Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

pluralistic.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 520 posts

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

#151

Post by dfxm12 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #16
john_strinlai wrote: post #2

> "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…

If you don't think a checkbox saying "I am 13 or older" is adequate, with all the behavioral tracking available to say Meta, they can tell well enough. OpenAI talks about this too: https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-age-prediction/

Knowing who someone is in general is different from having a photo of their face or government ID confirmation.

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

#152

Post by sowbug »

malwrar wrote: post #38
zug_zug wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure here's one example of decentralizing it -- it's going to be overly simple just as a toy example to show how easy it could be: Whenever you want to prove your adult you go to "am I an adult.gov" and you use your credit card or whatever to prove you are an adult. At which point you get a 1-time 5-digit code that is UNIVERSAL TO EVERY SINGLE HUMAN and good for 1 hour (everybody who uses the site gets the same code…

Headline news: children infiltrate the universal adult one time password scheme for porn, parents panic! Turns out the 18 year olds started selling access to their younger friends, who resold it to their younger friends.

Hopefully it would be less of a criticism of the system, and more spurring people to ask questions like "Wait, why did you leave a hunting knife on the coffee table?"

Design a scheme that equips parents with better tools to be better parents, rather than one that reduces the scope of parenting responsibilities.

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

#153

Post by 63stack »

john_strinlai wrote: post #2

> "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…

What's the point in making this distinction? This is HN, 99% of the users here are aware of what zero knowledge proof is and that it's possible to implement it that way.

The general consensus and what the article is alluding to is that it will be probably implemented in a way that allows individual tracking and identification.

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

#154

Post by inigyou »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #101
inigyou wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So HN should be banned

Not necessarily. Just fix the algorithm. Showing all submissions by time should be ok, showing all submissions by number of upvotes should be ok if the user chooses that.

The platform can also add ghost upvotes and downvotes and censor upvotes and downvotes.

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

#155

Post by sonic45132 »

ninalanyon wrote: post #103
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #93

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?

I feel the idea of public key encryption could be done without a phone but the device locking makes it harder to transfer the token off device. Like the parent comment said, I think 90% is all we can aim for. Nothing is going to be perfect.

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

#156

Post by inigyou »

sneak wrote: post #84
inigyou wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also, separately from that, a need to protect kids from growing up into the people in Idiocracy.

They already failed to do that by steadily eroding the educational system and its standards over the last 50-70 years. We’re already there. The electorate can’t locate the countries on a map in which the US is fighting multiple wars in their name. Banning Instagram ain’t gonna fix that. This is not in any way whatsoever about children.

Is it possible that two or more things both harm children?

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

#157

Post by maccard »

ninalanyon wrote: post #103
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #93

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?

Secure Enclave on a mobile phone, or an NFC smart card both work fine. It could be your passport, drivers license, national ID, whatever.

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

#158

Post by john_strinlai »

Retr0id wrote: post #98
john_strinlai wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you think even the client-side "yes im 18" on OS setup proposals are unreasonable, i dont know what to say.

Privacy-wise I think they're completely acceptable, but in terms of circumvention I don't think the politicians will be satisfied. It's barely a step up from the "I'm over 18" buttons on websites.

>It's barely a step up from the "I'm over 18" buttons on websites.

i think its a pretty decent step up from that, but i know what you mean.

>I don't think the politicians will be satisfied.

and that circles back to my original point. the politicians aren't satisfied with a "mostly effective" solution (e.g. OS-enforced age attestation) as they are with literally every other law, and instead are taking advantage of the issue to justify mass surveillance.

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

#159

Post by izacus »

ninalanyon wrote: post #103
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #93

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?

You can have an ID card. Just like for buying alcohol and cigarettes.

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

#160

Post by john_strinlai »

63stack wrote: post #153
john_strinlai wrote: post #2

> "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…

What's the point in making this distinction? This is HN, 99% of the users here are aware of what zero knowledge proof is and that it's possible to implement it that way. The general consensus and what the article is alluding to is that it will be probably implemented in a way that allows individual tracking and identification.

>What's the point in making this distinction?

we're on a discussion board, so i started a discussion. that was the point.

Post reply on HN