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Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

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11–20 of 485 posts

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#11
Haven't checked the others, but at least for the skin cream bill, the text explicitly lists "a date of birth entry or checkbox verifying age system" as sufficient, so the outrage about privacy seems overblown.

Of course this raises questions as to what is the point of requiring verification that doesn't actually verify anything, but that's an entirely separate problem.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#12
post #3

age verification should be backed into the browser and not into websites. parents should be able to access a (password protected) setting in any browser that can exclude some types of websites (like porn). governments should be free to go after any website not respecting that setting. but forcing the age-verification onto websites is just moronic.

> but forcing the age-verification onto websites is just moronic.

Agree.

> parents should be able to access a (password protected) setting in any browser that can exclude some types of websites (like porn).

How would this work? Who's going to set up the taxonomy / classification tree for every domain/site on the internet just so a guardian can say "yes to drugs, no to porn, no to news, no to weapons..."?

Or if that's not the implementation, how would an arbitrary site signal to the browser what the age limit is? Once you move beyond a binary "require parent consent for $domain" flag, you're quickly approaching traditional parental control software.

I know I'm not the only one one this site that made a bit of spare $ back in the day helping kids at school go _around_ overbearing parental controls.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#13
Am I missing something here? Entirely possible and likely. When I go to pornhub I have to click a button that days I’m 18. Some other sites I’ve seen actually make me enter a birthdate. Slightly more annoying but I always make one up. Is this what people are upset about? I get actual age verification with an account required or checking my ID is more invasive..but I guess I’ve not experienced this as an actual problem yet.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#14
post #9

This should be held up as a visceral demonstration of how the "slippery slope" isn't inherently a fallacy, as many oft like to claim: it is merely a form of argument that is easy enough to get wrong--leading to a fallacy when the cause is disconnected--that people have become overly-wary of it, reacting to the premise of the conclusion without even bothering to analyze how steep the slope might be before tuning the i…

Exactly. It's a fallacy when dealing with logical entities, but humans aren't logical entities.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#15

Haven't checked the others, but at least for the skin cream bill, the text explicitly lists "a date of birth entry or checkbox verifying age system" as sufficient, so the outrage about privacy seems overblown. Of course this raises questions as to what is the point of requiring verification that doesn't actually verify anything, but that's an entirely separate problem.

Likewise the dietary pills bill only requires the ID to be verified either at a retail point of sale or when the online purchase is delivered, so there doesn't seem to be any invasive data collection required.

To be clear: I'm strongly against any laws that require uploading government ID to sketchy websites, but at least 2 out of the 3 examples listed are not this.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#16
post #3

age verification should be backed into the browser and not into websites. parents should be able to access a (password protected) setting in any browser that can exclude some types of websites (like porn). governments should be free to go after any website not respecting that setting. but forcing the age-verification onto websites is just moronic.

it would be less terrible if there were some simple, Apple ID-like way to simply get redirected to a govt website, put in your driver's license, and the website only gets a token back that says "yes over age/no underage". The data already exists, it's what bars use to scan IDs with handheld readers IIRC.

> The data already exists, it's what bars use to scan IDs with handheld readers IIRC.

Sorta, yeah.

But the reason that works is because there's a human guarding the door that can assert that the hand presenting the ID is attached to a face that looks just like the one on the ID.

Otherwise a very smart 17 year old would just get their hands on the UUID or whatever for literally any ID that belongs to somebody that's 18+. Within _hours_ of this type of system going into effect, you'd have the age/id version of bugmenot.com

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> age verification should be backed into the browser You want a mandated block of government code in every browser?

why government code? having a checkbox that corresponds to info passed with the HTTP requests is hardly something that requires a library or more than a few lines of code

> why government code?

Legal age verification in the browser means legislated code. Not line by line, necessarily, but state code in the browser.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#18

Haven't checked the others, but at least for the skin cream bill, the text explicitly lists "a date of birth entry or checkbox verifying age system" as sufficient, so the outrage about privacy seems overblown. Of course this raises questions as to what is the point of requiring verification that doesn't actually verify anything, but that's an entirely separate problem.

What's the point of anytl of this though?

Like what public interest is served by having a date of birth entry or a checkbox for 'verifying' age?

To me it serves no public interest as it's functionally useless and it will only serve as a thin end of a wedge to normalize more egregious requirements.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#19
post #18

Haven't checked the others, but at least for the skin cream bill, the text explicitly lists "a date of birth entry or checkbox verifying age system" as sufficient, so the outrage about privacy seems overblown. Of course this raises questions as to what is the point of requiring verification that doesn't actually verify anything, but that's an entirely separate problem.

What's the point of anytl of this though? Like what public interest is served by having a date of birth entry or a checkbox for 'verifying' age? To me it serves no public interest as it's functionally useless and it will only serve as a thin end of a wedge to normalize more egregious requirements.

Oh, I agree, it seems completely useless as written. I'm just saying that it's no more of a privacy violation than Steam asking for your birth date (which somehow happens to be January 1st, 1900 for a shocking percentage of the population) to watch a video game trailer. I assume the point is virtue signaling.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#20
post #9

This should be held up as a visceral demonstration of how the "slippery slope" isn't inherently a fallacy, as many oft like to claim: it is merely a form of argument that is easy enough to get wrong--leading to a fallacy when the cause is disconnected--that people have become overly-wary of it, reacting to the premise of the conclusion without even bothering to analyze how steep the slope might be before tuning the i…

Exactly. It's a fallacy when dealing with logical entities, but humans aren't logical entities.

It’s only a fallacy when dealing with logical relations under certainty. Once uncertainty and probability is introduced the slippery slope just is relating Bayes’ Rule in plain English.
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