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What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

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Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#491

Post by palata »

palata wrote: post #468
microtonal wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? GrapheneOS is open source and developed by an international team of developers, why would it not fit for Europe? Besides that, /e/OS is basically LineageOS with weakened security and Murena's own cloud crap added. It's going to be a hell lot better than /e/OS, whose CEO claims security hardening is only for criminals (pedophiles) and spies. He is peddling the same narratives in the media as those who push ch…

> /e/OS, whose CEO claims security hardening is only for criminals (pedophiles) and spies That's true, there is a video interview where he says that they are not so knowledgeable about security, and anyway they don't develop an OS for pedophiles, so it doesn't matter.

Since I'm being downvoted, here is the source: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142

About not being so knowledgeable about security, he says:

"There's the attack surface, on that front we're not security specialists here, so I couldn't answer you precisely, but from the discussions I've had, it seems that everything we do reduces attack surface."

I won't go into details on the security side, but all the /e/OS systems I have seen don't properly relock the bootloader, meaning that they spoil the Android security model. This doesn't count as "everything we do reduces attack surface" in my book.

About his saying that security hardening is for pedophiles:

"However, we don't have a "hardened security" approach, we aren't developing a phone for pedo(censored) so they can evade justice."

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#492

Post by [deleted] »

account42 wrote: post #463
intended wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah. I wish. I have personally had to remove NCII for teens and young adults. Grooming is a thing, self harm communities are a thing, as is sextortion.All of it at internet scale. And this ignores the parts where the platforms released features they knew from their own tests, were harmful to teens. It is convenient to dismiss them, because it makes it easier to hold positions that depend on them being minor harms.

> I have personally had to remove NCII for teens and young adults. Grooming is a thing, self harm communities are a thing, as is sextortion.All of it at internet scale. And even 100% effective age verification will not make a dent. > And this ignores the parts where the platforms released features they knew from their own tests, were harmful to teens. Those features are also harmful to adults. > It is convenient to d…

[deleted]

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#493

Post by raxxorraxor »

me-vs-cat wrote: post #487
raxxorraxor wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want an eID established on the net. It isn't sensible design. It would only work for the legal offerings and those just can send a header and devices need to block any communication if device is in kidmode. Easy, efficient, better engineering. Illegal offerings won't do either of course. That can only be achieved by whitelisting a kid-net. Resource intensive, but only choice if you want unsupervised kid safet…

What do you mean by "active parenting", and why is it unrealistic? (Do you mean something specific like HHS' Active Parenting™? https://preventionservices.acf.hhs.gov/programs/744/show )

With active parenting I meant parents thoroughly checking the sites their kids have access to. Nothing parents can shoulder these days in my opinion since it is a very technical and fast moving problem. Some parents could do it, but the vast majority probably wouldn't.

Most approachable is the device having some kid mode. In this mode online platforms need to send a respective header to authorise the content as kid friendly.

If that is missing, access isn't possible. In this case parents just need to check that the devices of their kids are configured properly.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#494

Post by subscribed »

chollida1 wrote: post #201
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way identity wallets work: The government issues an eID to your wallet. The ID is signed by the government and linked to the device to prevent transferring the credential. A public/private key-pair is generated by the secure enclave in your phone, the public key along with proof of possession of the private key is included in the request for the government eID. The government signs individual attributes combined…

How does this work without a phone? I do 99% of my computer work, like now, not on a phone. Do regular desktop and laptop computers have the same secure enclave feature?

No, none of the commodity pcs or laptops come close to what Apple iPhone or Google Pixel hardware offers. Some have some sort of the secure enclave but it's not as safe.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#496

Post by palata »

gambiting wrote: post #483
palata wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can. Or maybe I don't get what you mean? It's possible for the government (or any entity, but when it comes to ID it feels natural that the government owns it) to verify your age (by verifying your identity) and give you a token that proves that you are above age, in such a way that the government cannot track you with this token and the website cannot identify you from this token. Using zero-knowledge proofs.

With my implementation, the government revokes the code after it's been verified once. If you want to verify elsewhere, you need to request a new code. How does that work with your implementation? A token given to you can be verified as legit by anyone using a public key, but there is no way to revoke it after a single use(because you have no way of knowing it's been used, by design).

The service (e.g. the porn website) keeps a list of used tokens and refuses to reuse them.

You can use the same token on multiple websites, but then you leak metadata. As for the age verification "protection", I don't think it makes it worse, given that anyway someone could get a token and give it to a kid.

Again, I don't think that the goal is to make it absolutely certain that no kid will ever access social media or porn. When you go to such extreme, you need dystopian technology and I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze.

My opinion is that age verification may (maybe?) be a tool to make it slightly more inconvenient for kids to access some services. But I am not completely convinced that it is always desirable. Instead of accessing a mainstream porn website, they may end up downloading random stuff from the internet, including malware and possibly violent porn, which is probably worse.

Social media is a real problem, but again... if a kid goes home and tell their parents that they are excluded because everybody else has TikTok, won't the parent get a token and install TikTok? Right now no parent wants their kids to use social media (or even have a smartphone), but they do it because all the other kids do, and kids need to conform.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#497

Post by ghtbircshotbe »

al_borland wrote: post #267
krupan wrote: post #259

Parents largely control what their kids have access to, whether it requires a device, a data plan, home Wi-Fi, whatever. Where parents don't/can't control their kids' access, no amount of regulation and technology will fix it. This applies not just to social media, but drugs, alcohol, porn, etc. Yes, laws and IDs add friction and that's good, but if a kid really wants those things they are going to find a way. Social…

Even as an adult who doesn't use social media, I find the use of Facebook as a company home page, or using it as a forum for group communication, to be problematic. Especially as Meta makes it more and more difficult to see content without an account.

Or even worse - as the homepage for local government/department.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#498

Post by Wowfunhappy »

solid_fuel wrote: post #325
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, treating general-purpose computers like alcohol seems a lot more dystopian to me. Does this extend to PC components? Can I build a machine and put Linux on it?

> I don't know, treating general-purpose computers like alcohol seems a lot more dystopian to me Isn't this the logical end goal of basically every approach to "age verification", though? If you really want to control access to the internet, then you can't let people have a VPN or Tor, and if you don't want people to VPNs or Tor then you need to lock the device down.

Well, the alternative is that Facebook makes you scan a government photo ID before you can use it. Any sense of privacy is gone, but at least general purpose computing isn't outlawed.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#499

Post by fsflover »

bluegatty wrote: post #416
budududuroiu wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy would be an alcohol shop employee with a photographic and infinite memory which then staples an AirTag to your skin to see where you're headed off after you've purchased your booze

except that's not the analogy at all.

Shallow dismissal?

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#500

Post by xinayder »

john_strinlai wrote: post #2

> "Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. its been said 1000 times here, but: age verification doesn't have to be a nightmare dystopia of 24/7 fine-grained tracking and recording unless you are somehow hoping to achieve 100% success rate (something we have not done with any other law ever). there are sev…

Age verification online shouldn't exist, period.
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