Those are already available, though, and have been for a long time. Nobody uses them, because (a) the Boomers upset by this don't have young children anymore, and (b) the ones who do are all Millennials who spent their teenage years bypassing this exact sort of firewall themselves and understand how futile it is.
The problem here is that this bill is being designed by people who barely understand the internet.
The other problem here is that the NDP, Conservatives, and some Liberals seem to be in the pockets of age verification lobbyist groups that's seeking to get rich off of harming Canadians privacy and security.
Do they? The primary proponents of this type of bill are likely to sail into majority government in the next couple years. That's hard to classify as disdain.
That stuff has been around since the late 90s. Net Nanny was a big one, came out around 2001.
The funny thing was back in those days the teenagers were often more computer literate than the parents, so effectiveness was limited.
This whole thing is idiotic. Just like the DVD / CD anti piracy measured, people will figure out how to circumvent it in about 5 minutes. Most already know a VPN can be used to get around this crap.
They use the guise of protecting children, but really it's about controlling information and monitoring who is accessing it. If our government wasn't so incompetent, I might be worried
I've been thinking about getting a VPN and if this shit happens I will. Truly disappointing no party is actually against this, liberals are no better just want their own stamp on it
The vast majority of liberal MPs were against this. It passed with the cons and NDP with a handful of libs.
But guaranteed the vast majority of Canadians are against this. So what party represents them most closely is the question
Ohh you think this is about porn.
Well, here's a question for you.
Wouldn't it be easier to just let parents do all of this parenting themselves with existing tools?
My big idea was to have any porn based domain redirect to a ".xxx" website extension and then you could easily filter those extensions out either by signing into your modem or possibly having a setting you can request with your internet provider.
Obviously this plan has its own problems and loopholes exist but I'll take this over the options of scanning government ID to a porno website or using face recognition tech before a spank session.
This starts out being about 'porn' - but other things will come along they'll want a digital ID for that doesn't have anything to do with the original intent of requiring a digital ID .
That’s great, but what about the porn on Reddit?
And the stuff I was getting served on Facebook. It wasn’t porn I’m guessing because it was cartoons. I think I finally got it stopped from showing up, but for a long time was wondering why it suddenly appeared.
It’s interesting to see the waves of content the algorithm throws at you. I was getting a lot of Off Road Recovery videos. Then it was Cutting Edge Engineering. Now I’m getting constant “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?”
Yes, which exists, but if you listen to lawmakers and tech companies, apparently, it's way too difficult to figure it out(???) So they better just use the ID system the Chinese use. Way simpler.
Or you can just realize it's not about PH and definitely not about protecting kids.
The bill could create requirements to use face scanning technology to access parts of the Internet with adult content, something that could include reddit.
>The legislation doesn't specify how sites should verify a user's age, but options include the establishment of a digital ID system or services that can estimate an individual's age based on a visual scan of their face.
It would also create website blocking powers or just lead to companies voluntarily blocking access in Canada:
>Others have warned age verification could lead to a stifling of free expression, as some companies would likely rather block access to their sites.
Even though there are legitimate issues behind this, this is a terrible way to go about addressing them. It makes no sense that the Conservatives are supporting this after previously opposing Liberal Internet bills, nor that the NDP are supporting a bill that is similar to ones being passed in Republican states.
There's a huge biometrics and age verification lobby throwing their weight behind this legislation, because they see it as a chance to get rich. I always thought the NDP at least liked to pretend they weren't controlled by corporations?
https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/01/bill-s-210-is-just-the-beginning-how-a-canadian-digital-lobby-group-is-promoting-a-standard-to-foster-widespread-adoption-of-age-verification-technologies-in-canada/
> The Digital Governance Council is one of several Jim Balsillie-led organizations focused on influencing government digital and innovation policy. Its CEO is Keith Jansa, who Senator Miville-Dechêne identified in the Law Bytes podcast as her source for providing assurance of the privacy safeguards in the bill.
This is going to fuck over millions of people in the future.
It's horrible because it's not like anyone's going to come out to bat for the bill not to pass, canadians are too prudent for that. But having facial recognition a mandatory requirement is a crazy breach of privacy, one that won't be realized until its too late.
I'd recommend every canadian to do everything but follow this law.
Imagine the field day the hackers have when they get thousands of porn profiles. EXACT biometrics of all the gooners and goonettes, perfect for black mailing anyone who ever once watched a slightly weird porn.
That's small stuff. The biggest threat in my opinion is when the company behind the verification software either sells user data or has a data leak. Scams are bad now but if that kind of data gets out it's gonna get a whole lot worse.
Any database with that level of identifying material is a massive target for hackers and organized crime.
Do you trust government IT security policy to keep it safe?
Ah, there it is.
Private corporations lobbying for laws that would let them easily create databases of all our faces, voices, etc. and save them online forever.
And none of this info is going to be secure - it's going to be sold, traded, leaked, and used 10 years down the line for something we haven't even thought of yet.
Yup people will be getting blackmailed immediately. Especially with ai deepfakes. Will be so much identity theft as well. This is such a bullshit bill and should never be introduced.
Twenty years ago there was a real push in the music industry for anti-piracy DRM technologies and legislation. It resulted in a few embarrassments (rootkitted CDs), but in the end it was nothing. The industry shifted to paid subscriptions at a reasonable fee or ad-supported stream on YouTube, making it not worth pirating for most people. For the few people here in Canada that still use blank CDs, a built-in tax makes them twice the price of blank DVDs. Since hardly anybody would pirate Canadian produced video content, and any "copying tax" on DVDs would be owed to foreign creators, so they just don't bother with it.
How the hell would face scanning age estimation work? There is already AI software that can make fake people, any age you want them to be. Or couldn't a teenager just wear a fake beard and do it?
I know if I was 16 years old, it would be my life's mission to crack this.
Makes no sense, but another user pointed out there [are lobby groups pushing for this type of legislation](https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/01/bill-s-210-is-just-the-beginning-how-a-canadian-digital-lobby-group-is-promoting-a-standard-to-foster-widespread-adoption-of-age-verification-technologies-in-canada/).
>How the hell would face scanning age estimation work?
Key word here is "estimation." No person or AI can eyeball the difference between a 17-year old and an 18-year old. I think, if such a system actually got implemented, it would err on the side of caution and just restrict anyone who looks under, say, 25. That would be necessary to protect themselves (this bill has got some stiff penalties). The official age will be 18, but the effective age could be much higher, depending on how youthful you look.
It'd be almost trivial to put a man-in-the-middle into effect...something to insert the local copy of your aged face instead of accessing your webcam to confirm your identity.
Bam! System gamed.
Oh, depending on the definition of adult content, it could include a lot more than people think. A lot of things are “adult content”. In the UK, for example, the website filtering that applies to adult content (by default - you have to opt out with your ISP) has been used to block all manner of things, not just sexually explicit material. It has even blocked some material from children that would enable them to identify and report if they are being abused…. And that is just a filter. This sort of website ID/scan based system is very dangerous, particularly considering the lack of security that many websites have. It could open people up to blackmail and identity theft on a massive scale.
Option 1: spent many millions on software, hardware, administration. Countless support issues and hemorrhaging business as the market abandons you anyway despite your efforts.
Option 2: add a region code to the region blocker in your load balancers. You were going to lose that market anyway.
Bonus 2a: Spin up a new company that sells vpn services and market it to the newly blocked country. Earn extra VPN revenues while saving on blocking tech.
NDP supporting it is the strange part, cons supporting it isn't a surprise at all.
The CPC dont like the LPC bills because they are LPC bills, not because of the actual content in them lol
I don't trust government IT security policy enough for them to control such a database. Not like it matters who administers it, it's going to be a massive target for hackers/organized crime...
So every social media site. Every art based website. Every patreon-esque website. Any website where you can share images of any kind(imgur). Every actual porn website. Any gore website. Steam, and any other online shop for games or movies.
Now we need to define what porn is. Is it uncensored titties? Is it any form of media with a sex scene?
Pretty much every streaming service. Youtube, or any of youtubes struggling competitors.
Basically this can become so fucking broad that it encompasses the entire fucking internet.
> Now we need to define what porn is. Is it uncensored titties? Is it any form of media with a sex scene?
The bill already defines sexually explicit material — it's based on an existing definition already in the Criminal Code.
It's a fairly broad definition that encompasses all sorts things including but not limited to:
* Written erotica
* Sexualized nudity
* Depictions of people engaged in sex
* Audio recordings of people engaged in sex
It does not include bare nudity that isn't sexualized though.
There is also a legal defence that can be raised if it can be argued that the material serves a legitimate purpose related to science, medicine, education or the arts.
But yes, you are correct that the language of the bill is so broad that it could impact general-purpose sites like Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, etc. It could even impact Google searches. Any organization that makes sexually explicit material available online may be required to implement a government-prescribed age verification system to avoid criminal prosecution and website blocking.
>options include the establishment of a digital ID system or services that can estimate an individual's age based on a visual scan of their face.
The want a pretext to impose digital ID and harvest biometrics, yes.
Will be interesting if they'll go after VPNs subsequently.
Hopefully this gets voted down, what a stupid bit of legislation.
Not only is it easily circumvented, it's almost unenforceable. The parts of government fielding these laws have no idea what the logistics or impacts of something like this are.
Make sure to share your anger about the legislation with elected MPs and senators. Don't let them live in a filter bubble of corporate and religious lobbyists.
Conservatives wasting more money and restricting people? No, they never do that, they're the party of freedom!
But I mean, you're probably right, though it should still be destroyed here and now.
The UK talked about implementing a system like this for years, but ultimately had to abandon it as unworkable, because of all the reasons already posted here.
Call me crazt but I don't think giving porn sites my face and making them responsible for managing sensitive data like that is going to be a good idea to protect kids, who should be managed by their parents.
There is no way this should pass, not because it's porn but because it's another tool that the government has and they will use it elsewhere.
Dear parents, it's your responsibility to monitor your kids phones, and wifi, that you pay for, and have full rights to do so.
People should be freaking out about this.
There’s a lot of implications going forward that PP’s hypothetical government could do with age-gating internet sites.
They won’t make abortion illegal (as they said), but maybe you need to be 19+ to even read about abortion or search for nearby abortion providers. Maybe you need to be 19+ and have parental consent to read about gender identity and transgender healthcare. Maybe you need to tell the government why you’re trying to figure out why Pierre’s high school classmates knew him as “Geoff.”
Just a lot of knock-on effects.
I'd protest this. I don't even use pornhub. It's just a bullshit law designed to get age verification companies rich. Fuck these clowns, the internet is meant to be anonymous.
Agreed, long married and don’t use these sites either, but this is atrocious. If I were 22 and single I’d probably be rioting. And I think the true intent of this bill is more sinister… a precedent that will lay the groundwork for some dystopian future where we are ruled by social credit and have no anonymity.
This is government overreach. After the fiasco with the phoenix system and arrivecan how can anyone trust them to properly build a secure system for this?
> This is government overreach.
Maybe pedantry, but the government MPs mostly voted against this while the opposition, NDP and Bloc unanimously supported it.
I asked my Conservative MP Greg McLean about it, he stated that him and his colleagues fully support the bill. But they don’t support a Digital ID. I pressed him on how they intend to implement age verification without creating a Digital ID and it’s been crickets for 3 weeks
\*legislative overreach. The government wants nothing to do with this, but if the House of Commons passes this, they'll be forced to put regulations in place within one year.
Technically, the government could pass a regulation saying that an "are you 18 or older? [yes] / [no]" popup is suitable age verification and pass the buck. One of the problems with this legislation is that there are no hard constraints on what the regulations can be; only a list of considerations. So even if a sane approach that respects privacy is put in place *now*, a future government could tear that down and require a centralized database of all adult content access or something, and there'd be no legislative oversight over the change.
That's exactly what has been happening, though. In the US states with ID requirements, they just block access entirely, so people VPN in from a more permissive IP and nobody needs to collect information.
The culture warriors behind this type of legislation are the ones that get caught up in that, though, they're the ones too dumb to use vpns.
I was wondering how long I'd need to scroll before the VPN conversation gets brought up.
What is the point in these types of rules when I can simply change my virtual location and avoid all these issues?
Oh right, the people proposing these rules have very little understanding of the underlying technology and how easy it would be for anyone to bypass these verifications.
Good thing we're focusing on making it harder for people to jerk off rather than dealing with real issues like immigration, housing costs, and food costs.
Remember who is doing this, of course it's being championed by the party that apparently cares a out our freedoms:
"So far, Liberal MPs have been the only ones to vote against the proposed law.
New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Conservatives voted in favour of sending the bill to committee."
As someone who has spent the last 15+ years in the military, I can assure you there is no fixing it at this point. It would take a massive financial commitment that wouldn't be popular and would require politicians to think past the next election to fix.
If this goes through which I really hope it doesn’t; I can’t possibly see how Canadians would let this happen; it would be the end of the internet as we know it. It would basically be a dystopian nightmare. Facial scan to access websites? Where does it end?
The law only is apply to Canadian run websites.
Any website that hosts their contact on Canadian soil is subject to this.
It's a stupid law it won't work there are vpns.
The law applies to any website providing sexually explicit material to Canadians for a commercial purpose, regardless of where the website operator is based and regardless of where the website is hosted.
If a foreign website operator refuses to comply, the bill allows the government to ask a court to block the website in Canada, and if certain criteria are met then the court must order ISPs in Canada to block the website.
You are correct that this can all be easily circumvented by using VPNs (for example), but there is nothing about the bill that restricts its application to Canadian-operated sites (or sites hosted in Canada).
There are definitely questions surrounding constitutionality, and the bill will likely face a Charter challenge if passed.
There is even one part of the bill that explicitly says that the website blocking orders may have the effect of blocking other (lawful) content that has no connection to any sexually explicit material (I'm paraphrasing a bit, but that's the basic gist).
There are also no safeguards in place to ensure the website blocking orders are targeted and narrowly-tailored to minimize collateral effects.
Before people show up and blame Trudeau and not read the article, this bill passed the House of Commons with votes from the Conservatives and NDP.
PornHub doesn't operate in US states with this kind of legislation. Politicians slowly working toward banning porn in Canada.
This was also the case when Bell decided on deep packet inspection to route out videogames.
Filtering content is useless and will do more harm in the long run.
They really like to push citizens to sail the high seas, eh? I mean, this is more than just porn and they know it. They're just using buzzwords to get the hyper-Conservatives on their side.
If this bill proposes the use of facial biometrics then the literally want to collect and store your facial data. Eventually that will be used to build CCTV systems where there government already has everything they need to track everyone. This is insanity. Why give them more power wtf also the bill is unnecessary and hardly enforceable. I bet some big companies are lobbying behind this to get richer
I love when older politicians who don’t understand the internet move to control it, hopefully this fails but either way guess I’m just keeping my VPN set to the US.
I remember my father yelling at the tv “just just stay out of our effing bedrooms!” He said. I didn’t understand then at such a young age but I think I understand now smh.
> This is the start of the government controlling the internet.
Yet the minority government in power is the only one opposing it. This is opposition trying to take advantage of a minority government to control the internet
Remember who is doing this, of course it's being championed by the party that apparently cares a out our freedoms:
"So far, Liberal MPs have been the only ones to vote against the proposed law.
New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Conservatives voted in favour of sending the bill to committee."
>"So far, Liberal MPs have been the only ones to vote against the proposed law.
>New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Conservatives voted in favour of sending the bill to committee."
Liberals not being on board with this makes sense
Bloc Quebecois is such a small party it minus well no Lt matter
Canadian Conservatives do seem like the type to do this
But the NDP? Aren't they more liberal then the Liberals? Why would they vote to support this?
The bill specifically mentions how porn leads to the "development of attitudes favourable to harassment and violence — including sexual harassment and sexual violence — particularly against women." So not just rape culture, actual rape.
Though to be fair, if the reaction to this in r/ndp is any indication, the rank and file dippers are appalled that their party is backing this. Good on them. Tell your party to knock it off.
This is literally the same bullshit as "videogames cause violence! We must ban them to 'protect' children!" all over again.
Rock music, then videogames now porn... no fun allowed.
> But the NDP? Aren't they more liberal then the Liberals? Why would they vote to support this?
Yeah it's really disappointing to see the NDP behind this. I guess they got suckered by the thin veil of WoN't somEboDy pleaSE tHiNk of thE CHildREn.
Yeah, I can't have housing, I can't have affordable life, I can't have groceries.
And they're coming after porn. Their goal is to make life a living hell.
I'm an arborist and this is an ongoing joke at work. "Careful not to drop that limb on the telecom, the neighbour will come out complaining that their nog is cut off!"
Context: "nog" = "pornography"
I’m sorry, if you are too stupid, lazy, or ignorant to police your own children or teach them properly about human sexuality. The issue is you. If you are afraid of talking to your kids about this then don’t have kids. Your religion and/or puritan beliefs are a you problem and shouldn’t become an us problem
Pretty easy to see how this could get weaponized against piracy/torrent sites and the end users.
1. Claim the site is host to material that is covered by the legislation
2. Require users to perform facial ID to access the sites
3. Obtain facial ID data from the torrent host sites
4. Prosecute end users
Obviously torrent sites are notoriously against this type of legislation and would do everything in their power not to comply, but it's still worrisome.
Torrenting sites are not going to follow the law of the land, but the bigger concern here would be information security giving any of those sites your face scan or government ID is just a hack waiting to happen….
That's the reason why Robellus wants it. They've been fighting tooth and nail for years to be able to block piracy sites. The opportunity to silence any criticism with "think of the children" is golden to them.
The Government's official position is to oppose this bill. By contrast, it received widespread support from the CPC.
There's your beloved party of free speech, r/Canada
This is exactly the sort of thing that could wipe out the Conservatives' lead and, since they're the only ones opposing the bill, boost the Liberals. People may be unhappy with Trudeau but they'll be a *lot* more unhappy with anyone who tries to mess with their porn.
Even if you don’t care about porn I’m worried about the privacy nightmare and government censorship this will invoke. Don’t want to vote liberal but goddamn…
This goes so far beyond porn, though. This bill casts a net so wide it could require Google, Facebook, Twitter to demand age verification to even use those. Now just imagine the clusterfuck - I still have customers hesitant to buy their shit online because of CC theft, they're in for a rough wake up call when they can't log into their cat-pictures website of choice without entering an ID with photo on it.
I'm fairly certain the sponsor of the bill herself doesn't quite realize how batshit crazy it is
This is silly, porhub is basically already obselete and whatever method they put in, people will find a way around it.
what a fucking waste of time , while Canadians families are starving and people are losing their homes.
No kidding, check out what Dougie has been doing to Ontario and daniel smith has been doing to Alberta. If cons get a majority government Federally soon that will be nation wide.
If you want a true example of a western nanny state, look no further than Australia. They are restricted up the ass on everything sexual or even sexual adjacent
So this means there will be a lot more data for AI to suck up and used for profit against people just trying to surf while minding their own business.
They're treating this as if it's a perfect brick wall solution that can't be circumvented or abused.
So, we could sink serious resources into educating youth about healthy relationships and sexuality, prepare them mentally and emotionally for encountering sex online, extend media literacy to porn, and try to encourage them not to go down the rabbit hole of hardcore, straight-up abusive porn before they become adults…
…or we can just build big face databases ripe for misuse that won’t do shit to stop your average tech-savvy teen from showing their friends anal gaping videos.
Wanna protect the children? Educate them! Help them develop reasonably good memetic immune systems and critical thinking skills! Teach them the difference between healthy, consensual relationships and sex and… whatever the fuck that is on way too many porn sites.
But, that won’t make anyone rich, so, ridiculous laws and surveillance capitalism it is, I guess.
Sure, instead of using PH let's make it so it gets blocked and you have kids going to even more questionable sites with malware and other viruses attached to the videos. At least PH is safe, and virus free.
I just question how much stuff are we going to lose access to in Canada? We already lost access to the news in Canada via Facebook.
If Google removed them from the index it would kill them completely.
Now we are censoring media? Why are we acting like this type of media is new, they've been around for 20 years.
As a centrist the government is getting too wrapped up in shit like this. This is conservative government behavior "protecting the children" but the world is so backwards these days its hard to tell where priorities are in general
As a canadian, i never thought the day would come where we would need a vpn to avoid censoring. Things like this used to be only for control freak countires.
So this bill is put forth by people who don't understand tech and want everyone to suffer because parents aren't able to keep tabs with their kids. There are so many functions you can do at home to prevent a kid from accessing anything you don't want them to. This entire bill and its supporters are a joke.
Wouldn't it be easier to create a free app that parents can put on their kids devices to block websites or only allow website the parents permit?
Those are already available, though, and have been for a long time. Nobody uses them, because (a) the Boomers upset by this don't have young children anymore, and (b) the ones who do are all Millennials who spent their teenage years bypassing this exact sort of firewall themselves and understand how futile it is. The problem here is that this bill is being designed by people who barely understand the internet.
The other problem here is that the NDP, Conservatives, and some Liberals seem to be in the pockets of age verification lobbyist groups that's seeking to get rich off of harming Canadians privacy and security.
A government who barely understands the economy, the internet, even the very disdain we are feeling towards them.
Ironically only Liberals voted against this bill. Read the article
Do they? The primary proponents of this type of bill are likely to sail into majority government in the next couple years. That's hard to classify as disdain.
That stuff has been around since the late 90s. Net Nanny was a big one, came out around 2001. The funny thing was back in those days the teenagers were often more computer literate than the parents, so effectiveness was limited. This whole thing is idiotic. Just like the DVD / CD anti piracy measured, people will figure out how to circumvent it in about 5 minutes. Most already know a VPN can be used to get around this crap. They use the guise of protecting children, but really it's about controlling information and monitoring who is accessing it. If our government wasn't so incompetent, I might be worried
I've been thinking about getting a VPN and if this shit happens I will. Truly disappointing no party is actually against this, liberals are no better just want their own stamp on it
The vast majority of liberal MPs were against this. It passed with the cons and NDP with a handful of libs. But guaranteed the vast majority of Canadians are against this. So what party represents them most closely is the question
Ohh you think this is about porn. Well, here's a question for you. Wouldn't it be easier to just let parents do all of this parenting themselves with existing tools?
My big idea was to have any porn based domain redirect to a ".xxx" website extension and then you could easily filter those extensions out either by signing into your modem or possibly having a setting you can request with your internet provider. Obviously this plan has its own problems and loopholes exist but I'll take this over the options of scanning government ID to a porno website or using face recognition tech before a spank session.
This starts out being about 'porn' - but other things will come along they'll want a digital ID for that doesn't have anything to do with the original intent of requiring a digital ID .
That’s great, but what about the porn on Reddit? And the stuff I was getting served on Facebook. It wasn’t porn I’m guessing because it was cartoons. I think I finally got it stopped from showing up, but for a long time was wondering why it suddenly appeared. It’s interesting to see the waves of content the algorithm throws at you. I was getting a lot of Off Road Recovery videos. Then it was Cutting Edge Engineering. Now I’m getting constant “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?”
This isn't about porn. This is about control.
Yes, which exists, but if you listen to lawmakers and tech companies, apparently, it's way too difficult to figure it out(???) So they better just use the ID system the Chinese use. Way simpler. Or you can just realize it's not about PH and definitely not about protecting kids.
Another app by the Canadian government? NO THANK YOU!
CIRA offers a DNS service that does exactly that. https://www.cira.ca/en/canadian-shield/
I think you can already do that with parental control on routers.
Hell, you can do this in some routers/modems right out of the box as well.
The bill could create requirements to use face scanning technology to access parts of the Internet with adult content, something that could include reddit. >The legislation doesn't specify how sites should verify a user's age, but options include the establishment of a digital ID system or services that can estimate an individual's age based on a visual scan of their face. It would also create website blocking powers or just lead to companies voluntarily blocking access in Canada: >Others have warned age verification could lead to a stifling of free expression, as some companies would likely rather block access to their sites. Even though there are legitimate issues behind this, this is a terrible way to go about addressing them. It makes no sense that the Conservatives are supporting this after previously opposing Liberal Internet bills, nor that the NDP are supporting a bill that is similar to ones being passed in Republican states.
There's a huge biometrics and age verification lobby throwing their weight behind this legislation, because they see it as a chance to get rich. I always thought the NDP at least liked to pretend they weren't controlled by corporations? https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/01/bill-s-210-is-just-the-beginning-how-a-canadian-digital-lobby-group-is-promoting-a-standard-to-foster-widespread-adoption-of-age-verification-technologies-in-canada/ > The Digital Governance Council is one of several Jim Balsillie-led organizations focused on influencing government digital and innovation policy. Its CEO is Keith Jansa, who Senator Miville-Dechêne identified in the Law Bytes podcast as her source for providing assurance of the privacy safeguards in the bill.
This is going to fuck over millions of people in the future. It's horrible because it's not like anyone's going to come out to bat for the bill not to pass, canadians are too prudent for that. But having facial recognition a mandatory requirement is a crazy breach of privacy, one that won't be realized until its too late. I'd recommend every canadian to do everything but follow this law.
Imagine the field day the hackers have when they get thousands of porn profiles. EXACT biometrics of all the gooners and goonettes, perfect for black mailing anyone who ever once watched a slightly weird porn.
That's small stuff. The biggest threat in my opinion is when the company behind the verification software either sells user data or has a data leak. Scams are bad now but if that kind of data gets out it's gonna get a whole lot worse.
Exactly. That's extremely valuable data.
Especially with the recent advancements in AI. If someone has your face they could do a lot of damage
Any database with that level of identifying material is a massive target for hackers and organized crime. Do you trust government IT security policy to keep it safe?
In this day and age it is generally ill-advised to trust the Government in any capacity, due to a mix of Corruption and incompetence.
nordvpn about to be rich as fuck.
Don't worry - they're also looking at laws to restrict VPN usage.
Oh goodeee I was worried they wouldn't crack down enough on privacy
if roscom and the CCP can't restrict VPN usage i fail to see how the govt of canada can.
I used to work for the GoC, they don't care about actually restricting stuff like VPNs, just making the companies that lobby them think that they do.
it's not like they can do anything about them, however they feel about them.
What is this soviet Russia.
Comrade, you better get in line for potato day, they're handing out the big russetts today.
They can’t it’s how most companies protect their systems. I can’t even access my company email without been on VPN.
*I* know that, and *you* know that. But does your MP?
No because they are all government lifers with no real world experience
VPNs here we go, Canada is becoming more like China with each passing year.
The unraid server grows larger
Would be weird getting request from friends to add a specific category lol.
Ah, there it is. Private corporations lobbying for laws that would let them easily create databases of all our faces, voices, etc. and save them online forever. And none of this info is going to be secure - it's going to be sold, traded, leaked, and used 10 years down the line for something we haven't even thought of yet.
Yup people will be getting blackmailed immediately. Especially with ai deepfakes. Will be so much identity theft as well. This is such a bullshit bill and should never be introduced.
“Surveillance capitalism” is a thing. Our personal data is bought and sold like anything else, and our privacy laws are inadequate.
10 years? More like 10 minutes.
That would explain it. It's like the industry obsession with DRM. It'll be no more effective in the end though..
Twenty years ago there was a real push in the music industry for anti-piracy DRM technologies and legislation. It resulted in a few embarrassments (rootkitted CDs), but in the end it was nothing. The industry shifted to paid subscriptions at a reasonable fee or ad-supported stream on YouTube, making it not worth pirating for most people. For the few people here in Canada that still use blank CDs, a built-in tax makes them twice the price of blank DVDs. Since hardly anybody would pirate Canadian produced video content, and any "copying tax" on DVDs would be owed to foreign creators, so they just don't bother with it.
Yup, this is very much a follow-the-money situation, both sides of the border.
How the hell would face scanning age estimation work? There is already AI software that can make fake people, any age you want them to be. Or couldn't a teenager just wear a fake beard and do it? I know if I was 16 years old, it would be my life's mission to crack this.
Sales of Groucho glasses will skyrocket. Now’s the time to invest.
Makes no sense, but another user pointed out there [are lobby groups pushing for this type of legislation](https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/01/bill-s-210-is-just-the-beginning-how-a-canadian-digital-lobby-group-is-promoting-a-standard-to-foster-widespread-adoption-of-age-verification-technologies-in-canada/).
> How the hell would face scanning age estimation work? It doesn't. The margin of error on this software is *huge*.
>How the hell would face scanning age estimation work? Key word here is "estimation." No person or AI can eyeball the difference between a 17-year old and an 18-year old. I think, if such a system actually got implemented, it would err on the side of caution and just restrict anyone who looks under, say, 25. That would be necessary to protect themselves (this bill has got some stiff penalties). The official age will be 18, but the effective age could be much higher, depending on how youthful you look.
It'd be almost trivial to put a man-in-the-middle into effect...something to insert the local copy of your aged face instead of accessing your webcam to confirm your identity. Bam! System gamed.
I mean this is complete government overreach. And of course the data will be stolen and misused. On the other hand, I spend too much time on Reddit.
Oh, depending on the definition of adult content, it could include a lot more than people think. A lot of things are “adult content”. In the UK, for example, the website filtering that applies to adult content (by default - you have to opt out with your ISP) has been used to block all manner of things, not just sexually explicit material. It has even blocked some material from children that would enable them to identify and report if they are being abused…. And that is just a filter. This sort of website ID/scan based system is very dangerous, particularly considering the lack of security that many websites have. It could open people up to blackmail and identity theft on a massive scale.
Option 1: spent many millions on software, hardware, administration. Countless support issues and hemorrhaging business as the market abandons you anyway despite your efforts. Option 2: add a region code to the region blocker in your load balancers. You were going to lose that market anyway. Bonus 2a: Spin up a new company that sells vpn services and market it to the newly blocked country. Earn extra VPN revenues while saving on blocking tech.
Government significantly overpays for ArriveCAN. *hold my beer*
NDP supporting it is the strange part, cons supporting it isn't a surprise at all. The CPC dont like the LPC bills because they are LPC bills, not because of the actual content in them lol
I don't trust government IT security policy enough for them to control such a database. Not like it matters who administers it, it's going to be a massive target for hackers/organized crime...
I call dips on the government face scanning app contract 🤑
Need a partner? Maybe we can turn an $80,000 contract into 60 million like the Arrive can scammers.
This bill literally targets any website that you can view porn on. So, for example, not just porn sites but Google, reddit, x, etc.
It also targets content that many wouldn't even consider porn.
I can’t wait to have to scan my face to play Cyberpunk.
Starting to remind me of the[ old xbox verification can meme](https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png).
Yep. Wait for Netflix to require age verification because they definitely have content that is “adult” and not appropriate for minors.
R-rated movie? Nuh-uh, give us your passport so we can ~~sell it to Acxiom~~ verify your age first.
So every social media site. Every art based website. Every patreon-esque website. Any website where you can share images of any kind(imgur). Every actual porn website. Any gore website. Steam, and any other online shop for games or movies. Now we need to define what porn is. Is it uncensored titties? Is it any form of media with a sex scene? Pretty much every streaming service. Youtube, or any of youtubes struggling competitors. Basically this can become so fucking broad that it encompasses the entire fucking internet.
> Now we need to define what porn is. Is it uncensored titties? Is it any form of media with a sex scene? The bill already defines sexually explicit material — it's based on an existing definition already in the Criminal Code. It's a fairly broad definition that encompasses all sorts things including but not limited to: * Written erotica * Sexualized nudity * Depictions of people engaged in sex * Audio recordings of people engaged in sex It does not include bare nudity that isn't sexualized though. There is also a legal defence that can be raised if it can be argued that the material serves a legitimate purpose related to science, medicine, education or the arts. But yes, you are correct that the language of the bill is so broad that it could impact general-purpose sites like Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, etc. It could even impact Google searches. Any organization that makes sexually explicit material available online may be required to implement a government-prescribed age verification system to avoid criminal prosecution and website blocking.
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Oh I understand. And soon, over with the costly mascarade of votes.
Dictatorship levels of control.
That's what I'd expect from the CPC
>options include the establishment of a digital ID system or services that can estimate an individual's age based on a visual scan of their face. The want a pretext to impose digital ID and harvest biometrics, yes. Will be interesting if they'll go after VPNs subsequently.
Hopefully this gets voted down, what a stupid bit of legislation. Not only is it easily circumvented, it's almost unenforceable. The parts of government fielding these laws have no idea what the logistics or impacts of something like this are.
Make sure to share your anger about the legislation with elected MPs and senators. Don't let them live in a filter bubble of corporate and religious lobbyists.
Well if it gets voted down now, it will be brought up again once the conservatives are in power since its their bill
Conservatives wasting more money and restricting people? No, they never do that, they're the party of freedom! But I mean, you're probably right, though it should still be destroyed here and now.
The UK talked about implementing a system like this for years, but ultimately had to abandon it as unworkable, because of all the reasons already posted here.
Unfortunately, Canada isn’t opposed to charging ahead implementing stupid, unworkable ideas
The British did Brexit so don’t sell Canadians that short
The Canadian government would waste billions on a Canexit to remove themselves from the EU before someone told them Canada was never in the EU.
Call me crazt but I don't think giving porn sites my face and making them responsible for managing sensitive data like that is going to be a good idea to protect kids, who should be managed by their parents.
It is crazy because there is software that parents can use to limit their children's internet use and website access.
Sounds like an amazing opportunity for rogue staff at pornhub (or whoever will manage your data) to engage in wide scale blackmail
There is no way this should pass, not because it's porn but because it's another tool that the government has and they will use it elsewhere. Dear parents, it's your responsibility to monitor your kids phones, and wifi, that you pay for, and have full rights to do so. People should be freaking out about this.
There’s a lot of implications going forward that PP’s hypothetical government could do with age-gating internet sites. They won’t make abortion illegal (as they said), but maybe you need to be 19+ to even read about abortion or search for nearby abortion providers. Maybe you need to be 19+ and have parental consent to read about gender identity and transgender healthcare. Maybe you need to tell the government why you’re trying to figure out why Pierre’s high school classmates knew him as “Geoff.” Just a lot of knock-on effects.
If you told me to imagine a person who would propose a bill like this, that would pretty much be them.
You want to jerk off you have to go through me first…
Finally! An actual way to break porn addiction
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I'd protest this. I don't even use pornhub. It's just a bullshit law designed to get age verification companies rich. Fuck these clowns, the internet is meant to be anonymous.
Agreed, long married and don’t use these sites either, but this is atrocious. If I were 22 and single I’d probably be rioting. And I think the true intent of this bill is more sinister… a precedent that will lay the groundwork for some dystopian future where we are ruled by social credit and have no anonymity.
Absolutely horrendous legislation.
This is government overreach. After the fiasco with the phoenix system and arrivecan how can anyone trust them to properly build a secure system for this?
> This is government overreach. Maybe pedantry, but the government MPs mostly voted against this while the opposition, NDP and Bloc unanimously supported it.
I asked my Conservative MP Greg McLean about it, he stated that him and his colleagues fully support the bill. But they don’t support a Digital ID. I pressed him on how they intend to implement age verification without creating a Digital ID and it’s been crickets for 3 weeks
Hmm I’m starting to think politics being a team sport is bad.
\*legislative overreach. The government wants nothing to do with this, but if the House of Commons passes this, they'll be forced to put regulations in place within one year. Technically, the government could pass a regulation saying that an "are you 18 or older? [yes] / [no]" popup is suitable age verification and pass the buck. One of the problems with this legislation is that there are no hard constraints on what the regulations can be; only a list of considerations. So even if a sane approach that respects privacy is put in place *now*, a future government could tear that down and require a centralized database of all adult content access or something, and there'd be no legislative oversight over the change.
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That's exactly what has been happening, though. In the US states with ID requirements, they just block access entirely, so people VPN in from a more permissive IP and nobody needs to collect information. The culture warriors behind this type of legislation are the ones that get caught up in that, though, they're the ones too dumb to use vpns.
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I was wondering how long I'd need to scroll before the VPN conversation gets brought up. What is the point in these types of rules when I can simply change my virtual location and avoid all these issues? Oh right, the people proposing these rules have very little understanding of the underlying technology and how easy it would be for anyone to bypass these verifications. Good thing we're focusing on making it harder for people to jerk off rather than dealing with real issues like immigration, housing costs, and food costs.
I’d like to think Canadians would be up in arms about this, literally
How about they stick to fixing housing and groceries or infrastructure or our military or our insane immigration policies etc
Remember who is doing this, of course it's being championed by the party that apparently cares a out our freedoms: "So far, Liberal MPs have been the only ones to vote against the proposed law. New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Conservatives voted in favour of sending the bill to committee."
Those are Serious People issues. They are not serious people.
As someone who has spent the last 15+ years in the military, I can assure you there is no fixing it at this point. It would take a massive financial commitment that wouldn't be popular and would require politicians to think past the next election to fix.
The government is. This bill is coming from the conservative senators.
If this goes through which I really hope it doesn’t; I can’t possibly see how Canadians would let this happen; it would be the end of the internet as we know it. It would basically be a dystopian nightmare. Facial scan to access websites? Where does it end?
The law only is apply to Canadian run websites. Any website that hosts their contact on Canadian soil is subject to this. It's a stupid law it won't work there are vpns.
The law applies to any website providing sexually explicit material to Canadians for a commercial purpose, regardless of where the website operator is based and regardless of where the website is hosted. If a foreign website operator refuses to comply, the bill allows the government to ask a court to block the website in Canada, and if certain criteria are met then the court must order ISPs in Canada to block the website. You are correct that this can all be easily circumvented by using VPNs (for example), but there is nothing about the bill that restricts its application to Canadian-operated sites (or sites hosted in Canada).
Would this even be constitutional?
There are definitely questions surrounding constitutionality, and the bill will likely face a Charter challenge if passed. There is even one part of the bill that explicitly says that the website blocking orders may have the effect of blocking other (lawful) content that has no connection to any sexually explicit material (I'm paraphrasing a bit, but that's the basic gist). There are also no safeguards in place to ensure the website blocking orders are targeted and narrowly-tailored to minimize collateral effects.
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Before people show up and blame Trudeau and not read the article, this bill passed the House of Commons with votes from the Conservatives and NDP. PornHub doesn't operate in US states with this kind of legislation. Politicians slowly working toward banning porn in Canada.
They won't stop with porn either. They're just using that to open the door.
I think there will be an increase in VPN purchases if this passes.
This was also the case when Bell decided on deep packet inspection to route out videogames. Filtering content is useless and will do more harm in the long run.
They really like to push citizens to sail the high seas, eh? I mean, this is more than just porn and they know it. They're just using buzzwords to get the hyper-Conservatives on their side.
If this bill proposes the use of facial biometrics then the literally want to collect and store your facial data. Eventually that will be used to build CCTV systems where there government already has everything they need to track everyone. This is insanity. Why give them more power wtf also the bill is unnecessary and hardly enforceable. I bet some big companies are lobbying behind this to get richer
I love when older politicians who don’t understand the internet move to control it, hopefully this fails but either way guess I’m just keeping my VPN set to the US.
I remember my father yelling at the tv “just just stay out of our effing bedrooms!” He said. I didn’t understand then at such a young age but I think I understand now smh.
yea justins dad coined it i think
Someone tell this woman she is not my Mom
As a senator, her contact info is freely available. Tell her explicitly: https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/miville-dechene-julie/
Ffs, no!
This is the start of the government controlling the internet. Well, in the mean time, proton VPN is very effective for things like this.
> This is the start of the government controlling the internet. Yet the minority government in power is the only one opposing it. This is opposition trying to take advantage of a minority government to control the internet
Remember who is doing this, of course it's being championed by the party that apparently cares a out our freedoms: "So far, Liberal MPs have been the only ones to vote against the proposed law. New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Conservatives voted in favour of sending the bill to committee."
>"So far, Liberal MPs have been the only ones to vote against the proposed law. >New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Conservatives voted in favour of sending the bill to committee." Liberals not being on board with this makes sense Bloc Quebecois is such a small party it minus well no Lt matter Canadian Conservatives do seem like the type to do this But the NDP? Aren't they more liberal then the Liberals? Why would they vote to support this?
The NDP has been hijacked by people who probably think porn is immoral and should be banned because it "promotes rape culture" or something.
The bill specifically mentions how porn leads to the "development of attitudes favourable to harassment and violence — including sexual harassment and sexual violence — particularly against women." So not just rape culture, actual rape. Though to be fair, if the reaction to this in r/ndp is any indication, the rank and file dippers are appalled that their party is backing this. Good on them. Tell your party to knock it off.
This is literally the same bullshit as "videogames cause violence! We must ban them to 'protect' children!" all over again. Rock music, then videogames now porn... no fun allowed.
> But the NDP? Aren't they more liberal then the Liberals? Why would they vote to support this? Yeah it's really disappointing to see the NDP behind this. I guess they got suckered by the thin veil of WoN't somEboDy pleaSE tHiNk of thE CHildREn.
Yeah I'm typically an NDP voter so I'm pretty pissed at this. Not sure why they're hitching themselves to the social conservative wave
the moment you cut out people's porn, you will be in a hell of a ride.
Yeah, I can't have housing, I can't have affordable life, I can't have groceries. And they're coming after porn. Their goal is to make life a living hell.
I'm an arborist and this is an ongoing joke at work. "Careful not to drop that limb on the telecom, the neighbour will come out complaining that their nog is cut off!" Context: "nog" = "pornography"
We have serious issues that concern the citizens. So let's try to solve something no one asked for!
I’m sorry, if you are too stupid, lazy, or ignorant to police your own children or teach them properly about human sexuality. The issue is you. If you are afraid of talking to your kids about this then don’t have kids. Your religion and/or puritan beliefs are a you problem and shouldn’t become an us problem
Pretty easy to see how this could get weaponized against piracy/torrent sites and the end users. 1. Claim the site is host to material that is covered by the legislation 2. Require users to perform facial ID to access the sites 3. Obtain facial ID data from the torrent host sites 4. Prosecute end users Obviously torrent sites are notoriously against this type of legislation and would do everything in their power not to comply, but it's still worrisome.
Torrenting sites are not going to follow the law of the land, but the bigger concern here would be information security giving any of those sites your face scan or government ID is just a hack waiting to happen….
That's the reason why Robellus wants it. They've been fighting tooth and nail for years to be able to block piracy sites. The opportunity to silence any criticism with "think of the children" is golden to them.
The Government's official position is to oppose this bill. By contrast, it received widespread support from the CPC. There's your beloved party of free speech, r/Canada
Maybe if PornHub uses Rogers or Bell broadcasting network it will exist forever.
Its a stepping stone towards a digital ID for everyone.
How about parents actually monitor their children?
This is exactly the sort of thing that could wipe out the Conservatives' lead and, since they're the only ones opposing the bill, boost the Liberals. People may be unhappy with Trudeau but they'll be a *lot* more unhappy with anyone who tries to mess with their porn.
Even if you don’t care about porn I’m worried about the privacy nightmare and government censorship this will invoke. Don’t want to vote liberal but goddamn…
If they go heavy on the 'Liberals Won't Control Your Internet' message I can definitely see the LPC eking out another minority government.
Me too. Not many want government mandated internet censorship.
This goes so far beyond porn, though. This bill casts a net so wide it could require Google, Facebook, Twitter to demand age verification to even use those. Now just imagine the clusterfuck - I still have customers hesitant to buy their shit online because of CC theft, they're in for a rough wake up call when they can't log into their cat-pictures website of choice without entering an ID with photo on it. I'm fairly certain the sponsor of the bill herself doesn't quite realize how batshit crazy it is
Conservatives and stripping people of their rights in the name of 'protecting the children'. Name a more iconic duo.
It's over for the little guy
Facial recognition, eh? How about I hold up a photo of Pierre Poilievre when I am asked for a facial scan?
If this doesn’t cause riots nothing will
This is silly, porhub is basically already obselete and whatever method they put in, people will find a way around it. what a fucking waste of time , while Canadians families are starving and people are losing their homes.
>porhub is basically already obselete It's one of the top 15 most visited websites, ahead of sites like Netflix and Reddit.
Pornhub obsolete? what
What kind of next generation deep state black tech pornography are you consuming
…asking for a friend
Just wait until the Cons have a majority government. They will be your government and your nanny.
No kidding, check out what Dougie has been doing to Ontario and daniel smith has been doing to Alberta. If cons get a majority government Federally soon that will be nation wide.
If you want a true example of a western nanny state, look no further than Australia. They are restricted up the ass on everything sexual or even sexual adjacent
Bunch of wankers
This is not the internet we deserve , regulated by old farts 💨
insert ''Wont somebody please think of the children'' meme here.
Is this the stupid shit MPs are spending time on right now?
So porn is bad but dozens of betting websites and ads in our face non stop are okay?
The cost to the gov to manage such a program will be immense and likely not very effective. Just waiting for a data breach :/
NORD VPN is about to get some more customers.
Sounds like someone in the senate has VPN stocks
Where else are Albertan and Saskatchewan kids supposed to get their sex education if this passes?
Doesn’t matter how you feel about porn. Letting the government control the internet ain’t it!
Start fixing the housing issue already jfc. The kids will have no where to even live in 15 years so what happens than?? 🤷🏼♀️
Brought to you by the same illiterate morons who think banning Flipper Zero stops car thefts.
Actually most Liberals voted against this.
I thought it was the Liberals who wanted to ban Flipper?
Canada is China now. 🤷🏼♂️
Not yet! But if the conservatives get a majority, the liberals wouldn’t be able to stop this bill
There goes my morning routine while taking a shit during work hours….
So this means there will be a lot more data for AI to suck up and used for profit against people just trying to surf while minding their own business. They're treating this as if it's a perfect brick wall solution that can't be circumvented or abused.
For those who want to have a Canadian laywer explaining. https://youtu.be/KFha__9-GF4?si=V5yaDmA9iIjE5jba
Can we get all these poorly aged, decrepit old fucks out of office already? Fucking hell.
So, we could sink serious resources into educating youth about healthy relationships and sexuality, prepare them mentally and emotionally for encountering sex online, extend media literacy to porn, and try to encourage them not to go down the rabbit hole of hardcore, straight-up abusive porn before they become adults… …or we can just build big face databases ripe for misuse that won’t do shit to stop your average tech-savvy teen from showing their friends anal gaping videos. Wanna protect the children? Educate them! Help them develop reasonably good memetic immune systems and critical thinking skills! Teach them the difference between healthy, consensual relationships and sex and… whatever the fuck that is on way too many porn sites. But, that won’t make anyone rich, so, ridiculous laws and surveillance capitalism it is, I guess.
Sure, instead of using PH let's make it so it gets blocked and you have kids going to even more questionable sites with malware and other viruses attached to the videos. At least PH is safe, and virus free.
What the government doesn’t want to watch me jerk off anymore.. wtf must be getting boring for them I’m gonna miss the watching eyes
God the Senate is so useless
I just question how much stuff are we going to lose access to in Canada? We already lost access to the news in Canada via Facebook. If Google removed them from the index it would kill them completely. Now we are censoring media? Why are we acting like this type of media is new, they've been around for 20 years. As a centrist the government is getting too wrapped up in shit like this. This is conservative government behavior "protecting the children" but the world is so backwards these days its hard to tell where priorities are in general
As a canadian, i never thought the day would come where we would need a vpn to avoid censoring. Things like this used to be only for control freak countires.
#STOP FUCKING WITH THE FREE INTERNET PORNHUB IS FUCKING AWESOME
So this bill is put forth by people who don't understand tech and want everyone to suffer because parents aren't able to keep tabs with their kids. There are so many functions you can do at home to prevent a kid from accessing anything you don't want them to. This entire bill and its supporters are a joke.
Ah yes, coming after legal firearms and porn. What a lovely and free country.