Episode 261: Ian Goldberg on the Privacy Risks of Age Assurance Technologies

About this episode

Ian Goldberg discusses the privacy risks associated with age assurance technologies and legislative approaches.

Age verification, estimation or inference is seemingly all the rage right now. Vendors are promoting it as the solution to thorny challenges to limit access to certain sites and services and politicians are eager to legislate in that direction, including in Canada with Bill S-209. Hundreds of scientists and technology experts from around the world have taken note of the trend and come together to issue a public letter warning about the privacy, safety and discrimination risks associated with these technologies. Ian Goldberg, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Privacy Enhancing Technologies at the University of Waterloo, was one of the signatories. Ian has long been engaged at the intersection between technology and privacy and joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss the age assurance technologies, how privacy enhancing technologies could address some of the concerns, and the risks with current legislative approaches.

People in this episode

Host: Michael Geist

Guest: Ian Goldberg

Topics covered

• privacy risks
• age assurance technologies
• legislation
• technology and privacy
• safety and discrimination

Keywords

• age verification
• privacy enhancing technologies
• technology experts
• public letter
• legislation
• safety risks
• discrimination risks

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Waterloo, Canada Research Chair in Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Bill S-209

Places: Canada

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