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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

#511

Post by somenameforme »

andrewla wrote: post #68
j2kun wrote: 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…

This is where social media and other sites' endless datamining and profiling will come back to bite them. These sites already know the age range of users to a very high degree of certainty, and can continue to obtain such in an ongoing fashion. If an underage person is using these sites, it's likely going to be because the store clerk just nodded and winked, instead of because they were genuinely fooled by a borrowed or fraudulent ID. And in that case, the clerk is the one facing the penalties.

Put the burden of responsibility on the sites themselves and the number of people that will be able to successfully bypass such restrictions is going to be negligible and largely depend upon ongoing inorganic behavior or being an outlier in terms of behavior/interests.

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

#513

Post by citruscomputing »

onetimeusename wrote: post #123
j2kun wrote: 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…

I don't think they are serious about privacy and even if they were I don't even want to distinguish between "children" and "adults" on the internet. Things seem to have worked fine up to this point, there doesn't appear to be a public demand for age verification, rather some murky corporations/NGOs/agencies pushing for this. I think it's pretty clear there is some other intention besides protecting children that is t…

they want to isolate gay and trans children from other gay and trans people. don't you know, there's social contagion afoot, but if we protect y^Wour children from this inherently sexual (and thus adult) content, we can prevent it. this is enough to make me oppose age verification wholesale. I don't care if there's fancy ZKPs, it's still going to be used to isolate and harm hundreds of thousands of vulnerable trans kids, who are already experiencing astronomically elevated suicide rates over the past few years. they don't need more of this.

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

#514

Post by fc417fc802 »

mindslight wrote: post #467
fc417fc802 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other option is for the major browsers to refuse to load pages that don't include the tag. I don't think it's a good thing that they can unilaterally dictate web standards but that's the reality so might as well take advantage of it for the better I guess.

I think that's the same option? I'm imagining "parental controls software" as something built into browsers (/ app stores) that can be enabled when you're setting up a new device. Or it can be disabled, meaning no tags would be required, leaving the open web unaffected. Given that we're at the point where big tech is pushing its regulatory capture legislation aimed at demanding mandatory identification ("age verifica…

> I think that's the same option?

Not quite. I'm suggesting that adoption could be forced if the major browsers refused to load sites that didn't include the tags regardless of whether or not parental controls were enabled. The end result would be that either your site included the tags or else it would not load without some sort of manual user intervention on every visit on windows, ios, etc.

> leaving the open web unaffected

But the entire point here is that there would be a legal mandate for all sites to carry such tags. The goal is to fix the problem that parental controls are spotty and unreliable at best.

> The real problems would seem to be twofold

It's as I previously explained. None of the current options are particularly good even if you are a parent that cares and is willing to invest time and effort.

> they like the fiction that their services are "18+" regardless of who is using them.

That's due to not wanting the liability of a mishmash of laws from different jurisdictions. Nearly all of them treat an 18 year old as an adult so problem solved.

That's entirely separate from these tags BTW. The idea isn't for the site to communicate some arbitrary age appropriateness signal that they as a third party to the family couldn't possibly know. Rather it's to communicate classes of content such as porn, gambling, violence, social media, user generated content, games, that sort of thing.

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

#515

Post by andrewla »

spwa4 wrote: post #411
andrewla wrote: post #68

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…

> The entire point of age verification systems is to prevent minors from accessing certain resources. I think we all know that this is basically impossible; but what these various governments and social media companies want to do is to make it high friction to do so. The problem is, this is wrong. What these governments want to do is get a grip on online behavior, through actions against individuals, who can't/won't…

> What these governments want to do

I feel strongly that this conspiratorial mind-reading approach to this sort of issue is just counterproductive.

What all the governments (and non-governments, frankly, there are many supporters of these things) are asking for is excluding minors from certain websites and services.

The problem is that this translates to age verification, which translates to identify verification, which incidentally gives states and other actors a variety of other tools they can use for anti-civil-liberties purposes.

In the end their motives are just irrelevant unless there is a clear way to exclude minors from certain services without going down the chain towards identity verification. Such a way does not exist, so we have to fight it here, at the point where the basic ask emerges.

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

#516

Post by ktosobcy »

j2kun wrote: 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…

EU is (trying at least) go in that direction with Zero Knowledge Proof:

https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/archit...

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

#518

Post by eigencoder »

jolmg wrote: post #468
pibaker wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that browsing the internet is remotely comparable to smoking is utterly retarded.

Probably got downvoted for failing this guideline: > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." I agree. Browsing the internet is not remotely comparable to smoking.

I disagree. Using social media is totally comparable to smoking. It's addictive, it's detrimental to health, and it's especially detrimental to kids going through puberty. "Browsing the internet", these days, mostly consists of social media platforms.

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

#519

Post by selimthegrim »

AJRF wrote: post #322
ajb wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't this already the case in a lot of the Continent? I was just in CH and it seemed impossible to have anonymous Wi-Fi without a Swiss SMS or a airline boarding pass.

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

#520

Post by mindslight »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #514
mindslight wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the same option? I'm imagining "parental controls software" as something built into browsers (/ app stores) that can be enabled when you're setting up a new device. Or it can be disabled, meaning no tags would be required, leaving the open web unaffected. Given that we're at the point where big tech is pushing its regulatory capture legislation aimed at demanding mandatory identification ("age verifica…

> I think that's the same option? Not quite. I'm suggesting that adoption could be forced if the major browsers refused to load sites that didn't include the tags regardless of whether or not parental controls were enabled. The end result would be that either your site included the tags or else it would not load without some sort of manual user intervention on every visit on windows, ios, etc. > leaving the open web…

> But the entire point here is that there would be a legal mandate for all sites to carry such tags.

My point is that you don't even need to mandate it for all sites, and attempting to do is kind of specious based on the existence of foreign sites. Rather you can focus on mandating it for the large consumer-oriented sites, and this will create enough of a critical mass that a web browser with parental controls enabled will have decent functionality.

The difficulty with forcing some uniform mandate onto "all sites" is that the mandate has to be for tags that are faithfully stated, rather than a blanket 18+. And small personal website operators shouldn't be in the position of being forced to determine whether the random stuff on their personal website is specifically suitable for 13+, 18+, etc.

That's the goal of defining the semantics in terms of an open system rather than a closed system - it fails gracefully.

> None of the current options are particularly good even if you are a parent that cares and is willing to invest time and effort.

Pragmatically this is disappointing to hear, but matches everything I've been able to surmise.

> The idea isn't for the site to communicate some arbitrary age appropriateness signal that they as a third party to the family couldn't possibly know. Rather it's to communicate classes of content such as porn, gambling, violence, social media, user generated content, games, that sort of thing.

I think it should be both. There should be a class of tags that assert a site is legally fine for a 13 year old to view in the US, an 8 year old to view in the US, etc, possibly multiplied with jurisdiction. (note the direction there - it's not a statement that there is content unsuitable for a 13 year old, rather it's a warranty that the contents are suitable for a 13 year old). There should also be tags of the content/aim of the site like you've listed.

The settings in the parental control software can then make a good first pass based on age, then content categories, then parents could even allow/disallow specific sites. The point is to provide good defaults, but ultimately keep control of parents rather than giving it away to corporate attorneys as any age verification (ie identity verification) based solution inherently does.

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