Age verification is just one part of this crackdown.
Device attestation is another - making sure you're using an unmodified government approved operating system and apps linked to your ID.
Age verification is just one part of this crackdown.
Device attestation is another - making sure you're using an unmodified government approved operating system and apps linked to your ID.
One day we'll need remote attestation to even get an internet connection. "Untrusted" devices that have been "tampered with" need not apply.
Little by little, everything I hold dear is getting destroyed. Computers of our own, that we control, that we can freely hack on. Everything the word "hacker" stands for. How I wish I could turn back the clock...
And people called Stallman alarmist. Truth is, if you give them an inch they take a mile every time, so a hardline stance is strictly required.
And always have that phone on you at all times please.
This goes way beyond any notion of a "hacker tweaking his electronics".
With ID checks, device attestation and a device required for any transaction, and all this data piped in to a central brain (none of which are far fetched), we're all pretty much buggered.
It is a matter of time until advertising companies claw their way in, insurances calculate individual premiums based on behaviour, and remember, we're all one legislation away from being governed by lunatics.
Just wait for the brain scan tech to pan out.
They'll call you in for a routine scan of your thoughts to make sure you haven't been up to any wrongthink.
I fail do see how can't be pessimistic in the face of this. And yet one must continue the good fight.
Until it's all over.
Every time age verification comes up, it’s shocking how many comments here start proposing schemes where we use government-issued tokens combined with secure device attestation to solve the problem.
Some people get so focused on providing a technical solution to the problem of age verification without revealing your full ID to the website that they forget that they’re proposing we start requiring only government-approved devices and operating systems.
Through the lens of information warfare, it's hard not to view those comments as an astroturfing campaign from the exact organizations who would want device attestation
They are not. Most people in Europe already have a digital government ID (I know I do), and most people in Europe trust their government more than random for profit companies, and are OK with making them a gatekeeper. People who care about rooting their own phones are a minority, even on HN.
Not too shocking. Many people’s jobs here require that they pretend that they’re not coding for fascism.
AI mass surveillance is another. The powerful are just ceasing opportunities to accumulate power and capital, seeing that right now it is not good enough for them.
We already have the mass surveillance, but the scale alone has traditionally been the obstacle to do something with it. But, we've had affordable "big data" processing for 20 years or more now (considering Hadoop) so AI is more of a next or different step to draw conclusions out of data. And it's limited by token consumption / context size, unlike big data stuff.
I think you mean "seizing". "Ceasing opportunities" means the precise opposite of what I think you intend to say.
Age verification is the visible, easy-to-sell layer. Device attestation is the more structural one...
That's why the politicians need to make it clear that what they're talking about is device attestation.
I'm an optimist, but I don't think any age verification laws will gain traction without first solving the device attestation problem.
> making sure you're using an unmodified government approved operating system
Will be interesting to see if this leads to more Linux systems being deployed. Then again with systemd supporting age sniffing (https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954), evading this becomes harder and harder.
Lennart Poettering is here to make sure Linux won't be a safe place for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572
Why would it? Such a government would just... not approve Linux, if it interfered with their objectives.
Evading what exactly? If the age verification is a flag sent by the OS and you are the OS administrator, you can do whatever you want.
Sure, but your device won't be able to connect to anything useful.
Systemd changes don’t make it harder, you control the damn OS at the source code level if you choose.
Theoretically, yes, but Gentoo with all their resources couldn't keep even eudev alive. How much free time does one person need to maintain a fork of the entire systemd?