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Don’t be fooled. Age is just a convenient lever. Identity verification is coming for the whole Internet, and will be advertisers’ and fascists’ collective wet dreams.
Considering the fact there are global blackmail operations, utilizing the rape of children, that no one in positions of power anywhere ever seem truly interested in doing anything about, I'd say that once again, the stated "protect the children" objective probably isn't the aim...
My prediction is that this is more about banning VPNs than about age verification. Start with this, then when everyone is "using VPNs to break the law" they have an excuse to ban VPNs.
Governments world wide likely see VPNs as incredibly dangerous. Plenty of examples of countries like Iran cutting off the internet entirely to prevent protests from organizing.
I think they want their own great firewall.
That would kill ATMs and a bunch of other things. Work from home, too, but I doubt the government cares about that much.
Would technically ban SDWANs, the new kid on the block everyone is creaming over.
Laws can easily have exceptions for these things. In China for instance "non approved" VPNs are illegal, but there are plenty of legal VPNs as well.
For instance businesses can get approval for their own VPNs, and regular people can use some free/paid VPNs within the country, but presumably the government can see all of the traffic within those.
I don't need to avail myself of anything requiring it.
Don't be so sure, if they force this at the ISP level then in order to have an account you'd need to prove your identity.
My ISP is a municipal utility. Theres no way in a million years we'd ever vote to do something as stupid as require an identity to use our fiber service. Someone once suggested charging additional for excessive data usage and they were laughed out of the room.
Theres no way in a million years we'd ever vote to do something as stupid as
Saying that in a politics forum is funny. Plus, what if it becomes a federal law? Doesn't matter what your local thinks.
Saying that on a thread about a policy that was put in place by people who had been elected to their positions is equally funny.
It wouldn't even be half bad...if they used the technology available to us and implemented it as zero knowledge proofs, where your ID cryptographically attests that you are a certain age without disclosing any other info.
But they don't. Because it's not about age, it's about identity and surveillance
its never about protection of the kids
it never was
No it's not, because the creeps shoving this 'protection' down everyone's throats, are the ones harming kids.
If my ID cryptographically attests something can't the organization the issued the ID still match it to me?
Wouldn't it be enough for some smart kid to get the ID of their grandma and post it on 4chan so that all the other kids can use it? How would you detect leaked certs?
For the first part of the question: I have to think/find a specific protocol to verify my intuition...
For the second part of the question: no that is not possible. Cryptographic material is stored in a Smartcard/secure platform module which (in simple terms) means the key material can't be extracted. So you always have to be physically in possession of the ID card/device with digital wallet in order to use it. Further you have to know a PIN or be able to present some biometric features to
So yeah a smart kid can nick their grannies ID, find out her PIN or socially engineer her into providing biometric features. But it would only be valid for that one attestation.
In a proper zero knowledge proof situation, where you auth it locally, no one knows you accessed the site but the site (who knows your IP) and they don't know who you are based on the proof. Doing it all locally is the best way to do it.
In a less ideal set up, where the Auth is split between you and the identity provider, the identity provider would learn how many people are accessing the site, but not who. (Edit: they could also learn that you requested an auth, but not for where, depending on how it's set up)
We have the technology to do it if we wanted to.
Edit: and it really only works with biometrics since pins can be shared.
In Spain you have the cert on an chip embedded in the ID card as you describe but you can also request a downloadable p12 cert that you import in your browser. Most people use the p12 certs because they don't require any additional hardware. From what I read Spanish government proposed solution based on anonymous certs that would only attest your age but wouldn't have any personal information.
On the other side we have the "mandatory ID card" solution which means additional hardware requirement, and, correct me if I'm wrong, it would only work on desktop, right? Do you have ID card readers that work with phones?
Oh I see! Yeah the p12 cert solution would obviously be vulnerable to the "grandma attack"
But it seems weird, because all of us in the EU should have to implement the eIDAS directive right, and our implementation of an eID here in Germany at least is an NFC interface on our national identity cards. So any phone with NFC can be the reader.
If I wanna do my taxes, I touch my ID to my phone, enter my PIN and get logged in.
Granted...that's still a pretty fucked up "auth flow" for when I wanna watch porn 😅
Ok, after checking the Spanish ID also supports NFC, I just never saw NFC readers for them. I think using NFC on your phone/PC to confirm you age by swiping a physical DNI card would work for convenience but I'm still not convinced about security. If you just have to verify your reddit/google/porhub account once kids would just give some 18 year old friend 10 Euros for a single ID swipe. If the entire operation is fully anonymous (you don't know which ID was used) there would be no way to detect this. You would get dozens if not hundreds of accounts verified by the same ID. You would be able to simply setup bunch of age verified Google accounts and sell them online. If you make it possible to track which ID verified given account you will lose anonymity. I don't see a way around it.
You can hook a smart card up to a phone, might need an adapter but it works on Android
Thats what the EU is doing. They have a controversy of requiring some kind of device integrity check to get the proof, but the crypto is good
They don't (at least partly) because the pioneer of this, the UK, doesn't have a national identity card and so doesn't have the ability to enforce the provision of standards in their ID.
British users need to verify their ages to access r/periods
Ah yes, periods. A thing that famously only happens to adults. What the ever-loving fuck?
I'm not surprised that something on a topic that I consider "basic women's health" is being blocked. Why, though? Is it too sexual (because vagina)? Is it too violent (because blood)? A teenager could have a million period-related questions without any part of it being "adult only."
But I guess all of us should've thought about that when we decided to be born with female reproductive systems. So dangerous, so violent, so political.
Finally a good reason to leave the internet
Seriously. If this hits I'm looking for a new career path. Leaning towards leaving the IT world as it is already.
I'm lucky, I'll be retiring in 10 years. At that point, I'm going to disconnect. I've got plenty of books to read and a guitar. That should keep me happy.
Me too. But I don’t have any other marketable skills, so I don’t know.
I won't participate. You shouldn't, either.
Real question, just trying to understand what other folks are planning when shit hits the fan.
What do you mean you won’t participate? No internet? Or just won’t use the sites that require the age Ver?
With things like this, not even VPNs are safe from my understanding.
Looks like fake IDs are back on the menu, boys!
Whole internet?
That's like the ISP, which doesn't make a lot of sense as you need to basically give all your information to the ISP anyway.
And to be frank, the way the Internet works, we'll just circumvent most of this anyway. We've literally been figuring out how to circumvent these things since elementary school.
Sure, a lot of people will be restricted because they aren't technoanarchists. But that also might have a huge benefit. that's just me being nostalgic, of course.
Yeah, when they tell Lemmy to age verify, Lemmy won’t respond.
And will be treated with the same seriousness as:
Accept Cookies? [Yes] [No]
idontcareaboutages
Guess it's back to FidoNet, then?
__
/ \
/|oo \
(_| /_)
_`@/_ \ _
| | \ \\
| (*) | \ ))
______ |__U__| / \//
/ FIDO \ _//|| _\ /
(________) (_/(_|(____/
...radical edward, to the rescue...
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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