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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

#431

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

CPLX wrote: post #381
fluoridation wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To do something about the unlimited firehose of porn, violence, divisive, and addictive content that has been pointed at children for the past generation or so. See, you've answered a different question. The question you answered is, "why should children be protected from the Internet?" I'll give you for free that children should be protected from the Internet, for the reasons you've said, and now you get to convinc…

> I, who don't have or plan to have children, should spend my money to protect other people's children from the Internet. For the same reason your taxes pay for schools even when you don't have kids. Because we live in a society. If you struggle to understand why that matters without reference to more direct personal stakes for yourself, just know that without a society, the children will grow up to rape you, kill yo…

>For the same reason your taxes pay for schools even when you don't have kids.

>Because we live in a society.

Quote attributed to attributed to Jiddu Krishnamurti 'It Is No Measure of Health To Be Well-Adjusted to a Profoundly Sick Society'

>just know that without a society, the children will grow up to rape you,

BS. I can tell you that you have never lived in a 'society' where there were no taxes. I have.

Have more IQ in your line of reasoning than the cliched 'society'. Idiot.

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

#432

Post by frm88 »

palata wrote: post #380
niemandhier wrote: post #372

I see that one point of criticism of the EUId is that people think it will lead to bad things because people will need iOS or android. Ok, we are an international collective of wealthy nerds obsessed with privacy: How much money do we need to collect to get /e/OS to be suitable? A few million? I’d pledge 500€.

If you're obsessed with privacy, I suggest you look at GrapheneOS instead of /e/OS, though.

The post you are replying to refers EUId, which implies European software, so Graphene is not an option.

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

#433

Post by frm88 »

niemandhier wrote: post #372

I see that one point of criticism of the EUId is that people think it will lead to bad things because people will need iOS or android. Ok, we are an international collective of wealthy nerds obsessed with privacy: How much money do we need to collect to get /e/OS to be suitable? A few million? I’d pledge 500€.

I'm in.

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

#434

Post by ranger_danger »

palata wrote: post #360
mcfedr wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of that is avoiding the distopian control? the very first line, government issued digital id - we have been avoiding that for a very long time how does this work on an open source operating system?

> Which part of that is avoiding the distopian control? Your ID is already controlled by your government, and we don't call that dystopian control. With privacy-preserving age verification online, the government doesn't learn what you do with the cryptographic token that proves that you are old enough, and the website doesn't learn who you are. So it's exactly the same situation as today, except that now there is age…

> Your ID is already controlled by your government

In the US, there are no national IDs, each state is responsible for their own. Transitioning to a national ID is not even legal currently, it would require a constitutional amendment... and I think most people do not want that for multiple reasons.

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

#435

Post by utopiah »

choo-t wrote: post #340
utopiah wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed but you are the one who claimed it was not a hard problem. I don't think any one of us pushing back here on those claims do so for the heck of NOT finding a "solution", rather genuinely asking because so far it seems nobody did find such a solution without compromises that is in the end not worth it due to the flaw in said solution. The point isn't to be critical of your process, only of the claim that it's a…

> Indeed but you are the one who claimed it was not a hard problem. Am I ?

Ah! My bad I didn't properly track authorship. I thought you were https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48645333

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

#436

Post by mcfedr »

palata wrote: post #360
mcfedr wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of that is avoiding the distopian control? the very first line, government issued digital id - we have been avoiding that for a very long time how does this work on an open source operating system?

> Which part of that is avoiding the distopian control? Your ID is already controlled by your government, and we don't call that dystopian control. With privacy-preserving age verification online, the government doesn't learn what you do with the cryptographic token that proves that you are old enough, and the website doesn't learn who you are. So it's exactly the same situation as today, except that now there is age…

there is no single government id in the UK at the moment, they currently do not control my identity

you specifically talked about an OS without user changeable software, thats the definition of open source

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

#437

Post by pibaker »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #93
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…

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…

> The government issues an eID to your wallet

I'll stop you right here. I don't want to be forced to use a government issued ID — one the administration can revoke at a whim, one that will certainly be backdoored by intelligence agencies including the ones they haven't told you yet — just so I can talk to my friends online.

It's insanity that we are asking the state to regulate personal identity — and trust them with it - in 2026 on hacker news.

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

#438

Post by pibaker »

armchairhacker wrote: post #22
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…

Make unrestricted devices like alcohol: you need ID to buy (but the box containing the device you’re sold is indistinguishable from any other, so the device may have a UUID but it can’t be traced to your ID); kids caught with unrestricted devices in school have them confiscated; maybe fine parents, but I think discouragement and banning in schools is enough. Kids can have restricted devices, distinguished from unrest…

> kids caught with unrestricted devices in school have them confiscated

This will surely fly on hacker news where the prevalent wisdom is to buy your kid an old thinkpad and install Linux.

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

#439

Post by microtonal »

frm88 wrote: post #432
palata wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're obsessed with privacy, I suggest you look at GrapheneOS instead of /e/OS, though.

The post you are replying to refers EUId, which implies European software, so Graphene is not an option.

Why not? GrapheneOS is open source and developed by an international team of developers, why would it not fit for Europe? Besides that, /e/OS is basically LineageOS with weakened security and Murena's own cloud crap added.

It's going to be a hell lot better than /e/OS, whose CEO claims security hardening is only for criminals (pedophiles) and spies. He is peddling the same narratives in the media as those who push chat control, etc.

And the on-the-ground reality that /e/OS runs Google DroidGuard binary blobs privileged (not so degoogled, eh?), installs F-Droid packages through a proxy that the don't want to reveil the owner or purpose of (which is a disaster combines with Android's trust-on-first-use), along with being ages behind on kernel, driver, firmware, and AOSP security updates.

People who care about privacy or security should not use nor push /e/OS.

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

#440

Post by malwrar »

triceratops wrote: post #285
pwg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My proposal is that we increase the effectiveness of child controls on devices, so kids can’t get access to the adult world on them. Parents in other threads however tell me that this won’t work, they’ll just use the internet on their friends devices, and what we need is to completely exclude children from the adult internet by confirming the identity of every single person who wants to use it.

Now I’m trying to convince people that identifying adults won’t work either, because kids will still get around it. All the while, we adults live with the negative externality of no longer having anonymous communication. Woe betide us all should this come to pass, but I guess desperate people are how bad things like this tend to happen.

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