Besides Porn, what sites are doing this? It's odd to me that the EFF page does not mention "porn" or "adult content" at all.
Here in Europe they want to do the same for chat services like WhatsApp.
EFF launches Age Verification Hub
231–240 of 371 posts
Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub
#232Why is this so difficult? Verified Credentials exist on the Web. Drivers’ licenses exist. Just show that you are over 18 in a zero knowledge way and be done with it. Why do they need to see your IDs?
Because I don't want to prove myself in everything I do online?
Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's not linked to an identity, why can't a kid use a parent's key?
Excellent question. More generally, what prevents me from copying the credential and giving it to somebody else? The currently favored approach works like this. The DOCUMENT contains a device public key DPK. The corresponding secret key is stored in some secure hardware on the phone, designed so that I (or malware or whatever) cannot extract the secret key from the secure hardware. Think of it as a yubikey or somethi…
> How does the issuer (e.g. the republic of France) know that DOCUMENT is bound to a given fingerprint? This is still under discussion, but as a first bid, a French citizen goes to city hall with his phone and obtains DOCUMENT after producing a fingerprint on the citizen's phone (as opposed to a device belonging to the republic of France).
Are you saying that someone goes to city hall, shows ID, and gets a DOCUMENT that certifies age, but doesn't link back to the person's identity? And it's married to a fingerprint in front of the person checking ID?
Is there a limit on how many times someone can get a DOCUMENT? If not, it'll become a new variation of fake id and eventually there's going to be an effort to crack down on misuse. If yes, what happens if I get unlucky and lose / break my phone limit + 1 times? Do I get locked out of the world? The only way I can imagine limiting abuse and collateral damage at the same time is to link an identity to a DOCUMENT somehow which makes the whole ZKP thing moot.
I'd be more worried about the politics though. There's no way any government on the planet is going to keep a system like that limited to simple age verification. Eventually there's going to be enough pretense to expand the system and block "non-compliant" sites. Why not use the same DOCUMENT to prove age to buy beer? Sanity for guns? Loyalty for food?
What happens if the proof gets flipped to run the other direction and a DOCUMENT is needed to prove you're a certified journalist? Any sources without certification can be blocked and the ZKP aspect doesn't matter at that point because getting the DOCUMENT will be risky if you're a dissenter. Maybe there's an interview. Maybe there's a background check. Has your phone ever shown up near a protest?
It's just like the Android announcement that developers need to identify themselves to distribute apps, even via side loading. The ultimate goal is to force anyone publishing content to identify themselves because then it's possible to use the government and legal system to crush dissenting views.
Big tech caused most of the problems and now they're going to provide the solution with more technology, more cost, and less freedom which is basically what they've been doing for the last 2 decades so it's not a surprise.
Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is, of course, very technical, but here is how it works at a high level. In the non-ZKP presentation, the "holder" (phone) sends the credential to the relying party (website), and the RP executes some verification algorithm. In the ZK presentation, the holder executes the verification algorithm and sends to the RP a proof that the algorithm was executed correctly. The "proof" has this magical property that it re…
the more I think about it, the more I feel like I need someone with deep knowledge to explain ZKPs to me. So like, we've got this algorithm that gets sent our way and we run it and that provides kind of a cryptographic hash or whatever. But if we're running the algorithm ourselves what's to stop us from lying? Where does the 'proof' come from? What's the check that it's running and why do we inherently trust the sour…
I’m not exactly sure about ZKPs but for age verification the “proof” can come from the government but in such a way that the web service doesn’t know anything more than whether an assertion is true, and the government doesn’t know anything more than you wanted to verify some assertion.
This is a simplified method for age verification:
I want to buy alcohol from my phone and need to prove I’m over 18. SickBooze.com asks me for proof by generating a request to assert “age >= 18”.
My phone signs this request with my own private key, and forwards it to the government server.
The government verifies my signature against a public key I previously submitted to them, checks my age data in their own register of residents, and finally signs the request with one of their private keys.
My phone receives the signed response and forwards it back to SickBooze.com, which can verify the government’s signature offline against a cached list of public keys. Now they can sell me alcohol.
- the “request” itself is anonymous and doesn’t contain any identifying information unless that is what you intended to verify
- the government doesn’t know what service I used, nor why I used it, they only know that I needed to verify an assertion about my age
- the web service I used doesn’t know my identity, they don’t even know my exact age, they just know that an assertion about being >= 18 is true.
Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub
#235This keeps coming up and we keep having the same debates about what Age Verification isn't. For the folks in the back row: Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Without even reaching for my tinfoil hat, the strategy at work here is clear […
Age verification is absolutely about kids. It’s also being used (or hijacked into) a vehicle for people who want increased surveillance. There is a ton of evidence that there are harms to unrestricted online access for kids and teens (the book The Anxious Generation is cultural touchstone for this topic at this point). There is a real, well reasoned, and valid movement to do something about this problem. The solution…
The thing is that when it starts being about the kids it means the bottom 90% has entered the internet and you should be away because it is already lost.
I wonder if there's something like internet accelerationism - push things like having friends or watching movies online off the cliff as soon as possible.
Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub
#236This keeps coming up and we keep having the same debates about what Age Verification isn't. For the folks in the back row: Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Without even reaching for my tinfoil hat, the strategy at work here is clear […
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Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub
#237This keeps coming up and we keep having the same debates about what Age Verification isn't. For the folks in the back row: Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Without even reaching for my tinfoil hat, the strategy at work here is clear […
As much as you (and I as well) don't want age verification to involve discussion about kids' access to content because we're more concerned about the surveillance push riding the popularity of that, repeating "it isn't about kids" loudly 3 times doesn't make the (extremely large) group of people pushing age verification for kids disappear.
Telling that larger group their interest just isn't part of the conversation at all excludes _you_ from the conversation rather than changing the focus of the conversation to the other downsides instead of the primary interest others might have.
There are also, concerningly IMO, an extremely large amount of people willing to accept severe surveillance or privacy downsides so long as it helps achieve the goal about kids. To them, the same would in reverse would be "why are you talking about surveillance, the real issue is the kids. Say it 3 times loud, for those in the back!" and the conversation gets nowhere because it's just people saying how they won't talk to anyone who disagrees what concerns should be considered.
Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
So adults are required to own a phone to prove their age? Can I log into an age gated service at a library without a phone?
Another excellent question. The current answer in the EU seems to be "you need a phone". My preferred answer (despite being one of the Google guys who designed the ZKP mechanism) would be that the government sends you some sort of plastic card with a chip that does not tie you to a phone. Still fighting that battle.
Thanks for answering, I appreciate it.
Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub
#239What they should do instead is invest in technology that can do age verification while protecting privacy. This is obviously a required piece of technology. It is not acceptable for children to grow up on the Internet and easily access pornography by simply going to a website. Imagine letting your children loose in a city where they can wander in and out of peep shows without friction.
It's funny to me that porn does not have more age verification than just "Yes, I promise I'm 18+" (or whatever). If I go to the liquor store, I can't just promise "I'm 21+" If I go to vote, I can't just promise I'm 16+ If I go to buy a lottery ticket I cant just promise... I think I made my point.
And yet this has been the system for the last 35 years and somehow the sky didn't fall.
Either you're old enough to understand what porn is and have desires to consume it in which case you won't be scarred by it and don't need protection from it, or your not in which case you won't seek it out. You need id checks for alcohol because people too young to consume it want it, and given how much teens drink and how not a problem lower drinking ages are in other countries even that claim is somewhat dubious.
Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
the more I think about it, the more I feel like I need someone with deep knowledge to explain ZKPs to me. So like, we've got this algorithm that gets sent our way and we run it and that provides kind of a cryptographic hash or whatever. But if we're running the algorithm ourselves what's to stop us from lying? Where does the 'proof' come from? What's the check that it's running and why do we inherently trust the sour…
I am someone with "deep knowledge", but HN is not the proper place for this discussion. See https://people.cs.georgetown.edu/jthaler/ProofsArgsAndZK.htm... for the gory details. Here is a hopefully simple example of how this ZKP thing may even be possible. Imagine that you give me a Sudoku puzzle. I solve it, and then I want to prove to you that I have solved it without telling you the solution. It sounds impossible,…
> How do we implement the lock boxes? I tell you SHA256(NONCE, VALUE) where the NONCE is chosen by me. Given the hash you cannot compute VALUE. To open the lock box, I tell you NONCE and VALUE, which you believe under the assumption that I cannot find a collision in SHA256.
That's the bit I was missing! The prover pre-registers the scrambled solution, so they can't cheat by making up values that fit the constraints.