Age Verification Supporters Continue to Rely on Disinformation to Push Bill S-210

Supporters of age verification have long had problems of providing evidence that supports their theory, so disinformation continues to be relied on.

Canada’s age verification legislation, also known as Bill S-210, is a major threat to Canadian privacy and free speech. The technology envisioned to be used is both ineffective and a threat to the privacy of Canadians everywhere. What’s more, it’s also a constitutional nightmare while threatening to suppress LGBTQ+ content. Supporters have tried to push back against all this evidence and expert opinion, but to say that their efforts are laughable would be an understatement.

Of course, that’s not going to stop them from trying to advocate for a fundamentally terrible bill. Joel R. McConvey of Biometric Update apparently took a crack at this. Let’s just say that the most charitable interpretation of his effort is that he may need to lay off the crack more than anything else. In his first salvo, McConvey argued that there is evidence to show that age verification is effective. This is what he argued:

Critics continue to insist age verification is ineffective despite evidence

Writing for the Canadian Bar Association, Dale Smith quotes an allegation by Aislin Jackson, policy staff counsel at the BC Civil Liberties Association, that in drafting Bill S-210, Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne “appears to have worked with the age verification industry” and “took its assurances around things like age-estimation AI as being workable without privacy infringement.”

One would hope a senator drafting an age verification bill would consult the age verification industry, and it is true that Sen. Miville-Dechêne has engaged with age verification providers and advocates. Their statistics, she says, should be more than enough to shoot down the notion that age verification is not technically feasible without serious privacy violations.

In a Substack post from March 2024, written in response to a Globe and Mail editorial about Bill S-210, Miville-Dechêne notes developments on age assurance in the EU and UK, and quotes the Age Verification Providers’ Association’s brief to the Senate testifying that “age verification can be designed to protect completely the identity of the users, by separating the age verification process from the age restricted websites which apply it, and by not retaining any personal identity data after checks have been completed.”

So, to put it another way, McConvey argues that there’s lots of evidence to support the theory that age verification is effective. What evidence did he use? The very convincing evidence that the companies pushing to sell their products told them so. After all, if you can’t believe that evidence, what can you believe? That’s… really what this idiot just argued.

Now, I didn’t think this needed to be explained (again), but this is the level of intelligence we are dealing with when it comes to people pushing for age verification laws. What McConvey provided was not called “evidence”. What McConvey provided is called a “sales pitch”. It’s the kind of thing that should be put to the test, not something that you treat as a conclusion.

As for the quote from the senator, the legislation in question provides absolutely no protection against those who decide to retain that personal information in the first place. All the legislation does is as “pretty please” and that’s the end of it. What’s more, existing privacy laws provide no real protection against abuse, either. Instead, all it allows the government to do is to get a privacy commissioner (or multiple) to send strongly worded letters whenever the law is violated. That’s it. When it comes to any real protection of that personal information, Canadian citizens are left on their devices to take the law into their own hands and litigate, putting up the money to fund anything and being burdened with proving that damages occurred. It’s a state of affairs that is unacceptable and has been unacceptable for more than half a decade now.

McConvey’s idiocy doesn’t end there. He goes on to say this:

S-210 ‘most dangerous Canadian Internet bill you’ve never heard of’: Geist

Objections from legal and civil rights experts say the legislation falls victim to the trap of believing technology can fix everything.

However, they often fall back on the “ineffective” argument, fail to factor in retention, refer to outdated testing data, or outright conflate biometric methods with privacy violations.

Um, I hate to break it to you, but biometric data is, in fact, personal information. In fact, many classify it as highly sensitive personal information because once it is compromised, you can’t exactly get new biometric information that’s different from the old one. It’s not exactly practical to change your fingerprints and your face should it get misused. This is entry level knowledge in the world of privacy rights and McConvey couldn’t even pass that threshold.

Moreover, McConvey is clearly being forced to rely on straw man arguments because I’ve been following this stuff closely and nowhere that I saw did anyone say that “biometric methods” is “privacy violations”. McConvey never cited when that argument was made. An actual argument is that collected biometric data on people can be misused and there are no real protections (re: fines) against that misuse. It’s not surprising because there are no counterarguments to the real arguments in the first place, so it’s unsurprising that a supporter has to rely on such tactics in the first place.

A lot of us fall back on the ineffective argument because the technology is actually ineffective. Once VPN and anonymous technology is thrown into the mix, the age verification technology is rendered worthless. You know what the counterargument from supporters to that is? That people are too stupid to figure all that out. I’m not joking, that was their only argument against that response. It doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

I’m not sure what McConvey is referring to when he said “fail to factor in retention”. My best guess that he honestly believes that private third party companies won’t misuse that information and will destroy the data they collect afterwards. Again, though, there are no government penalties for failure to do so. At most, it’s a wagging of a finger and an “oh you” response. This while such information could theoretically fetch millions on the shady data broker market afterwards. For anyone with two brain cells to rub together, that is unacceptable.

As for McConvey’s argument of “refer to outdated testing data”, I mean, the obvious response is “what makes the data outdated?” The chemical formula for water is H2O. That’s really old knowledge. It still holds true. Just because the data might be older doesn’t make it untrue.

Even if you were to rely on that argument and think it has merit, we can refer to real world examples from this year alone to show why age verification technology is a privacy nightmare. Back in May, an Australian age verification technology was breached by hackers. 1 million people had their information compromised as a result of that. Just two weeks ago, gun manufacturers were busted misusing people’s personal information for political purposes. That is practical real world examples of how personal information can be misused, whether by unauthorized third parties or by the very people charged with collecting that data. Is two weeks old new enough for you?

Going back to the beginning of the article, McConvey wrote this:

The question of effective age verification in Canada increasingly has ramifications beyond the beaver. There is ongoing debate on whether or not age assurance measures for adult content online violate privacy rights, or make it easier to suppress LGBTQ+ content and other material geared for marginalized groups.

The ironic part about this is the fact that McConvey never addressed how age verification laws could suppress LGBTQ+ content. The above is literally the only mention of that. I don’t blame McConvey because there are no counterarguments to that. Those that push these so-called “child safety” bills have long admitted that suppressing things like LGBTQ+ content is the entire point of these kinds of legislation. Supporters have long argued that age verification laws are little more than a stepping stone to a full ban on porn, rather than keeping “kids” away from “porn” being the end goal. This is what they are straight up admitting to and there are no counterarguments to this.

If that weren’t enough, some countries, after pushing for age verification laws, have already begun the process of expanding age verification laws to other pet projects. This includes slapping age verification laws on social media in general or pushing to include video games. That’s just what we have become aware of so far. Who knows what other forms of speech government and age verification advocates hope to suppress next.

Critics have damn good reasons to be wary of these efforts. Simply put, we are getting into the business of government censoring otherwise legally protected speech. For anyone who supports freedom of expression, that alone raises alarm bells. As much as supporters of these laws are afraid to admit, pornography in general, when proper consent is given, is, in fact, free speech. No one is forcing you to consume that kind of content. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. When you start getting into the business of dictating what legally protected speech people can and cannot watch or otherwise consume, people will start to have problems with that. This is not rocket science.

McConvey might try to argue that standards are being worked on, but all that is is a self-defeating argument that says that the technology is not ready. If the technology isn’t ready, why is Canada forcing companies to use that technology in the first place through these age verification laws? I’m convinced that such technology is never going to be ready for prime time, but even McConvey basically admits that the technology, and the standards governing such technology, is not ready for prime time.

Finally, McConvey conveniently side steps the constitutional questions surrounding age verification laws. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects Canadian citizens from the government suppressing or outright censoring otherwise legally protected speech. What these age verification bills aims to do is, well, exactly that: suppress otherwise legally protected speech. This means that these age verification laws are highly vulnerable to a Charter challenge.

McConvey’s article is bad and he should feel bad for publishing it. It’s just further evidence that concludes that there are no viable defences of these age verification laws. It’s an unconstitutional mess in the first place, relies on technology that simply doesn’t exist, is being forced onto the Canadian public, is a privacy nightmare, and likely to get hit with a Charter challenge once these laws are brought into force. McConvey tried to defend the legislation, but failed completely in the task. Instead, he relies on straw man argument’s, sales pitches, ignoring some of the other concerns, and the argument that “they are working on it”. For any sane Canadian out there concerned about these issues, that simply isn’t good enough. As a result, McConvey inadvertently reinforced the notion that there are no viable counterarguments to the concerns levied against these age verification laws. This is an unintended consequence, just like the only thing age verification laws will likely unleash onto the rest of Canada.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.