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//The Wire//2300Z December 11, 2025//

//ROUTINE//

//BLUF: AUSTRALIAN AGE VERIFICATION LAW COMES INTO EFFECT. ARRESTS MADE IN LAST WEEK'S STABBING ATTACK IN CHARLOTTE.//

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-International Events-

Australia: Yesterday Australia's Age Verification law came into effect for most websites, effectively blocking the vast majority of social media to the entire nation, unless users upload a scan of their face to prove that they are over 16 years old, and thus allowed to be on social media.

Caribbean: The tanker vessel seized by the United States yesterday has been identified as the M/T *SKIPPER*, one of the infamous "shadow fleet" vessels which is used to smuggle oil around the world. The *SKIPPER* was her most recent name change, and at the time of capture she was flying the flag of Guyana (though her registration status is dubious at best). As of this afternoon, AIS ship tracking platforms noted her position being just off the east coast of St. Lucia, heading north at around 10 kts.

-HomeFront-

North Carolina: More details have come to light regarding the stabbing attack that took place on the Blue Line commuter train in Charlotte last week. Back on December 5th, a stabbing was reported on the train, with the assailant eventually being arrested. At the time of the incident, the attacker was not identified, but after a few days authorities said the attacker was Oscar Gerardo Solorzano-Garcia, an illegal immigrant from Honduras who had multiple warrants out for past violent crimes, to include aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

Analyst Comment: From here, the situation takes a rather unfortunate turn. Solorzano stabbed a man on the train, who was hospitalized with severe wounds. Earlier this week, the victim was identified as Kenyon Dobie, and was lauded as a hero during the attack because of his efforts to confront the attacker to stop him from harassing other commuters. Dobie did intervene, and prevented the attacker from bothering other passengers, which resulted in him getting stabbed in the process. However, after this news story hit the local media, and the victim made statements in front of the camera, Dobie (the victim) was arrested. Turns out, he had open warrants for his own arrest for beating a pregnant woman so severely she received skull fractures during a domestic dispute. Both Solorzano and Dobie are being held in jail due to Iryna's Law preventing their release.

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Analyst Comment: Unlike many other cases of Digital ID being mandated around the world, Australia has implemented even more dystopian procedures to take effect during this rollout. Of note, the social media platforms which are known to cause extreme harm to children (such as Discord and Roblox) are exempt from the social media ban. However, the platforms that are affected, are impacted in very specific ways.

As one might expect, VPNs are popular ways to circumvent such crackdowns on speech. However, the IP addresses associated with VPNs are public record, so social media companies can easily blacklist those IPs, effectively making VPNs useless for evading the ban. At least some platforms have been observed using these blacklists (but not all). For those in the United Kingdom wondering about how their own Digital ID scandal will play out, this might be a clue; Australia is providing a case study for what a more totalitarian crackdown on communications throughout the global West might look like.

How serious platforms are taking this plan is anyone's guess, and reports vary widely. Some users report no issues whatsoever with being prompted to verify their age, whereas others have reported every app they have now requiring a face scan. Some users report that they can simply put in a false date of birth with no verification at all, and others report their accounts being hard-locked even though the mandate doesn't apply to them.

This wide variance is because most of the ID verification needs are being driven by AI in conjunction with a person's advertising ID; the way that this is rolling out in practice is that the ID verification requirement is being tailored for each individual human being and not simply a blanket policy for all platforms. In short, the AI models being relied upon already know if a person is over 16 years old, simply based on their online signature, and the digital fingerprints they leave behind. This is why some people don't notice the law taking affect at all, whereas others are hit pretty hard with the ID check requirements.

But, the system isn't perfect, and many times users are prompted to give over extremely precious biometric data anyway. Many users have reported successfully bypassing the 3D face scans by using a classic trick...video games. Many popular video games have a character creation menu which people can hold their phone up to in order to pass the 3D head scan requirements which have become common now. Users have reported even more effectiveness by using the video game Death Stranding, which features a mode in the settings menu to make the character assume different facial expressions, opening and closing the mouth, and various other poses which are still effective in bypassing the AI-driven face scanning technology. In short, it's probably fair to assume that there are potentially tens of thousands of Norman Reedus's living in Australia and trying to access TikTok. This trick was discovered by children during the lead up to the implementation of Digital ID in the United Kingdom, and it still works for those who are trying to bypass the ID check systems.

There is also a side-benefit to this effort, even for people who are legally accessing the internet and not trying to bypass the law. A major motivating factor for all of this crackdown on communication is the financial aspect....there's a LOT of money to be made from selling biometric data. Since there's now a massive pool of biometric data being collected and sold to the highest bidder, it's very likely that AI models are being trained off of this data....data which will 100% be used in other ways later on that have nothing to do with accessing Instagram. A high-resolution 3D scan of a person's face is very valuable, and once it's collected *and associated with a person's online identity* this is quite literally impossible to dissociate. Once Palantir has that data, that genie can't be put back into the bottle. As such, everyone using the same face is very likely to skew this data and make it harder for many other AI models to recognize faces in the future, so this little civil disobedience at least helps somewhat. This is very important information for the future of digital security, and the rollout of even more draconian Digital ID practices around the world.

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