sites without providing a copy of their identity document.
In The Parisianthe lawyer Etienne Drouard also insisted on the need to extend the solution in France to the other Member States of the European Union, because “the publishers of these sites will not bother to adapt to the dozens of millions of French visitors on their platforms”.
Jean-Noël Barrot affirms that “digital certificate” guarantees the anonymity of users. However, this does not reassure Internet users who fear that this solution is used for surveillance purposes. “And tomorrow, it will be to access other sites?”asks the lawyer Fabrice DiVizio. The delegate minister also revealed the government’s plan to extend this “certificate of majority” alcohol sales sites, “where you only have to declare your date of birth to buy”or social networks, “on which a young person can only register from the age of 13 with the express agreement of his parents”.
Children should have been protected from pornography a long time ago. Child protection=good news.
But choosing the digital identity while requiring identification by credit card was enough is very suspicious.
✅Monitor, Trace and Disconnect➡️Absolute Danger https://t.co/l6IbGwKvoD— Philippe Murer ???????? (@PhilippeMurer) February 5, 2023
On Twitter, Internet users welcome this project with enthusiasm and humor, but also with concern. Some express reluctance as to the effectiveness of this certificate since pornographic content is also available on certain social networks or especially certain instant messengers. Still others draw a parallel between “digital certificate” and “sanitary pass”.