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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

#171

Post by fc417fc802 »

Morromist wrote: post #150
johnc1 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't understand why the act of buying internet access isn't considered a parental control. I doubt very many kids are doing it or can. Ok, but parents buy internet access and then let their kids use it, because the kids need it for school. So? The parents job is to keep their kids out of trouble. Learning how to keep track of what their kids access shouldn't be difficult, and maybe should be part of the obligation…

> The parents job is to keep their kids out of trouble. Learning how to keep track of what their kids access shouldn't be difficult

Unfortunately it is, but we could fix that with only minimally invasive legislation. Right now you either whitelist which breaks half the internet on a recurring basis (things are constantly changing) or you blacklist which is swiss cheese. Either way you're relying on third parties.

I think it would be much better to legally mandate a certain minimum level of self classification for website operators along with a simple and extensible scheme for communicating such. It might also be useful to mandate that devices ship from the OEM with parental control software supporting that standard but honestly I doubt that's necessary - if their were a standardized and above all reliable signal available I think browsers and operating systems would rapidly adopt support for it.

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

#172

Post by yoz-y »

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…

None of this is necessary. First, the only devices that actually need to be gated are cell phones.

The user agent should simply send the user’s age of the parental lock is set up and the websites required to respect this.

Parental controls and the OS should be robust enough to not let kids bypass it (e.g.: by installing a browser that skips the header, or blocking proxy websites)

Done.

Cellphones only because those are the devices kids can have on them all the time and can easily use in private unsupervised.

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

#173

Post by fc417fc802 »

DennisP wrote: post #163
mikestorrent wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this idea is that it assumes responsible parents, which are not a given. I agree with you completely - I don't want any kind of controls on the Internet - but we live in a world where we cannot actually rely on parents to fulfill what you would consider to be basic and reasonable expectations of parental duties.

For kids with parents like that, the internet is probably the least of their problems.

They certainly have other problems however the internet is unique in that it drops the entire world directly in your living room. Even with irresponsible parents zoning laws keep most children away from things like casinos and strip clubs (at least until they can drive) and everyone benefits from community efforts to keep the neighborhood safe.

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

#176

Post by what »

andrewla wrote: post #68
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 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 verificati…

Why can’t you just sell single use codes at gas stations/liquor stores/etc and they just check your ID before sale? Of course shady places can still sell them without ID check, but we have this problem already for liquor and tobacco.

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

#177

Post by pessimizer »

johnc1 wrote: post #126
kaashif wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know! What puzzles me is responses every such article gets even on HN - let's build some cool tech that 95% of the general population and 100% of politicians won't even understand not to mention agree to. Yes, government want to end anonymity and that's clear to some. But governments enjoy on a pretty broad support for this and many people supporting this believe it's a real problem. Suggesting to leave it unsolved…

> But governments enjoy on a pretty broad support for this

No they do not. They do an enormous amount of PR trying to convince people that they have it, though.

In the real world when there is a ton of support behind a position, you see representatives of it all over the place and they are pushing the agenda and the coverage. In the world of online age verification, you just see a bunch of lame duck politicians using procedure to sneak policy changes in and keep objections from being heard, and a few government contractor-surrogates writing op-eds (that they haven't read.)

When puritans go on the march, they're actually pretty loud. Most of the anti-social media people are hippy-dippy upper-middle class liberals who curse "screens," completely believed Cambridge Analytica's PR and think that Trump rules through mind control - who will be bothered by the end of anonymity; and the remainder are angry online right-wingers who think that they were censored by and as a result of social media. They're not marching together, they're not marching to have people identified when they're using the internet, neither of them are even prioritizing social media right now and they aren't putting pressure on anyone.

The fact that it's so unpopular is why there are lame ducks doing it. They're just assuring their fortunes on the way out, and the person on the way in will pretend like they had nothing to do with it even though it will be will be passed and implemented on their watch.

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

#178

Post by Retric »

Kuyawa wrote: post #175

There is absolutely no privacy on the internet, Snowden told us 13 years ago but we all forgot. The government already knows everything about us, and I mean everything. It is extremely naive to think they don't or that you are safe behind a VPN.

The government is largely incompetent about proactively sifting through vast amounts of information for relevant bits.

That’s minimal defense, but it’s worth remembering the difference between what it in theory knows and what its actually paying attention to.

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

#179

Post by madrox »

Geezus_42 wrote: post #144
madrox wrote: 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…

We could try investing in positive infrastructure that improves peoples life's in stead of creating the panopticon torment nexus. Things like third spaces where people can spend time is save spaces where they form communities and public transit so that people can get to those places. Incentivize positive behaviors instead of closing off public spaces and pricing more and more people out of being able to do anything w…

That sounds like a great idea, but I think we should also try to solve human trafficking online.

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

#180

Post by Tannic »

what wrote: post #176
andrewla wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 verificati…

Why can’t you just sell single use codes at gas stations/liquor stores/etc and they just check your ID before sale? Of course shady places can still sell them without ID check, but we have this problem already for liquor and tobacco.

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