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What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

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Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And those cards will be getting sold to kids faster than you can blink. there's a reason i said 90% and not 100% effective. alcohol and tobacco get resold to kids, too.

What makes you think this will be close to 90%? Unless these cards are expensive I don't see that happening.

>What makes you think this will be close to 90%? Unless these cards are expensive I don't see that happening.

its obviously just an illustrative guess. but if the penalty of possessing the card is similar to underage possession of alcohol/tobacco, and larger penalties if a store/person is found providing a card to someone underage, i see no reason why it wouldnt have a similar success rate as alcohol/tobacco.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#132
post #5

> "Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. its been said 1000 times here, but: age verification doesn't have to be a nightmare dystopia of 24/7 fine-grained tracking and recording unless you are somehow hoping to achieve 100% success rate (something we have not done with any other law ever). there are sev…

Exactly. The same way that selling alcohol doesn’t require a paper trail of every beer I’ve bought.

And yet in practice they do.

Well, not every beer but when you shop at Beers-R-Us they know.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#133

> "Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. its been said 1000 times here, but: age verification doesn't have to be a nightmare dystopia of 24/7 fine-grained tracking and recording unless you are somehow hoping to achieve 100% success rate (something we have not done with any other law ever). there are sev…

Yeah, and once you have the non-intrusive system in place you can just switch it out for the tracking one without the user knowing.

Or there's probably some kind of correlation trail possible that will track you even with the anonymous systems.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#134
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's an important step in maintaining fairness. When there are no consequences, it by definition isn't.

Well there can be no consequences at T=0, but thanks to transparency, consequences can happen, by a collective decision, at T=1. Therefore having transparency is important on its own, it facilitates change towards fairness. And that's what I am saying - we should still ask for transparency even in the environment of no consequences. It's also possible that people are not sure about the lack of consequences, and again…

If we're in a position to ask for something, I would rather ask for consequences. We already know what bad stuff is being done: more transparency has marginal utility, under the circumstances.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind elaborating on the specific methods you're referencing? To me, the entire problem is framing the issue as "age verification" in the first place - this implies the web company is responsible for knowing and controlling who uses their service. Whether this is a full-on demand for drivers' license / face scan / verification can, or whether there can be a technical process that obscures some details doesn'…

> Would you mind elaborating on the specific methods you're referencing? well, i mean, you put a decently reasonable one in your own comment: " client-side parental control software that works based on website/app tags supplied by the server / app creator / etc. " another sibling comment mentions alcohol sales. government could issue a scratch card with UUID that's valid for some time, sold at anywhere alcohol/tobacc…

Isn't getting around showing ID for alcohol about as easy as clicking "Yes I'm above 18"? All you need is to know someone that would buy it. Or know someone that knows someone that would buy it. Or know someone that had it bought for them.

Or I guess in the case of the US... maybe even just steal it considering how lax people seem to be with theft.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#137

> "Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. its been said 1000 times here, but: age verification doesn't have to be a nightmare dystopia of 24/7 fine-grained tracking and recording unless you are somehow hoping to achieve 100% success rate (something we have not done with any other law ever). there are sev…

Could you be more specific as to what you're imagining? I don't personally see a way to verify someone's age which doesn't involve either credit card verification, photo id verification, or some sort of facial recognition. If you know enough about someone to verify their age—even to a relatively low degree of accuracy—you probably know enough to pinpoint who they are in general. Heck—in most cases, we can't even tell…

Cryptographically blinded age verification with a government signed digital ID

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way identity wallets work: The government issues an eID to your wallet. The ID is signed by the government and linked to the device to prevent transferring the credential. A public/private key-pair is generated by the secure enclave in your phone, the public key along with proof of possession of the private key is included in the request for the government eID. The government signs individual attributes combined…

So now I have to have a mobile phone?

Identity wallets can be made to work anywhere.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#139

My main concern is transparency. How do we know that the ruling/governing class is not abusing these monitoring systems and exempting themselves from monitoring? If we are all subject to the same monitoring and there are no exceptions, that would be fair. However, if some people are exempt from monitoring because of their connections, relations, etc. then that would be unfair. And if some people are allowed to harass…

>How do we know that the ruling/governing class is not abusing these monitoring systems and exempting themselves from monitoring?

Ah, so except for THE ENTIRE FUCKING PROBLEM, this is fine.

>And if some people are allowed to harass and stalk others based on some attribute (race, religion, nationality, etc.) because they are in a monitoring position (while others are not) then that would be unfair as well.

Yes, we wouldn't want racial profiling in our Orwellian hellscape. That would truly put it over the edge.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way identity wallets work: The government issues an eID to your wallet. The ID is signed by the government and linked to the device to prevent transferring the credential. A public/private key-pair is generated by the secure enclave in your phone, the public key along with proof of possession of the private key is included in the request for the government eID. The government signs individual attributes combined…

So now I have to have a mobile phone?

Could probably be implemented by a smartcard or yubikey-like device as well. Shoot, just build it into my state issued ID card.
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