The government had promised to quickly test a device for verifying the age of Internet users visiting a pornographic site, as provided for in the July 2020 law, which has not been applied and deemed inapplicable by many experts. As a reminder, according to this text, pornographic sites are obliged to “effectively control the age of their visitors”, knowing that the only declaration to be validated with a click, with which almost all of these sites are satisfied, is insufficient. Thus, from this month of March, a first verification system will be tested in “double anonymity”.
The principle of double anonymity
“We are working to bring out an age verification solution that respects a principle of double anonymity […] Whoever provides the certificate of majority does not know what it will be used for. It can be a telecom operator, a digital identity provider or any other organization capable of attesting to a person’s majority. And the site on which the certificate is used does not know the identity of the person. This is the principle of double anonymity” explained yesterday Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister Delegate in charge of Digital.
While the Cnil and Arcom have yet to publish their opinion on the recommended technical solution, the Minister takes them by surprise by attesting that “in the opinion of both Arcom and Cnil, it is the most robust system, not only to solve once and for all the question of age verification on pornographic sites, but possibly to the future to perform other age checks on other services that we want to protect our children from”. However, it is admitted by the Cnil itself that among the many solutions devised to control the age of Internet users, none is perfect.
A technical puzzle
This is a technical and ethical puzzle with respect to privacy, fundamental freedoms and issues related to the use of VPNs, for example. In the United Kingdom, a device of the same kind was already considered and tested, before the law was abandoned given the technical difficulties in verifying the age of visitors in a relevant manner. “What we are preparing is a system that will be robust enough to be unassailable”, concluded for his part Jean-Noël Barrot. The tests in question will begin at the end of March and will be implemented by a few companies in the sector, without further details.
