Age verification means identity verification.
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Age verification means identity verification. And it removes the final remnants of anonymity from the internet. Anonymity in the sense of being in control of the decision to share your identity is however a requirement for a public space. The internet can never be a public space with identity verification. That’s what is at stake, in my personal opinion.
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Age verification means identity verification. And it removes the final remnants of anonymity from the internet. Anonymity in the sense of being in control of the decision to share your identity is however a requirement for a public space. The internet can never be a public space with identity verification. That’s what is at stake, in my personal opinion.
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And to those that say that anonymity (or rather pseudonymity) can be implemented with zero knowledge proofs — yes. But that’s not what is being used in currently preferred age/identity verification „solutions“ which tend to be centralised, commercial offerings.
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Age verification means identity verification. And it removes the final remnants of anonymity from the internet. Anonymity in the sense of being in control of the decision to share your identity is however a requirement for a public space. The internet can never be a public space with identity verification. That’s what is at stake, in my personal opinion.
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@jwildeboer it depends on the mechanism. For the way European governments have been pushing, yes. An **optional** number that a device admin can set locally, with an API that can expose it so websites can block it (only) when it's present and < TARGET AGE wouldn't.
And since the latter is such an obvious solution to the child protection problem, I'm assuming this was never about age limits.
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@jwildeboer it depends on the mechanism. For the way European governments have been pushing, yes. An **optional** number that a device admin can set locally, with an API that can expose it so websites can block it (only) when it's present and < TARGET AGE wouldn't.
And since the latter is such an obvious solution to the child protection problem, I'm assuming this was never about age limits.
@jmcs That is a safe assumption.
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And to those that say that anonymity (or rather pseudonymity) can be implemented with zero knowledge proofs — yes. But that’s not what is being used in currently preferred age/identity verification „solutions“ which tend to be centralised, commercial offerings.
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ADDENDUM: I said „final remnants“ because the ad/tracking mafia already has powerful capabilities to identify individuals with high probability of correctness. Avoiding their fingerprinting and correlation capabilities is almost impossible.
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Age verification means identity verification. And it removes the final remnants of anonymity from the internet. Anonymity in the sense of being in control of the decision to share your identity is however a requirement for a public space. The internet can never be a public space with identity verification. That’s what is at stake, in my personal opinion.
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@Jan Wildeboer
:krulorange: Depends. For example. if the Germam „Personalausweis“ would be used it would be possible to just verify the age (using AusweisApp2), without revealing any other data. This is one of the few things the German government did right - there's also the possibilty to use the Personalausweis in a pseudonymous way without being able to track you. Unfortunately there aren't very much sites that are willing/capable of using this.
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Age verification means identity verification. And it removes the final remnants of anonymity from the internet. Anonymity in the sense of being in control of the decision to share your identity is however a requirement for a public space. The internet can never be a public space with identity verification. That’s what is at stake, in my personal opinion.
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@jwildeboer I NEVER had an account that wasn't in my own name or nickname.
And I will NEVER STOP SUPPORTING anonimity on the internet, because it is much needed, essential part of what makes the internet - interconnected network.
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And to those that say that anonymity (or rather pseudonymity) can be implemented with zero knowledge proofs — yes. But that’s not what is being used in currently preferred age/identity verification „solutions“ which tend to be centralised, commercial offerings.
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It's weird to "hide" this in the second part not all will see. Especially when it directly contradicts your first sentence.
Age verification does not mean identify verification: there are technical tools and some are even in practical use (e.g., Apple's use of differential privacy) that can provide age verification (or even "old enough" verification) withot identity.
The implementations of age verification proposed by government officials mean identify verification. If they really wanted to "think of the children¹⁾," they would go in that direction instead of proposing yet another "sign in with your passport to view naked ladies" suggestion.
Being against age verification is dumb and bound to fail as long as there are genuine issues; pointing out that it is not necessary to have id verification to provide it is the winning strategy that pre-empts the "think of the children" argument.
1) which I'm not opposed to, and I do believe there are issues re: SoMe, Roblox, and Discord that need a solution. -
It's weird to "hide" this in the second part not all will see. Especially when it directly contradicts your first sentence.
Age verification does not mean identify verification: there are technical tools and some are even in practical use (e.g., Apple's use of differential privacy) that can provide age verification (or even "old enough" verification) withot identity.
The implementations of age verification proposed by government officials mean identify verification. If they really wanted to "think of the children¹⁾," they would go in that direction instead of proposing yet another "sign in with your passport to view naked ladies" suggestion.
Being against age verification is dumb and bound to fail as long as there are genuine issues; pointing out that it is not necessary to have id verification to provide it is the winning strategy that pre-empts the "think of the children" argument.
1) which I'm not opposed to, and I do believe there are issues re: SoMe, Roblox, and Discord that need a solution.@michael It is a thread clearly marked with 1/2 and 2/2, both posts are public, nothing is hidden here. There is no contradiction. Current approaches are a mixture of commercial offering where a 3rd party requests identification data to give you back some sort of token that you can use to proof to a website that your are of a certain age. It is centralised. Other solutions that do zero proof exist but are not widely used nor is that level of pseudonymity prescribed by law/regulation.
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@jmcs That is a safe assumption.
I could care less. Google meta NSA you already been screwed. If this helps even 1 kid its worth it.
Mastodon is full of freaks and freaks need to be controlled.
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Age verification means identity verification. And it removes the final remnants of anonymity from the internet. Anonymity in the sense of being in control of the decision to share your identity is however a requirement for a public space. The internet can never be a public space with identity verification. That’s what is at stake, in my personal opinion.
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@jwildeboer What bothers me isn't necessarily the anonymity part if it. I've always used my real name online, and I tend to prefer the parts of the internet where people talk to each other as if they're irl. I just don't trust the government.
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
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@michael It is a thread clearly marked with 1/2 and 2/2, both posts are public, nothing is hidden here. There is no contradiction. Current approaches are a mixture of commercial offering where a 3rd party requests identification data to give you back some sort of token that you can use to proof to a website that your are of a certain age. It is centralised. Other solutions that do zero proof exist but are not widely used nor is that level of pseudonymity prescribed by law/regulation.
@jwildeboer @michael Also, let's not forget that there is no way in hell any of these systems, however "secure" & "private" on paper, will not leak and/or abuse data. To believe anything else is literally to believe in magic.
- so even if you don't believe that age verification = ID verification (which it is; there's no other way to do it), being against it still isn't dumb, but rather extremely sensible for this reason alone.
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And to those that say that anonymity (or rather pseudonymity) can be implemented with zero knowledge proofs — yes. But that’s not what is being used in currently preferred age/identity verification „solutions“ which tend to be centralised, commercial offerings.
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@jwildeboer Exactly. There are combined technical/regulatory approaches which would allow for age (or any other legally mandated trait) verification that protects the user and are fairly straightforward to implement* in a setting of good faith interest by all parties. But that is not the setting we are in
* (I have sketched out what such a technique might look like https://gist.github.com/jimfl/ff930632d9ee7dd68aeaa777ea714326)
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@jwildeboer @michael Also, let's not forget that there is no way in hell any of these systems, however "secure" & "private" on paper, will not leak and/or abuse data. To believe anything else is literally to believe in magic.
- so even if you don't believe that age verification = ID verification (which it is; there's no other way to do it), being against it still isn't dumb, but rather extremely sensible for this reason alone.
There's absolutely ways to do it without id. At the simplest, issue everybody that's 18+ a certificate + key. The certificate can be issued without any identifying information. Have the site send a challenge to the user and have them sign that with their key and return the signed challenge + certificate. You've just proved they are 18+ without divulging any information and there is no risk for leaks at the site.
It's a little more complex than that because it is very easy to use somebody else's key/certificate and the certificate itself can be used as a pseudonymous identifier if used directly against the site.
This can be made decentralized (site decides which certificate issuers they trust) and can be made entirely offline.
Just because sites now require uploading a picture of your passport or most government age verification mandates require something similar, doesn't mean it isn't possible to make it secure. -
There's absolutely ways to do it without id. At the simplest, issue everybody that's 18+ a certificate + key. The certificate can be issued without any identifying information. Have the site send a challenge to the user and have them sign that with their key and return the signed challenge + certificate. You've just proved they are 18+ without divulging any information and there is no risk for leaks at the site.
It's a little more complex than that because it is very easy to use somebody else's key/certificate and the certificate itself can be used as a pseudonymous identifier if used directly against the site.
This can be made decentralized (site decides which certificate issuers they trust) and can be made entirely offline.
Just because sites now require uploading a picture of your passport or most government age verification mandates require something similar, doesn't mean it isn't possible to make it secure.@michael @jwcph @jwildeboer its a little more complex
yeah, especially if you ignore all the rest. There are reasonas why we are fighthing stuff like #chatcontrol continously. I also lost count of what Crypto Wars we are at now
So falling in a trap about tech, and looking at this as an academic problem to solve, is the first problem making your responses, well naive. Look at Denmark and our politicians
Even if a perfect valid solution is proposed it will be subverted and twisted sooner or ltr
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@michael @jwcph @jwildeboer its a little more complex
yeah, especially if you ignore all the rest. There are reasonas why we are fighthing stuff like #chatcontrol continously. I also lost count of what Crypto Wars we are at now
So falling in a trap about tech, and looking at this as an academic problem to solve, is the first problem making your responses, well naive. Look at Denmark and our politicians
Even if a perfect valid solution is proposed it will be subverted and twisted sooner or ltr
@kramse @michael @jwildeboer Also, *none of all that works if it can't be unequivocally tied to a specific person's identity*, which never can or will be secure or safe from abuse.
How is this so hard to understand for some people?
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ADDENDUM: I said „final remnants“ because the ad/tracking mafia already has powerful capabilities to identify individuals with high probability of correctness. Avoiding their fingerprinting and correlation capabilities is almost impossible.
@jwildeboer Personally, I don't even care about internet anonymity in itself as much as I do the stories coming out of the US where ICE agents are visiting people to intimidate them over their political views. In my opinion, removing our ability to communicate anonymously is a death sentence for a functioning democracy.
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@jwildeboer Personally, I don't even care about internet anonymity in itself as much as I do the stories coming out of the US where ICE agents are visiting people to intimidate them over their political views. In my opinion, removing our ability to communicate anonymously is a death sentence for a functioning democracy.
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@jwildeboer Personally, I don't even care about internet anonymity in itself as much as I do the stories coming out of the US where ICE agents are visiting people to intimidate them over their political views. In my opinion, removing our ability to communicate anonymously is a death sentence for a functioning democracy.
@zazzoo @jwildeboer This
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@jwildeboer Personally, I don't even care about internet anonymity in itself as much as I do the stories coming out of the US where ICE agents are visiting people to intimidate them over their political views. In my opinion, removing our ability to communicate anonymously is a death sentence for a functioning democracy.
I agree. We must protect the ability to be anonymous on the Internet
