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Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

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Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#71
I was a kid with unrestricted, unsupervised internet access, and it definitely affected many things in my life. If I happen to have a child in the future, they won't go through that.

The Brazilian government passed a law requiring age verification for every site categorized as 16+. It can't be self-declared, so companies usually resort to facial scans and ID verification. I DO NOT want photos of our Brazilian children going to foreign agents who are PROVEN to profit from and do God-knows-what with our biometric data. And the funniest part? The same law says 'regulation shall not, under any circumstances, authorize or result in the implementation of mass surveillance mechanisms,' but also mandates that these measures must be 'AUDITABLE.' In other words, someone needs access to that data. It’s all so stupid and incoherent.

People who are less tech-literate FIERCELY support the measure, and whenever someone opposes it, they claim that person supports digital child abuse...

Anyway... the responsibility of protection should come from the parents, not from companies that profit off your biometric data.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#72
It's irksome that these laws and bills in multiple countries are trying to put limits on the general purpose computer. It's the wrong solution and arguably put forward in bad faith.

If you want access control, the appropriate point for regulation is with ISPs and cellular providers, and the appropriate mode of regulation is requiring these companies to provide choice and education for families, and awareness of liability.

Require ISPs and cellular network providers to offer a standard set of controls to their customers informing the common person (in common language) who is using those connections and what they are doing with them. For ISPs, this looks like an option for a router with robust access controls, designating some devices (based on MAC address) as belonging to children and filtering those devices' network requests at the network gateway, or filtering one hop up onto the provider's infrastructure (e.g. the ONT for fiber connections). For cellular providers, it looks like an app available to parents' devices and similar filtering for devices designated as belonging to children (based on IMEI).

When a family signs up for Internet service, either at-home access or cellular data, the provider must give both parents a presentation about these tools, and about the liability the parents face for allowing their children unsupervised, latchkey access to adult content, no different than allowing children to drink alcohol.

It may even make sense to require ISPs and cellular providers to track MAC addresses and IMEIs of devices their own customers designate as "for children" and make those providers liable for not filtering Internet for those devices, and also liable for allowing targeted advertising against those devices.

I don't think achieving that setup is likely, but it's fundamentally the right way to solve this problem, and parents are pushing for a solution one way or another. I don't love it, but if it's coming almost inevitably we should at least push to do it right. It's a dead-end, losing strategy to blanket oppose one solution to legislators and provide no alternative. I write all of that as someone who values privacy and liberty, both in meatspace and cyberspace.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#74
post #37
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be helpful to engage with the possibility that they are neither stupid nor ignorant, rather that they simply have different values and priorities than the early internet users.

And what would those values and priorities be? Because it doesn't seem to me that they align with what they actually do. For example, it seems to me there is a whole lot of worry around megacorporations, often related to capitalism and the inequalities it brings. In that context, if you don't place privacy as a priority, how are you not either stupid or ignorant? Is my premise just wrong?

You can be in favor of privacy while simultaneously thinking porn, gambling, and advertisers shouldn't be targeting children. The age verification bills I've read have steep penalties for retaining information, so that seems fine since that's literally more protection than you get in person.

It's really more just concluding that those corporations should be liable for their behavior. It also has nothing to do with "the Internet" which is largely unaffected. Except of course ideas for forcing OS behavior coming out of California which are obviously bad.

I actually think things could be a lot simpler if we just made the laws like alcohol: it's illegal (with criminal liability) for a non-parent adult to provide to a child. Simple enough. Seems to work fine as-is for Internet alcohol purchases. Businesses dealing in restricted industries can figure out how to avoid that liability. That's entirely compatible with making it illegal for businesses to stalk everyone, which we should also do!

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#75
post #4

What's sad is how effective this is. Religious groups figured out a few years ago that anti-porn groups accomplish nothing, but if you start an anti-trafficking group you can restrict porn access.

Their real goals are even worse than that. Some of these groups have admitted they're also about suppressing LGBT+ content. As the Heritage Foundation admitted: > Keeping trans content away from children is protecting kids. No child should be conditioned to think that permanently damaging their healthy bodies to try to become something they can never be is even remotely a good idea. https://arstechnica.com/tech-polic…

Heritage's tweet in the screenshot in your link makes no reference to "L", "G", "B" nor "+". Just "T"

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#76
post #53
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The people pushing for "child protection" went to the island. What does this even mean aside from a thinly veiled accusation that such efforts are being pushed by a shadowy cabal of pedophiles elites? I'm sure you can find some overlap between people who want to push age verification laws and people who went to the island, but what about everyone else pushing for the law but who didn't go?

> shadowy cabal of pedophiles elites Its a shame that this used to just be a conspiracy theory one could mostly ignore, but we simply can't pretend that there isn't rampant CSA by those in power, because we've had proof of it despite their best efforts. Without wanting to get into politics, the leader of the United States right now was friends with the supposed ring-leader... > but what about everyone else pushing fo…

>we simply can't pretend that there isn't rampant CSA by those in power, because we've had proof of it despite their best efforts

What's "rampant"? The news coverage provides no shortage of people, but ringing off 100 (or whatever) people that are in the files doesn't say much, even if we make the questionable assumption that inclusion in files implies guilt. I'm sure that everyone would prefer the amount of pedophiles that are in power to 0, but if it's the same rate as the general population that can hardly be considered "rampant", or a "conspiracy". Given some neutral inclusion criteria (eg. members of legislative bodies), is there any evidence they have disproportionate amount of pedophiles?

>the leader of the United States right now was friends with the supposed ring-leader...

You conveniently omit the fact that they broke up 5 years before he was first convicted. From wikipedia:

"Trump had a falling out with Epstein around 2004 and ceased contact. After Epstein was said to have sexually harassed a teenage daughter of another Mar-a-Lago member in 2007, Trump banned him from the club. "

>Useful idiots, perhaps?

So basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness?

> Wanting to protect their own power and gain more?

How does adding age verification help in that? Are they blackmailed by the shadowy cabal? Are they just doing what the voters/lobbyists want? If so, what makes invocation of this reasoning more suitable than for any other political issue? Is everything from tax policy to noise ordinances just something pushed by pedophile elites, helped by useful idiots and people who want to "protect their own power and gain more"?

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#77
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The people pushing for "child protection" went to the island. What does this even mean aside from a thinly veiled accusation that such efforts are being pushed by a shadowy cabal of pedophiles elites? I'm sure you can find some overlap between people who want to push age verification laws and people who went to the island, but what about everyone else pushing for the law but who didn't go?

Like who? Name some names of people pushing for this, and we can dissect their motivation.

How about the first country to ban social media for kids, Australia[1]? So far as I can tell the PM/party leader was not in the files. Of course, if you make your inclusion criteria absurdly wide (eg. anyone who voted or advocated for age based restrictions in any shape or form), you'll probably find some pedophiles or even epstien island visitors from sheer luck alone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Amendment_(Socia...

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#78
post #9

It's too late and never about children, simply deeper forms of data harvesting and surveillance. What makes me extremely sad and concerned is that more recent generations simply have no idea or expectation of privacy online anymore. There will never be more of a fight against all this Orwellian behavior.

Has there even been a time when we really had privacy online ?

It didn't take long for the CIA to sniff everything on everyone, early 2000's.

Maybe you're referring to the 90's but at that time the internet wasn't really that popular, it was a niche thing.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#79
post #9

It's too late and never about children, simply deeper forms of data harvesting and surveillance. What makes me extremely sad and concerned is that more recent generations simply have no idea or expectation of privacy online anymore. There will never be more of a fight against all this Orwellian behavior.

It’s only too late when we stop fighting back and accept it as a given. Don’t underestimate civil disobedience and the hacker spirit.

UK showed how to deal with civil disobedience (fast tracked judicial process). Hardware attestation will deal with the hacker spirit.

Above all, the LLM panopticon will watch us all.

Technology will not save us. Nothing will save us but ourselves and we're busy making rent and doomscrolling.

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