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Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

bsky.social

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Re: Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

#51

Post by crtasm »

aboringusername wrote: post #21
bjackman wrote: post #8

I think the important question here is: once they've got your face or ID, do they store it? Is this effectively forbidding pseudonymity? It's worth thinking twice about this in a country that is actively censoring mainstream political speech in its media.

The claim is that the data is "deleted", but there is no way to actually verify it is in fact being deleted (and the chances are data itself might be stored in say AWS which may have its own way of "deleting" data, such as in backups, caches, multiple regions etc (however they have their own legal process which may not allow data to be deleted in the event of a law enforcement request, and there's no way for anyone u…

The linked https://www.kidswebservices.com/en-US/privacy-policy#retenti... seems to say they'll keep it all for as long as they want, except for "some information" that you can request to be deleted by emailing them - but no detail on what that covers.

Re: Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

#52

Post by zimpenfish »

bjackman wrote: post #8

I think the important question here is: once they've got your face or ID, do they store it? Is this effectively forbidding pseudonymity? It's worth thinking twice about this in a country that is actively censoring mainstream political speech in its media.

> once they've got your face or ID, do they store it?

I work at a place that uses Yoti[0] for age verification and we definitely don't store any facial images[1]. Yoti also claim they don't store any images once they've delivered the age estimation back to the caller[2] (but obviously that's something unverifiable from outside.)

[0] Who provide the facial image age verification for KWS.

[1] Unless the client team have gone rogue and done something weird, I suppose? I can confidently assert that the backend doesn't store them though.

[2] https://support.yoti.com/yotisupport/s/article/Is-facial-age...

Re: Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

#53

Post by zimpenfish »

rphln wrote: post #48
IshKebab wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of liveness checks?

The app asks you to move the camera or change your expression throughout the verification. I'm not familiar with how it works on the implementation side. A ML conference that I attended had a presenter working on this area and beating AI impersonation was their #1 priority (along with other trivial approaches). For what it's worth, this might also be just a security theater from the banks, though.

> The app asks you to move the camera or change your expression throughout the verification.

The Natwest app will sometimes ask you to say words / numbers when doing a verification for e.g. a large transfer. Probably beatable by decent OCR feeding into voice synthesis with facial animation though (they don't have voice prints to check against that I'm aware of but even if they did...)

Re: Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

#54

Post by zimpenfish »

heavyset_go wrote: post #24
IshKebab wrote: post #9

Here's what you want to know: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/kids-web-services/pv-service/... > Parents in all regions except the USA and the Republic of Korea can verify their age using face scan. KWS prompts the parent to hold their device in front of their face. A machine-learning algorithm estimates the parent’s age using the device’s camera. > Face scan verification is provided by Yoti (yoti.com). They have an a…

This will be a lot of fun. I regularly get clocked as being a teenager, despite not being one for a long time. I've been kicked out of bars, get carded buying cough medicine, etc. If I'm lucky, the only thing that gets me out of those situations is my government ID with my birthday on it. Something tells me people who don't look exactly their age are going to get caught up in these automated systems.

> Something tells me people who don't look exactly their age are going to get caught up in these automated systems.

But then you just verify with a different method like government ID or credit card.

Re: Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

#55

Post by zimpenfish »

thmsths wrote: post #17
basisword wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this particular system doesn't sound great. It seems like Epic are storing the fact you're verified and your email. I've definitely seen systems where they verify you and immediately delete the data.

Makes me wonder: why do we not have a government provided service? IDing people has, traditionally been a responsibility of the government. Even the private verification services ultimately rely on you showing your government issued ID at some point. If the governments want online verification, they should provide the tools and make sure they are accessible to all.

> Makes me wonder: why do we not have a government provided service?

Because every UKGOV since about 1980 has had an obsession with small government and farming out as much as they can to private contractors[0] regardless of consequences.

[0] Until those contractors fail to perform / go bust at which point the government steps in, things get better (shockingly) for a while, and then the government farms it out to another bunch of idiots who have ~bribed~ lobbied hard and the cycle repeats.

Re: Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

#56

Post by 63 »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #31
63 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally, sure. In practice, that hasn't worked well. I was a youth fairly recently and I can assure you my mother lacked the knowledge to meaningfully enforce any content restrictions on my devices short of physically going through my phone. Incognito windows and deleting texts isn't exactly out of reach for children.

Why does that make that everyone else’s problem?

What I'm hearing is "I would rather let millions of kids get victimized than allow even the remote possibility of being held accountable for what I say on the internet."

In my mind it's all of our problems that children are getting groomed and manipulated online and the downside is minimal here. Like the worst case scenario is we have to assume people know who we are when we tweet... which doesn't even sound like a downside to me.

Re: Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

#57

Post by 63 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #29
63 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your alternative is teaching millions of 40+ year olds how the internet works so they can implement dns blocks on their home routers? Service side age restriction seems much more effective than mandatory parenting classes.

My alternative is not falling head first into a moral panic and destroying the last vestiges of free speech we have because people don't like the idea of other people's kids using the internet. Even if I was sympathetic to that argument, "let's just let unaccountable companies scan and store your face and sensitive biometrics that they promise they won't lose" is possibly the laziest solution that can be dreamt up an…

I'm not sure anonymity online is "the last vestiges of free speech." Free speech existed before the internet.

I'm not sure there's an effective solution that's easier and imo the downside here is minimal anyway. Honestly, eliminating anonymity online might be a good thing. Maybe the crazy polarized rhetoric would stop and people would talk to each other in person more. Sounds great.

Re: Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

#58

Post by ImPleadThe5th »

ronsor wrote: post #14
ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #11

I used to be vehemently against this. But now I really do think we need to reel in the youth having unfettered access to attention grabbing algorithms. I know this isn't really what this is for but it's a step. That being said, I wish these verification services would be provided by the government (with ridged watchdogs for storage) and not by private companies.

I think the youth's parents should be reeling them in, not the government or third parties at the expense of everyone else's freedom.

The issue is that the internet is too ubiquitous. It'd be like trying to stop teenagers from smoking cigarettes when there are cigarette trees all over the place. While I agree parents need to do better, somethings become so big they are a societal problem. Simply saying "We need better parenting" unfortunately won't fix the state we're in.

Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the government should be reeling in the social media and advertising companies. But I would trust Facebook's Age verification system less than one created by the EU for example with our NFC enabled IDs.

All I know is that Mass Social Media has been poison to young people, and I don't really see a way to put that cat back in the bag.

What would you suggest? How do you "fix" parenting? Or do you not think that there is a problem at all with the interent for the youth today?

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