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The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

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Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#481

Post by closeparen »

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

A physical realm that is safe for children to explore in their own is clearly preferable to one where it’s transgressive to let a child go outside without an escort.

It is plausible that the same applies to the digital realm.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#482

Post by mothballed »

basisword wrote: post #412
JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

>> In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. So anyone can walk into a shop and purchase these things unrestricted? It's not the responsibility of the seller too?

Tobacco, yes you can order pipe tobacco and cigars online sent to your house without ID.

Guns yes, you can buy a schmidt-rubin cartridge rifle or black powder revolver sent straight to your home from an online (even interstate) vendor no ID or background check, perfectly legal.

Alcohol yes, you can order wine straight to your house without ID.

These are all somewhat less known "loopholes" but not really turned out to be a problem despite no meaningful controls on the seller. You probably didn't even know about these loopholes, actually -- that's how little of a problem it's been.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#483

Post by pessimizer »

The point is to undermine data protection; this debate is useless. It's a question about power and control, not a technical one. The people lobbying for this don't care about children, and neither are they getting big support from a constituency clamoring for this. This is an intelligence initiative, and a donor initiative from people who are in a position to control the platform (all computing and communications) after it is locked down.

It's not even worth talking about online. There's too much inorganic support for the objectives of nation-states and the corporations that own them.

Legislation has been advanced in Colorado demanding that all OSes verify the user's age. It will fail, but it will be repeated 100 times, in different places, smuggled attached to different legislation, the process and PR strategies refined and experimented with, versions of it passed in Australia, South Korea, maybe the UK and Europe, and eventually passed here. That means that "general purpose" computing will be eventually be lost to locked bootloaders.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/colorado-lawmakers-push-for-age-v...

[edit: I'm an idiot, they already passed it in California https://www.hunton.com/privacy-and-cybersecurity-law-blog/ca...]

And it will be an entirely engineered and conscious process by people who have names. And we will babble about it endlessly online, pretending that we have some control over it, pretending that this is a technical discussion or a moral discussion, on platforms that they control, that they allow us to babble on as an escape valve. Then, one day the switch will flip, and advocacy of open bootloaders, or trading in computers that can install unattested OSes, will be treated as organized crime.

All I can beg you to do is imagine how ashamed you'll be in the future when you're lying about having supported this now, or complaining that you shouldn't have "trusted them to do it the right way." Don't let dumb fairytales about Russians, Chinese, Cambridge Analytics and pedophile pornography epidemics have you fighting for your own domination. Maybe you'll be the piece of straw that slows things down just enough that current Western oligarchies collapse before they can finish. Maybe we'll get lucky.

Polls and ballots show that none of this stuff has majority organic support. But polls can be manipulated, and good polls have to be publicized for people to know they're not alone, and not afraid they're misunderstanding something. If both candidates on the ballot are subverted, the question never ends up on the ballot.

The article itself says nothing that hasn't been said before, and stays firmly under the premise that access to content online by under-18s is suddenly one of the most critical problems of our age, rather than a sad annoyance. What is gained by having this dumb discussion again?

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#484

Post by gigel82 »

antitoxic wrote: post #390

I work at a European identity wallet system that uses a zero knowledge proof age identification system. It derives an age attribute such as "over 18" from a passport or ID, without disclosing any other information such as the date of birth. As long as you trust the government that gave out the ID, you can trust the attribute, and anonymously verify somebodies age. I think there are many pros and cons to be said about…

Where can we learn more about your architecture?

Someone brought up the need for device attestation for trust purposes (to avoid token smuggling for example). That would surely defeat the purpose (and make things much much worse for freedom overall). If you have a solution that doesn't require device attestation, how does that solve the smuggling issue (are tokens time-gated, is there a limit to token generation, other things)?

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#485

Post by dom96 »

antitoxic wrote: post #390

I work at a European identity wallet system that uses a zero knowledge proof age identification system. It derives an age attribute such as "over 18" from a passport or ID, without disclosing any other information such as the date of birth. As long as you trust the government that gave out the ID, you can trust the attribute, and anonymously verify somebodies age. I think there are many pros and cons to be said about…

That's really awesome. I hope that soon we will also have humanity verification without sacrificing our anonymity.

With LLMs and paid actors wreaking havoc on social media I do think that social media needs pivot towards allowing only human users on it. I wrote about this here: https://blog.picheta.me/post/the-future-of-social-media-is-h...

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#486

Post by netcan »

techblueberry wrote: post #432
JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. I get your position, but like. The whole idea of the promise of the internet has been destroyed by newsfeeds and mega-corps. There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted. This isn't a few bands with swear words, and in fact, I thi…

>Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck.

For me this is a crux, at least in principle. Once online media is so centralized... the from argument freedom is diminished.

There are differences between national government power and international oligopoly but... even that is starting to get complicated.

That said... This still leaves the problem in practice. We get decrees that age-restriction is mandatory. There will be bad compliance implementations. Privacy implications.

Meanwhile a while... how much will we actually gain when it comes to child protection.

You can come up will all sorts of examples proving "Facebook bad" but that doesn't mean these things are fixed when/if regulation actually comes into play.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#487

Post by axus »

fartfeatures wrote: post #419
axus wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy to lock up alcohol/cigarettes, a child should never have access. Internet usage is more like broadcast media, a child should have regular access. The positives and negatives of Internet usage are more extreme than broadcast media but less than alcohol/guns. The majority of people lack the skills to properly censor Internet without hovering over the child's shoulder full-time as you would with a gun. Be…

This is where Apple, Microsoft and Android need to step up. Indeed they already have in many ways with things being better than they used to be. There needs to be a strict (as in MDM level) parental control system. Furthermore there needs to be a "School Mode" which allows the devices to be used educationally but not as a distraction. This would work far better than a ban.

Microsoft has done a good job with Microsoft accounts and Microsoft Family Safety. It's about as user-friendly as you'll get outside of Apple, though the speed could be improved. And this only covers PCs, Android 's system is less good.

Even with this, the problem requires more than pushing a button. Time, thought, and adjustment are needed. Like home maintenance, its necessary but not everyone can do it without help.

Getting AI assistance is good advice.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#488

Post by dom96 »

some_random wrote: post #279
julianozen wrote: post #235

There is missing a solution. Give our personal devices have the ability to verify our age and identity securely and store on device like they do our fingerprint or face data. Services that need access only verify it cryptographically. So my iPhone can confirm I’m over 21 for my DoorDash app in the same way it stores my biometric data. The challenge here is the adoption of these encryption services and whether compani…

The real problem with this is that the ultimate objective isn't age verification, it's complete de-anonymization. I think different groups want this for different reasons, but the simple reality is that minimizing the identify information transferred around is antithetical to their goals.

Is it though? Do you have any proof that is the case?

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#489

Post by dom96 »

julianozen wrote: post #235

There is missing a solution. Give our personal devices have the ability to verify our age and identity securely and store on device like they do our fingerprint or face data. Services that need access only verify it cryptographically. So my iPhone can confirm I’m over 21 for my DoorDash app in the same way it stores my biometric data. The challenge here is the adoption of these encryption services and whether compani…

This kind of solution couldn't come soon enough. It will also enable us to verify humanity and have bot-free spaces on social media again. I wrote about this here: https://blog.picheta.me/post/the-future-of-social-media-is-h...
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