Our role in Australia’s Age Assurance Technology Trial
Illuminate Tech are delighted to announce our participation in the Australian Government’s Age Assurance Technology Trial, as part of a consortium led by the Age Check Certification Scheme. You can find the Australian Government’s announcement here.
The Trial represents a significant commitment from the Australian Government to ensure that their policy proposals designed to protect children online are effective, proportionate, and informed by robust evidence.
Illuminate Tech co-founders George Billinge and Dr. Asad Ali will be responsible for leading the delivery of two Work Packages. George will lead Work Package One: Data, Ethics & Impartiality. Asad will co-lead Work Package Two: Context of Use, Evaluation Design & Validation. We are grateful to have our unique expertise in this field recognised by being invited to help deliver the Trial, which will inform global approaches to age assurance. We have already begun our work, and will provide ongoing updates over the next eight months.
Why does age assurance matter?
One in three internet users is a child, but the internet was not designed with children in mind. Governments around the world are increasingly waking up to the extent and severity of online harms to children and legislating to place a duty of care on online services.
The root causes of online harms are complex. Some online services are designed to incentivise their users to act in ways that may not be inherently harmful, but can combine to create risky online environments. These incentives include:
Encouraging users to expand the size of their networks;
Encouraging users to spend as much time on their services as possible;
Encouraging users to engage as much as possible with other users, or with content generated by other users.
Such design decisions can help build compelling online platforms full of entertaining or informative content and experiences. However, they also introduce a number of potential risks to children, which are commonly categorised using the 4 Cs: content, contact, conduct, and commerce.
Age assurance technologies have emerged as a tool to enable online services to either prevent children from accessing harmful content, or provide children with age-appropriate experiences. Age assurance does not always look like a hard “age gate.” In fact, platforms that decide to block access to children to avoid doing the work of providing safer online experiences for them may be unduly infringing on children's fundamental rights. However, where age assurance tools are implemented in a proportionate, risk-based manner, they can form an important part of a broad approach to offer children the opportunities of life online while experiencing a lower risk of harm.
What’s so hard about age assurance?
As momentum has gathered around regulating online services, debates around the merits and drawbacks of age assurance have gained traction. The need to offer children greater protection from harm must be balanced with the impact of age assurance on fundamental rights – including the rights of children themselves.
Alongside the impact on children’s rights, the impact of age assurance on the rights to privacy and freedom of expression is often highlighted. Proposals from data protection regulators such as CNIL in France and the AEPD in Spain, alongside technological innovations, are encouraging the adoption of approaches to age assurance that prioritise data minimisation, for example using zero-knowledge proofs or performing the age check on-device. Such approaches prioritise sharing no personal data with the online service, aside from an anonymised token containing only the users age or age-range (e.g. 18+).
Concerns around freedom of expression are linked to concerns surrounding privacy, as privacy often serves as a pre-requisite to freedom of expression – particularly in online environments. The perceived impact of these technologies on privacy may also have an impact on people’s ability to express themselves freely.
Finally, in order to justify the implementation of age assurance, it is vital that there is good evidence that age assurance technologies work effectively.
To address these concerns, transparency is vital. Providing accurate information in accessible language about how age assurance systems operate, and the safeguards they have in place to protect user privacy, is an important step in reassuring users that they can trust these tools and that their deployment is worthwhile.
Ultimately, it is for democratically elected governments to determine their approach to age assurance, in consultation with children, civil society, industry and academia. It is our role to ensure that government officials and regulators have the best possible quality evidence from which to develop those policies.
Illuminate Tech’s role in Australia’s Age Assurance Technology Trial
At Illuminate Tech, our background in online safety regulation gives us a nuanced understanding of the challenges faced by policy makers. We are experienced in navigating challenging trade-offs, considering factors such as the risk of bias against marginalised peoples or the need to safeguard children’s rights. At the same time, we are equipped with world-leading technical expertise in age assurance and digital identity technologies, and are motivated by a firm commitment to help foster a safer, more trusted internet.
We’re delighted to have this expertise recognised by being invited to lead two crucial Work Packages of Australia’s Age Assurance Technology Trial, and look forward to sharing updates over the coming months.
