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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

#401

Post by fluoridation »

CPLX wrote: post #398
fluoridation wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For the same reason your taxes pay for schools even when you don't have kids. But I have benefited from public education. Me paying for someone else's education in return is fair. >Because we live in a society. "Because we live in a society" is a phrase flexible enough that it can be used to justify anything, including outright theft: "we live in a society; us taking your stuff is the price you have been chosen to p…

You have convinced me that there are in fact no differences between things, and that protecting children from adult content is indistinguishable from stealing from people, and therefore I was foolish to advocate for it. I stand humbly corrected.

I'm glad you've seen the error of your ways.

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

#402

Post by budududuroiu »

bluegatty wrote: post #244

The slippery slope argument is hugely valid, but having kids not have access to alcohol, porn and guns is very normal. We don't even discuss it in the 'physical world' because it's absolutely normative. Even in 'Europe' kids aren't going into the liquor store stocking up obviously - there are always age and responsibility-related conventions. The 'online' nature of this piques our anti-authoritarian triggers and tend…

The analogy would be an alcohol shop employee with a photographic and infinite memory which then staples an AirTag to your skin to see where you're headed off after you've purchased your booze

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

#403

Post by r-woolsey »

I typed out a whole story and thought better of it.. I never post but this one hits home so hard for things I’ve worked on. I like being alive and would prefer to quietly go work on robots/ai in peace so.. no story.

I’ll just say that if the government says any age verification technology is for the kids safety it is most definitely not their idea.. they are being worked like a sock puppet by the real corporate power and the shadowy contractor intelligence gradient.

I watched this same sort of narrative play out from behind the curtain with a project in US back in the day. I currently work with some similar systems and data brokers. I’m working on leaving to use my skills to build shit that actually helps the people who need help (SMBs, consumers, etc). I’m tired boss.

If you’re hiring a startup tech wizard who has done it all and works hard hit me up.

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

#404

Post by donmcronald »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #206
Aurornis wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The website only sees the ‘over_18’ attribute, which is backed by the government signature Not true. The device's public key is also sent, which functions as a stable device identifier. We've spent years trying to get away from stable tracking IDs and fingerprinting. Returning to a system where devices are sending a stable ID to a website to prove ownership is a step backward. There are proposed mitigations like is…

> Not true. The device's public key is also sent, which functions as a stable device identifier. This is covered by allowing for single-use credentials. IIRC the EU personal IDs will use this. Basically, the wallet requests a batch of single-use eIDs that all use different device key-pairs. Each credential is only used for one request and then deleted. The wallet will automatically request new credentials in batches…

> The wallet will automatically request new credentials in batches when they run out.

Is that an ongoing cost that I’ll pay for via taxes? It doesn’t matter how anonymized all the schemes are. The government needs to give permission by signing attributes. It will be abused to gate everything we can do.

I wouldn’t be surprised if everything is gated behind attestation fairly quickly. Then our “secure” devices will attest against us if we do anything that isn’t a government approved activity.

Hopefully they never manage to hijack our network protocols. Imagine something like SNI, but it’s an attestation that traffic originated from a secure device that’ll participate in the scheme you described. Then your ISP can drop non-compliant traffic and you can only engage in government approved activity.

The answer to these proposals should be “no”.

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

#405

Post by XorNot »

akmiller wrote: post #393
XorNot wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do data privacy laws address the significant number of voters who are being told and believe that social media use is causing issues for children and want something done about it? This is exactly what I mean: you've rocked up and started talking about something else entirely.

I think you misunderstood me, I'm saying strong (very strong) data privacy laws make age gating unnecessary. This solution has far reaching benefits across all age groups.

Okay: How?

How do data privacy laws prevent a 14 year old from being cyber bullied online or consuming influencer content destroying their self-esteem?

This is (in the most politically neutral way I can put it) what people who want social media age checks are talking about.

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

#406

Post by xdennis »

rationalist wrote: post #54
pokstad wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

After a while you age out of getting carded. The vast majority of alcohol is bought without ever showing any ID.

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

#407

Post by seb1204 »

ninalanyon wrote: post #103
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way identity wallets work: The government issues an eID to your wallet. The ID is signed by the government and linked to the device to prevent transferring the credential. A public/private key-pair is generated by the secure enclave in your phone, the public key along with proof of possession of the private key is included in the request for the government eID. The government signs individual attributes combined…

So now I have to have a mobile phone?

Yes. Cover 90% of cases. Maybe browser and RFID reader for passport is also possible.

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

#408

Post by wizzwizz4 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #288
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is sufficient transparency to know violations are occurring, and we can usually rule out other actors circumstantially to give us a suspect – often Facebook, Google, or another "Big Tech" company. There isn't enough transparency to conclusively prove it's them (as opposed to some secret shadowy conspiracy who've concealed all other evidence of their existence – which we do need to rule out, for the innocent-until-proven-guilty standard), but that's what the legal fact-finding process is for.

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

#409

Post by tom910 »

palata wrote: post #383
tom910 wrote: post #149

The main problem is providing infrastructure for a government that can over use it in future if move to ultra right/left/authoritarian spectrum Just for example Russia build infrastructure for blocks website for child safety, but it started to used much further

> The main problem is providing infrastructure for a government that can over use it in future if move to ultra right/left/authoritarian spectrum If that was considered the real problem, we would be fighting against surveillance capitalism. Instead we cheer for LLM companies who made it an order of magnitude worse. Let's be honest, the only time we care about being tracked is to access porn, for some reason. And if w…

Even some bad aspects/issues doesn't justice that we need to support even worse cases

Also want to mark that `surveillance capitalism` companies can not be comparable with totaletar countries which want to control people. This is orders of magnitude worse

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

#410

Post by SecretDreams »

pseudalopex wrote: post #359
SecretDreams wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I buy my beers on CC. If someone really wanted to know the best IPAs and session able beers they could get, they could audit my CC records and then cross check to the breweries and pubs to see what I was buying. Just depends how much someone wants to learns bout good beer.

Your point was what? No one should be allowed more privacy than you wanted?

My point was mostly a joke about drinking beer in response to the OP drinking beer.

But the underlying darkness is that if you're paying for things using a CC, you've already given up on your privacy, but it's implicitly lost, rather than explicitly.

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