bad title, this isnt about protecting kids online
this isnt about protecting kids online
It never is, but they always try to sell unpopular things as “protecting the kids”.
They’re using type of zk-proofs that keep things private. This is completely different from the “upload your selfie” shit in UK
Who knew we would need an Orban for this absurdity.
I didn’t see Orban mentioned in the article. What is his role in it all?
I’m saying we somehow now need someone to block this garbage.
Ah yes Orban that champion of personal freedoms and heroic warrior against government overreach
You guys clearly missing the point here. If you can’t see an age verification app is just the beginning of mass survailance of EU citizens, then what has EU then become? We exchange Big Tech with government. But privacy still dies, then what have we actually achived? Two wrongs doesn’t make one of them good
It will help the pedophile class and Israeli backed oligarchs mass surveil us more effectively
People keep saying that they verify your age at the super market and I keep trying to remember the last time that happened to me and I just cannot. Nor, for that matter, at bars or coffee shops (for after lunch chat chilling before returning for the afternoon stint).
It may just be my corner of the European Union being much more lax than others.
I’m sorry you look so old. I do too, I basically never get carded, and really never did. My friend that’s actually a year older than me still gets carded every single time, and he’s 36.
The only time they verify your age at the grocery store in America is if you’re buying alcohol
…and they don’t do it unless you look like you might be underage.
Gaaaarbaaaaage.
Ewww gross. Fuck age verification
Welp, this was bound to happen, wasn’t it? I’m pretty sure they’re referring to this application, which I stumbled upon a while back. If I remember correctly, the app “allows” (or implicitly forces) the user to store a government issued identity: able to attest to an age-restricted website, whether or not the user is of age.
It does this, supposedly by “just” sharing an age-bracket with the website; but here’s the kicker: the Union, in its generosity, has granted their citizens an in-app option, to withdraw this signal from the websites it has been provided to. What this means in practice, is the app storing one’s government-issued identify, also ties back to every account requiring “age-verification”…
So now, every device containing the app, has the owner’s government-issued identify on it, together with connections to every age-restricted service. And considering the apps are maintained by the Union, or member states (through their own implementations), creating a backdoor to the application’s contents… I mean to “observe app usage”, would be absolutely trivial.
Again, I’ve read it a while back, so some things might’ve changed, and my memory might be spotty; but I’m quite sure it’s along the lines I’ve described.
I see how this would be considered a problem in the US.
In Europe we see these things differently. I have a number of apps already, that knows my government id. Honestly I don’t know how many, I haven’t needed to keep track.
All sorts of apps from drivers license to a social networking app, which all needs to know my exact id to work. Even my kids has their government id on their phones. This includes an app which only purpose is to prove the users identity.
Having one more appwith your id is not a problem. Specially when its purpos is to NOT show your id.
Why does any of your apps need to involve a government ID? Why do kids need ID on their phone?
First, government id has a very different ring here, than in the us. It’s not that different from a name or a face. It’s not s big deal. Almost anytime there’s any need to be recognized formally, the government id is an easy way to do it.
We don’t really use “all names and addresses you’ve had the past 5 years” and all that.
So think about any app, where you need to id yourself better than just an email adress or phone number. It will be all of those.
I have an app to access my medical record. Nobody accesses my medical record without identifying themselves, in a trustworthy way.
My bank app, with access to all my financials, including pension funds - same deal.
There’s a payment app that is very popular here, the kids uses it too. It requires id. That id solves some issues that could have been solved in other ways, but since id is no big deal here, that’s the easiest solution by far.
Exactly. We’re not afraid of government overreach, but corporate overreach. In the US it’s the opposite (if you include regulatory capture as government overreach). Both regions are underestimating risks in one of these areas. Dictatorship and oligarchy can happen and we should be careful
I’m an European (specifically from an EU country). I was born still in a Dictatorship, before the Revolution which brought Democracy, and I grew up hearing the stories of Censorship and the Political Police arresting people for criticizing the local Dictator.
I don’t know who your “we” is, but it sure as hell ain’t me or most of my countrymen.
A mandatory Government app on your phone is the kind of thing that rings alarm bells in people’s minds around here because it stinks of Dictatorship and is a wet dream come true for a Political Police.
I lived elsewhere in Europe, so I can understand that people in countries which have long been stable and Democratic (say, The Netherlands and all of Scandinavia), have no memory of Authoritarianism and think that the Authorities only ever act for the greater good (which is why, for example, Swedes have zero concerns about every single payment they do ending up in a database), but pretty much everbody from Southern and Eastern Europe have either direct memories or heard the stories of just how bad the Authorities can be and just how bad it is to let them know what you’re doing.
You’re right, I meant western first world Europe, not formerly communist Europe
Clearly, if you’re really from Europe (and not just a paid propagandist or troll), you’re not from one of those countries which freed themselves from some dictatorship or other recently enough for most people in that country having themselves or their parents been alive during the dictatorship days.
One thing is some kind of passive ID, be it in a card or in digital format, another very different thing is software running on your devices which is capable of automatically reporting to the authorities everything you do.
As the US is showing right now, it doesn’t take much to go from absolutelly legit activity - say having an abortion - and innocent apps with some kind of “phone home” ability - say something to help “women track their periods” - doing no hard to nobody, to extreme prison sentences (for murder, even) and said apps being used to catch and prosecute women for it.
Anybody whose even just heard the stories from their parents and grandparents about whatever the version of the Stasi in their country used to do in the Dictatorship days would be profoundly against any “report to the authorities” software even if it’s sold by politicians as “think of the children”.
you’re not from one of those countries which freed themselves from some dictatorship or other recently
This is true.
software running on your devices which is capable of automatically reporting to the authorities everything you do.
This would be my only government app that is NOT capable of doing that, because it’s open source. If they start doing that, it will be all over the media.
I already have at least 7 apps where that could do that and get away with it. That should be the concern, not this new app.
As the US is showing right now, it doesn’t take much to go from absolutelly legit activity
If our government was like yours (even the way it was before Teump), I would be as concerned as you are. But it’s not.
I’m making the bet that if the government changes, I will have time to adapt. (Yes, I could be wrong.)
profoundly against any “report to the authorities”
Yeah, but that’s not what’s happening here, so I don’t feel like discussing that here.
I’m making the bet that if the government changes, I will have time to adapt. (Yes, I could be wrong.)
The thing with data is that once it’s out, it’s out.
If tomorrow whatever you do today starts getting deemed a perversion or even a crime, the data related to you doing sent out today will at the very least put you at the front of the list of people to be investigated for it.
Best to have as little as possible about me and my activities (no matter how innocent) out there in an easy to access form, IMHO. If I have to trade a bit of convenience for it, so be it.
I’m a European, and yet I wrote this; but I would agree many people (regardless of whether or not European) have progressively been accustomed, to having their personal identify tied to their devices (often for the sake of convenience, or out of necessity: the uncalled-for Two Factor Authentication (2FA) applications, for accessing government or work-related services, being an example), and I’ve not been an exception to that rule.
For me these were limited to applications, typically where a higher degree of security is expected: banking applications, the before mentioned 2FA applications, government mailbox applications, etc. But I’ve also once sent, a nearly fully redacted copy of my driver’s license to YouTube, in order to listen to music with naughty artwork (which I already believed to be ridiculous at the time, but gave into nevertheless).
Currently I would never let such applications near devices for general use, and it wouldn’t even cross my mind, to ever send any signal that signifies I’m not, in fact, a child, and shouldn’t be treated as such; ultimately so abusive services are green-lit to surveil me as an adult, instead of having to be more conservative (as data collection on children is typically more strict: for whatever reason… instead of people, regardless of age, being treated with dignity).
So no, not everybody has applications on their device, which link to, or directly store one’s personal identity. I rarely have to interact with financial or government services, and have zero interest, in being required to do so in order to access “age-restricted” content online. I like my pseudo-anonymity, and do not at all, trust a government application, which links this pseudo-anonymous activity to my personal identity.
This has nothing to do with protecting children
Lotta internet users are going to suddenly be from outside the EU, just like the UK population suddenly all moved to the Netherlands after their own version of this.
What? We got this too? I guess I accidentally dodged it.
Try checking Imgur from a UK IP
just like the UK population suddenly all moved to the Netherlands after their own version of this
Personally I prefer Switzerland lol
to moniter political dissidents against the right wing to be exact, and may track women as well.
Have you not been following the EU and the right-wing influence the last few years? Spain is practically the only leftist country left.
Well Ireland is indipendent rn
Don’t give palantir your biometrics
The motives are irrelevant. This will destroy the internet as we know it and disempower citizens. I can’t help but wonder if the empowerment LLMs may have to an individual is terrifying leaders into an authoritarian mindset, finally demanding to be able to know and track what we do online, everywhere we do it. This is about protecting their ability to rule, not children from harm.
It could greatly boost the use of decentralized apps. Which will ultimately give people more power than they have right now. So in the long run, it might have some positive side effects.
Cracking down on decetralized apps will be the next logical step
How would they do such a thing? Require every open port on every internet connected device to be registered? Disallow https and implement full scale layer 7 scanning?
No, they will expand the mandates for providers to filter traffic. Everything ultimately goes through a handful of big ISP companies, so they will just make them comply with the filtration. It will not work great, even simple DPI is resource intensive, but when an ISP is ultimately at fault, they will have to find a way. And ultimately it doesn’t have to work all the time forever, it just need to degrade services enough so most people find it inconvenient to use. As a tool of control, it needs to prevent unwanted communication to be easy, this will ensure only the nerds will do it, and nobody cares about handful of nerds.
They don’t have to invent anything, that’s exactly how it works already in every country that controls their population and the internet in their country. It took Russia 8 years to transition from completely free unobstructed internet to everything being unavailable and everyone being used to it. Europe is way more capable technically, it will take most of the countries less.It is possible but doesn’t sound all that realistic to me. A truly decentralized app cannot be blocked by dns or endpoints. Thus a country would have to DPI the entire internet which is very resource intensive. And even then the data will be encrypted so you would have to resort to fingerprinting and finding patterns. From an age verification app to automatic data blocking based on deep packet inspection with fingerprinting of the entire internet - that seems quite a leap. Personally I don’t think decentralized apps are next in line to be blocked.
You’d be surprised how easy it is to ban specific protocols or apps, if you put your mind to it. DPI is dead easy this days. Again, Russian example is right there, the only thing that managed to resist the block so far was Telegram, because they’re doing some very advanced block avoidance. Russia is poor, and losing brains very quickly, a country with better equipment and people will not have this problem.
Yeah, it’s resource intensive, but that’s ISP’s job, and they have equipment and motivation already. Small ISPs if they still exist will die, but that’s just added bonus. And you don’t even need the complete blockage, you need to make it annoying enough to use so it’s not very popular, so most of the communication will happen on platforms that are under control. You can’t fight all the nerds, and you don’t need to.
It’s not a leap, it’s the only next logical step. A government doesn’t start carding everyone on the internet because they’re bored. They do it because they don’t want uncontrolled communication for some reason or another. “For the children”, of course, why else. That’s why everyone needs to have an ID app on their phone, and all the websites should be tied to it. It’s for the children.
The internet as we know it is a playground for billionaires to get richer. Good riddance.
And the new internet that is on the horizon will be the definitive establishment of these same billionaires as feudal lords.
Unlike most other age verification system, this doesn’t reveal any other personal information but your age. No credit card number, no personal id.
So I’m curious how you get to your conclusion?
Extrapolating from US decisions, like I would have done
In order to make sure that the age a person provided is real, the system will gather all that information anyway. I don’t know what you mean by “reveal”, but it will gather it. And that’s the main building block of the problem.
That system is basically the government. They already know.
No, that’s an app on your phone. That accumulates a ton of data in a way that didn’t exist before. The government knows I exist. Now it knows every website I’m visiting, and my identity on those sites. Now the new politician in my country decides to be a little bit more corrupt, and asks the app maintainer “hey, can you gather IDs and home addresses of all the people who criticized genocide online last couple of years, I would like to execute them publicly”, and they can do it with basically one sql equerry. The only defense against that will be “but that’s illegal, there are laws against that!”, which is shit defense nowadays.
Yes, all of that happens. That is a valid worry. Which is why they tried to avoid it.
Did you see how much they did to avoid this? Do you see a flaw in their solution?
Yes, the flaw in their solution is that they require the government ID to access the internet now. That’s the flaw.
I’m sorry, but have you read the technical documentation? The design is intentional created this way to avoid tracking.
You are issued a set of ZKP tokens that you hand back to websites. They cannot correlate these tokens back to you, nor can the operator of the system.
Now they could lie, of course, and violate the design (but being open source that’s a little harder), but if the government wanted to secretly track you, much more precise tools exist for this already.
At last a piece of code free of any flaw, any exploit, invulnerable to any known or unknown attack method!
Of course things can break and something might be able to refer back to you, until it gets fixed.
But if your argument is that “the standard is fine, but something might not quite work”, then the same argument applies to your phone’s location tracking, your debit/credit payments etc. The vast majority of us happily use systems on the basis that they are secure, until they’re not, and then things get fixed.
Your argument has to apply evenly.
That’s the stupid part, it doesn’t matter what it will look like at the beginning. It might be the best written documentation now, they can even implement the app correctly. The thing is, the jump from “people can use the internet” to “in order to access the internet you need to provide your government ID to your smartphone” is a big jump, one that can cost a politician career. The jump from “you need to use version 1.4.412 of the govenment id checker” to “you need to use version 2.0 of the Government Id Checker Plus” is minuscule. That’s where you introduce a persistent database of the tokens, somewhere on page 5 of the changelog. And only nerds care about that and nobody listens to them.
It’s so fucking easy, Russia did this exact gambit in 2017, Kazakhstan couple of years before.Ok, so it’s the slippery slope fallacy.
But that slippery slope, which it sounds like you believe us to be on, also applies to phone location tracking, credit cards payments, mobile phone train tickets, smart homes, smart cars, home CCTV etc etc.
Do you leave your phone at home, always pay with cash, don’t use any apps? Most people do these things on the basis that the government doesn’t wantonly have access to what we’ve bought online. Why is age gating so different?
I can’t help but wonder if the empowerment LLMs may have to an individual is terrifying leaders into an authoritarian mindset
LLMs are here to enrich the rich, not to “empower the individual”. They require ridiculously expensive computing power, which makes them impractical or even impossible to self-host (with data centers buying up the market, the required hardware becomes unaffordable to the individual). Now you’re at the mercy of renting out the compute from the oligarchs and their companies, and you’re also relying on their censored and biased models (see Grok and his “Mecha-Hitler” antics if you want a taste of the future). Please don’t expect that to empower you, or anyone else. It can’t, and even if it could, it wouldn’t be available to you.
Unless we democratise LLMs, they’ll just become yet another tool of enslavement in the clutches of the Epstein class.
Unless I’m reading this incorrectly, this seems far more invasive than the California law.
