The Debate Has Started … Proof of Age “and/or” Proof of Identity?

For 40-odd years, politicians have generally avoided doing anything with the Internet, apart from knowing that they needed to make it faster. They often only saw the Internet as a fast way of communicating, and where we replaced the postal system with electronic mail, and books with digital versions. It was a world that just converted our analogue world into digital.

But government have often completely missed the new worlds being built, and which have reduced their power to monitor, regulate and control their citizens. For them, physical borders are power, and the laws of the land start and end at these borders. The Internet, though, has little respect for physical borders, and technology often has little respect for the laws of each country. For most, the rise of cybercrime has resulted from a flawed digital world and where we can trust little. Without regulation, technology has thus often focused on the rights of citizens to privacy and consent, and not on the specific laws of countries.

But now, they have finalised realised its potential, and in the way that we all live our lives on-line, and where physical borders have little in the way of control. Few things happen these days, too, without the Internet touching it, and where we leave behind our digital footprint. In our Google-driven world, we are…