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The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

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Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#691

Post by bentley »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #532
sophrosyne42 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, take it the other way. You want to marry someone? Make sure the government approves for your safety. Want to make dinner? First you have to send the recipe to your local overseer with proof of your safe cooking credentials or you will have to pay heafty fines for noncompliance. Want to make love, read a book, speak your mind, make a contract with someone, work the job you want? Sorry, you can't decide that yourse…

While children are often married off to old men in the US and Afghanistan in more civilised countries the state tend to intervene.

> children are often married off to old men in the US

How often are children married off to old men in the US?

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#692

Post by fauigerzigerk »

codedokode wrote: post #598
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So under your proposal, all checks would happen exclusively on the end-user device. Websites would do absolutely no age checking, nor would they get any kind of signed certificate from end-user devices vouching for the user's age. Am I understanding this correctly? Would this not immediately lead to demands for hardware makers to prevent the installation of non-compliant operating systems?

White-listed sites could report the content rating (for example in HTTP headers) and the browser in "child mode" would refuse to display non-appropriate content. Lack of the header means that content is for adults only (unless parents manually white list the site). Also, websites could use different domain for "child mode" version. > Would this not immediately lead to demands for hardware makers to prevent the instal…

>In child mode, yes, installation of any other OS (compliant or not) should be prevented.

Not just in child mode, because child mode would only exist in compliant operating systems. It would not exist in all Linux or Android distributions for instance.

So governments would have collude with or regulate hardware vendors to control and certify what can run on the hardware available in the country.

This would be a highly centralised system with the potential the become tyrannical.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#693

Post by iamnothere »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #638
iamnothere wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. My hope is that the rare earths shortage, memory shortage, and current focus on munitions will delay the era of drone-based policing until after the crisis.

"Rare earths" aren't rare, they're just hard to separate and produce quite toxic & radioactive slag (they're the bottom 2 rows of the periodic table and "rare earth" mines & refineries that were operating in the US are now SuperFund sites). Due to CEOs offshoring work, most of the refining is now done in China. And the Chinese don't want to keep exporting the bare metals, they want to export the things made from thos…

This is needless pedantry. They are not technically rare, yet we do have a shortage due to China’s tit-for-tat response to our sanctions, and we seem unwilling to invest in the industry needed to secure a domestic supply.

And regardless of the causes of the memory shortage, there is indeed a shortage, which will hopefully help to prevent the mass deployment of drones here at home.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#694

Post by TremendousJudge »

TZubiri wrote: post #680
noir_lord wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the UN convention on cybercrime which is a ridiculous one since it makes co-operation necessary if the penalty in the home country is 4 or more years - there are quite a few countries where speaking out against the leader, been gay or been trans will get you that (or much much worse). Canada opposed it originally and then quietly signed it most recently, the UK didn't start this stuff though we are up…

Pointing out a law you don't like in another country as justification to ignore local laws, or to critique internation relations policy, is a terrible argument. Some country has laws that some other country dislikes, therefore they should be able to ignore them? I think comes down to what influence you think you have. I'm a backend developer and sys admin, when it comes to international law, I think of it in relation…

>Some country has laws that some other country dislikes, therefore they should be able to ignore them?

Yeah, I think that's pretty much the definition of the right of asylum.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#695

Post by speedstyle »

tzs wrote: post #342
speedstyle wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be sent anywhere, websites should send a flag when serving various types of content, so parental controls has the information it needs for filtering. Websites could still infer what's being filtered of course, but doing the decision on the client allows for much more granular/extensible categories of content, as well as allowlisting, time limits, etc. Some sites/proxies won't be marked properly, bu…

Filtering on the app side is more flexible. A game that has some levels not suitable for children could when on a child's device still let them play most of the game.

I think the most useful flexibility is for parents to do more specific categorization, eg allow violence on netflix but not youtube, block some game that would be allowed, request access to something that wouldn't, set time limits and times of day, etc. It's easier to enforce this stuff on the client than try to send the relevant parts to an app or site, but yes there are times you want the latter too.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#696

Post by TZubiri »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #694
TZubiri wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing out a law you don't like in another country as justification to ignore local laws, or to critique internation relations policy, is a terrible argument. Some country has laws that some other country dislikes, therefore they should be able to ignore them? I think comes down to what influence you think you have. I'm a backend developer and sys admin, when it comes to international law, I think of it in relation…

>Some country has laws that some other country dislikes, therefore they should be able to ignore them? Yeah, I think that's pretty much the definition of the right of asylum.

Not sure if asylum is relevant here. Crucially, asylum is granted when the person is already on the jurisdiction of the country that grants asylum.

Granting asylum to someone on another jurisdiction and extraditing them is already problematic.

Granting asylum remotely while they stay in that jurisdiction is unheard of.

And a system admin or service provider like us mortals, don't have the authority to grant asylum.

Like we would say in Argentina, you are peeing outside the bowl.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#697

Post by [deleted] »

slg wrote: post #613
cobbzilla wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't imagine someone genuinely caring for a child that isn't there own? I just said the opposite. I can imagine many people genuinely caring for a child that isn’t their own. I am skeptical when a politician who does not know my children claims to care about them. To borrow an LLMism: It’s not cynicism, it’s the reality of history. We the people have been duped many times over. Caveat Emptor.

>I just said the opposite. I can imagine many people genuinely caring for a child that isn’t their own. Sure, but limited to "family and friends". Following that up with "who does not know my children" indicates you clearly view empathy as extending to merely one's personal relationships and you seemingly can't imagine caring for a stranger's child. I'll grant you cyncism is not the correct description of that worldv…

[deleted]

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#698

Post by preg_match »

codedokode wrote: post #480

Here's my idea how "safe mode" might be implemented without selfie, passport and without every app or website owner having to spend money on compliance. The mobile and desktop OS should have a checkbox "child mode" in the onboarding stage. Switching device to "child mode" allows only installing white-listed apps from the government list and opening white-listed websites from the government list. Parents may edit the…

I've had this exact same proposal, and it's basically perfect. We can go one further and require a fee for inclusion. Then, if Meta for instance really wants to be included in that list, they must prove they are child-safe AND pay a little fine. We can make exemptions for non-profits. The system would be self-paying, no taxes needed.

A whitelist is the only thing that works. Anything else is not just stupid, it's ineffective. These laws are 100% ineffective. Many, maybe most, porn sites will just... not implement an ID check. A whitelist solves that.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#699

Post by like_any_other »

Steve16384 wrote: post #654
like_any_other wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK arrests were also for stickers with: slogans such as “Reject white guilt”, “Nationalism is nurture”, “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066” and “Diversity – designed to fail, built to replace” - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/16/uk-man-with-... "Stirring up racial hatred", even merely possessing material that could do so, is a crime in the UK: https://www.thelawpages.com/criminal-offence…

Your framing of the stories is interesting: * "UK arrests were also for stickers" - surely there must be a point where we stop someone putting racists stickers everywhere. * "merely possessing materials designed to Stirring up racial hatred" - Presumably you're okay with someone stirring up racial hatred? * "Viewing "far-right propaganda" carries a 15 year jail sentence:" - No it doesn't, that's just an MP trying to…

> Your framing of the stories is interesting: * "UK arrests were also for stickers" - surely there must be a point where we stop someone putting racists stickers everywhere.

The post I replied to claimed "The UK wrongthink arrests were for stuff like calling for a building full of people to be burned down". That example shows this is clearly not the case, and entirely non-violent speech [0] is criminal. That you personally agree with that prosecution is irrelevant.

> "merely possessing materials designed to Stirring up racial hatred" - Presumably you're okay with someone stirring up racial hatred?

What does it matter what I agree with? It doesn't stop being censorship, or a counterexample to the parent post's claim, if I agree with it.

> "Viewing "far-right propaganda" carries a 15 year jail sentence:" - No it doesn't, that's just an MP trying to get votes.

After reading the text of the law [1], you are correct - it only applies to material "useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". My mistake for believing the word of the UK Home Secretary about the law she was pushing.

> ""young white girls are being raped by these grooming gangs" ". Where does it say anything about a jail term?

I apologize, I should have better organized the citations. [2] only talks about the conviction, the jail sentence is reported in [3]: Jailing him for 10 months and two weeks, Judge Nicholas Barker said it was clear that Heggie had wanted his offensive comments about the Muslim faith "to be read and heard by many".

[0] Yes, speech, not "vandalism" or other charge related to the stickers themselves, not their content - the conviction was literally for "stirring up racial hatred", and the average sticker promoting a nightclub or dance class, even if technically illegal, does not come with a 2 year jail term: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867

[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58 (it says 2000, but includes amendments from 2019)

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce328p9330eo

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rq8r4jdgno

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#700

Post by speedstyle »

judge2020 wrote: post #685
speedstyle wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Client-side filtering solves the problem, because children's clients are owned by their parents. We should mandate that websites and apps send metadata about the content being served (eg extending the Rating: RTA header from 20 years ago) and mandate that OSs/browsers allow filtering to be easily configured at setup. This is a more private but also much more granular/ useful solution, it's only difficult today becaus…

It's not difficult at all. It's not good enough for lawmakers. Their requirement is opt-in to adult content, not opt-out (i.e. the goal is parents don't need to interact with their child or set up parental controls themselves). Which is really bad.

It is difficult for parents to do this today! You can either have a limited set of apps with no general internet access (fine for younger kids), or domain-list filtering which takes significant work to set up, has many false positives and negatives, ie it's both a chore to request/allow useful things, and easy to get around. Lawmakers have been convinced the solution is opt-in, so websites can self-categorize and nothing needs to be configured on device – and I agree that websites need to self-categorize, but then this would make it very easy to reliably filter on device.
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