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

411–420 of 485 posts

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#411

Post by LorenPechtel »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #328
haswell wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More of it yes, but the themes and extremes have been shifting over the years as well, with family fantasies and misogyny/sexual violence becoming increasingly prevalent. This was actually on the front page recently [0], and while I'm no prude, I do think it's worth taking the trends in porn seriously when comparing the old Internet to the current day. - [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43196585

Then you have a different problem. Suppose you have some content that depicts healthy and loving relationships, but is also sexually explicit. The prudes are going to want that inside the porn filter along with the rest of it, even though it's something that does the opposite of what you're concerned about. Meanwhile, insert "watch it for the plot" joke, because we all know that kind of content gets produced when the…

Yup, and legitimate educational stuff gets rated 18+. Thus people end up with a very unrealistic impression of what's actually normal anatomy.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#412

Post by LorenPechtel »

Aeolun wrote: post #257
cameldrv wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public spaces are most definitely not "Adults Only" by default. You're not allowed to have a big billboard with porn on it, you have to show ID to get into a bar, you have to show ID to buy a pack of cigarettes, and in many states the cigarettes have to be in an opaque cabinet. You can't walk around naked. You can't be drunk in public. Now admittedly many of these things are unevenly enforced, but society absolutely…

> You're not allowed to have a big billboard with porn on it Most adults would be put off by that as well, I’m not sure if this is indicative of public spaces. That said, I agree that public spaces cannot possibly be adult only by default, as children have to traverse them.

But we have a very unrealistic view of what's harmful to children. Non-sexual nudity is not a threat, period. Playboy--yeah, because of some of the tobacco ads clearly aimed at teenagers. The nudity--harmless.

I grew up in a household where no effort was made to hide adult materials. Oh, the horrors--that don't actually exist. There is exactly zero overlap between my father's kinks (I was the one that had to go through his stuff when he died, I know what they are) and my own.

As for the billboard--there's sometimes been a prostitute ad on a billboard here. "Full" nudity with strategically placed text. Of course it pretends they are dancers but few people are actually mislead. (Despite a fair amount of misunderstanding prostitution is *not* legal in Las Vegas. It's banned by state law in the two most populous counties, local choice otherwise. However, there's pretty much a truce between the outcall escorts and the police--they don't do other wrongs, the cops don't try to catch them.)

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#413

Post by LorenPechtel »

linuxhansl wrote: post #156
mjevans wrote: post #71

The Internet should be Unrated and thus Adults Only by default. Just like public spaces. (Would you allow an 8 year old to wander New York City unattended? Arguments can be made for more controlled spaces but...) Have a website and want the chance for kids to see it? Advertise in the headers that it's moderated and intended to be a given rating. Various indexers can pick that up. Complaints can be forward to relevant…

> Would you allow an 8 year old to wander New York City unattended? Yes as long as they know to observe traffic and know how to use the subway. Almost all child adductions are parental kidnappings. This "will nobody think of the children..." neurosis is just that, a neurosis.

Or runaways.

I do agree with the basic concept, though--kids being snatched by strangers is very rare.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#414

Post by LorenPechtel »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #168
miki123211 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the problem isn't ID-based age verification specifically, it's that such verification is usually impelemnted in a way where the service in question gets a lot more data than they need, with no real control over how that data is kept and processed. It would absolutely be possible to implement that stuff in a fully privacy-preserving way, with nothing but basic cryptography, and the government could absolutely enfo…

> It would absolutely be possible to implement that stuff in a fully privacy-preserving way, with nothing but basic cryptography, and the government could absolutely enforce that implementation. There are ways to do this which are less bad , but there is no way to do it "in a fully privacy-preserving way" without also making it fully ineffective, because if there is no way to prove who someone is then there is no way…

I don't see how it could be fully privacy preserving. It's the government trying to get the information, the repository is not secure!

However, you could come close. Sell a simple USB device that generates codes. It can only be purchased in person by showing ID--but the ID is not recorded. Down the road it can only be traced to the device, not to the purchaser. But you would no doubt see them for sale by unscrupulous individuals reselling them.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#415

Post by ty6853 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #394
ty6853 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or alternatively, someone else with homophobic feelings will use my comment to reflect and realize it's OK to acknowledge their feelings while acknowledging the rights and freedoms of others. I welcome gays the freedom to kiss in public, just as they must accept my freedom to discuss my feelings. It's a two sided coin, and I'm not sure it's a loaded coin as you imply.

It's because you're berating their identity. It's similar to sharing your feelings when you're offended by a black person walking on the street. We don't tolerate people complaining about that. Why would the LGBT community be treated differently?

First of all, I entirely reject your premise.

Second of all, I want to really zero in on "we don't tolerate." I want to know who we is, and how they plan on stopping me from expressing my feelings. Because last I checked we even tolerate nazis in the town square in this country, because the alternative is even worse.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#416

Post by LorenPechtel »

croes wrote: post #296
autoexec wrote: post #181

> California’s AB-728 mandates age verification for anyone purchasing skin care products or cosmetics that contain certain chemicals like Vitamin A or alpha hydroxy acids. On the surface, this may seem harmless—who doesn't want to ensure that minors are safe from harmful chemicals? Why would we want to keep minors safe from "harmful chemicals" but not adults? If skin cream products with Vitamin A or alpha hydroxy aci…

Everything is harmful in the wrong dosage

Yup. "Hazardous" simply means something where it's quite possible to encounter harmful quantities. And it's possible to have substances intended for human consumption that meet the definition of "poison".

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#417

Post by LorenPechtel »

baby_souffle wrote: post #12
dinkblam wrote: 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…

Define a set of things that many will want to censor on. Put it in censor.txt. A browser in censored mode pulls the file for the domain, checks if it contains any tags that it's set to block. It's treated like anything else a web browser might load, cached if possible. In uncensored mode it doesn't matter if it exists, it's not downloaded.

Make a standard set of tags and a yes/maybe/no response to them. (Maybe is for a website that has user content that permits such stuff.)

I do agree it would be defeated in many cases, though. Tech-ignorant parents aren't going to be very good at stopping tech-savvy kids.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#418

Post by LorenPechtel »

notatoad wrote: post #93
baby_souffle wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

i think it would be reasonable to legally require websites to classify themselves. if it's illegal to show porn to minors, all a website should have to do to comply with the law is to send a header saying "this is porn" and leave it up to the browser to decide whether or not the human using the browser can see it or not.

1) I disagree with "porn" as a tag. Much too broad. And it should distinguish between educational stuff and entertainment.

2) Look at my earlier post--you don't even need to compel it. Just make browsers in censored mode not able to access sites without classification. You have a kid site, you'll comply. Your subject matter is either not for kids or is something kids aren't going to be interested in, you can ignore it.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#419

Post by wkat4242 »

ty6853 wrote: post #415
wkat4242 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because you're berating their identity. It's similar to sharing your feelings when you're offended by a black person walking on the street. We don't tolerate people complaining about that. Why would the LGBT community be treated differently?

First of all, I entirely reject your premise. Second of all, I want to really zero in on "we don't tolerate." I want to know who we is, and how they plan on stopping me from expressing my feelings. Because last I checked we even tolerate nazis in the town square in this country, because the alternative is even worse.

How is it different? People being gay or trans is just like people being black or white. They are born that way. We just give them the tools and trust so they don't have to hide it. Having them hide it doesn't make them not gay. And it doesn't matter because there's nothing bad about that anyway.

And how the non toleration works? Well through law. Discrimination and racism are a crime. Even though the white house is full of white supremacists now. And male chauvinists too. Even white women get the short end of the stick. They're already unwelcome in the military (trump fired the female head of the coast guard and the black chief of staff)

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#420

Post by LorenPechtel »

TZubiri wrote: post #337

We should recognize that this is a political issue and that a problem exists that needs a solution. One party to the debate claiming that the solution (age verification) to the problem (kids accessing adult content) is imperfect, is worthless. We know what the position of the EFF or FSF is on the matter, they prioritize online privacy over kid safety, got it. But if the message is going to be that the solution has a…

The reason we denounce it is that it's *always* an attempt to get the camel's nose in. Just look at the article--politicians admitting their intent!

And the reality is as always it's focusing on the wrong "threat". Like the vast majority of sexual abuse is by trusted people in the kid's life, not by anything on the web. The real threats on the web are social media and chat rooms, not the "naughty" stuff.

Or look at the perennial attempts to allow governments to block "child sexual abuse images"--since it's always done with hashes there's no verification that that's all they're doing. Think China wouldn't block images of tank man in Tienanmen Square?

Post reply on HN