Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 485 posts

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#61

Post by evil-olive »

stvltvs wrote: post #44
michaelmior wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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..."? This isn't really an answer, but the same problem exists with current age verification laws. I think the main difference with traditional parental control software is that the burden would be on the site maintainer to…

Have browsers default block anything that doesn't label their content (allow this setting to be disabled and locked down in parental controls), then hold websites liable for willfully or negligently mislabeling. Exceptions for good faith efforts to label correctly. Maybe a special label for user generated content that holds companies a bit less liable for it.

> Have browsers default block anything that doesn't label their content

"have" is a bit ambiguous here. I assume you actually mean "have the government require"?

in other words, if I develop a browser, I could be fined or thrown in jail for not implementing your "default to blocking anything unlabeled" strategy?

since implementing a browser is a vast undertaking, what about if I maintained a fork of Chromium or Firefox that simply disabled that check?

we had this exact same debate 20ish years ago [0] except it was about the specter of TV piracy and file-sharing. the proposed solution was the same, though - require software that could be used for piracy to incorporate a specific check, and make it illegal to distribute software without that check. it was a terrible idea then, and remains a terrible idea now.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_flag

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#62

Post by mandevil »

ryandvm wrote: post #27
plasma_beam wrote: post #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 proble…

Certain US states are requiring the porn sites actually do rigorous age verification via scanned documents. I believe PornHub just opted to stay out of those states entirely hoping that their "reverse boycott" would cause enough of a backlash to get the laws changed. I'm not sure it's working. That said, as a parent to teenagers, I don't know that I believe that age verification is such a terrible idea. The reality i…

"Hoping that technology can magically solve this without destroying privacy" seems to be where the Supreme Court is heading, at least that was what observers thought after watching the Court's hearing on the Texas bill a few weeks ago.

Which is one reason that the EFF is trying to lay down their argument that the technology won't work.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#63

Post by bobthepanda »

baby_souffle wrote: post #16
bobthepanda wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1…

As far as I’ve done, I’ve had to upload drivers licenses to websites before (e.g. to open an online banking account or whatever) and I don’t recall doing anything other than uploading the license.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#64

Post by [deleted] »

baby_souffle wrote: post #16
bobthepanda wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1…

[deleted]

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#65

Post by armchairhacker »

saurik wrote: 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…

IMO slippery slope is a fallacy when the small step only supports the big step symbolically, shifting the “Overton Window”. It’s true that the Overton Window has some effect, but we shouldn’t avoid taking a step towards the middle just because it’s also a step towards the opposite bad side, if the middle is good.

Wrt. privacy, the real issue is that the small step helps the big step not just symbolically. ID-based age-verification, even when used for good reasons, gives the state and government access to its people’s history of age-restricted content. If this government decides to, say, prosecute anyone who viewed/bought/consumed (inane) X, it’s far easier vs. a government that doesn’t have age-verification. Both governments face major opposition, but the latter government’s opposition is more effective, because the former’s has already shared their history.

One thing the article doesn’t state but implies, that I don’t agree with, is: the slippery slope is still a fallacy, when a government first decides to age-gate reasonable X (e.g. porn) then unreasonable Y (e.g. history books). Because said government will receive almost as much opposition and people doing work-arounds for Y, as if they went straight to age-gating Y; although not exactly as much, I generally assume (and hope) the difference doesn't outweigh the benefits of "stepping towards the middle". In the article, X is porn, and Y is facial cream, dating apps, and diet pills. But these things arguably should be age-gated; and even the article’s talking points are not that these are OK for children, but that gating them gives the government data on more people (which is a real slippery-slope, not a fallacy, as explained in the above paragraph), specifically people who don’t watch porn (perhaps some of the readers don’t mind porn viewers being monitored because they aren’t one of them). If states were to actually start age-gating history books, I guarantee there would be serious opposition, including from people who are completely fine with age-gating porn.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#66

Post by GauntletWizard »

saurik wrote: 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…

They no longer teach Rhetoric at schools. Rhetorical arguments have been completely forgotten and debased in the public mind.

Rhetorical arguments are more important than ever in the age of AI, because AI is our attempt to simulate that. Probabilistic AI mimics rhetoric (inexpertly). It uses past knowledge to predict future behavior (rather, just the next token) based on probability.

To be clear - I'm not arguing that logical argument aren't important; I am a logical person, and prefer logical arguments to rhetorical ones. I prefer the certainty. I still recognize the need for rhetoric. Not everything is certain, and you have to make decisions based on probabilities and unknowns.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#67

Post by II2II »

nkozyra wrote: post #32
saurik wrote: 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…

If you look at it less as "if A then B" and more like "if A then possibly B" as it's usually intended then I think you can strip the fallacy. Almost anything is possible, but even in this case it was never inevitable or inherently true that age verification for X meant age verification for Y. Which means the value - if any - for a slippery slope argument is "consider the possibilities X might open up"

It depends upon what Y is. If X and Y require age verification for in-person purchases and age verification is required to purchase X online, it is reasonable to assume that age verification for Y will follow. Some may call that a slippery slope. In reality it is simply a loophole in the law. Either way, it is reasonable to assume there is a bottom to that slope. It is not reasonable to assume that X opens up all possibilities.

That said, I understand where the EFF is coming from. Data collection and "sharing" is rampant these days. Any meaningful form of age verification opens up the potential for abuse. What I don't understand is their failure to address how to handle restricted goods.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#68

Post by Analemma_ »

jay-barronville wrote: post #60
ryandvm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certain US states are requiring the porn sites actually do rigorous age verification via scanned documents. I believe PornHub just opted to stay out of those states entirely hoping that their "reverse boycott" would cause enough of a backlash to get the laws changed. I'm not sure it's working. That said, as a parent to teenagers, I don't know that I believe that age verification is such a terrible idea. The reality i…

> That said, as a parent to teenagers, I don't know that I believe that age verification is such a terrible idea. The reality is that there's a lot of fucked up porn out there and blocking it effectively across all networks and every device is non-trivial. I understand this is a minority viewpoint on HN. I agree with you. I’m very pro-privacy/anti-surveillance and pro-freedom, so I’m entirely against the invasive ID-…

> I agree with you. I’m very pro-privacy/anti-surveillance and pro-freedom, so I’m entirely against the invasive ID-based systems, but the problem you highlight is pretty real and has to be addressed somehow, and I’m just not sure what the solution is.

The solution is client-side filtering/blocking software on the machines you own. And if your response is "but that's hard", that should increase your confidence that server-side filtering and verification are unacceptable. If even tech-savvy people can't get verification working on a local device-- which has the full, correct context who is using it and what should be blocked-- then certainly it's not going to get any better by mandating a solution at scale on the public Internet, where there is much less context about the individual user, credentials can be mocked, proxies can be used, and so on.

Post reply on HN