Digital Rights Watch

@drwaus.bsky.social

2978 Followers 79 Following

We fight for human rights in the digital age. www.digitalrightswatch.org.au

ai digital twins Gladys Lai 16 Apr 2025
An image of a crumbling post-apocalyptic city, with one person standing in the rubble. Text reads: Asif Kapadia's 2073 Earth Day Screening and Q&A "You won't see a more urgent, provocative or haunting film this year" "Monumentally powerful" "A galvanizing call to action" Samantha Morton 2073 Tues 22nd April 18:30PM Cinema Nova Naarm (Melbourne)
The Fight for Digital Rights in the Age of AI March 12, 2025 The promise of AI innovation has captured the attention of the technology industry and its associated policy makers. While we wait for the development of a National AI Capability Plan in Australia, companies are left with a set of voluntary guardrails to navigate the technologies’ associated risks.
43 ATO-built AI models in production at the ATO, as of 14 May 2024. 8 Number of publicly available generative AI tools approved as low risk by the ATO, as of 18 June 2024. 74% Percentage of the ATO’s AI models in production that did not have completed data ethics assessments, as of August 2024.
Promoting AI accessibility to reduce digital divides; • Ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all • Making innovation in AI thrive by enabling conditions for its development and avoiding market concentration driving industrial recovery and development • Encouraging AI deployment that positively shapes the future of work and labour markets and delivers opportunity for sustainable growth • Making AI sustainable for people and the planet • Reinforcing international cooperation to promote coordination in international governance
Assessment Methodology & Test Strategy • The scope of the test effort includes technologies which provide: • Age Assurance (AA), including: • Age verification (AV) • Age inference • Age estimation (AE) • Parental controls • Parental consent • This is when they are used for the following age gates: • 18+ • 16+ • 13+ • Out of scope: • Exact age • 13-16 age range (as this is covered by the 13+ and 16+ age gates above)
1. AgeChecked 2. Arissian Ltd 3. Assure ID 4. Austroads 5. Blue Biometrics 6. Civic 7. DigiChek 8. Eden Game Development Centre 9. euCONSENT 10. FastAs Pty 11. FrankieOne 12. Fujitsu 13. GBG PLC 14. General Identity Protocol 15. GeoComply 16. IDmission 17. IDVerse an OCR Labs company 18. IDVerse and iProov (joint EOI) 19. Incode Technologies 20. iProov 21. iLAbs 22. k-ID 23. Meta 24. MyMahi 25. Needemand 26. Netsweeper 27. One Click Group 28. Opale.io 29. Persona 30. Privately SA 31. Qoria 32. R2 Labs Pty 33. RightCrowd 34. Rigr AI 35. ShareRing 36. Shayype Solutions 37. Snap Inc and Meta (joint EOI) 38. TomorrowX 39. TruAnon 40. Trust Stamp 41. TrustElevate 42. VerifyChain Pty 43. Verifymy 44. Yoti
Google Lifts a Ban on Using Its AI for Weapons and Surveillance Google published principles in 2018 barring its AI technology from being used for sensitive purposes. Weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term, those guidelines are being overhauled.
Text: Data Privacy Day 28 January. Freedom Together. Two magpies, one biting the chains from the other's ankle.
I’d love to see tranche two of privacy reform—now—that disrupts the extractive data economy and resolves some of the privacy and security vulnerabilities. I’d like to see a more nuanced approach to social media for young people.
Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 [Provisions] On 21 November 2024, the Senate referred the provisions of the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for report by 26 November 2024. The closing date for submissions is 22 November 2024. Due to the short timeframe of this inquiry, the committee would appreciate submissions being limited to 1-2 pages.
Recommendation 6 5.145 The committee recommends that any features of the Australian Government's regulatory framework that will affect young people be co-designed with young people.
3.31 The eSafety Commissioner explained how advertising-based revenue models incentivise online services to increase engagement, 'as the more time users spend online, the more advertising revenue is generated'.24 3.32 Revenue considerations were also identified by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) as an incentive for advertising-based platforms to optimise their recommender systems to promote content based on engagement—which it described as a 'key driver for risk'.25 3.33 Likewise, Digital Rights Watch (DRW) viewed online harms as 'a symptom of data-extractive business models of digital platforms and advertisers that dominate our digital ecosystem':26 ... social media platforms reward content that keeps people on their platforms for as long as possible. This is because the more time that a person spends on a platform, the more data can be collected about them, and in- turn increases the opportunities platforms can offer to advertisers to sell targeted ads.27
It is clear from the evidence presented to the committee that there are significant risks associated with social media use. However, many of these risks appear to be driven by the business models of advertising-based social media platforms, which optimise recommender systems to promote content based on engagement. Concerningly, this often leads to the boosting of harmful material.
Recommendation 5 5.144 The committee recommends that the Australian Government prioritise proposals from the Privacy Act review relating to greater protections for the personal information of Australians and children, including as part of its suite of ongoing privacy reforms, such as the Children’s Online Privacy Code.
Digital Rights Watch welcomes privacy reform, but more must be done urgently to bring our laws into the 21st century
A photo of Samantha Floreani from Digital Rights Watch on ABC 7:30, they have long blonde hair and are wearing glasses and a black top
A photo of a person called Kat sitting at a table with a laptop, pencil case and notebook. They have short dark hair and are wearing an orange and pink top and are smiling at the camera.