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EFF launches Age Verification Hub

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Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#121

Post by atonse »

zmmmmm wrote: post #114

I feel like the EFF has stretched a bit far on this one. They need to be advocating for good solutions, not portraying age verification as fundamentally about surveillance and censorship. As many are pointing out zero knowledge proofs exist and resolve most of the issues they are referring to. And it doesn't have to be complex. A government (or bank, or anybody that has an actual reason to know your identity) provide…

Yep this is the first time I've disagreed with the EFF on anything civil liberties related.

My view is that there's no reason why we can't come together and come up with a rating system for websites (through HTTP headers, there are already a couple proposals, the RTA header and another W3C proposal).

Once a website just sends a header saying this is adult only content, what YOU as a user do with it is up to you. You could restrict it at the OS level (which is another thing we ALREADY have).

This would match the current system, which allows households to set their devices to block whatever they want, and the devices get metadata from the content producers.

No ID checks needed.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#122

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #90
pksebben wrote: post #88

This keeps coming up and we keep having the same debates about what Age Verification isn't. For the folks in the back row: Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Without even reaching for my tinfoil hat, the strategy at work here is clear […

I am someone who is very privacy focused. I've literally never had a social media account on any platform and I'm 42. From day one of facebook, I never wanted my information online. Like many here, I'm deeply concerned about privacy and surveillance. In real life, we think age verification is a good thing. Kids shouldn't buy porn. Teenagers shouldn't get into bars. etc... There has to be room somewhere for reasonable…

In the online world you can’t make sure of anything. Florida for instance requires age verification for porn sites. Guess how many mainstream sites not based in the US are completely ignoring the law and guess how many others are easily accessible via a VPN? If you guessed the sum total of both is less than 100%, you would be wrong - and even that is tilted toward sites that just ignored it.

The one thing you can control is your childs access through their device using parental controls.

I can absolutely guarantee you that any teenager can easily get access to weed, cigarettes and alcohol despite the laws and definitely can use a VPN. It only takes one smart kid to show them how.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#123

Post by like_any_other »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #90
pksebben wrote: post #88

This keeps coming up and we keep having the same debates about what Age Verification isn't. For the folks in the back row: Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Without even reaching for my tinfoil hat, the strategy at work here is clear […

I am someone who is very privacy focused. I've literally never had a social media account on any platform and I'm 42. From day one of facebook, I never wanted my information online. Like many here, I'm deeply concerned about privacy and surveillance. In real life, we think age verification is a good thing. Kids shouldn't buy porn. Teenagers shouldn't get into bars. etc... There has to be room somewhere for reasonable…

> In real life, we think age verification is a good thing.

Ok. In real life, do we think having agents from the government and corporations following you everywhere, writing down your every move and word, is a good thing? Or rather, what kind of crime would one have to have committed, so that they would only be allowed out in public with surveillance agents trailing them everywhere?

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#124

Post by H1Supreme »

Generally speaking, I share the HN consensus on age verification laws. But, there is a real problem with kid's unfettered internet access. Just think about all the adults who are hopelessly addicted to social media. The negative affects are amplified when it comes to developing minds.

My SO has been teaching for nearly 20 years now, and mental health in kids has fallen off a cliff in the last two decades. I could fill this page with online bullying stories. Some of which, are especially cruel. Half her students are on medication for anxiety. It's out of control, honestly.

That said, I don't know how to solve it. It's easy to put this on the parents, but that's not the answer. Otherwise, it would be solved already. Some don't care. Some don't have the time to care because they're trying to keep the lights on, and dinner on the table. And, some simply think it doesn't apply to them or their children. Parents on HN are hyper-aware of this sort of thing, but that's definitely the minority.

I know a family that would be most folks least likely candidate for something bad to happen online. Single income, relatively well off, the parent at home has an eye on the kids 24/7. And, if you met the kids, you would most likely qualify them as "good kids". Without going into detail, their life was turned upside down because one of the kids was "joking around" online.

Again, I don't know what the answer to the problem is. Clearly, age verification laws are a veiled attempt to both collect and control data. And, EFF's emphasis on advertising restrictions as a solution, seems off the mark. There's more to it than that. Idk, this shit makes me want to log off permanently, and pretend it's 1992.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#125

Post by taeric »

no_wizard wrote: post #100
taeric wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only gripe here is the idea of "perhaps hold the parents culpable." I'm not opposed to the idea, but what sucks is we are ultimately all paying the cost of it going wrong. The idea that we can shunt that away to a few irresponsible people is just demonstrably not the case. Worse, it leads to situations where society seems to want to flat out be kid free in many ways. With families reportedly afraid to let their ki…

>Worse, it leads to situations where society seems to want to flat out be kid free in many ways. With families reportedly afraid to let their kids walk to and from school unsupervised. I'm not seeing the correlation / causation here.

I was referencing the towns that have called the cops because there were some unsupervised kids in a park. I comfort myself by saying this isn't nearly as common as the fear mongers online would have you think. That there are cases it happens still worries me.

Note that I'm not even necessarily worried about cops getting called. Quite the contrary, I am fine with the idea of cops having a more constant presence around parks and such. I do worry about people that get up in arms about how things are too unsafe for kids to be let outside. If that is the case, what can we do to make it safe?

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#126

Post by orblivion »

phyzome wrote: post #115
knallfrosch wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we have to know that you're not a minor, then we also have to know who you are That is untrue

Are you aware of any age verification systems that do not have this property? (This includes being robust against law enforcement action, legal or otherwise.)

How about:

https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/opening-up-ze...

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#127

Post by pksebben »

phyzome wrote: post #115
knallfrosch wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we have to know that you're not a minor, then we also have to know who you are That is untrue

Are you aware of any age verification systems that do not have this property? (This includes being robust against law enforcement action, legal or otherwise.)

Like many mention in other comments on this post, it's possible to implement using ZKPs. There are likely other methods that would be effective without compromising privacy. None of them are part of the Age Verification discussion because kids are not the actual point of Age Verification.

When I say "if we have to know you're not a kid, we have to know who you are" I'm not stating an actual truth, but the argument as it is playing out politically.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#128

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

rlpb wrote: post #26
pembrook wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps even hold parents culpable for not doing so, as a minimum supervision requirement Even the idea of prosecuting parents for allowing their child to access 'information,' no matter what that information is, just sounds like asking for 1984-style insanity. A good rule of thumb when creating laws: imagine someone with opposite political views from yours applying said law at their discretion (because it will hap…

> Even the idea of prosecuting parents for allowing their child to access 'information,' no matter what that information is, just sounds like asking for 1984-style insanity. This assumes an absolutist approach to enforcement, which I did not advocate and is not a fundamental part of my proposed solution. In any case, the law already has to make a subjective decision in non-technology areas. It would be no different h…

And surprisingly when the law makes such decisions, it seems to affect little Jerome more than little Johnny.

You have way too much faith in the fairness of the court system.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#129

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #97
rockskon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero knowledge proof is either trivially defeated by re-using the same credentials or doesn't have useful privacy guarantees. There really isn't an in-between here for something like age verification.

The idea is that e.g. the government would give you an app that lives on your phone. When you apply for the app you provide some documents to prove your age, but you don't say anything about what sites you plan to visit. When you want to visit an age-restricted site you use the app to generate a proof that you have it, but the site doesn't learn anything more than that, and the government doesn't learn that you used…

> the government would give you an app that lives on your phone

And you don’t see a problem with this part?

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#130

Post by pksebben »

tzs wrote: post #118
pksebben wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not dismissing that idea. It is a perfectly reasonable thing to think about, part of why we have age verification techniques that already work well in critical places like online vape shops. I'm even willing to talk about the possibility that we could use more robust systems deployed more broadly. A lot of folks here are talking about ZKPs in this regard, and that's not a bad idea at all. The issue I'm trying to…

> The issue I'm trying to sound the horn on is that the current push for AF in the US and EU has nothing to do with kids . I think you could put together a working group on ZKPs and Age Verification, write up a paper and run experiments, and when you bring it to the lawmakers they're gonna say something to the tune of: The EU is currently doing large-scale field tries of the EU Digital Identity Wallet, which they hav…

I appreciate the mention - i had not yet heard of this EU DIW thing. That said, I can't find any resources on it that mention the use of ZKPs. Could you share a link?
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