FPF Submits Comments to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s (OPC) Exploratory Consultation on Privacy and Age Assurance

FPF submitted comments to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) regarding their age assurance exploratory consultation.

In general, FPF considers the OPC is appropriately approaching age assurance in a nuanced, informed, and balanced way, especially by highlighting in its preliminary positions: the privacy risks associated to age assurance systems, that age assurance systems should be proportionate to the privacy and access risks, the need to support strong privacy by design, and the potential for inequitable outcomes.

Given the OPC’s preliminary positions, the FPF submitted the following recommendations:
1. An existing legal framework is necessary for the efficacy and enforceability of the Guidance Document, as well as for FPF and others to provide the most helpful recommendations, recognizing that in the absence of a legal mandate, age assurance should only be used when strictly necessary and only to prevent particular harms.
2. The Guidance Document should distinguish among and describe the age assurance methods available and highlight for each use case the risks involved, rejecting a one-size-fits-all approach in favor of an age assurance method proportionate to the risks of each use case.
3. The Guidance Document should recognize data minimization as a key mitigation measure to deal with privacy risks of age assurance systems.
4. The Guidance Document should analyze each specific use case for potential inequitable impacts, especially access equity.