Comment on Colorado proposing Bill to move age verification to Operating System rather than web site
baronvonj@piefed.social 1 day ago
This goes in a better direction than web sites doing it themselves, I think. The government put out an open source tool that runs locally and the browser just gets a yay/nay return code from it.
How do they secure age data?
How do they ensure no one who is a different age ever uses the device?
However, if a developer has clear and convincing information that a user’s age is different than the age indicated by an age signal, the developer shall use that information as the primary indicator of the user’s age range.
1) You don’t. 2) Easy. The device constantly captures images of the user and checks them against the user image on file 3) By scanning a government issued ID and checking against an online database with poor security.
I feel like #1 and #2 are problems whether its client side or server side. As for #3 I would lean in the direction of there being a one-time check with no persistent knowledge. Like when you flash your ID to the bartender to order a drink. A client app that scans the ID and returns the answer to the requestor.
But I don’t think there is any way to reliably implement this sort of thing. I think it should really just be left to parental control and monitoring.
I think part of the problem is there shouldn’t be a server-side to this. Because that’s opening the door to all kinds of intrusive data-collection to determine age, even if they claim it should be done “minimally.” Define “minimal.” That seems to fly in the face of “clear and convincing information that a user’s age is different than the age indicated by an age signal” which is a direct quote from the Bill.
And as for number 3, I don’t see how no persistent knowledge could work. If the client app has read the data (“scanned the ID”) that means the client-app can now store that data anywhere the client-app has write access.
Further, it’s not like in real life when the bartender can scan the person up and down, look at the ID and make the assessment that McLovin is clearly underage.
If it’s open source it can be verified that it’s not storing the data.
And I 100% agree that software scanning an ID is an overall bad way to verify. With a CC# validation at least that shows up on my statement, but if my kid is sneaky enough to get mine out of my wallet I have no way of knowing.
The only thing this bill seems to affect are apps. It has no provision for websites, meaning kids would still have unlimited access to adult content. If a kid wants to get around browser checks, all they have to do is either install an older browser that doesn’t use the OS verification, or find a plug-in that fakes it (and of course those will immediately come out).
Even worse, if the OS requires ALL software to acknowledge the age verification checks, what do you think that means? Everyone in Colorado is required to immediately spend thousands to buy all new versions of every program they use? And what happens to the software that is no longer updated? If you’re lucky, you can buy something completely different and spend months rebuilding all your old information into the new system? Sounds wonderful.
I think it’s pretty clear that this was written by people who are used to getting everything from the iOS store/macOS store/Microsoft store/Google Play store and have no fucking clue what using a computer that isn’t “app-based” is like.
tynansdtm@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
On paper, I like this solution better than every app/site developer having to hack together (or outsource) their own age verification system. But I’m sure it opens up a ton of potential problems. And if it’s open source, someone could just fork it and make a version that always says “yes” so unfortunately it’ll never be FOSS.
pivot_root@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It wouldn’t even work on paper. All it would take to twist this into something dystopian is requiring attestation for the age range, and knowing lawmakers, they would justify it as a countermeasure for kids lying about their age. Expand the feature as a web API so websites can use the “easier” and “more secure” system-level age verification process and—oh look, now we can’t use important websites without a commercial operating system.
It would be like Secure Boot but worse. At least with that you can turn it off or enroll your own keys.
baronvonj@piefed.social 1 day ago
Some kind of cryptographic signing of the executable could probably help with that.
Ultimately I don’t believe there can ever be a foolproof solution and the emphasis should be on client-side parental controls.