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The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

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Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#51

Post by quotemstr »

gruez wrote: post #35
discodachshund wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using cryptographic signatures from approved signers, like a government

No, I'm meant me, using my 18+ ID to generate a bunch of tokens that can't be linked back to me, and then giving it to random < 18 year olds for the lulz.

There are multiple approaches. One, which the Europeans use, hardware-locks the token. Each age attestation is unlinkable, but the cryptographic credentials you need to make the attestation aren't portable. Of course, this model requires a big statist apparatus that does implementation certification, but it does achieve the narrow goal of unlinkable, privacy-preserving age attestation that doesn't instantly decay to mass copying.

Other approaches are possible. I'm particularly keen on ones that treat attestations as anonymous digital currency and use cryptographic penalties like slashing to discourage copying post-hoc instead of relying on EU-style implementation certification.

There's a huge literature on the subject I don't want to reproduce here. The point is that yes, we do have the technology to do attestation without sacrificing privacy, which makes all the calls for non-privacy-preserving attestation awfully curious.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#52

Post by echohack5 »

HoldOnAMinute wrote: post #42

Assuming no revolutionary changes are coming to the USA, I am planning to opt out of the digital world when I retire. Physical media only. No subscriptions. Spend lots of time in the library. Find like-minded people and meet in person. Will only keep the bare minimum for survival, like banking.

Which is precisely why powers will try to make all these illegal

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#53

Post by JohnFen »

j2kun wrote: post #21

There are at least some technological solutions here, such as anonymous credentials. [1] Modern versions of this technique allow one to associate metadata (like a proof of age exceeding a threshold) in such a way that the verifier can't even correlate repeated requests across users. Governments that are serious about age verification and individual privacy (which, doubtful they truly are) should agree on a protocol a…

The problem is that you still have to trust something you don't control and can't verify that the technological solutions are correctly implemented and applied.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#54

Post by rockskon »

j2kun wrote: post #21

There are at least some technological solutions here, such as anonymous credentials. [1] Modern versions of this technique allow one to associate metadata (like a proof of age exceeding a threshold) in such a way that the verifier can't even correlate repeated requests across users. Governments that are serious about age verification and individual privacy (which, doubtful they truly are) should agree on a protocol a…

Zero Knowledge Proofs are worthless for this.

Either they validate so little information that a single homeless person can authenticate the entire country or they validate so much information as to not have a significant privacy guarantee.

There is no in-between for ZKP validating someone's age.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#55

Post by motohagiography »

The discussion is not about whether it's a good or bad idea, but whether we will yield the power to these people to ratchet in further oppressive laws onto formerly free countries.

Tech companies should ignore it and just publicly name whoever attempts to prosecute them and see how the population responds. I think people today are orders of magnitude more informed about their privacy and the consequences of digital ID laws. A few countries are on the edge of revolt at the moment anyway, and this would be a good way to get young people into the streets.

20 years ago, people would have had no defense against it or understanding of what was being imposed on them. Today, normal people use Signal and encrypted messengers, faraday bags, and leave their phones at home. Where we were nerdy security guys back then, non-technologist women and girls use spy tradecraft level electronic opsec for their own safety and security from middle school. People are much more sophisticated about their privacy now. They're ready to take this on.

The laws coming into force are on people who are not in favour of them, and I'm so optimistic that I will not interrupt the enemies of privacy and human dignity while they are making a mistake.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#56

Post by AJRF »

The path ahead in the next few years (at least for the UK)

1. Age gating + VPN ban under the guise of protecting children from social media

2. Few years pass, Identity Passport gets ushered in under guise of convenience of not having to repeat those pesky age verification checks.

3. Utilities start to require ID Passport. Including signing up with an ISP.

4. Renting starts to require ID Passport.

5. Work requires ID Passport.

6. Well done, you built the torment nexus!

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#57

Post by ricree »

miiiiiike wrote: post #41
krapp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’m glad this is finally becoming the cause célèbre du jour. It really isn't, though. Don't mistake the internet for reality. The majority of people in the US and Europe support laws like these, and most of the rest don't care. Even on Hacker News the consensus is mostly in favor of anything from age restriction to making all social media illegal.

> Even on Hacker News the consensus is mostly in favor of anything from age restriction to making all social media illegal. That doesn't sound right. Put up a poll. I'd put money on 90%+ choosing some flavor privacy/anonymity on the internet.

The main issue is that they are very careful not to frame it like that. In broader contexts, it's always framed as something like "do you favor limiting children's access to social media" without a word on what it would cost to actually institute such a ban.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#58

Post by tqi »

> You’re not happy about it, but you hand over a photo of your passport and hope it doesn’t come back to haunt you.

I think for this argument to carry weight with voters, privacy advocates need to be much more specific about what "coming back to haunt you" looks like. They do a little bit of it later on[1], but I think most people do a rough cost benefit in their head and decide that the small benefit outweighs the small risk (to them).

[1] "And that creates a lot of risks for data breaches, overly broad data collection and retention, censorial legal demands for collected data, corporate and governmental malfeasance, pressure to self-censor, and perhaps blatant First Amendment violations. Every new layer and every new mandate brings more potential for risk. As we’ve unfortunately seen many times over the years, people including high-level government officials will maliciously seek to root out the identities of their critics, so the more layers of anonymity we can preserve in online speech, the better."

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#59

Post by zaptheimpaler »

This seems more like a technical problem that we could actually solve well if we wanted to and had competent people advising the governments. You go to DMV and they generate a keypair and an entry in a DB. App looks up your age with your public key + signed private key authorization from you. Apps can ask for specific checks like is_over_21, is_citizen or whatever without any more data. Something like that, details are probably off ;) The whole infrastructure could be open source. Age verification doesn't need to equal identity verification by a 3rd party company that will leak your IDs.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#60

Post by Gigachad »

HoldOnAMinute wrote: post #49
Gigachad wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just kids. Adults are having their brains fried on AI generated political videos online right now. The state of the internet is an absolute disaster.

An enormous portion of the world is effectively addicted to a drug. Solution: Maximize the distance between yourself and the people

Rather than becoming a social outcast I’d rather support any proposed laws that take down the social media companies.
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