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EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

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Re: EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

#131

Post by Calamity »

CommanderData wrote: post #44

Someone on HN suggested parents set devices up for their kids and Browsers and OS's gate by age. I haven't really been able to fault this idea. State mandates verification and stuff like this makes me suspicious that this is much more than "protecting the children". More advocacy of alternative solutions please.

Indeed, I truly don't understand how simply enabling parental controls onto mobile devices handed to kids which then gets advertised to each website/app that they use isn't sufficient.

You make it an opt-in feature to "self-broadcast" that this device is being used by a minor. Solves 99% of the use cases. And for the remaining 1% — the really determined teenager — they'd never be stopped by this anyway. They'd social enginneer their way to access somehow.

Re: EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

#132

Post by matheusmoreira »

izacus wrote: post #123
matheusmoreira wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cannot be exfiltrated by userspace or installed kernel space apps or intercepted on the way to TPM So it must be secure against the user, as expected. Preventing the user from "tampering" with the token means carving out a section of the machine and putting it out of his reach. You just created a government embassy on the user's machine. There's no telling what it will be abused for, and there's no escape. > But su…

Yes, that's what a TPM or smart card chip in your ID/Passport does. Prevents tampering even by the "user". I have advocated nothing of the sort you're accusing me of. Please leave your strawman at home. Having a physical card fallback here is a necessity and nothing in these proposals shows that the physical card ID is going away.

> Having a physical card fallback here is a necessity and nothing in these proposals shows that the physical card ID is going away.

It doesn't have to go away. Once the capability is there, they can and probably will simply make it mandatory to even so much as get an internet connection from your ISP. No unbreakable ID chip? No internet for you.

The "fallback card" is exactly what added the necessary friction that prevented everything under the sun from demanding these sorts of verifications out of everybody alive.

It was somewhat tolerable when it was just a financial transaction. It's still highly problematic given that AML/KYC laws are just the financial arm of global warrantless mass surveillance, but at least it was contained to the financial domain and it was possible to avoid credit cards and use cash instead. Putting this stuff in every computer kicks it up into 1984 territory by allowing tracking of anyone posting wrongthink online.

Re: EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

#133

Post by Saline9515 »

user00005 wrote: post #115

I searched this page for 'fascist', 'fascism', 'far left', and 'liberal' and there were no results. A surprising little amount of criticism considering the rhetoric in any political right adjacent threads on this website. There are three mentions of 'trump'.

This is neither a far-left, far-right or centrist measure. It's a pure technocratic one, where the State and its minions believes optimize for control over the population, and matters like "privacy" or "resilience" don't appear in the cost function.

Re: EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

#134

Post by izacus »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #132
izacus wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's what a TPM or smart card chip in your ID/Passport does. Prevents tampering even by the "user". I have advocated nothing of the sort you're accusing me of. Please leave your strawman at home. Having a physical card fallback here is a necessity and nothing in these proposals shows that the physical card ID is going away.

> Having a physical card fallback here is a necessity and nothing in these proposals shows that the physical card ID is going away. It doesn't have to go away. Once the capability is there, they can and probably will simply make it mandatory to even so much as get an internet connection from your ISP. No unbreakable ID chip? No internet for you. The "fallback card" is exactly what added the necessary friction that pr…

In most EU states you already need to provide ID to establish internet service, so what are you on about man?

Re: EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

#135

Post by happymellon »

SoftTalker wrote: post #76
akersten wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's simplistic and unhelpful is falling for the narrative that infinite scroll, boobies, and algorithmic feeds are somehow more harmful than ubiquitous government surveillance of the most powerful communication tool on earth. The Internet, more or less, has been around 30+ years and the Something awful and 4chan generations are now in charge. We're not much worse off. The Internet is actually way tamer these days…

"Boobies" really understates what is available virtually unrestricted on Pornhub and similar sites. If "boobies" were the extent of it, far fewer people would be worried about it.

Based upon this sentiment, it's already too late as 2Girls1Cup already existed and has done it's damage to the current generation who are obviously deviants!

How can we even trust these lawmakers when Blue Waffles, Tub Girl and Goatsee already existed??!

Unless it hasn't. And while it's grosser than finding a copy of Readers Wives in the park, the "think of the children" angle is overhyped.

Re: EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

#136

Post by Saline9515 »

dijit wrote: post #9
83642736392 wrote: post #6

[flagged]

It's very commonly the anti-EU politicians who inevitably get into EU parliament (due to representative voting, ironically more democratic than the FPTP system we use in the UK, despite all the wailing about democracy) who endorse such obviously stupid ideas, as a way to undermine the credibility of the EU. What's frustrating is that it works really well, and occasionally they get something truly stupid through- whic…

EU parliamentaries don't initiate laws, and, during the "trilogue" with the EC and the Council, they don't hold the pen on the final version.

If any entity is "self-sabotaging", it's the European Commission. But it's not self-sabotage, it's simply yet another bureaucratic measure to assert power and control the population.

Re: EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

#137

Post by StrLght »

jmyeet wrote: post #24
big85 wrote: post #18

All this ostensibly to keep teenage boys from watching Pornhub (when parental controls already exist). The real reason, of course, is to force people to connect strong real-life identifiers to online activity. Mobile first, then Windows. Then Linux is too weak to oppose on its own, and will adapt or die.

That's a completely unhelpful, overly simplistic straw man argument. We restrict certain activities and places in the real world from certain people all the time. For example, not allowing people under 18 or 21 (depending on your country) into casinos. What we have now is essentially unrestricted access to pretty much anything and a fair assessment is that there is societal harm from that. We're creating gambling add…

> I personally believe that the easiest thign to attack is advertising to minors.

Well then, let's regulate this instead? Advertising companies already make a pretty good guess about a person's age. It doesn't require 3rd parties and age verification.

But we won't — this isn't why identity checks are getting lobbied.

> I believe we should shift that liability to advertising.

I am confused. Are you saying that advertising companies should handle these identity checks? So let's just hand out a unique identifier to the companies who have monetary interest in this? Surely this will end well.

Re: EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

#138

Post by imtringued »

SoftTalker wrote: post #76
akersten wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's simplistic and unhelpful is falling for the narrative that infinite scroll, boobies, and algorithmic feeds are somehow more harmful than ubiquitous government surveillance of the most powerful communication tool on earth. The Internet, more or less, has been around 30+ years and the Something awful and 4chan generations are now in charge. We're not much worse off. The Internet is actually way tamer these days…

"Boobies" really understates what is available virtually unrestricted on Pornhub and similar sites. If "boobies" were the extent of it, far fewer people would be worried about it.

Pornhub is incredibly restrictive about what can be uploaded and about identifying who is uploading the videos and is now also demanding proof of consent from the performers (presumably to avoid revenge porn).

If one of the most compliant actors is already "virtually unrestricted" then you just want to censor things you don't like and the censorship of porn is just a pretense for the things you actually want to censor.

Re: EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

#139

Post by hurfdurf »

Dig1t wrote: post #89

What happens if some social media site hosted in another country becomes popular and refuses to implement these age verification measures? Is the EU going to create a great firewall like China and start blacklisting sites? Are they going to ban VPN’s too? Seems like a slippery slope could easily get extremely invasive and restrictive. It does seem like an effort to connect all online activity to real-world identities…

  Is the EU going to create a great firewall like China and start blacklisting sites
Welcome to six years ago:

https://diginomica.com/eu-policy-doc-recommends-building-eur...

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2020/6487...

"Like the Chinese firewall, this European internet would block off services that condone or support unlawful conduct from third party countries."

Sound familiar?

Re: EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

#140

Post by mort96 »

dijit wrote: post #40
mort96 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good way to prevent this anti-EU sentiment would've been to not go through with these obviously stupid ideas. Weird that the EU doesn't seem to realize? Or do you think, maybe, that there's a deeper issue here and the problem isn't exclusive to just these anti-EU politicians you want to scapegoat?

I think rejecting proposals from MEPs on the grounds that "it's against EU interests" would be very undemocratic and fuel the very anti-EU sentiment that it would supposedly combat.

And approving this kind of regulation doesn't?
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