Invocation of safety has yet again been relied on in an attempt to expand Executive government powers. Earlier this month, the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 was floated to the public. We saw the same themes used to force digital identity checks to access adult content: children aren’t safe, and tech platforms are irresponsible. Notwithstanding any discussion of parental responsibility to manage technology in the family unit, the government is now seeking to broaden how “safety” is achieved. A term typically relegated to niche sectors of cyber security, law enforcement, and intelligence has suddenly entered the zeitgeist of public debate: sock puppet identities.
Section 205J is one sentence: the Commissioner may assume a sock puppet identity for the purposes of performing the Commissioner’s functions or exercising the Commissioner’s powers under the Act. It has effect despite anything to the contrary in any other law of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory, and despite any contract, deed or policy. Section 205K then lists what that identity may do: create and use an account; observe, download, record; engage with services and providers; test features. A second subsection, reserved for the Commissioner and not for university researchers, authorises generating material on an online service, including by artificial intelligence, so long as that material is not itself a criminal offence.
On their face, this seems benign. Until someone asks, who will watch the watchers masquerading under these accounts?
Australia already knows how to legalise a lie of identity. Part IAC of the Crimes Act 1914 lets law enforcement and intelligence officers acquire and use assumed identities. The form is written. The chief officer must be satisfied the identity is necessary and the risk of abuse is limited. Police authorities are reviewed at least annually. Agencies report use to a minister, and the minister tables the report. It is not a judicial warrant, but it is a form of accountability. Heavier handed forms of digital interception, under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 are warrant powers. A judge or nominated tribunal member for police, the Attorney-General for ASIO, tied to serious offending or activities prejudicial to security.
The Bill does not borrow, or even attempt to borrow the culture of accountability, approval, and above board conduct. It borrows the costume of investigation and strips the issuance ritual. The regulator is not asked to swear that a particular account is necessary to test a particular harm. The statute simply says: for the functions, without limitation. Researchers who want the same tool must be approved, must hold ethics clearance, and do not get the AI-generation limb. The office that writes the approval also holds the broader power.
The tip of the iceberg shines like a light of care for the citizenry. Agitated by the unrestrained conduct of seemingly evil or selfish technology companies. Without any actual explanation as to how this narrow, reductionist conclusion was drawn. Beneath the iceberg tips lurks the machinery of an apparatus that extends deep into the depths of unaccountability and vagary. The State will inhabit the same digital world as it’s citizens, under a false and unverifiable identity without recourse. If the harm is serious enough to justify a covert state account that can write with a model, it is serious enough to justify the paperwork already demanded of the Federal Police when they do the same thing for a drug network. Safety that refuses the warrant is not a lighter touch. It is a different kind of power: civil, perpetual, and unembarrassed by the word puppet.The person this technique forms is not a prisoner. It is a user who can no longer tell whether the other account is a neighbour, a brand, a researcher with an ethics form, or the office that will later fine the platform for what the neighbour said. Anonymity for the public stays legal; that much the fact-checks got right. Anonymity for the regulator becomes infrastructure.
Voting does not need a stuffed ballot box if the room in which opinion is rehearsed can be seeded by accounts that never have to survive a warrant affidavit. Hypereality does not need a ministry of truth if the ministry of care can publish inside the same ranking system it later polices. The irreversible act is not the first fine. It is the first lawful fake that no independent officer had to sign.
In a sentence, the sheep agree to dress the wolf in sheep’s clothing, and be invited into the flock.