191–200 of 570 posts
Linux distro founder here (stagex) I will never be compelled to implement this, and would never merge it. Every release requires quorum signatures by an international maintainer team, and the distro is designed to work offline-first, with some variants not even supporting network drivers in the kernel, so Illinois legislators can eat shit.
What does it mean to "found" a Linux distro? Can you describe it?
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RedHat/IBM does have an Illinois presence so will likely be compelled to add it to their distro, and will likely do it through systemd. So to avoid it getting into any consumer distro you'd have to ship a patch to remove it from systemd. This is probably all completely irrelevant to StageX since it's a distro designed to be used in containers, AFAICT.
IIRC systemd already started implementing some hooks for age verification API
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I'm now pretty convinced that this is the best argument for persuading non-technical and non-internet-privacy minded people why this is a problem. It's hard to explain all the technical factors that make it impossible to implement without compromising privacy... but it's pretty easy to get them to understand the real intent. If you start them thinking through what mechanisms would make sense _if_ the original premise…
> "everyone must provide their ID so we can verify their age" but that's not this law. This law requires self-declaration by whoever creates the accounts on the device.
this is a way to get something legal on paper, the rest of the stuff (patches, if you will) comes later. This asserts that age is important enough to force an operating system to comply, this opens the door.
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> Our FOSS code is constitutionally protected free speech and I would defend on those grounds. You have precisely zero additional speech rights as a FOSS project than any other organization has. If "free speech" was a valid defense for you, then Meta would be doing the same. > The technical design of the project just makes it so no one can force changes on the distro unwanted by the maintainer team regardless of any…
> Being unable to comply is not a valid legal defense. Sure it is. Lawyers even have a pithy Latin maxim about it: lex non cogit ad impossibilia.
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No need to hack the law. Our FOSS code is constitutionally protected free speech and I would defend on those grounds. The technical design of the project just makes it so no one can force changes on the distro unwanted by the maintainer team regardless of any courtroom outcomes. Like, what if someone made a law that said Bitcoin nodes must KYC? They could make the law I guess, and the international network operators…
> Our FOSS code is constitutionally protected free speech and I would defend on those grounds. You have precisely zero additional speech rights as a FOSS project than any other organization has. If "free speech" was a valid defense for you, then Meta would be doing the same. > The technical design of the project just makes it so no one can force changes on the distro unwanted by the maintainer team regardless of any…
Corporations do whatever seems most profitable. We can't base our understanding of constitutional rights on whether Meta decides to defend them.
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> Anti-money-laundering is a comparable field, as all the AML regulations and laws are ineffective at identifying money launderers, but they're wonderful for verifying (auditing and prosecuting) tax compliance. As someone who’s implemented AML, KYC, and tax reporting functions in a bank. I think you would be very surprised at how shit they are for tax auditing at scale. Unless the tax man is specifically auditing you…
Criminals don't have to "recruit and pay huge numbers of naive bank customers"; in my jurisdiction, they just walk into a casino with a few hundred thousand dollars, exchange for chips, pretend to gamble for an hour, then exchange the chips for cash, and walk out with a nice receipt. There're more complex schemes involving real estate and other mediums too.
There is a huge international criminal industry that exists to find and hire money mules, and launder eye watering amounts of cash. Where I worked, we broadly assumed that the police weren’t interested in fraud or money laundering unless it was measured in 10s of millions. We reported everything, of course, but we only got call backs for really big schemes.
If you’re just committing fraud measured in $100ks, the odd of anyone bothering to investigate, and attempt to bring criminal charges, was basically zero.
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It is a technical ratchet. Once you accept part of the implementation it will never be undone, more will be added.
I don't think this is a safe assumption. As a counter, actual age verification is being rolled out in other places. I really don't think we're in a position of choosing between no age-based access mechanism, and age-based access mechanism. Between the anti-porn types and public demand for some kind of regulations on social media, regulation of some kind is inevitable. Our actual choice may only be what type of restri…
I actually agree with you, if you mandate that the site has to look for an affirmative signal and if it doesn't get one, has to assume the user is the youngest possible age group. Users would demand the proper support for it.
Although it would have to have some teeth capable of biting the client software companies, because for instance, if browser(s) chose to on their own simply send "I'm over 21" to every site this becomes a pointless exercise and that applies whether the browser makers do it out of frustration that the OS support hasn't landed, or out of malice (imagine a browser that misreported age on purpose, specifically targeted at kids who want to bypass the parental controls).
Honestly though - because kids (especially the younger set) are hard pressed to buy their own hardware, a property that can only be set up out of the box, and can only be undone by using the account password of the parent who set it up, it is the perfect level of security here. And as for browsers, all you need is the gatekeepers (Apple, Google, MS) to agree not to ship in their "stores" browsers designed to evade it. Yes, you can totally compile your own browser, but most kids are using locked platforms like iOS and Android, and are by default denied permissions to run arbitrary software on platforms like Mac and Windows, so that's fine.
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> constitutionally protected rights Wait, which constitutionally protected right is that? I'm an attorney and constitutional scholar and am particularly interested in what right you believe is being violated here.
Code is speech. Forcing someone to implement something is legally-compelled speech, assuming no complicating factor like commerce.
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Having the ability to identify who is watching or saying what on the internet would be immensely useful to the government; the justifications are really meaningless. Anti-money-laundering is a comparable field, as all the AML regulations and laws are ineffective at identifying money launderers, but they're wonderful for verifying (auditing and prosecuting) tax compliance.
> Anti-money-laundering is a comparable field, as all the AML regulations and laws are ineffective at identifying money launderers, but they're wonderful for verifying (auditing and prosecuting) tax compliance. As someone who’s implemented AML, KYC, and tax reporting functions in a bank. I think you would be very surprised at how shit they are for tax auditing at scale. Unless the tax man is specifically auditing you…
Or criminals just get a bank like HSBC to do the money laundering for them.
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There are a lot of remedies available to a court with respect to a recalcitrant party, ranging from an injunction to remove your product from the market to fines and imprisonment. Again, speak with your attorney. Do not try to "hack the law" yourself; many who have tried have regretted it later.
No need to hack the law. Our FOSS code is constitutionally protected free speech and I would defend on those grounds. The technical design of the project just makes it so no one can force changes on the distro unwanted by the maintainer team regardless of any courtroom outcomes. Like, what if someone made a law that said Bitcoin nodes must KYC? They could make the law I guess, and the international network operators…
They might not be able to break your private keys, but they can fine you or jail you for not complying.