The Spanish government wants to control and register Spanish citizens' access to pornographic websites.

The government of Spain is proposing a system to control and register citizens' access to pornographic websites through a digital passport. This passport would verify the age of majority of users, ensuring that only adults can access such pages. To this end, a blacklist of pornographic sites would be created, which could only be accessed by means of a government-issued ticket. Citizens would use their electronic ID or digital certificate to receive 30 monthly tickets, allowing them to enter adult websites included in this blacklist.

I believe this is not about protecting minors' access to porn, but about applying censorship to some Internet content.

Government Arguments in Favor of the System

The government uses child protection as a pretext to justify these measures.

They say that this system would protect users' anonymity while ensuring that only adults access pornographic content. They assure that the system is convenient and easy to use, prioritizing the protection of minors.

Criticisms and Concerns

However, this measure has raised significant concerns.

Although the government claims that privacy is guaranteed, critics point out that there will be a record of the people who apply for the passes, revealing who consumes pornographic content and how often. This record could be used politically to blackmail journalists, businessmen, or political rivals by leaking the information to the media or family members of these individuals.

In addition, there is a risk that this data could be stolen by cybercriminals, as happened recently with the data of 34 million Spanish drivers.

This system could also be easily extended to other digital content, restricting access to certain media and creating an archive of citizens who consume information from certain websites.

Future Implications

In short, this government proposal poses serious risks to privacy and individual freedoms, opening the door to state political control of Internet access, a phenomenon associated with dictatorships.

The greatest danger is the social legitimization of these measures.