In this photo illustration, an age-verification screen is displayed on the website Pornhub. The U.K. requires sites and platforms hosting harmful content such as pornography to have age-verification systems to stop children from accessing them. Canada is considering similar legislation.Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Jake Pitre is a freelance writer and academic based in Montreal.

Canada’s proposed Bill S-209, which addresses online age verification, is currently making its way through the Senate, and its passage would be yet another mistake in tech policy.

The bill is intended to restrict young peoples’ access to online pornography and to hold providers to account for making it available to anyone under 18. It may be well-intentioned, but the manner of its proposed enforcement – mandating age verification or what is being called “age-estimation technologies” – is troubling.

Globally, age-verification tools are a popular business, and many companies are in favour of S-209, particularly because it requires that websites and organizations rely on third parties for these tools. However, they bring up long-standing concerns over privacy, especially when you consider potential leaks or hacks of this information, which in some cases include biometrics that can identify us by our faces or fingerprints.

This is presumably where the age-estimation tools could come in, as they would collect less information while determining a user’s........

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