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Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

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Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#111

Post by IanCal »

protocolture wrote: post #33
Avicebron wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, they have ignored that. I did my part and sent an email. Now what?

Violent revolution I guess. Genuinely what are the other options? I made a formal submission to the Australian Government in the very small consulting window they held for the Access and Assistance bill. Pleading with them to consider simply not introducing the law, as there was no justification for it at all. Google also made a submission against the bill, as did many large local and overseas corporations. The gover…

There are steps in between “send an email saying don’t do the thing you want” and “murder lawmakers”.

> I dont see how this is even slightly contentious in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty six

Violent revolution in response to data privacy issues?

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#112

Post by PeterStuer »

Will they not just argue that you could share the assertion, and hence we need a 'trusted' verfication point to establish it is actually you in posession of the zkp token, right now. So turn on that smartphone camera right now and obediently follow our biometric verfication instructions ...

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#113

Post by chii »

sciencejerk wrote: post #103

It is suspicious to me that "age assurance" is trending EXACTLY as AI agents become capable of autonomously operating a personal computer in the same way a human office worker would. I'm afraid "age assurance" has nothing to do with "the children".

> I'm afraid "age assurance" has nothing to do with "the children".

and you should be afraid, very afraid. Because none of these (and other measures to invade privacy) has ever had anything to do with children.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#114

Post by sigbottle »

PeterStuer wrote: post #112

Will they not just argue that you could share the assertion, and hence we need a 'trusted' verfication point to establish it is actually you in posession of the zkp token, right now. So turn on that smartphone camera right now and obediently follow our biometric verfication instructions ...

Or even simpler - they can just claim to implement it but still store your data just because.

Doesn't seem like government is taking any steps here to try and regulate anything anymore. Possibly not ever again.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#115

Post by skybrian »

dadoum wrote: post #10

Still, I don't want to gate people based on age. Parents should at least be able to overwrite the age of their child, maybe selectively allow bypasses. My experience with a computer would have been completely different if I was blocked from half of the internet. Especially when I see which kind of content gets blocked.

Websites should have an easy way to check whether the connecting device has a child lock turned on. We don’t need to identify the person using the device at all. It should be up to parents to make sure their kids use device that are locked.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#116

Post by mahirsaid »

more like walled off garden where they only, have access to children and what they watch. so now they will feed them the junk and ads curated only for children so they can get them hooked on products early on. Way to go Google yo uhave succeeded in your goal.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#117

Post by za_creature »

alexghr wrote: post #81
onion2k wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get enough signals like that you can often narrow down a very large cohort of people to an individual. First it's 'over 18?', then it's 'over 25?', and then 'biological sex?', 'employed?', 'enjoys posting on HN?', 'active in the early morning?' and after half a dozen questions, all with binary answers that are safe individually, you can zero in on a 23 year old woman who has a job and posts on HN in the mornin…

Proper ZK proofs don’t work that way. N different proofs will not be linked to each other unless the circuits are written to emit a stable identifier. Obviously if you see a bunch of proofs for known circuits coming from the same IP address then yeah, you can infer a bunch of info from that metadata.

> N different proofs will not be linked to each other

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Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#118

Post by vrypan »

Groxx wrote: post #13

I've been trying to figure out how zero-knowledge stuff would work in practice for age verification, where "when issued" (or extremely coarse, like what year), "to whom", and "where it's used" are hidden from everyone except the individual holding the proof (since that's the gold standard, and the only one worth accepting). I get that ZK techniques work, and reveal "nothing". That's useful. But if they reveal nothing…

This may help: https://blog.vrypan.net/2026/06/29/260629-whats-wrong-with-e...

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#119

Post by ggm »

CSIRO and the Australian privacy commissioner suggested this path to the Australian Government a few years ago.

I'm not a fan of technology fixes for social problems but i do think this may be in the sweet spot.

I see a lot of people here don't agree. I think they may not appreciate quite how concerned a lot of the community is about the effects of networked communication on minors. I'm not here to change people's minds, but this isn't a US problem it's a global one, and US constitutional rights views do not predominate worldwide.

Google has more customers outside the US than inside, and has more business with entities subject to non US laws than solely US domiciled entities.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#120

Post by sigmoid10 »

sciencejerk wrote: post #103

It is suspicious to me that "age assurance" is trending EXACTLY as AI agents become capable of autonomously operating a personal computer in the same way a human office worker would. I'm afraid "age assurance" has nothing to do with "the children".

>It is suspicious to me that "age assurance" is trending EXACTLY as AI agents become capable of autonomously operating

It is not, because your premise is false. This whole thing has been going on for as long as kids have been online. The early 2000s tried (and obviously failed) by using credit cards. The UK tried and failed last decade to ban porn for minors this way. AI tools are probably not even on the radar for the kind of politicians that keep pushing this.

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