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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

#101

Post by hasteg »

mossTechnician wrote: post #74

I appreciate the wealth of technical solutions that don't violate privacy, but isn't this overlooking an important point: that children don't need to be connected to the Internet at all times from such an early age? Many internet and cell phone providers seem to take it for granted that children must be online, which is already a net loss for their privacy as they mature.

I agree, I think kids should have limited access to the internet. I pretty much did and it worked out for me but I have seen so many reports about it causing harm in schools and personal life. (Specifically I think LLMs should not be used in education also, but different point) However, I think the main problem people have with this "think of the children" narrative is that it will force EVERYONE to give up their credentials to access the internet, not just kids. And the general consensus is that we as adults do not want to and should not have to prove our identity to access the internet.

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

#102

Post by Aurornis »

quotemstr wrote: post #51
gruez wrote: 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.

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…

> One, which the Europeans use, hardware-locks the token.

I'm surprised anyone considers this viable.

It would limit access to those sites to a limited set of acceptable devices and operating systems.

I couldn't use my laptop, desktop, or a jailbroken phone.

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

#103

Post by teravor »

rockskon wrote: post #90
teravor wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the same thing that prevents them from doing reuse right now: platform detection mechanisms. the difference is that right now the identity of the subject is known whereas with ZKP (nullifier approach) only the dirty token is known and where that token was used.

So....what exactly would platform detection mechanisms be basing their decisions off of that wouldn't defeat the entire privacy-preserving premise of ZKP?

multiple use of the same token on multiple accounts...?

tying multiple accounts and services together isn't ideal but its inarguably better than tying your real world identity to every single service.

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

#104

Post by dylan604 »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #59

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 a…

why would any site on the internet need to give a damn about is_citizen? That's just gross to me at the mere suggestion. If it's a government service site, then they already know that information. If you're trying to use something like social media, then it couldn't possibly matter less.

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

#105

Post by CSSer »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #59

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 a…

They want it to equal identity verification! When virtually every top tech executive who wants a favor is at the inauguration and you have companies doing 180 degrees on support for something they previously furiously opposed, someone is getting something they wanted. It seems naive to think otherwise. Furthermore, the current administration in the U.S. fired or ignored the competent people to which you’re referring, and those people oppose a centralized repository of various metadata because it creates a central point of failure, otherwise known as a target, that is generally a bad idea for both our nation and our citizens. Of course there are agencies in the federal government that possess this information already, but they possess it for their purposes only. This is good because it means that it’s both more difficult to abuse internally in addition to being more cumbersome to collect externally.

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

#106

Post by johnc1 »

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…

There is a much easier solution that already exists - parental controls on children's devices. I honestly don't understand why is it not solving the problem?

Yes, parents are responsible to set this up. But parents are also responsible to lock their alcohol, drugs or guns, condoms, etc., and many other things.

Perhaps parental controls are not good enough? That's where the regulation could genuinely help - require child-certified devices to implement minimum set of parental controls, and make them easy to use.

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

#107

Post by [deleted] »

motohagiography wrote: post #55

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 I…

[deleted]

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

#108

Post by Aurornis »

vkou wrote: post #94
_heimdall wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I've also always been curious how a truely anonymous identity verification could possibly work. You go to a store. You show the clerk your id and give him a quarter. The clerk pulls a scratch-off ticket from the front of a ticket tape. The ticket contains a token identifier. It's anonymous. The clerk or his POS system knows your name and age, but doesn't know your number. The vendor providing the tape doesn't know…

> It's anonymous. The clerk or his POS system knows your name and age, but doesn't know your number. The vendor providing the tape doesn't know your number or your name.

Where does this 3rd party identity token provider come from?

For government-issued identity tokens, there are not separate parties. It's just the government, and they can choose to link whatever they want in their internal system if they decide it's in the interests of national security.

You're also forgetting that lottery tickets are tracked. This is how they can announce which store sold the winning ticket before anyone steps forward with it. It would be trivial to match a buyer to the ticket if they wanted to inspect the records. In the case of a government identity token service, there isn't even a separation of parties providing the records. They do it all and can have all the data.

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

#109

Post by kelseyfrog »

iamnothere wrote: post #80
kelseyfrog wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what happens when parents don't? Too bad?

What happens when parents don’t lock the liquor cabinet? When they smoke in front of their kids? When they leave porn laying on the table? Too bad!

How is it more like leaving a liquor cabinet open than not buckling them up with seatbelts?

I'm glad we're discussing parental liability. It seems no one else is advocating for "social media access is criminal neglect," so I appreciate the novelty.

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

#110

Post by kaashif »

johnc1 wrote: post #106
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…

There is a much easier solution that already exists - parental controls on children's devices. I honestly don't understand why is it not solving the problem? Yes, parents are responsible to set this up. But parents are also responsible to lock their alcohol, drugs or guns, condoms, etc., and many other things. Perhaps parental controls are not good enough? That's where the regulation could genuinely help - require ch…

That's not the problem governments are solving. They're solving the problem of convincing the public it's a good idea to end the anonymity of internet use.
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