[codedokode]

Age verification should be made on OS or firmware level when buying a device. And not by sending your passport scan to random companies with dubious data collection practices.

A law must mandate that an "adult" version of OS (or device) may be sold only to adult users. It is not difficult for Microsoft/Apple to implement this yet they do not want to for some reason.

This would allow more reliable age verification, without revealing identity of account owners. Well, maybe the govt wants exactly the opposite.

[herbst]

I can tell how this would be implemented. Microsoft rolls their own awkward standard nobody asked for. Other major companies try to use a somewhat common standard.

The Industrie enforces new rules and suddenly it costs $150000 and has awkward requirements to get your OS certified adult.

For the years to come only the most recent windows versions and customer devices like phones will work. No Linux will pay to get a standard they haven't asked for. Embed devices will stop working as more and more stuff gets simply flagged "adult only"

Just don't ... :)

Edit:// see Silverlight, or why it took years until something like Netflix was even legally technically possible

[immibis]

I think they'll just send X-Is-Over18: Yes. Nobody actually cares about this issue enough to invest money in it - just enough to get certain stupid politicians off their backs. There will be third party browsers that always send the header, and they'll be banned from the app store upon discovery, and if they get famous enough their creators will be sent to jail, just like Tornado Cash.

[codedokode]

This should work the other way: a website must send a header that the content in the response is safe for those under 18. If there is no header, the browser doesn't display the page. It is easy to implement and there is no need to change existing websites for this.

[herbst]

I like the header idea but it's the wrong way around. Let's make the header a law, and then consumers can decide themselves.

[loa_in_]

That would make all older web content become inaccessible

[codedokode]

Only for those under 18, not for anyone else.

[valenterry]

Listen to that guy!

[valenterry]

Oh god no. We need to absolutely stop making OSs more restrictive than they already are. There are better solutions.

[snerbles]

The California legislature is already working on forcing operating systems to attest the age of the user at the account level. See the recent gut-and-amend of AB1043 [0], which was a privacy bill [1] just a few months ago:

> This bill would require, among other things related to age verification on the internet, a covered manufacturer to provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder, as defined, to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the sole purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store and to provide a developer, as defined, who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a real-time application programming interface regarding whether a user is in any of several age brackets, as prescribed. The bill would define “covered manufacturer” to mean a person who is a manufacturer of a device, an operating system for a device, or a covered application store. The bill would require a developer to request a signal with respect to a particular user from a covered manufacturer when that user requests to download an application.

> This bill would punish noncompliance with a civil penalty to be enforced by the Attorney General, as prescribed.

[0] https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1043/2025 [1] https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1043/id/3134744

If you want to know more about this lovely bait-and-switch tactic used by the Golden State's legislature, see here: https://californiaglobe.com/uncategorized/gut-and-amend-bill...

[supriyo-biswas]

I’ve often talked about in private settings about how running open source OSes and DRM-free setups would likely become illegal in the future. With every passing day this vision seems closer to reality.

[LocalH]

The slowly boiled death of general-purpose computing

[beeflet]

A slow-boiled GNU with a hardened kernel, and a side of salted hashes please

[subscribed]

"you must be a terrorist or a child abuser if you're so afraid of security... Unhackable phone? What are you hiding? "

Add several big TV shows, op-eds in national press and it'll start shifting even without the laws.

My money is on the UK leading the charge.

[codedokode]

First, there are too many brackets, second, I think the age should be set by a store, not by the user because obviously all kids will state that they are over 18.

[immibis]

So cat ~/.user_age ?

[codedokode]

Uploading your passport to a random company is a worse solution, and it is being rolled out now.

[PartiallyTyped]

Denmark does it by sending you to a government-owned website, which then uses two factor authentication and responds back verifying one’s identity.

I don’t understand why other countries can’t do the same.

[maccard]

The UK doesn’t have any form of identity that can be used like this. There’s a very very vocal group of people who oppose the idea to the point that it hasn’t gained traction.

[zarzavat]

There's three groups:

First, a vocal minority of security freaks lead by Tony Blair who think that forcing everybody to carry ID cards around is a proportionate way to protect Britain from terrorists, illegal immigrants and other foes.

Second, a large proportion of the country who think that the introduction of optional ID cards is a slippery slope towards the first group getting what they want.

Third, another large proportion of people who think that the risk of the first group getting what they want is overblown, or else think that the convenience of being able to prove identity more easily outweighs the inconvenience of having to carry an ID card around everywhere.

In the great ID card battle of the late-00s, the second group won decisively and politicians have been too scared to take up the issue ever since. Except for Blair, but having the face of your political campaign be a war criminal is of negative value to that cause.

[ndsipa_pomu]

I wouldn't describe myself as a very very vocal person, but I'm not a fan of the UK introducing identity cards as it would almost certainly be misused by the government and the data would be leaked as the UK government is utterly incompetent (when it comes to computers).

[Jigsy]

Yeah. They left unencrypted child (benefits?) information on a train once.

[subscribed]

Voter ID rears its ugly head.

It's compulsory now so it's doable. Especially since voter registers are available to certain companies* regardless of the voters' consent.

*eg political parties, credit bureaus.

[Yeul]

The Netherlands has this system but it is ripe for abuse. We still have a few Christ clowns and there's a big fascist party at the moment.

How about we don't make lists of people visiting porn sites? How about we accept that children are part of society and not try to put them in little cages like songbirds?

[Barrin92]

>How about we accept that children are part of society and not try to put them in little cages like songbirds?

It's the correct idea but the way it should be done is by coming to a democratic consensus that helicopter parenting is bad, not by attempting to hobble the infrastructure of government. If only for the practical reason that it'll simply be outsourced and privatized. In US states where the police can't scan license plates, there's a private industry doing that and then selling the data back to the police. The same result but now you pay a premium.

Lee Kuan Yew was fond of making this point. Weak "horizontal" administrations will creep in ways that are more opaque and without checks than strong "vertical" ones.

[immibis]

One reason that's better is that private companies aren't backed by the force of law the same way police are. I don't think it's a felony to prevent some random company's spy camera from seeing your license plate but it is illegal to prevent the police from seeing it. (Of course it's illegal to generally obscure it so there's some implementation details to be worked out there)

[npteljes]

Children are part of society, but adults need to have their space to do their adult things, some of which are actually hurting children. The "little cages" are actually supposed to aid a healthy mental development.

But whatever age-verification solution I have seen so far sucked, really badly. And I can't believe people promote something like a government based age check. People need their privacy.

[Etheryte]

Tangential discussion, one thing I like a lot about the Netherlands is that it's not common to flaunt wealth, at least not as much as in some other countries. For all their other flaws, isn't this something that comes from the protestants? Or is there a different historical background here?

[PartiallyTyped]

I am fairly certain it can be done in a zero-knowledge way, but regardless, parents should be taking care of this.

[crooked-v]

The US in particular doesn't have a national identity system in the first place because the Republican party has opposed the concept for a long timr for various reasons both ideological ("mark of the beast" claims are less of a thing these days but have been made in the past) and political (having a patchwork of systems makes voter suppression and stochastic disenfranchisement of undesireables easier). Without that, any kind of unified verification system is very unlikely to happen.

[uamgeoalsk]

It's worth being careful with broad characterizations like this. Attributing complex policy opposition to fringe beliefs or bad faith motives oversimplifies the issue and shuts down good faith discussion. Whatever one’s views, that kind of framing isn’t helpful.

[dpkirchner]

But in this case it's absolutely true -- I've yet to see any other reason for Republicans to be opposed to national IDs. Have you?

[astrange]

The funny thing is voter suppression doesn't actually help either party consistently over time. Right now the marginal voter is Republican, and so are all the "low-information" voters (this is the polite term politics people use for, you know.)

So voter ID laws would make them lose every election. But of course, that's not permanent either.

[HelloMcFly]

Would Passports not be considered a "national identity system"?

[crooked-v]

No. They're designed around citizenship, not just identity, and the system is slow, relatively expensive, and increasingly hostile to trans people or anyone else who doesn't fit neat categories that aren't actually necessary for an identity system.

[codedokode]

This is a first step to shutting down anonymous accounts - here in Russia for example the account must be linked at least to a phone number or to a government ID and I see no reason why other governments don't want to do the same.

[immibis]

In Germany it's not the case, but in Germany they have to store your IP address, and your IP address records are linked to your passport. It is illegal to get an Internet connection without a responsible party. The person who provides their passport is liable for all misuse no matter who did it. Public wifi was effectively illegal in Germany until recently due to this rule, until a special exception was made for public wifi but the rule is otherwise still in place.