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.

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.