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EFF launches Age Verification Hub

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Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#281

Post by miki123211 »

pksebben wrote: post #127
phyzome wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of any age verification systems that do not have this property? (This includes being robust against law enforcement action, legal or otherwise.)

Like many mention in other comments on this post, it's possible to implement using ZKPs. There are likely other methods that would be effective without compromising privacy. None of them are part of the Age Verification discussion because kids are not the actual point of Age Verification. When I say "if we have to know you're not a kid, we have to know who you are" I'm not stating an actual truth , but the argument a…

The simplest possible such method? Single-use age verification codes, generated and validated by the government, sold on physical scratch cards with in-store verification of ID, piggybacking on the infrastructure we already use for selling alcohol and cigarettes.

This would be far easier to implement for websites too. You'd just have a single, unauthenticated API endpoint which, given a code, tells you if the code is valid (and marks it as used). Integrating with such an API is about 1 day of work for a competent dev. Even open, non-profit platforms like Mastodon could easily implement such a mechanism.

Scratch cards wouldn't have to be the only way of getting such codes. THe vast majority of people could just generate them in their banking app or whatever (which would still be far more privacy friendly than the current ID verification mechanisms).

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#282

Post by cycomanic »

hunter2_ wrote: post #267
kahnclusions wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 as…

> the government [...] only know[s] that I needed to verify an assertion about my age This is problematic if a majority of things needing age verification are looked down upon; for example, insurance companies would love to know what people don't do things needing age and therefore don't buy alcohol (at least not online).

The first question is how would the insurance find out that you are doing lots of things requiring age verification? The only body that could tell them is the government, while a distrust in the government can be healthy, I think this is the least thing to worry about, the government typically knows already much more damaging things than how often you ask for age verification.

Moreover, that would only work if there are relatively few things that require age verification and it needs more than just being looked down upon, i.e. while alcohol buying might be interesting information for insurances, watching porn is likely less interesting. Even worse, if the insurance can't distinguish between porn and alcohol (which they can't by design even if the government would give them the information about how often you ask for age verification).

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#283

Post by cycomanic »

donmcronald wrote: post #233
MatteoFrigo wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I somewhat understand your argument about how to prevent misuse, but I'd say one could do that by embedding the key in an ID card and someone will have to connect the ID card to the phone/computer (e.g. via NFC). So obviously you can pretend you lost your ID card and get a new one, but I would say that you can only do that so often until someone will get suspicious, just as if you would ask for a new passport every couple of months someone would start asking you some serious questions.

Regarding using the document to buy beer, that's already done, you need to provide ID. I also hope you being asked to provide ID for buying guns, but then again I'm not from the US, so I have quite a different opinion on gun ownership.

All that said though, we are currently watching some of the most significant civil rights abuses by authorities, all without any ID system and people are worried about age verification? If the government wants to abuse their power they don't need an ID system, they just look at your social media profile at the border.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#284

Post by wartywhoa23 »

zamadatix wrote: post #237
pksebben wrote: post #88

This 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 a…

And now compare this comment with another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46228900) I got in yet another "let's save children from the Internet" thread:

> Your sci-fi distopia flash fiction is compelling, but not actually on topic in this discussion.

> "Think of the children" is weaponized for censorious purposes, but also the harms of social media are well documented (unlike many of the other moral panics fuelled by this phrase).

> I'm not sure a blanket under-16s ban on all social media is the right answer, but there are really good reasons why people support this that you need to engage with to have a useful discussion here.

So basically for everyone even with modest pattern recognition abilities the template used here should be crystal clear, which goes along the lines of

- I'm kinda with you (even though you are stupid and emotion-driven);

- But your point is totally invalid because you should be humiliated by the sheer number of your opponents, which renders you small and negligible;

- Your opponents have very good reasons to support any fascism that is able to address their reaction to prefabricated problems with prefabricated solutions, and you've got to support that too if you want to be heard.

I'm pretty sure these threads are chock full of shills, because one can't rob people of freedom without significant narraive steering efforts.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#285

Post by wartywhoa23 »

topkai22 wrote: post #153
pksebben wrote: post #88

This 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…

Yet another comment following the template described in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46242184

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#286

Post by wartywhoa23 »

miki123211 wrote: post #280
pksebben wrote: post #88

This 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 […

How do you know this? I see this argument repeated over and over on HN, with 0 evidence for it. Any "evidence" people cite is usually of the "politicians are evil, so this should be obvious by definition" kind, sometimes of the "they tried x in the past, so surely some unrelated y they're trying to pass in the future is also about x" kind. I haven't seen a single leak, a single admission from somebody trying to pass…

> There are far too many politicians trying to pass laws like these, in very different countries across the world, for some kind of giant global conspiracy to stay undetected.

This is today's top agrument! "There are far too many gangsters each operating in their own district for some kind of notion of organized crime to be credible".

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#287

Post by dietdrpeppr »

edgineer wrote: post #252
zamadatix wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I'm sure those people exist, I just never happen to see anything they write online nor meet any of them in real life.

> 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.

I’m alive. Nice to meet you.

I “accept severe surveillance”, not in the sense that I agree with it, but because I know that it already exists and has existed and that people that are against it are screaming into the wind. Many large and small countries have long histories of surveillance.

It’s not that you shouldn’t try to enforce privacy, in fact, the law requires it if you in some cases, and it’s a good idea in others.

I’m certainly not against the EFF standing up for the rights of everyone not to be severely surveilled.

But, realistically, the public cannot easily anonymize our activity and data. And if you try to do so, you’re painting yourself as a target.

If you were trying to keep your country safe, wouldn’t you like the ability to infiltrate any major cloud, SaaS app, social media platform, bank, government, VPN/internal network, and OS?

Similarly, if you were a big data or security company wouldn’t you also do everything you could to know everything it is to know about a person if you had the means and time and it made sense for your business?

Following, if you were to have that power as a government, business, or other organization, wouldn’t it be critical to ensure that you restricted its use to ensure it wasn’t abused to the point that you’d lose it, even though the reality would be that you probably don’t have time to keep it as safe as you need to?

I “accept severe surveillance” not because I promote it or want it, but because I understand how the world works and what it does.

All these things will pass. If you have the focus and the mental capacity to do what is good, then do it. It likely helped the world in some way to learn about KGB wiretaps. But, in the U.S., as far as I can tell, the backlash against the CIA and NSA was just used for political gain and then to replace those that didn’t agree with the current administration. Was that helpful? And who are we really being manipulated by when we attack ourselves and install destabilizing leaders?

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#288

Post by wartywhoa23 »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #146
like_any_other wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In real life, we think age verification is a good thing. Ok. In real life, do we think having agents from the government and corporations following you everywhere, writing down your every move and word, is a good thing? Or rather, what kind of crime would one have to have committed, so that they would only be allowed out in public with surveillance agents trailing them everywhere?

I don't, but society clearly does. We're already there.

All chutzpah is built upon brazen assertion of desired outcome as already achieved.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#289

Post by imtringued »

Epa095 wrote: post #277
cocoto wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such sites would be illegal if not sharing the header back from the source website and be banned as much as adult websites incorrectly setting this header. It’s not a real problem.

Making them illegal does not fix it. There will be a indefinite whack-a-mole game which is very hard to solve without draconian control over the Internet. The problem is that it's easy to make, easy to deploy, easy to make money on, and a single site opens up the whole Internet. It will happen even if it's illegal. Compare this to adult webpages setting the header. They will probably be quite willing to do so, since…

It's actually hard to understand on "which" side you're on, but a charitable interpretation is that you're arguing that there are no perfect solutions, hence a simple and minimal non-invasive method will probably have the same effect as a complex and invasive method. That is, both methods will add enough friction that children who don't know what they're missing won't bother and the ones who can't do without, will choose every conceivable method to get around the restrictions.

Worrying about the latter makes no sense, because they are sort of like organized crime. People still take drugs even though they are illegal.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#290

Post by dottjt »

pksebben wrote: post #88

This 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 […

Just because it's about surveillance doesn't mean it's a bad thing?

The fact that you need a driver's licence to drive a car, or a document to identify yourself to open a bank account is also surveillance. Yet it seems perfectly reasonable?

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