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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

#61
post #35

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.

The verification service would tie the token to the IP address/geolocation. It would also throttle the number of identifications, or expire old ones.

Yes, that can eventually be worked around, but not really that different than doing the verification today on someone else's device.

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

#62
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.

> I'd put money on 90%+ choosing some flavor privacy/anonymity on the internet.

I can only say what I've observed from numerous threads - people's advocacy for privacy on the internet here does not extend so social media.

But OK this could be fun let's put my keyboard where my mouth is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680434

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

#63
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's about as meaningful a framing as asking if you favor world peace and ending world hunger.

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

#64
post #40

I'm pretty sure this is a "pick your poison" problem. We as a society are damned no matter what we do or do not do. For my part, we need to do something, because things are not fine the way they are, including the half ass Australian solution. We can't keep putting the onus on private enterprise to address social issues. I may sound crazy for saying so, but I think the answer is more government run infrastructure for…

And yet as the article mentioned, the "problem" is a lie... an excuse to justify the surveillance state.

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

#65
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…

As you say, it's doubtful governments want it to be private. So we should expect them to not use these kind of elegant solutions, and the public is generally not sophisticated enough to distinguish between the options already.

In what direction do the incentives point?

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

#66
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…

I wouldn't trust governments, today or in the future, to keep such a system private and I don't see a foolproof way of building some kind of audit mechanism into it to make sure the data is always truely private.

I've also always been curious how a truely anonymous identity verification could possibly work. At best for age verification, I could be given some kind of token that would still have to verify my age and be verifiable with a central authority to ensure my token is valid. The central authority could always keeper records of my token, revoke it whenever they please, and every entity that can verify the age associated with, or embedded into, the token knows at least some of my PII.

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

#67
post #35

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.

What's to stop you, using your 18+ ID from buying crates of alcohol and giving it to random < 18 year olds for the lulz?

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

#68
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 article talks about the possibilities of malicious cloning of these tokens by third parties, but fails to identify the much more common use case, and one that makes this scheme useless for age verification.

It's one thing to be concerned about someone stealing my credential, but another to prevent the transfer of these credentials, especially if they are limited use credentials.

The entire point of age verification systems is to prevent minors from accessing certain resources. I think we all know that this is basically impossible; but what these various governments and social media companies want to do is to make it high friction to do so.

The highest friction version of this is that the credential ties to a real world identity somehow; maybe locked behind legal barriers, etc., but if a minor is caught using someone's credential, then the person whose credential they are using can be investigated, and, if necessary, charged with a crime roughly equivalent to providing alcohol to a minor. Without the possibility of real world enforcement, none of these identity solutions can possibly work.

Keep dreaming of a technological solution -- there is none that does not lead to the world that FIRE is warning about, except to accept that we can only make a solution "good enough" and leave it at that, without expanding into full on identity verification. The solution here is likely to just try to provide better abilities for parents to monitor and limit their children's use of the internet. Let individual parents decide on the level of harm that they are willing to accept, and accept that there will be ways to work around this even if parents are vigilant, but just try to reduce it on the margins.

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

#69
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.

worthless is too strong.

the truth is that the two extremes you listed can be titrated.

if you use nullifiers you can trade some privacy for some security. basically you convert your true identity into a private token which you can use to authenticate aspects of yourself, the price being that the token can be tracked with some effort across services. better than just using your identity at least. if a token/nullifier is abused it can be revoked and then you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get another.

there are some other trade offs that can be made.

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

#70
post #67
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's to stop you, using your 18+ ID from buying crates of alcohol and giving it to random < 18 year olds for the lulz?

For one, I have to do it in meatspace so it's easily traced back to me, whereas anonymous tokens can't be traced back to me by design.
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