Australians to face age checks from search engines

2025: if you're logged in, then we check your age to see if you can do or see some stuff

2027: the companies providing the logins must provide government with the identities

2028: because VPNs are being used to circumvent the law, if the logging entity knows you're an Australian citizen, even if you're not in Australia or using an Aussie IP address then they must still apply the law

2030: you must be logged in to visit these specific sites where you might see naked boobies, and if you're under age you can't - those sites must enforce logins and age limits

2031: Australian ISPs must enforce the login restrictions because some sites are refusing to and there are loopholes

2033: Australian ISPs must provide the government with a list of people who visited this list of specific sites, with dates and times of those visits

2035: you must be logged in to visit these other specific sites, regardless of your age

2036: you must have a valid login with one of these providers in order to use the internet

2037: all visits to all sites must be logged in

2038: all visits to all sites will be recorded

2039: this list of sites cannot be visited by any Australian of any age

2040: all visits to all sites will be reported to the government

2042: your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case

Australian politicians, police, and a good chunk of the population would love this.

Australia is quietly extremely authoritarian. It's all "beer and barbies on the beach" but that's all actually illegal.

> 2042: your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case

We already reached that point several years ago.

If only there was a name for this fallacy. Something slope something

> 2030: you must be logged in to visit these specific sites where you might see naked boobies, and if you're under age you can't - those sites must enforce logins and age limits

Some states in the US are doing this already. And I think I saw a headline about some country in Europe trying to put Twitter in that category, implying they have such rules there already.

yeah true, I should have made it more explicit that it's your entire browser history, and every criminal case

So, is this particular slope likely to be slippery? Do governments have a history of looking for ways to control what information people can see, or looking for ways to identify people who post disfavored information?

Slippery slope is only a fallacy when there is no reason to believe the end state is likely or desired.

It seems quite likely that governments want to continuously chip away at privacy.

Slippery slope is specifically about opening the gates to further slipping. This clearly isn't the case since there is going to be slipping regardless of this specific instance going through all the way or not.

Australian politicians, police, and a specific chunk of the population would be exempt from this... like with privacy laws.

indeed. Rules for thee but not for me.

Mate...

> 2038: all visits to all sites will be recorded

That's been the case since 2015. ISPs are required to record customer ID, record date, time and IP address and retain it for two years to be accessed by government agencies. It was meant to be gated by warrants, but a bunch of non-law-enforcement entities applied for warrantless access, including local councils, the RSPCA (animal protection charity), and fucking greyhound racing. It's ancient history, so I'm not sure if they were able to do so. The abuse loopholes might finally be closed up soon though.

https://privacy108.com.au/insights/metadata-access/

https://delimiter.com.au/2016/01/18/61-agencies-apply-for-me...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-18/government-releases-l...

https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2023/government-acts-to-finall...

> 2039: this list of sites cannot be visited by any Australian of any age

Block lists are not new. For example Italy blocks a number of sites, usually at DNS level with the cooperation of ISPs and DNS services. You can autotranslate this article from 2024 to get the gist of what is being blocked and why https://www.money.it/elenco-siti-vietati-italia-vengono-pers...

I believe other countries of the same area block sites for similar reasons.

> It's wrong to call this a slippery slope because we're not at the top but instead already well on our way down a slope that is indeed slippery.

Not a convincing take.

more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incrementalism

I didn't know that. Thanks

> your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case

As others have said, that's the case already and not just in Australia. Same in lots of other places like the UK and the whole EU. Less so in the US (though they can demand any data the ISP has, and require ISPs to collect data on individuals)

> Australia is quietly extremely authoritarian.

It is weird, as a recent-ish migrant I do agree, there are rules for absolutely bloody everything here and the population seems in general to be very keen on "Ban it!" as a solution to everything.

It's also rife with regulatory capture - Ah, no mate, you can't change that light fitting yourself, gotta get a registered sparky in for that or you can cop a huge fine. New tap? You have to be kidding me, no, you need a registered plumber to do anything more than plunger your toilet, and we only just legalised that in Western Australia last year.

It's been said before, but at some point the great Aussie Larrikin just died. The Wowsers won and most of them don't even know they're wowsers.

2027: ufos visit, and decide to end the human experiment, game over.

I cannot find it any more due to the degradation of Google but there was a report on the amount of times this data was access in NSW for 2018 (?). It was something like 280,000 requests for that year alone!

As others have pointed out how many of these are already present here. I suspect the rest of your time line is far to optimistic in how long it will take to get there. I suspect that with the pace of decline most of that will be enacted in the next 5 years.

I would like to say "It is all because of X political party!" but both the majors are the same in this regard and they usually vote unanimously on these things.

Yes, the 2038, 2040, and 2042 scenarios are already reality in most of the world. We're in the dystopian nightmare.

Australia is already living in a full-blown surveillance state. Over 330,000 metadata access requests were approved in a single year—no warrant needed. Agencies like Centrelink, the ATO, even local councils can tap into your private data. Police get access to your web browsing history directly from ISPs without judicial oversight. Encryption is being quietly undermined through laws like the TOLA Act, forcing tech companies to help spy or weaken their own systems. The government now mandates that AI search tools filter and flag content, shaping what people can even find online. When the AFP raided the ABC, they had the legal power to copy, alter, or delete files. Add to that Australia’s deep involvement in the global Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, and it's clear: this isn’t future dystopia, it’s surveillance as a fact of life. NBN monopoly + TR-069 as default hard locked and custom PCB in NBN hardware (even to the point of new PCB runs with all headers and test points even unpopulated removed) it tooks untill the new rev of arriss hardware before they even complied with the GPRD lisenceing. legit!

> Australia is quietly extremely authoritarian.

Not quietly, I don't think. Not like Australia is known for freedom and human rights. It's known for expeditionary wars, human rights abuses, jailing whistleblowers and protesters, protecting war criminals, environmental and social destruction, and following the United States like a puppy.

Interesting question is warrant or no warrant required?

US is the same but with a different leash-holding country.

There are a lot of people changing their own light fittings. I have never heard about laws against plumbing but I don't see them stopping old mate from doing it.

Electrical work can be pretty dangerous...

Yeah, here in WA at least, there are signs up in the plumbing section of Bunnings saying “Stop! DIY plumbing is illegal! Only buy this stuff if you’re getting a professional to fit it!”

The reasoning is often “people might contaminate the water supply for a whole street!” Which just points to poor provision of one way valves at the property line.

But yeah, illegal.

I agree there are limits with what you want to do on electricity, but turning the breaker off and replacing a light fitting or light switch is pretty trivial. And I know people do just get on with it and do some of this stuff themselves anyway.

Was particularly pissed off that in January this year the plumbing “protections” were extended to rural residents who aren’t even connected to mains water or sewage, to protect us from substandard work by … making it illegal for us to do it ourselves. Highly annoying.

Well there you go. Probably thanks to a plumbing lobby. Lucky we moved out of WA.

A lot of laws can be interpreted as reccomendations :)

> your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case

Pretty sure google searches have been used in murder trials before, including the mushroom poisoning one going on right now in Victoria.

We aren't part way down the slope either. There is no slippery slope, they will press on citizens through every opportunity they can get, regardless of the progress they have or have not made in the past.

Its more of a constantly lowering bar, not a slippery slope that just needs to be stopped once.

Or in words you might find more appealing: Its worse than a slippery slope.

My understanding of US current policy:

> your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case

Already the case. Mostly for the kind of dumb criminal who is suspected of murder and has been found googling "defences to murder" and "how to hide a body".

> the companies providing the logins must provide government with the identities

If there's a court order (good) or a national security letter (occasionally good but very open to abuse). Maybe the NSA or some guy in DOGE has automatic API access to this data anyway.

> you must be logged in to visit these specific sites where you might see naked boobies, and if you're under age you can't - those sites must enforce logins and age limits

Already the case for youtube and reddit content marked NSFW - either by the creator or by a fairly stupid algorithm. (You can see these boobies, but not those ones.) But the age verification is mostly "open a new account and enter a birth date". Also reddit has the dumbest age verification/login bypass ever. (Your honor, editing an URL is nation-state level hacking and we can't reasonably defend against that.)

> all visits to all sites will be recorded

Something something Permanent Record.

> you must have a valid login with one of these providers in order to use the internet

Ok this one is cheating a bit, but don't you need a google (or samsung etc.) account to set up an android let alone access the internet?

Also cheating a bit but you need a login and contract with your ISP to get on the internet too.

I went as far as to look up the last ‘consultation’ on this, and yep, all down to the plumbing lobby, expressing their horror that the general public could be ripped off, scammed even, by unqualified “handymen”, so it must remain illegal to do even the basics if you’re unqualified, even on your own house.

Total rort.

And let me guess, this rule isn't eliminated if your property is isolated by a reduced pressure zone device?

I assume that in your post "WA" means Western Australia -- as I can't imagine this kind of absurd protectionism law flying in Washington state, even though it's a little more paternalistic than average for the US.

Is this normally pulled from the search company or from your laptop?

Yeah, Western Australia.

And of course not! As mentioned - the rule has even recently been extended to 'protect' people like us who live semi off-grid, with rainwater capture for drinking and a septic system.

Australians really seem to loooooove rules.

And of course, for the most part, nobody's actually checking this stuff and people pay varying levels of attention to the rules. Seems like a waste of time all round.

At the moment I believe a warrant is required but easily obtained. Eventually, if we go down this path, it won't.

Selectively enforcing the rules is another classic Aussie trait.