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The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

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Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#321
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is precisely why powers will try to make all these illegal

I don't think they are going to make libraries illegal mate.

Libraries track what books you read (nowadays via some database and in the past via paper)

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#322
post #139
post #56

The path ahead in the next few years (at least for the UK) 1. Age gating + VPN ban under the guise of protecting children from social media 2. Few years pass, Identity Passport gets ushered in under guise of convenience of not having to repeat those pesky age verification checks. 3. Utilities start to require ID Passport. Including signing up with an ISP. 4. Renting starts to require ID Passport. 5. Work requires ID…

Renting and work already require ID in the UK. Every landlord and employer is supposed to take a copy of original documents proving the right to rent/work in the UK. Technically you can do that without handing the docs to the government, but there's less potential liability to do so via the Home Office website.

You miss the point - they are stitching it all together in a way that deanonymize you to your ISP under the guise of save the kids and then convenience

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#323
This could be good to make the lack of privacy online more explicit to users, and actually cause people to be more cautious online, which all the snowden revelations failed to do. If we start using the internet the same way we use government websites, log in, do the thing, log out.

I feel we are still living in this bubble that treats the internet as some sort of utopian democratic institution. For certain people with strong mental gating it can be the case. But I'd say it's a massive projection from intelligent technologists on the rest of humanity. Most people really need some guardrails to avoid becoming hopelessly addicted to the worst material.

I hope this creates pressure for new technologies and media that answer some of the problems of communication which the internet couldn't. I guess people will find new bubbles of anonymity like Signal/Whatsapp groups to get information and discuss. Hopefully which reward some degree of contribution and proper thinking. Revive the genuine social sphere rather than tuning into the corporate filtered simulacrum of a town square. The truth I've seen is that the current internet is pure poison to most minds, and anonymity is just one less bit of friction to mindlessness.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article talks about the possibilities of malicious cloning of these tokens by third parties, but fails to identify the much more common use case, and one that makes this scheme useless for age verification. It's one thing to be concerned about someone stealing my credential, but another to prevent the transfer of these credentials, especially if they are limited use credentials. The entire point of age verificati…

Yes, this is the part of the issue that is so frequently ignored: Anonymous age verification schemes are easily defeated through proxying because there wouldn't be any consequences for selling your tokens. "Install this app on your phone and we'll pay you $1 per day" and it will mint your anonymous identity tokens and send them off to kids who want to buy them. If there's no way to track the tokens, there is no possi…

We are talking about porn here. And the internet will be always full of it - and that can only be prevented by controlling all of it, or have each state have a golden firewall.

All of these solutions seem very complicated, for little benefit. So a anonymous age verification scheme, fine with me. But making it more complicatdd, because dark entities could capture and resell tokens .. seems a step in the direction of madness.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#326
post #321
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they are going to make libraries illegal mate.

Libraries track what books you read (nowadays via some database and in the past via paper)

Unless you read it directly at the library (at least in my country), without borrowing it.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the part of the issue that is so frequently ignored: Anonymous age verification schemes are easily defeated through proxying because there wouldn't be any consequences for selling your tokens. "Install this app on your phone and we'll pay you $1 per day" and it will mint your anonymous identity tokens and send them off to kids who want to buy them. If there's no way to track the tokens, there is no possi…

The tokens could be tied to the device and Apple account by a provider like Apple, in fact you don’t need to issue tokens, only provide a web api that Apple and other browser providers support, which attests age. This is certainly something that can be solved technically if we want.

It sounds like your scheme would only allow browsing the "adult web" on locked-down, unmodified devices running government-approved software. Frankly, that's worse than even requiring ID.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#328
post #32

How is it any different from being required to identify yourself to get a phone or electricity account? Identifying yourself on the internet is long overdue.

You aren't required to identify yourself to get a phone. You can get a prepaid phone with no ID. You are required to identify yourself for an electricity account because it is essentially extending you credit. You use the electricity first, and then they bill you for it later. They also only identify the person who is receiving the bill. You could have a house with a dozen people in it but the electric company only k…

> You aren't required to identify yourself to get a phone. You can get a prepaid phone with no ID.

Requiring ID to buy a prepaid SIM card has become the norm across the developed world. There are still a few holdout countries, but they won’t hold out for long.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on average aren't very smart and will happily support programs objectively harmful to them and everyone else because the government and a nice lady from the breakfast TV says it's necessary to think of someone's else's children watching porn (this soundbite is gross. I don't understand how it's okay for the serious people to repeat it).

Once again blaming the tv which barely anyone watches rather than the algorithmic feed in their pocket 24 hours a day. It’s not 1980 any more.

Naah, "nice lady from the breakfast TV" is mostly[1] an allegory of the traditional media narrative, but you can't seriously deny the impact and importance of it?

If you deny for example Murdoch-owned media impact on the society, or the extent of the damage for example BBC did in the UK to the human rights or the discourse, I'd suggest reading more :)

[1] one TV programme I remember (I don't watch it): "Good Morning Britain is the UK's most talked about breakfast television show with a weekly audience reach of 4 million people." that's 10% of the age group 16-64 here, not too shabby-- and that's ONE tv.

Re: The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy

#330
post #21

There are at least some technological solutions here, such as anonymous credentials. [1] Modern versions of this technique allow one to associate metadata (like a proof of age exceeding a threshold) in such a way that the verifier can't even correlate repeated requests across users. Governments that are serious about age verification and individual privacy (which, doubtful they truly are) should agree on a protocol a…

The article talks about the possibilities of malicious cloning of these tokens by third parties, but fails to identify the much more common use case, and one that makes this scheme useless for age verification. It's one thing to be concerned about someone stealing my credential, but another to prevent the transfer of these credentials, especially if they are limited use credentials. The entire point of age verificati…

the article also mentions;

Unfortunately, the said-government doesn't seem to worry about the fact that their own systems have been breached over the years

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