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We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

federalregister.gov

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Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#21

Post by oshout »

Skimming through the article, it seems like the extent of this is to require IAAS (Infrastructure) providers to verify the identity of those who are using their services to train AI. It's an attempt to stymie sanctioned or malicious actors, from training AI and especially from hopping between services or using aliases to continue training on their model.

It seems a bit benign and I don't understand the parallels others on this HN discussion are making. Is it that it's a slippery slope or perhaps I'm being naïve in regards to the scope?

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#22

Post by chadsix »

plus wrote: post #5
chadsix wrote: post #2

Submission Statement: We have exactly 4 days to leave comments to the Federal Government of the United States of America contesting the requirement of KYC by internet service providers. This law is not conducive to a free internet/society.

I ask this 100% genuinely, since this isn't a subject I've ever given any mind to. Why should we oppose this? What are the potential negative outcomes if this goes through? Can you steelman the argument for why people support this, and explain why you find the arguments unconvincing?

It is great that you ask a question, because we live in a world with the freedom to opine on things. What could be considered a massive issue to me may not be a massive issue to another; and if we feel the world will be better by debating our positions, we have the right to do so.

Today, anonymity and pseudonymity exist and allow people to speak freely without risk of backlash for having a different opinion as often times the right opinion may differ with that of social consensus.

If KYC is introduced, the ability to maintain freedom of speech, online, will likely diminish.

This is of negative consequence to the people of the world.

Further, with internet 'forever data', LLM NLP and so forth, character profiles are too easy to develop for people which can cause further harm as we begin segregating based on said profiles.

I believe this KYC requirement can even extend to blockchain node operators and so forth as well.

These are just a few reasons but there are many more.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#23

Post by ameister14 »

CalRobert wrote: post #14
plus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ask this 100% genuinely, since this isn't a subject I've ever given any mind to. Why should we oppose this? What are the potential negative outcomes if this goes through? Can you steelman the argument for why people support this, and explain why you find the arguments unconvincing?

I think that the biggest argument in favour is that it would remove anonymity on the internet, at least from governments, and that could enable law enforcement to more easily find people committing real crimes. CSAM, scams, etc. I think the biggest argument against it is that this removes anonymity on the internet, at least from governments, and that would remove people's ability to freely voice their opinions withou…

Does this actually remove anonymity on the internet?

It seems to de-anonymize a set of IaaS customers, sure; but that's not nearly the same thing as removing anonymity completely. I've only just scanned this but it seems at first glance to mean that a foreign company can't anonymously spin up an AWS instance, that's all. Am I reading this incorrectly?

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#24

Post by Izkata »

For those of us who don't know what this is, an explanation is a bit down the page:

> To address these threats, the President issued E.O. 13984, “Taking Additional Steps To Address the National Emergency With Respect to Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities,” which provides the Department with authority to require U.S. IaaS providers to verify the identity of foreign users of U.S. IaaS products, to issue standards and procedures that the Department may use to make a finding to exempt IaaS providers from such a requirement, to impose recordkeeping obligations with respect to foreign users of U.S. IaaS products, and to limit certain foreign actors' access to U.S. IaaS products in appropriate circumstances. The President subsequently issued E.O. 14110, “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence,” which calls for the Department to require U.S. IaaS providers to ensure that their foreign resellers verify the identity of foreign users. E.O. 14110 also provides the Department with authority to require U.S. IaaS providers submit a report to the Department whenever a foreign person transacts with them to train a large AI model with potential capabilities that could be used in malicious cyber-enabled activity.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#25

Post by webdoodle »

CalRobert wrote: post #3

I suppose VPN's will become illegal next?

Those in authority don't want us sharing information with anyone they can't track. So many of the websites I use are already blocking VPN access, and it's only getting worse. Codifying it as law will just be the last step to protect the censors from prosecution for violating the 1st Amendment.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#26

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

AdamH12113 wrote: post #19

For those who didn't know, KYC stands for "know your customer". It's a good idea to spell out abbreviations the first time they're used, especially since the abbreviation itself is not used in the linked article. It's also worth noting that the proposal is about US infrastructure as a service (IaaS) products specifically, not "internet services" in general.

Yeah this is a very industry standard term in banking and anyone in that industry is going to immediately know what you are talking about, but outside of that industry, chances are high that a layman will not

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#27

Post by chadsix »

oshout wrote: post #21

Skimming through the article, it seems like the extent of this is to require IAAS (Infrastructure) providers to verify the identity of those who are using their services to train AI. It's an attempt to stymie sanctioned or malicious actors, from training AI and especially from hopping between services or using aliases to continue training on their model. It seems a bit benign and I don't understand the parallels othe…

AI is mentioned, but the scope is significantly larger if you read the fulltext.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#28

Post by throwup238 »

CalRobert wrote: post #14
plus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ask this 100% genuinely, since this isn't a subject I've ever given any mind to. Why should we oppose this? What are the potential negative outcomes if this goes through? Can you steelman the argument for why people support this, and explain why you find the arguments unconvincing?

I think that the biggest argument in favour is that it would remove anonymity on the internet, at least from governments, and that could enable law enforcement to more easily find people committing real crimes. CSAM, scams, etc. I think the biggest argument against it is that this removes anonymity on the internet, at least from governments, and that would remove people's ability to freely voice their opinions withou…

> …directs the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) to propose regulations requiring U.S. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers of IaaS products to verify the identity of their foreign customers… (from TFA)

This is about IaaS not “internet services”. It doesn’t remove anonymity from internet users, just foreign customers renting cloud servers and other infrastructure.

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#29

Post by [deleted] »

noodlesUK wrote: post #15
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #11

This does not appear to affect domestic customers.

Then surely all the good actors have to do KYC, and all the bad actors can just pretend to be American entities. I don't agree with this on principle, but even just from a practical perspective it seems like they are leaving the door completely open by doing that. What's even the point?

[deleted]

Re: We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services

#30

Post by [deleted] »

Zak wrote: post #12
systemvoltage wrote: post #4

Unconstitutional.

What provision of the constitution does it violate? Do you know of court precedents that support that claim? I'm not writing this to argue against your position, but to help people craft effective comments to submit in response to the proposed regulation. Federal agencies are not responsive to comments about people disliking a proposed rule, but are very responsive to concrete examples of why it might be legally prob…

[deleted]
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