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What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

pluralistic.net

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Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#31

Post by seethishat »

My main concern is transparency. How do we know that the ruling/governing class is not abusing these monitoring systems and exempting themselves from monitoring?

If we are all subject to the same monitoring and there are no exceptions, that would be fair. However, if some people are exempt from monitoring because of their connections, relations, etc. then that would be unfair.

And if some people are allowed to harass and stalk others based on some attribute (race, religion, nationality, etc.) because they are in a monitoring position (while others are not) then that would be unfair as well.

We need full transparency.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#32

Post by john_strinlai »

akmiller wrote: post #28
john_strinlai wrote: post #2

> "Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. its been said 1000 times here, but: age verification doesn't have to be a nightmare dystopia of 24/7 fine-grained tracking and recording unless you are somehow hoping to achieve 100% success rate (something we have not done with any other law ever). there are sev…

Doesn't 90% successful mean you are stepping on 10% toes???

>Doesn't 90% successful mean you are stepping on 10% toes???

no, it means that <10% of kids under 16 or whatever age will still make it onto instagram

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#33

Post by win311fwg »

pokstad wrote: post #5
john_strinlai wrote: post #2

> "Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. its been said 1000 times here, but: age verification doesn't have to be a nightmare dystopia of 24/7 fine-grained tracking and recording unless you are somehow hoping to achieve 100% success rate (something we have not done with any other law ever). there are sev…

Exactly. The same way that selling alcohol doesn’t require a paper trail of every beer I’ve bought.

Not anymore, at least. In these parts your alcohol purchases did require a paper trail once upon a time.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#35

Post by inetknght »

seethishat wrote: post #31

My main concern is transparency. How do we know that the ruling/governing class is not abusing these monitoring systems and exempting themselves from monitoring? If we are all subject to the same monitoring and there are no exceptions, that would be fair. However, if some people are exempt from monitoring because of their connections, relations, etc. then that would be unfair. And if some people are allowed to harass…

Transparency doesn't matter without consequences. Many of the currently ruling governments have demonstrated that already.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#36

Post by akmiller »

zug_zug wrote: post #26
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be more specific as to what you're imagining? I don't personally see a way to verify someone's age which doesn't involve either credit card verification, photo id verification, or some sort of facial recognition. If you know enough about someone to verify their age—even to a relatively low degree of accuracy—you probably know enough to pinpoint who they are in general. Heck—in most cases, we can't even tell…

Sure here's one example of decentralizing it -- it's going to be overly simple just as a toy example to show how easy it could be: Whenever you want to prove your adult you go to "am I an adult.gov" and you use your credit card or whatever to prove you are an adult. At which point you get a 1-time 5-digit code that is UNIVERSAL TO EVERY SINGLE HUMAN and good for 1 hour (everybody who uses the site gets the same code…

Same code for all people for 1 hour and you don't think we'd immediately have rotating codes to pass the gate?

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#37

Post by gampleman »

What an exceptionally bad faith way to put this whole thing. A five year old watching hours of the most depraved porn available is harmful to that child. Even if you disagree with that statement, you surely must acknowledge that it is an entirely reasonable opinion to hold and one our societies have generally held to this sort of thing for ages.

I also acknowledge that there is a reasonable debate to be had if the disadvantages to adults and businesses from imposing these rules are worth the harms prevented.

There is also a reasonable debate to be had about the merits of various technical and legal schemes being implemented to achieve these goals.

But this take is neither of those. For one, surveillance isn't the number one harm being prevented (even though, a number of legal codes attempt to make this the case).

As has been pointed out previously, there absolutely can be age verification that is without surveillance. The fact that these solutions aren't always legally mandated and therefore age verification can be used to increase surveillance is a reasonable thing to attempt to amend to the implementations of these laws.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#38

Post by malwrar »

zug_zug wrote: post #26
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be more specific as to what you're imagining? I don't personally see a way to verify someone's age which doesn't involve either credit card verification, photo id verification, or some sort of facial recognition. If you know enough about someone to verify their age—even to a relatively low degree of accuracy—you probably know enough to pinpoint who they are in general. Heck—in most cases, we can't even tell…

Sure here's one example of decentralizing it -- it's going to be overly simple just as a toy example to show how easy it could be: Whenever you want to prove your adult you go to "am I an adult.gov" and you use your credit card or whatever to prove you are an adult. At which point you get a 1-time 5-digit code that is UNIVERSAL TO EVERY SINGLE HUMAN and good for 1 hour (everybody who uses the site gets the same code…

Headline news: children infiltrate the universal adult one time password scheme for porn, parents panic! Turns out the 18 year olds started selling access to their younger friends, who resold it to their younger friends.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#39

Post by economistbob »

The bigger threat to kids is all the browsers now bypassing domain filtering by default, even if you specify a DNS server. There was a time when multiple vendors sold protection software, but apparently some unsavory elements wanted all the browsers to build in DNS bypassing to go around it. The best protection for children is blocking the bad stuff at the DNS level.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#40

Post by john_strinlai »

malwrar wrote: post #38
zug_zug wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure here's one example of decentralizing it -- it's going to be overly simple just as a toy example to show how easy it could be: Whenever you want to prove your adult you go to "am I an adult.gov" and you use your credit card or whatever to prove you are an adult. At which point you get a 1-time 5-digit code that is UNIVERSAL TO EVERY SINGLE HUMAN and good for 1 hour (everybody who uses the site gets the same code…

Headline news: children infiltrate the universal adult one time password scheme for porn, parents panic! Turns out the 18 year olds started selling access to their younger friends, who resold it to their younger friends.

this happens with alcohol and tobacco every day. i cant think of the last time it reached headline news.
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