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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

#281

Post by CPLX »

fluoridation wrote: post #272
CPLX wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if you really want to make the government subsidize an ID verification scheme or mandate that certain real-world locations provide age verification as a social service for everyone, that's fine. It's orthogonal to the discussion, though, which is about whether we should do it or not, because the costs here aren't significant and don't change the terms of the debate.

I'm personally in favor of just banning children off the Internet, but I don't agree it's orthogonal to the discussion. What I replied to was the implication that someone should pay a recurring cost to prove they're an adult for the same reason that they pay to own a computer or to connect to the Internet. Don't disown the dumb thing you said.

I'm not disowning it at all. I think paying a recurring cost to prove you're an adult for purposes of accessing the internet is completely fine, trivial, and unimportant.

You have to pay a cost to go out in public, since there are nudity laws. You have to pay a cost to use an airport or a train station. You have to pay a fee to prove that you own a car. And so on.

It just doesn't matter. It's not important. It's consistent with how we organize our society in general, which makes focusing on it in this one particular instance more understandable as an attempt to distract from the substantive merits of these arguments about age verification.

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

#282

Post by anigbrowl »

catoc wrote: post #279

Age Verification is not about “saving kids from spying/social media”. Same as Regulatory Encryption Backdoors are not about “protecting kids from child predators” This is framing. Abusing kids is bad. But that is not what this about. Let’s keep the discussion on topic: the goal is 1984-level oversight… not just of the kids [Edit: I guess HN agrees: meanwhile the title changed from “saving kids from spying” to “is act…

The headline already summarizes the premise of the article in fewer words.

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

#283

Post by anigbrowl »

inigyou wrote: post #164
john_strinlai wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you think this will be close to 90%? Unless these cards are expensive I don't see that happening. its obviously just an illustrative guess. but if the penalty of possessing the card is similar to underage possession of alcohol/tobacco, and larger penalties if a store/person is found providing a card to someone underage, i see no reason why it wouldnt have a similar success rate as alcohol/tobacco.

Why possess the card when you can just buy the UUID on the dark web

Why buy a UUID when you can just get porn on the dark web

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

#284

Post by catoc »

anigbrowl wrote: post #282
catoc wrote: post #279

Age Verification is not about “saving kids from spying/social media”. Same as Regulatory Encryption Backdoors are not about “protecting kids from child predators” This is framing. Abusing kids is bad. But that is not what this about. Let’s keep the discussion on topic: the goal is 1984-level oversight… not just of the kids [Edit: I guess HN agrees: meanwhile the title changed from “saving kids from spying” to “is act…

The headline already summarizes the premise of the article in fewer words.

Yeah, the headline changed while I wrote my comment

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

#285

Post by triceratops »

pwg wrote: post #105
john_strinlai wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It does not reach headline news because everyone just accepts that the "filter" is imperfect. But, for some reason, little twelve year old Jimmy obtaining access to porn evokes some kind of far more visceral reaction in Jimmy's parents (or if not Jimmy's parents, some "busybody" who wants to "protect all the children") than Jimmy managing to get himself a pack of Salem's or a Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboy.

> little twelve year old Jimmy obtaining access to porn evokes some kind of far more visceral reaction in Jimmy's parents

Because right now there's next to no barrier to access compared to Jimmy getting himself a beer. If you keep saying "Your proposal sucks because it isn't perfect and we should do nothing" then you're essentially surrendering to the people who really want facial scans.

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

#286

Post by triceratops »

Retr0id wrote: post #188
gambiting wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and? Just like a child can "trivially" ask an adult to buy them a beer. Who are these adults giving children their verification codes for adult websites?

Asking adults for beer doesn't scale, code sharing can. If you want to crack down on code sharing, you'd have to start surveilling who is signing up to what.

> If you want to crack down on code sharing, you'd have to start surveilling who is signing up to what.

Why? One code for one user account per site. If you're paranoid about privacy rotate codes and accounts weekly. As long as you can purchase the codes with cash in IRL stores the privacy impact is minimal.

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

#287

Post by terribleperson »

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…

It doesn't even need 'age verification'. Ostensibly, the goal is to prevent children from accessing content their parents don't want them to see. That means all that's needed is a standard way for parents to make sure that websites know their children are children. They don't need identity, they don't need actual age, we don't even need a complicated cryptographic solution.

California had the right idea - establish a standard way for a client to identify that the user isn't an adult (or you could do it the other way around, but that's less permissive), mandate that websites obey the flag, mandate that OSes include the feature and that browsers use it. In the end, anyone who owns a device can set their age group flag however they want it - it would be up to parents to make sure their children only use devices set the way they want. The parents could set their 8 year old's age group to whatever age group they want, and rest assured that websites would respect it.

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

#288

Post by anigbrowl »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #134
js8 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there can be no consequences at T=0, but thanks to transparency, consequences can happen, by a collective decision, at T=1. Therefore having transparency is important on its own, it facilitates change towards fairness. And that's what I am saying - we should still ask for transparency even in the environment of no consequences. It's also possible that people are not sure about the lack of consequences, and again…

If we're in a position to ask for something, I would rather ask for consequences. We already know what bad stuff is being done: more transparency has marginal utility, under the circumstances.

What are you going to seek consequences for, if there isn't sufficient transparency to know violations are occurring?

We already know what bad stuff is being done

This is a witch-finding mentality: witchcraft exists, I suspect this person of being a witch, therefore burning them at the stake is justified.

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

#289

Post by encom »

sneak wrote: post #15
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…

This isn’t about kids at all. The ID requirement is the WHOLE POINT. That it is technically possible to do age verification in a privacy-preserving way is thus entirely irrelevant. They want all online activity tied to ID so they can violently, illegally retaliate in the dark of night against protected expression online that they don’t like. That’s all this is. Privacy-preserving techniques are irrelevant because the…

My government shouldn't decide what content I'm viewing or providing, and that's the end of it.

>muh kids

That's the parents problem, not mine.

Any system the government comes up with will be insecure, inconvenient, invasive and cost the taxpayers billions, and you all know it's true.

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