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What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

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

#51

Could we instead disallow algorithmic skinner-box addiction machines for everyone ?

How about taking some personal responsibility for your life? This shouldn't even be a consideration concerning adults.

It's clear by now that the societal impact is significant. I can banish all the social networks from my life and they'll still be corrupting the political process, promoting divisive content, etc.

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

#53

Could we instead disallow algorithmic skinner-box addiction machines for everyone ?

How about taking some personal responsibility for your life? This shouldn't even be a consideration concerning adults.

I assume you are also for heroin vending machines at every school corner if you watch a 30 second ad slot. You don't have to use them, you know.

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

#54
post #5

> "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.

I don't know about this, stores around me are scanning people's IDs to verify their age.

I guess I could make an ID (not a counterfeit government ID) that uses the same encoding for the birthday.

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

#56

> "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…

> 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

I believe you are missing the point. "To protect kids" is just a cover, the nightmare dystopia is the real goal. So age verification have to be a nightmare dystopia or it would be useless for those, who push for it.

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

#57
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are these mythical sweet-spot solutions? Concretely, half the websites I visit from the UK want me to either scan my face or upload ID documents to access their full featureset. Now that users have been conditioned to accept this, nobody seems very interested in figuring out how to collect less PII - only insulating themselves from liability by having the data processed by a third party.

> mythical sweet-spot solutions? there are thousands of comments on these threads every time it comes up. there's tons of what i consider reasonable solutions proposed. there's examples below, too, which don't require face scans. > Concretely, half the websites I visit from the UK want me to either scan my face or upload ID documents yeah, i agree that really sucks.

I've yet to see one I consider reasonable.

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

#58
post #56

> "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…

> 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 I believe you are missing the point. "To protect kids" is just a cover, the nightmare dystopia is the real goal. So age verification have to be a nightmare dystopia or it would be useless for those, who push for it.

>I believe you are missing the point. "To protect kids" is just a cover, the nightmare dystopia is the real goal.

did i miss the point? because my last sentence literally says this.

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

#59
post #29

> "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…

Where are these mythical sweet-spot solutions? Concretely, half the websites I visit from the UK want me to either scan my face or upload ID documents to access their full featureset. Now that users have been conditioned to accept this, nobody seems very interested in figuring out how to collect less PII - only insulating themselves from liability by having the data processed by a third party.

Government builds a website where you can log in using any government issued ID or using one of the many many many available services that hold your details already(at least in the UK nearly everyone will have a DLVA account, HMRC account, HMPO account, NHS account.....all of these are government services which we can only assume hold our data securely already).

On that website, you can click "give me a verification code", it gives you a code that is single use and only valid 24 hours. You type that into whatever 18+ website you need to, they use a public API provided by the government to just check "yes this is a valid code and the user is 18" - bang, done, verified. The website knows nothing about you at all, except for the fact that you're 18.

In fact, the UK government ALREADY HAS THIS. For the EU settlement scheme, you can give your employeer(or anyone else who needs it) a special magic code that they type in on the government website, and it just says "yet his person has the right to reside in the UK" without spilling any of your personal information at all. The code is single use and valid a limited amount of time. And you can do the same with your driving licence, where anyone can verify you hold a valid licence without actually seeing it or any details on it.

Like, am I being stupid here? It seems like an almost trivial solution to the problem, especially given that it already exists for at least 2 services named above.

And yes, I know people will say "oh but that requires the government having this data on you, and that's bad" or "but then the government will know you've authenticated with pornhub!".

And yes, both of these are true - but on point 1 - like, I'd love some ideal situation where the government can simultaniously give me a passport or a driving licence AND not have any information about me at the same time, but that ain't happening, and on point 2 - yes, but that's still infinitely preferable to the current implementation, and it can be easily solved with legislation saying that the code authentication service doesn't log who requested verification, it just answers with yes/no and that's it.

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

#60

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…

> Could you be more specific as to what you're imagining? sure, i'll put my favorite two. though you'll find much more detailed and thought-out versions of these (and others) in the dozens of other giant threads on the same topic. - buy a card with a UUID from anywhere that sells alcohol/tobacco that is valid for some period of time. most people are comfortable with flashing their ID at the clerk. the UUID card is no…

> buy a card with a UUID from anywhere that sells alcohol/tobacco that is valid for some period of time

Why should I pay continuously to prove I'm an adult? And those cards will be getting sold to kids faster than you can blink. I bet a lot of parents would buy them for their kids.

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