Internet access in Europe will change forever, and all in the name of protecting minors. The announcement by the President of the Government of a new global law which will block access to pornographic content for minors will lead to the creation of a new and complex mechanism, which will have to take into account both the protection of minors and the privacy of Internet users. .
This is the biggest challenge facing the government’s new flagship measure; I’m ready for this summer a secure, private and unbreakable system to access certain web pages. Pedro Sánchez clearly explained the motivation behind the design of this system: the protection of minors. According to the AEPD’s own data, 60% of adolescents consume pornography, a practice that begins younger and younger: 25% of young people under 12 have already consumed this type of adult content.
The law did not come out of nowhere: from February 17, 2024, the Digital Services Act comes into force throughout the European Union, which among the new obligations towards Internet giants like Google or Microsoft , includesprotection of minors when visiting adult pages. This is a task that other governments have already attempted with different methods and with varying degrees of success; Europe’s advantage will be the collaboration between the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) and the National Coin and Stamp Factory (FNMT).
The problem with blocking porn
There are already methods for controlling access to pornographic pages; However, these blocks are primitive and, in most cases, do the bare minimum to avoid a lawsuit. The classic example is a pop-up window that asks the user if they are over 18something that obviously can be ignored with a simple lie.
The problem is that depending on anything other than the user’s honesty means taking a big step in technical terms. The open architecture of the Internet makes it very difficult to implement a standard access control to certain web pagessomething appreciable when we talk about free access to information, but something more annoying when we talk about limiting access to harmful and potentially criminal content.
So, until now, the vast majority of attempts to block content in Europe have failed in one way or another; either by blocking pirated web pages or terrorist or illegal content. There is always a “back door,” or way around the blockade that lawmakers didn’t take into account at the time. Sometimes technology simply evolves and makes traditional methods obsolete.
How will it work
Therefore, the solution that the AEPD and the FNMT are developing cannot be as simple as a button; but neither can it be complicated to the point of restricting adult access or, even worse, restricting adult access. allow user tracking who access pornographic pages. The resulting privacy scandal could overshadow Cambridge Analytica.
Although the technical details of this solution have not yet been made public, everything indicates that everything will depend on the DNI; but it won’t be as simple as inserting our license number on the page, which can easily be used for malicious purposes. The DNI would instead be used to obtain a digital certificate, offered by the FNMT and cryptographically protected, which will not have personal data and it will simply indicate that the user who wants to access the page is over 18 years old.
The process would be very similar to the two-step authentication that many services like Google already have and would involve the use of a mobile application, in which the user would have to use their login in the same way as the My Folder application . Ciudadana and other similar government applications. To access the blocked page, you should scan a QR code with your mobile; The application would be able to use the information in this code to grant the necessary certificate to the website, which would unlock the content after receiving approval.
For the adult user this means I should use the app every time I want to access a pornographic page it’s part of this platform; and in theory they all should be, because they can be fined between 2% and 3% of their annual turnover if they don’t implement it. The National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) will be the one that will decide and apply the criteria to determine a page as “pornographic”. This project is therefore the joint work of three independent organizations.
How is it done in other countries
This alone differentiates the Spanish project from other similar projects. Europe is not the first to try to block access to pornography, far from it, but it seems to be the most technically advanced.
So far, the most ambitious anti-pornography law comes from the United Kingdom, but it is also the one that takes the longest to implement: the original project was David Cameron’s idea and involved the creation a filter with a list of websites considered harmful. This evolved into a system that required showing the identification document on the pages, and finally, the latest version includes several verification methods, from bank account communication to uploading a recent photo so that it is analyzed by algorithms that determine age.
All of these methods could potentially be used to violate user privacy if this information fell into the wrong hands; and depending on the country, They might even be unconstitutional.. That’s the conclusion reached by a Texas judge, who temporarily blocked a new law requiring identification to websites containing pornography; and this has caused the departure of industry giants like Pornhub, which directly block all connections from the state.
Given these failures, the Spanish solution is perhaps the most comprehensive and advanced to date; although the challenges it will have to overcome until its launch will be numerous, including user acceptance.
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