AATT advisory board member critiques age assurance trial with hyperbole

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has issued a statement claiming that the findings of the Australian Age Assurance Technology Trial are “strong on hype, rhetoric and difficult to reconcile with the evidence.” 

The comments are attributed to John Pane, who served on the Stakeholder Advisory Board for the trial – the only representative on the 20-person board from a digital rights organization. Tim Levy of children’s safety tech provider Qoria previously resigned from the board, claiming a disconnect between the early results and findings.

Pane takes direct aim at the trial’s preliminary finding that “age assurance can be done in Australia and can be private, robust and effective.” According to Pane, “things could not really be further from the truth.” 

A sense of resentful exclusion runs through Pane’s comments. “The Stakeholder Advisory Board was stacked with online safety and child safety representatives (as you might expect) but there was a dearth of civil society privacy experts or advocates.” He says that, in deciding to join the trial, the EFA Board took the view that “if you’re not at the table, you soon find yourself on the table.” 

Verbiage flies as EFA argues against findings that have not been released

Pane and the EFA first take issue with the statement that the trial’s evaluations “did not reveal any substantial technological limitations.” 

“The data to support or refute this claim is not publicly available,” says the statement. 

This should be amended to say that the data is not yet available. In releasing its preliminary findings, the Age Assurance Technology Trial was clear that the full report would be published in due time, but that the decision was with the Australian government. 

The remainder of the statement is, ironically, heavy on rhetoric and light on evidence. 

Pane says the trial describes a vibrant, creative and innovative age assurance sector, but that its specific assessments aren’t as kind to some of the technologies. He says the project team “seemingly” relied on the existence of a participant’s privacy policy to gauge how well they understood privacy policy decisions. He alleges that “the bar for privacy assurance has been set incredibly low by the project team,” and that “the bar for information and cyber security risks also seems low and indicative of check box compliance.” 

He backs up none of this with evidence.

Pane also points to the already-flagged concern that some providers were “over-anticipating the eventual needs of regulators about providing personal information for future investigations.” 

With pearls in hand, the EFA writes, “from a privacy and information security standpoint this is an absolute nightmare!” 

(Oh, and by the way, “excessive storage of personal data will become a honey pot for bad actors.”) 

Trial determined feasibility, not volume of solutions

Pane appears to have fallen into a trap that has plagued the Age Assurance Technology Trial throughout its run: a basic misunderstanding of what it is for, and what it aims to accomplish. The project was only ever intended as a survey to determine feasibility – i.e. answering the question, “can robust, privacy preserving age assurance be done?” 

In answering that with a preliminary yes, the trial need only have determined that a single participant’s technology could be deployed; there is no prescriptive intent as to how many participants need to have demonstrated this capability, which technologies are effective, or how age assurance should be used. 

Alas, we will only know the results of the trial’s testing phase once the final report comes to light. 

Pane’s pointing to a lack of evidence when said evidence has yet to be released is surely done in bad faith. The penultimate paragraph in the statement says that “the final report – comprising ten volumes, including individual assessments of each age assurance method evaluated – was submitted to the Australian Government on 1 August 2025. EFA has not seen it and do not know if the assurances we sought were kept.” 

The final paragraph serves as a nice punchline: “You can expect EFA to utilise knowledge gained from the Age Assurance Technology Trial to counter any spin coming from the government on the efficacy or alleged success of this significantly flawed initiative. Join us in our efforts here. (The link takes one to a page listing membership fees, which start at $75 for standard, and go up to $499 for “Torrent of Justice.”) 

Privacy stance seems to have been predetermined

The point here is that EFA has a stake in its position, much as every party does. Pane apparently felt unheard during the proceedings, but his preemptive promise to attack anything positive that the Australian government says about the trial and its still-unreleased findings is a tell that the EFA’s participation in the trial was likely never destined to end any other way. This is only bolstered by Pane’s noting that he went into the trial in a hostile stance, expecting to be served as dinner.

In comments to Biometric Update, trial project director Tony Allen says “we welcome EFA’s statement and the contribution John Pane has made to the Age Assurance technology Trial. We believe all the points that they have raised have been fully addressed (and in some considerable detail) in our full report. It is a matter for the Minister to determine when that will be published.” 

Beware the hordes of MrBeast, PewDiePie, Loserfruit

On Australia’s age assurance for social media file, Privacy Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is warning of an imminent campaign by YouTube to marshall its most popular influencers in the battle against the country’s age check law.  

The video sharing platform has previously been granted an exemption, which was subsequently rescinded on Inman Grant’s recommendation. YouTube has been fighting back ever since.

“Finally, we are anticipating a potential lobbying surge by the currently excluded platform and I expect the ground war will be at the education level – and will also involve the harnessing of the most famous influencers,” Inman Grant wrote to a senior adviser in Anika Wells’ office, according to the Guardian. 

“If YouTube is adamant that they are not an age-restricted social media service then any concerns held by Google about the impact of them not being specifically exempted in the rules seem to me to be moot.”

Article Topics

Age Assurance Technology Trial  |  age verification  |  Australia  |  Australia age verification  |  biometric age estimation  |  data privacy  |  Electronic Frontiers Australia