This sounds funny but it probably gets you sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in the King's coal mine or something similarly draconian.
Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
251–260 of 297 posts
Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
#252I like the spirit but wouldn't this run afoul of one or two laws? Identity fraud or some such? I'm not in the UK, so I don't have any idea about their laws, but I'd be shocked to find this was above board. Your FAQ claims it's a parody site and claims " The ID number isn't valid and you can't use the card for anything real. " but you've just confirmed here it can indeed be used for real things (discord, reddit). Your…
Law often focus on intent. I am not sure if identity fraud can be applied if the person are not gaining anything (assuming they are of the right age). Service providers might be of fault if their verification practices are not compliant with regulations, but I don't know if the law puts any requirements on users to verify their identity.
To me this seems more similar to a people participating in a masquerade or comedian who dress themselves in the likeness of a politician. They are using the identity of the politician, but not in the way that identity fraud is intended to prevent.
Domain registration is an interesting example. To my knowledge, falsifying domain registration data is not a crime. Domain registrars have regulations to verify the identity of customers, including the recourse to suspend a domain if the data is incorrect. I could see a case if a person impersonate a politician in order to falsely attribute content of a website, under a registered domain name, as belonging/sanctioned by that politician, but that would likely fall under defamation laws. The crime could also be identity fraud, but the intent would be defamation.
Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
#253This sounds funny but it probably gets you sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in the King's coal mine or something similarly draconian.
The government has a monopoly on violence and I believe they will use their violence here.
I am not a layer but identity theft is a first thing that comes to mind
Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
The generated images are very obviously AI fakes. I don't think anyone is going to be seriously fooled by this. > I would pre-populate the list so when entering a new postcode, it doesn't stall waiting for AI. It looks like it already works like this? It was slow the first time I searched for my postcode, subsequent times have been very fast.
I wouldn't say they’re “obviously” AI fakes. I’m not from the UK, so I’m not familiar with what their IDs are supposed to look like. I was suspicious, though—the hands holding the ID cards looked kind of “crispy.” But at the same time, I thought, “woah, where did the website owner even get these photos?” It wasn’t until I read the Hacker News post that I realized they were all AI-generated (and now cached). And here’…
> I wouldn't say they’re “obviously” AI fakes.
I'd say they're obviously AI fakes, just trying a few: B249AL (it made her bald), SA487AB (different shape, hair color and hair), TN248DF (it grew his hair back), HA26ND (bald, again) and NG166QE (I don't even need to explain)...
Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
#255Your MP Name: Mike Wood Party: Conservative Constituency: Stafford Err, Stafford has been Labour since the last election, and before that it was a Conservative, but it was Theodora Clarke. Mike Wood is MP for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire. Surely the way you build something like this is a postcode -> constituency table (I assume available free), a constituency -> mp table, and mp -> image generation (with cach…
Nope! Office of national statistics published a CSV for postcode -> constituency name [ https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/6f2f35a9a0b94e7... ], and then the official gov.uk parliament API for a constituency name -> MP lookup [ https://members-api.parliament.uk/index.html ]. So all of the data is the officially available data. I humbly posit that this is a publicly owned bug.
Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I certainly agree! However, I doubt that's a strong legal argument.
True but the wording of the act actually places the onus on the service provider to verify the identities, not on the user to give them. It would be Discord in this case having to make the legal defence.
>It would be Discord in this case having to make the legal defence.
There's no rule that only 1 entity can get in trouble.
If I use a fake ID to by smokes while underage, I will definitely get in trouble for that and the store that sold me the smokes may also get in trouble (depending on how realistic the ID is, etc.). If the provider of my fake ID is found, they also get in trouble.
I haven't yet heard a compelling argument why this website (who, in the analogous scenario above, would be the fake ID provider) would not be subject to the same logic.
I hope that the defense of "this is a satirical website" is strong enough (or preferably, it never even has to be put to the test), however given what I've gathered about the general attitude UK legislators have regarding the internet, I think it is more likely that they would do anything in their power to try and punish someone operating a site like this.
Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
#257I like the spirit but wouldn't this run afoul of one or two laws? Identity fraud or some such? I'm not in the UK, so I don't have any idea about their laws, but I'd be shocked to find this was above board. Your FAQ claims it's a parody site and claims " The ID number isn't valid and you can't use the card for anything real. " but you've just confirmed here it can indeed be used for real things (discord, reddit). Your…
Law often focus on intent. I am not sure if identity fraud can be applied if the person are not gaining anything (assuming they are of the right age). Service providers might be of fault if their verification practices are not compliant with regulations, but I don't know if the law puts any requirements on users to verify their identity. To me this seems more similar to a people participating in a masquerade or comed…
>Service providers might be of fault if their verification practices are not compliant with regulations, but I don't know if the law puts any requirements on users to verify their identity.
As I mentioned in another comment, I've heard no compelling argument that differentiates between this scenario (e.g. kid uses this site to access a nsfw subreddit) and an underage kid buying smokes with a fake ID.
In that scenario, the police don't just pick 1 entity to punish. The kid gets in trouble, the store (most likely) gets in trouble, and (if found) the fake ID supplier gets in trouble.
In the end, I hope that the owner of the website never has to find out exactly where and how the laws shake out, and that "it's a satirical website" is a strong enough defense. But from my armchair, I would suspect that the UK police/legislators would not look favorably on the "it's satire" defense. Especially because of this post which advertises that the fake ID works for some services, and there are under-18s on HN.
>Law often focus on intent.
I would expect that advertising that the IDs work on real services undermines any defense of "my intent was satire".
Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does the online safety act actually say about this? It's only supposed to be age verification, and if you are actually old enough does it matter how you proved it? Many of the age verification services explicitly promise not to retain photos!
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/part/4/chapter/... It talks explicitly about verifying your identity, not your age, so no loopholes today I'm afraid
.. for Category 1 services. I've already noted that several age verification services explicitly promise _not_ to retain your identity.
I'm having trouble working out what's category 1. Schedule 1 defines exemptions https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/schedule/1/part... ; otherwise this refers OFCOM to "critera" which I can't find.
As I understand it, Wikipedia are seeking judicial review of OFCOM's placing them in category 1, which requires the most stringent checks including identity.
Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
#259Re: Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
#260Your MP Name: Mike Wood Party: Conservative Constituency: Stafford Err, Stafford has been Labour since the last election, and before that it was a Conservative, but it was Theodora Clarke. Mike Wood is MP for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire. Surely the way you build something like this is a postcode -> constituency table (I assume available free), a constituency -> mp table, and mp -> image generation (with cach…
Nope! Office of national statistics published a CSV for postcode -> constituency name [ https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/6f2f35a9a0b94e7... ], and then the official gov.uk parliament API for a constituency name -> MP lookup [ https://members-api.parliament.uk/index.html ]. So all of the data is the officially available data. I humbly posit that this is a publicly owned bug.
I would guess you're taking the constituency name and doing something like this:
https://members-api.parliament.uk/api/Location/Constituency/...
returns three constituencies, all of which look fine to me, but the "Stafford" one is the middle, and you're using the data from the first returned constituency