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Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

theregister.com

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Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#91

Post by quesera »

m132 wrote: post #37
quesera wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this position. Cryptocurrency exchanges are the primary legal touch point (fiat offramp) for a lot of criminal activity. Of course they will get attention for AML.

I can understand the regulation of fiat/crypto exchanges, but the verification extends to centralized exchanges that merely facilitate exchanges one kind of purely virtual currency for another, neither of which have to be recognized as legal tender.

I didn't know those existed, and so I kind of see your point.

The counterpoint is that if your job was to prevent/punish financial crimes that affect consumers, would it make sense to ignore these exchanges?

Heck, if M:TG cards were the medium, and they could be moved across international borders with a few keystrokes, then surely those would be watched too.

I won't argue that it's not privacy-invading for legitimate customers, but if the legal structure allows it, regulators have an obligation to look where the problems are expected to be.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#92

Post by forshaper »

randusername wrote: post #31

Many parents will not be proactive in protecting their children online and I think this is a legitimate societal problem. The idea of algorithmic feeds for adult content that descend into increasingly "engaging" depictions is something I find horrifying. I do not want my kids to experience those "loss of innocence" moments too soon by letting their curiosity lead them into things they are not equipped to confront yet…

It seems to me that this is a parental responsibility. Understandably, we have shifted increasing amounts of those on to the state. However, there are fireplaces, stoves, drills, and other power tools at home. Is the state responsible for children getting into those?

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#93

Post by iamnothere »

shadowgovt wrote: post #68
iamnothere wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is paying FOSS devs who will be implementing this? Who is providing them with legal indemnification since they are now apparently subject to fines for a fucking hobby if they do it wrong? Who is making CA the only jurisdiction instead of the myriad contradictory laws all over the place? Who is stepping in to make sure no additional legislation comes across regulating how FOSS has to include backdoors or weaken en…

To be fair, "it's just a fucking hobby" no longer being an excuse has been a long time coming, much in the same way that driving cars or flying airplanes started as just a hobby but became no longer one when practicing it had outsized consequences to non-practitioners. Signed, someone who notes frequently that the default apache configs probably put a web developer in violation of the GDPR (since if you just left on…

You’re arguing against freedom of computing, itself an extension of freedom of thought and freedom of speech. These laws are an attempt to regulate not just what you do with your computer, but how it operates. This is fundamentally an attack on rights and freedoms, and if it goes unchallenged then it will expand into other areas.

Maybe that doesn’t move you; it seems like you don’t care much for personal liberties. (A Euro, go figure.) But this is America and we have constitutional guarantees here.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#94

Post by jasonlotito »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #73
wat10000 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting is far more important. If someone is falsely denied access to some web site, it doesn't matter. But everyone with the right to vote must be allowed to vote, no exceptions. In any case, voting is substantially more intrusive. You must register with your full name and address, which is made public record. Each time you vote, that is also made public record (not who you voted for, but the fact that you voted). In…

I disagree there. I think that this is far more intrusive, because it impacts your everyday life rather than just a small slice of it, and thus more important.

I agree. Voting is far more important as laws impact you every day, and I don't install an OS every single day.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#95

Post by hackinthebochs »

hrimfaxi wrote: post #60
butILoveLife wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh... I am the opposite. I want my kids exposed to the brutal realities of the world asap. I reflect that my innocence caused me to make some extreme major mistakes as a young adult that took a decade to show itself. I cannot go back, and now I am suffering terribly. I blame my parents at least a little bit, but I blame western idealism more majorly.

I am intrigued by this. I have long thought that exposing children to optimism and "what could be" allows them to envision a world different from our own. Kind of like how once you're in capitalism it's hard to think of alternatives.

I've always found it strange how Americans like to validate their ideals using their kids as vehicles. Instead of teaching kids how to be successful in a less than ideal world, we teach them our ideal view of the world. Like teaching kids violence is never the answer, instead of sometimes a situation does call for violence. We raise kids for a world that doesn't exist. It's up to the kid/adult to unlearn those obviously bogus ideals after they make contact with the world. It's just odd how we're so practiced at setting up our children for less success in the real world.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#96

Post by duckerduck »

When I was very young I installed OpenSUSE on my underpowered windows PC, it was really a hacker man experience that is engraved in my mind as a core memory. As a child I just thought it was cool to have a new and faster desktop, but as I've grown older I've stayed with Linux for its ideas and principles. Hopefully these laws can be overturned...

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#97

Post by charlieo88 »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #27
wongarsu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The California law only stipulates that there's an "accessible interface at account setup" to set the birthday or age at account setup, and an interface to query the age bracket. Plus the crap for "application stores" I don't think it's a very well thought-out law. But realistically this will end up as setting some env variable for your docker containers to assure them that you are 99 years old. And yes, maybe transm…

So once my application is running I can just keep querying an age bracket until it flips and then I've successfully determined a date of birth.

assuming it flips, and you aren't locked into that age bracket for the duration of your OS

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#98

Post by quesera »

LtWorf wrote: post #83
quesera wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, there are vanishingly few problems with improper voting in the US, and the extremely unusual occurrences are mostly PartyB voters trying to "counteract" the imaginary PartyA violations. Anyone who tells you differently is lying or ignorant.

But how are any of them able to carry out the violations?

Because the data is collected while voting is ongoing, and audited after the fact.

This is how we know how extremely few problems there are, and how we catch the accidents (which are backed out, hence the delay between voting and election certification), and the fraud (which is extremely rare but of course also backed out).

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#99

Post by bee_rider »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #77
bee_rider wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a neat attack (in that it is obvious and a big flaw but also it makes sense that the lawmakers wouldn’t have thought of it), but it would only affect users who have an age-bucket transition while your application is running, right? Edit: as folks have pointed out, the attacking application doesn’t actually have to be running while the age-transition takes place. The attacker just has to have logs from before…

Then you store the user age every time it's run and check for changes on start. Maybe that only gives you a 7 day range for birthdays, but you can narrow that over time and it's still good enough for targeting.

I agree, sorry, I think my original comment was a little imprecise. My point was that the app can get the “exact” age only for users who undergo an age-bucket transition in an era that the app has logs for.

I mean, the app can query on a weekly basis, and then if you go from “under 18” to “over 18” it knows the week that you were born in. But, if the user was already an adult when the logging started, there isn’t a transition to go off.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#100

Post by wat10000 »

slopinthebag wrote: post #76
wat10000 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "arguments like this one"? It isn't an argument at all, it's just pointing out some actual facts. If your slippery slope argument can't withstand a simple statement that something is at the top of the slope, it's not much good.

Authoritarianism rarely happens overnight, it happens one step at a time and at every step the useful idiots [0] exclaim "It's just one step! What's the big deal? Stop overreacting!". Next thing you know you've walked 100 miles and it's too late to turn back. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

The comment you replied to only said the first "it's just one step" part. You're imagining the rest. Are we not even allowed to make factual statements when something is, in fact, just one step? "It's bad to factually describe what's happening because it will get worse" is a terrible way to make your case.
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