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The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

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Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#961
post #894

I work at a European identity wallet system that uses a zero knowledge proof age identification system. It derives an age attribute such as "over 18" from a passport or ID, without disclosing any other information such as the date of birth. As long as you trust the government that gave out the ID, you can trust the attribute, and anonymously verify somebodies age. I think there are many pros and cons to be said about…

Immigrants do not have an ID for up to a few years when they move to Germany. Just this week the Berlin immigration office stopped issuing plastic residence cards for budget reasons, so people get a sticker in their passport. Passport recognition is also spotty. The ID verification providers used by banks do not recognise Indian passports. Will we exclude a few million people because it’s too expensive to verify that…

No, we will exclude a few people because Germany doesn't have its shit together when it comes to digital stuff. Then hopefully people will complain and things will improve.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#962

I work at a European identity wallet system that uses a zero knowledge proof age identification system. It derives an age attribute such as "over 18" from a passport or ID, without disclosing any other information such as the date of birth. As long as you trust the government that gave out the ID, you can trust the attribute, and anonymously verify somebodies age. I think there are many pros and cons to be said about…

What is wrong with inactive accounts, why do they need to be deleted?

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#963

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people. The main problem I suspect is that it would be widely unpopular in the US or Europe, because (especially younger) people have become addicted to porn and brainrot,…

> A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people. Porn is not just political information about human right abuses, government overreach or heavily censored overview of concentration camps for "group X". People can live just fine with government censorship buying into any kind of propaganda. Kids would find a way to access porn though.…

It's as easy as parents keeping the default router password, a kid logging in and then setting up port forwarding to a device on a port that they're running a server on, tied to their current residential ip, and then pinging their friends that ip and allowing them all to connect and download whatever files or upload whatever files. The peer-to-peer network could really start establishing itself in ephemeral and very hard to track ways. All you need is one kid with access to a vpn to torrent without copyright concerns to seed the network. Or one kid to get its parents to buy a domain and use that as an anchor so that the dns to ip is set behind the scenes for the peers.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#964
post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the EU Identity Wallet's documentation, the EU's planned system requires highly invasive age verification to obtain 30 single use, easily trackable tokens that expire after 3 months. It also bans jailbreaking/rooting your device, and requires GooglePlay Services/IOS equivalent be installed to "prevent tampering". You have to blindly trust that the tokens will not be tracked, which is a total no-go for pr…

> EU's planned system requires highly invasive age verification EUDI wallets are connected to your government issued ID. There is no "highly invasive age verification". We are literally sending a request to our government's server to sign, with their private key, message "this john smith born on 1970-01-01 is aged over 18" + jwt iat. There are 3 claims in there. They are hashed with different salts. This all is signe…

> This is true. The eidas directive requires that secret material lives in a dedicated hardware / secure element. It's really not much different than what a banking app would require.

Except the state is not a bank, of which there are many. The state is not optional, and trusting an American company with, of all things, the digital precondition for social existence, is suicidal.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#965

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, all the bible wankers screamed about "the mark of the beast" over things like RealID. Now we have fascists setting up surveillance and censorship tools to tie speech and movement to centralized ID...and they're lining up to lick boots. You should need to show ID and prove you're over 18 to enter a church. At least we know they're actually harmful to children.

The people pushing this are the same ones who are always screaming about "fascists". Also, your ideas in your post are anti-liberal and anti-constitutional (in the US).

In the context of government-mandated identity checks for speech, either both are unconstitutional or they're not, in the latter case it's time to start cracking down on the dangers of religion.

I hope society comes to the former conclusion and the egregious attack on freedom of speech on the internet is discontinued.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#966

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get your point, at least not in relation to the GP post. I agree with GP, parents need to be more accountable. We as parents, and We should all be concerned about future children/generations , should be demanding more regulation to help force the change we need on this topic. We as a society need to treat SM like those other addictive product classes. The fact SM is addicting and execs try to juice it more, i…

not social media, treat the entire internet as fundamentally hazardous to kids because it is, just like cigarettes alcohol and porn. check IDs once when signing the contract that is required for internet access and all these problems go away.

That’s fair. I do think they’re some point where it gets too broad though. The definition part will be a tough balancing.

As an example, I’ve been a fairly strict parent with devices and content access. But, I do let my son play Switch games with his friends which requires the internet. I feel it’s ok in moderation, he plays no more than about 3 hours a week.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#967

I work at a European identity wallet system that uses a zero knowledge proof age identification system. It derives an age attribute such as "over 18" from a passport or ID, without disclosing any other information such as the date of birth. As long as you trust the government that gave out the ID, you can trust the attribute, and anonymously verify somebodies age. I think there are many pros and cons to be said about…

I would much prefer to see a ZK system that, by design, CANNOT reveal info neither to the website nor to the authority. e.g. in the new EU system, it is (afaik) conceivable that the ID authority could collude with social network providers, or with government or with police etc. That's not great IMO.

How about a system like Google Authenticator in which google knows nothing about which websites I'm logging into. Except, obviously, it'd have to be some kind of cryptographically signed response. e.g., website puts up a QR code (according to some standard) asking "is the user 18+", I scan with the phone, and the ID app, without accessing internet (like google authenticator) responds.

I suppose that might need a secure computing environment, so no rooted phone etc. But, of course, there's a simple workaround. Any adult can give their phone to a child. As long as that vulnerability is there, there's no such thing as a guarantee on the responses no matter what way you build it.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#968
post #950

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also bans jailbreaking/rooting your device, and requires GooglePlay Services/IOS equivalent be installed to "prevent tampering". Regulatory capture at its finest. Such a ruling gives Apple and Google a duopoly over the market. Maybe worse, it encourages the push of personal computers to be more mobile like (the fact that we treat phones as different from computers is already a silly concept). So when are we goin…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTnYVh7K6xQ There are (to make up a number) ten desirable properties of the modern internet, and so far it's "Pick two", but novel combinations of the things you mentioned offer "Pick three" or possibly "Pick four" if adoption picks up. For text, phone, and even image communication in urban and suburban areas, it sounds like there's real promise here. But we're not going to achieve par…

Hell, I don't know why we don't just start building a guerrilla network around the Bay. Just start gluing repeaters to things. You could do LoRA like in that video but even WiFi has decent range. Maybe not in the km range but it's also a $5 device. And we don't need to limit ourselves to that cheap of stuff.

We don't need to replace global fiber, we just need to demonstrate enough to inspire others. I'd be perfectly happy if we got just an old web text only system up.

Honestly, would be a lot easier if we could get encryption rules lifted from HAM operations. That's what's needed for long range, even if we won't get the high data rates. We don't need a YouTube to make a difference

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#969

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how this is any better. It's my job as a parent (and I have several kids...) to monitor the things they consume and talk with them about it. I don't want some blanket ban on content unless it's "age appropriate", because I don't approve that content being banned. (honestly - the idea of "age appropriate" is insulting in the first place) Fuck man, I can even legally give my kids alcohol - I don't se…

> I don't want some blanket ban on content unless it's "age appropriate" I'm currently struggling with FitBit. Since about the start of the year, my kids can no longer sync their watches to their phones. The "solution" is to completely disable all parental controls on their Google accounts.

I was going to recommend the Gadgetbridge app, but it seems to have little or no support for Fitbit. I does support hundreds of devices, though. I used it extensively with a Mi Band 3, but have yet to try it with my Garmin.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#970

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the biggest problem, so many parents are head-in-the-sand when it comes to things that can damage a child’s mind like screen time, yet no matter how much you protect them if it’s not a shared effort it all goes out the window, then the kid becomes incentivized to spend more time with friends just for the access, and can develop a sense that maybe mom and dad are just wrong because why aren’t so-and-so’s paren…

Do you believe the research shows that screens in and of themselves are so powerfully damaging that being exposed for, what, a few hours a week at a friend’s house will cause them to require psychiatric medication? So many questions. Are you campaigning against billboards in your city? Do you avoid taking your kids to any business that has digital signage? I assume you completely abstain from all types of movies and…

it sounds like you already knew all of your assumptions were absurd yet you asked them anyways which ironically makes your comment the truly fascinating one
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