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European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS

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Re: European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS

#451

I agree wholeheartedly with the argument raised in this github issue, but I think people are wrong to be skeptical about the concept of a government-issued age verification app. Thing is, the status quo is absolutely worse. My 13yo son likes making Roblox games. Suddenly, some months ago, Roblox made a change where you’re not allowed to share your games with friends unless you do “age verification”, apparently in som…

The original design intention of this approach was that wallet apps were independant and interchangable, with any wallet app able to talk to any attestation provider, to get age attestation tokens, and any site/app able to talk to any wallet. The wallet's job was merely to securely hold a bunch of attestations tokens, and dispense them to other sites/apps on request.

So you could use an open source app, or government provided one, or one provided by your bank, whatever you trust the most to not be recording data about relying parties and sending it somewhere you don't want.

The version of the document currently on GitHub has heavily deviated from that original intention. This is very unfortunate.

Even so this version is supposed to still be incapable by design of sharing any data with a relying party other than "over 18" and was designed such that the only way for a relying party to determine your identity is to be colluding with the attestation provider, or by colluding with the wallet app.

To attempt to address the first issue they have the unfortunately optional ZKP protocol. The original design assumed that users could find a wallet that they were certain would not collude with the RPs, and was considered a non-issue, but unfortunately it is a huge hole in the current version.

Re: European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS

#452
post #25

This is the elephant in the room regarding the big "digital sovereignty" talks in the EU. For the moment in the EU institutions the focus is mostly at the post-acceptance stage that everything must eventually migrate off US clouds. There is still some denial and hope that things will go back to "before" because it's going to be extremely costly to migrate, but at least high level EU civil servants start to see the st…

Yes, spot on, the talk is always around Office and co.

Re: European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS

#453
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wont help anything. Then you are just force to use Android, iOS, or Sailfish. It need to be a platform agnostic thing, else you're just hitching the fulcrum of civil society on private company.

Exactly. The app is only inclusive if it is accessible over a standard protocol (Web) without "attestation", so that it works for any platform. If I release a GNU/Linux distribution tomorrow, I should be able to use the app on it with only some work on my part.

You mean ChromeOS Platform.

Re: European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS

#455
post #25

This is the elephant in the room regarding the big "digital sovereignty" talks in the EU. For the moment in the EU institutions the focus is mostly at the post-acceptance stage that everything must eventually migrate off US clouds. There is still some denial and hope that things will go back to "before" because it's going to be extremely costly to migrate, but at least high level EU civil servants start to see the st…

China made its own linux distros almost immediately. And as far as I know it is widely in use (Kylin etc.?).

Some nations in the western sphere seem to gladly outsource such critical infrastructure. Thinking about the Korean defence manufacturer whose contact mail was something@gmail.com in an advert I saw a few days ago. Perhaps Google will integrate some fast reply function for some instant AA ordnance delivery?

Re: European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS

#456
post #25

This is the elephant in the room regarding the big "digital sovereignty" talks in the EU. For the moment in the EU institutions the focus is mostly at the post-acceptance stage that everything must eventually migrate off US clouds. There is still some denial and hope that things will go back to "before" because it's going to be extremely costly to migrate, but at least high level EU civil servants start to see the st…

China made its own linux distros almost immediately. And as far as I know it is widely in use (Kylin etc.?). Some nations in the western sphere seem to gladly outsource such critical infrastructure. Thinking about the Korean defence manufacturer whose contact mail was something@gmail.com in an advert I saw a few days ago. Perhaps Google will integrate some fast reply function for some instant AA ordnance delivery?

I don't think that we should want some locked-down insolution forced upon everyone, European or not.

Re: European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can also vote out my government. You can't. Not if you're in the minority. Tyranny of the majority is still tyranny. You what you as an individual most certainly can do is stop using Roblox. Not ideal, but way easier than moving to a new country.

> You can't. Not if you're in the minority Is that a bad thing?

Compared to multiple competing privately run systems, which you can opt out of even if you're in the minority? Yes.
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