Your Papers, Please - The Internet Is Entering The Digital ID Era

Useful takeaways from this story.

For most of the internet's history, opening a website required little more than an internet connection.

You could read, search, post, debate and browse without first proving to a government-backed system who you were.

Governments increasingly want online platforms to know something about the person sitting behind the screen -- beginning with age.

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The useful part

For most of the internet's history, opening a website required little more than an internet connection. You could read, search, post, debate and browse without first proving to a government-backed system who you were. Governments increasingly want online platforms to know something about the person sitting behind the screen -- beginning with age.

How it works

Once the infrastructure exists to prove something about you before allowing you through a digital doorway, an enormous question follows.
Canada is moving toward tougher age requirements for social media, while Europe is developing age-verification technology that can be incorporated directly into its new continent-wide Digital Identity Wallet.
First, Prove Your Age Canada's proposed Safe Social Media Act would establish a new Digital Safety Commission and give it authority to develop rules concerning age estimation and age verification.
The government says it intends to establish a minimum age of 16 for social-media accounts, subject to possible exemptions for platforms with sufficient safeguard...

Details worth keeping

What else might eventually require that digital credential?

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