The UK should just be banned from modern technology until their government has evolved socially enough to respect privacy. Companies need to pull out and stay out, because that's the only way the UK government will learn a lesson.
I'm sure when this law goes through they won't stop and will shortly be lining up some even crazier surviellance tech.
I'm thinking something that automatically scans your computer for porn or other things, like ripped film mp4s and sends it to the goverment to be analysed.
Or perhaps little gps trackers that children are mandated to wear at all times.
That's not what the UK is demanding. They want client side scanning malware that breaks DRM, circumvents encryption and VPNs, and bypasses other security features in order to scan everything visible on your screen.
zero knowledge proofs exist, don't they? also it matters "private from whom, and what". You can make what sites you visit private from the government, and your identity a secret from the site, but the inverse isn't true, the government would know the identity, and the site would obviously know someone visited it.
The problem with this whole thing is the expectation of privacy online for interactions where their IRL equivalents don't have such an expectation. Even if there was no harm being done to anyone, it isn't a rational argument if you subscribe to the ideal of equal treatment under the law.
Zero knowledge proofs exist in theory, but none of these age verification laws that are introduced use them, probably on purpose. I'm certain that every government will want to know what sites everyone visits.
but why does it have to be that way. why not have zkp age verification processes anyways, inconvenience aside, what's the harm. If they refuse to let us use them, they need to explain why. I don't disagree with the malicious intent you're talking about but we can have it so that they have no legitimate excuse to require collection of site visit data. all the emotion and fervor aside, why can't we talk about having this as a standardized process that excludes third parties.
Governments are banking on being able to purchase that site visit data anyways, bypassing their own laws that prohibit them to do surveil, we can require them by means of technology to comply with laws and for the last time resolve the "but the children" argument.
it works if it is time-scoped and full age/id verification is done directly with the government. if you're malicious that way, you can likewise verify your id/face and just give a minor access after verifying anyways. you can get a zkp token that can prevent the site owner and the government from colluding and revealing your activity. zkp is one of many ways to solve this as well.
What the UK is trying to do here is evil and authoritarian. Its the sort of thing people brushed off as conspiracy theories not long ago. It is completely and utterly unacceptable.
I recently talked to a brit who expressed their fear of... knives. It blew my mind. The UK has one of the lowest murder rates in the world, 5 times less than the US, but they're so incredibly afraid.
They are just plain embracing a culture of paranoia, cowardice and extreme surveillance. I wouldn't care because I don't live there except the dystopian tech and business models they're developing ends up crossing the seas.
To be fair, pointy knives are unnecessary. At least I haven't found a use for them, though I stab myself with them occasionally when unloading the dishwasher.
Some people will tell you that they need a pointy knife for cutting tomatoes but they should try using a serrated knife instead: it's much better.
Getting the eyes out of potatoes, working with tough meat like beef or goat, ... knives are the most popular weapon, but that just because we're not allowed guns. If you take the point from knives then we can attack with the sharp side to the throat fairly effectively. Mandate blunt knives and we'll have to beat people around the head with bricks. Ban bricks and we'll ... and so on.
Because in the UK people believe, media enhances this, they can get stabbed for little to no reason or over a small argument due to mostly due to social tensions but also poverty. In the US it seems you have a high chance of not getting stabbed/shot if you don't agitate. So I think the paranoia about knives does not correlate with the likely hood of getting stabbed but with the unpredictability of it.
I agree that this is the wrong direction to develop into.
100%. The public tend to get very angry when police kill innocent people. So the govt want to squash any uprising which is exactly what they've been doing by taking down any video that allows people against the status quo to coalesce and coordinate. They want people to very energetic about voting for one of a few awful options which amount to /dev/null.
> Why did they think clicking "Yes" on an "I am 18 years of age" popup was sufficient?
Because that is the only acceptable solution and it doesn't violate user privacy. Other than off-by-default parental controls that are optionally enabled.
Quite. The age verification for social media may actually be worse, because the age requirement is lower, meaning they have to collect personally identifying information on minors. Many young people also don't have ID, particularly in the UK where driving is less common. Actually, many adults don't have ID in general. Every free vBulletin form also just got thirty cents per user more expensive to run.
If you know anyone who uses WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, and other encrypted apps, tell them to speak up now. Otherwise tell them to be prepared to pay for a foreign VPN to continue using the service. They may also need to create a foreign IOS/Google account to redownload the apps.
Tell the SECU, Gary Anandasangaree (gary.anand@parl.gc.ca), Mark Carney (mark.carney@parl.gc.ca), and Sean Fraser (sean.fraser@parl.gc.ca) that any suspicionless retention of metadata is unacceptable.
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