Government look to impose mandatory age verification on UK Smartphones

The government’s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Lisa Nandy, has revealed that they’re planning to introduce new legislation that will have the power to force the likes of Google and Apple to introduce mandatory Age Verification measures on Smartphones. The goal is the stop children sharing nude images of themselves, but it will also impact adult users.

Readers may recall that the government had been trying to reach a voluntary agreement over the issue with Apple and Google for the past few months, which follows on from their recent moves to ban children under the age of 16 from social media (here and here).

The previous Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, said at the time that he wanted Britain to be the first country in the world to make it “impossible for children to take, share or view nude images”. The statement also set a 3-month deadline to make meaningful progress, but as above, the progress has been slow and so the government are now looking at a legislated solution.

According to The Guardian, the talks are still said to be ongoing and the latest statement may well be intended to ratchet up the pressure so a deal can be done. But even if an agreement were to emerge then Lisa Nandy believes it “almost certain” that new legislation would still be required to enforce it.

Lisa Nandy MP said:

“For too long, technology companies have failed to protect children from some of the worst harms. And to be frank, I am not prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt that progress will continue at the pace that we need it to, while harm is being done now … This will ensure that the whole ecosystem changes, tackling the means by which children are most often abused or groomed in the online world.”

The new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has also made clear that he wants the protections to be “built into the device and switched on by default”, and tech companies will be required to verify an adult user’s age before they are allowed to take, view or send nude images (we presume they mean ‘any’ image, not only nude ones, but it’s unclear). The government also wants to extend such restrictions to apps used by children, which would require further legislation.

Few could disagree with the objective here. But on the flip side, not everybody will like the idea of the Government having such control over our individual devices (Smartphones etc.). As usual, the focus is on children (under 18s), but it may also impact adults – just as we’ve seen with the sledgehammer approach to implementation of Age Verification across other corners of the internet.

Tech and civil society groups have previously expressed worry that making access to common online services too restrictive could inhibit their use by adults and risk significant consequences, particularly if applied to online services of all sizes (e.g. harmless smaller services often have no viable way of adding Age Verification). The result could be censorship by the backdoor of excessive legal liability, forcing the closure of such services.

At the same time many adults may be rightly uncomfortable with having their access restricted from using vital communication / chat services or devices until such time as they agree to share their personal biometric or financial data with often unknown, unfamiliar and unregulated third-party age verification organisations. The serious privacy breach of UK user’s government ID data at Discord (here) helps to underline this concern.

Lest we forget the question of how owners of Smartphones would even be able to verify their age, since the initial device setup process can also take place offline (you can’t force it to be online as that would be totally unworkable in real-world situations). Not to mention that we don’t all have forms of ID or payment cards to hand when needing to setup a new Smartphone, such as after another one has just been stolen.

The other question is over the technical side of how devices will scan for and inspect the content of private messages and images, which is a particularly sensitive aspect for security. The processing would need to happen locally for that to be considered safe and it could potentially result in over-blocking (e.g. a close-up picture of a peach being mistaken for a nude bottom etc.).

In short, the whole idea would seem set to face a myriad of complex technical, practical and legal challenges, which might risk having the unintended impact of forcing many children to seek out less safe channels, methods or devices for their communications. Inevitably people will also find ways of removing such requirements from their devices, such as via custom firmware or other modifications.

Presumably, a child could also still take a photograph with a completely unrestricted camera and send it through another device or medium. In that sense the fundamental problem would remain unresolved. In any case there’s currently a lack of detail in the government’s proposal and so it’s difficult to know precisely what structure they intend to adopt. But the plan does make clear that you’d need to verify your age before being able to turn the aforementioned child safety features off.