Claims that the Australian Government has introduced a new social credit system via a digital ID to access the internet are false (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Australian recommendation for social credit system to access internet was never implemented

By Lily Ford, PA
11:27 - January 16, 2023

Claims that the Australian Government has introduced a new social credit system via a digital ID to access the internet circulated online in December, saying that Australian citizens would need “100 points of identification to use social media & the police will have access to your accounts including private messaging”.

The tweet, written by a user whose location reads North West, England, also included: “Goodbye freedom. Hello tyranny”, and another user in a now-deleted tweet wrote that in an effort to combat “online abuse”, the “police will have access to individuals’ social media accounts, which will be linked to people’s passports”.

Evaluation: False

There is no evidence on Government websites or in any proposed legislation that there is a plan to “de-anonymise” social media by implementing a social credit system for its users.

The claims are taken from a 9News Australia report, that aired on April 1 2021, which explained the ideas were only recommendations in a federal parliamentary inquiry published on the same day.

The facts

The 9News Australia report references an inquiry into family, domestic, and sexual violence by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, where 88 recommendations are made.

Recommendation 30 out of 88, relating to “technology-facilitated abuse,” reads: “In order to open or maintain an existing social media account, customers should be required by law to identify themselves to a platform using 100 points of identification, in the same way as a person must provide identification for a mobile phone account, or to buy a mobile SIM card.”

Searches for “social credit” or “digital identification” yielded no results on an official Australian Government website and there is no evidence the recommendation made its way into any Australian legislation.

The recommendation also suggested regulating law enforcement being able to access “a platform’s end-to-end encrypted data, by warrant, in matters involving a threat to the physical or mental wellbeing of an individual or in cases of national security”.

This has also only ever remained a recommendation, there is no evidence of it in Australian law, and the recommendation never specified granting full access to every citizen’s social media accounts to the police.

There was a new law passed in September 2021 which aimed to make it easier for Australian police to collect information about digital crimes, but it does not impose any new obligations on social media platforms or users.

Links

9News Australia report (archived)

Claim on Twitter (archived)

Deleted claim on Twitter (archived)

Federal parliamentary inquiry into family, domestic, and sexual violence (archived)

Recommendation 30 (archived)

Search for “social credit” on Australian Government website (archived)

Search for “digital identification” on Australian Government website (archived)

Surveillance Legislation Amendment Bill 2021 (archived)

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