In the context of "Age verification should be banned" though, we're already talking about legislative intervention. If there's no particular problem with schemes that are like that then we don't necessarily need a blanket ban on age verification.

Perhaps what we're really saying is "Ban age verification that collects lots of personal information".

Or perhaps we could distil it down further to "Ban unnecessary collection and storage of PII". In which case, Congrats! You've arrived back at the GDPR :)

Which I think is a good thing, and should be strengthened further.

(Also the other response to "because most implementations are not going to be like that" is "why not?". People are already building such ecosystems.)

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AnthonyMouse 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> If there's no particular problem with schemes that are like that then we don't necessarily need a blanket ban on age verification.

There is a problem with schemes like that.

The way computer security works is, attacks always get better, they never get worse. A scheme that nobody has found any privacy holes in when it's enacted will have one found a week after.

The way governments work is, the compromise bill passes if the people who care about privacy support it because then it has the votes of the people who care about privacy and the people who want to ID everyone. But then when the vulnerability is found, the people who care about privacy can't get it fixed because they can't pass a new bill without also having the votes of the people who want to ID everyone, and those people already have what they want. More specifically, many of them then have what they really want, which is to invade everyone's privacy, as they were hoping to do once the vulnerability was found.

Which means you need it to be perfect the first time or it's already ossified and can't be fixed. But the chances of that happening in practice are zero, which means it needs to not happen at all.

	▲	Nursie 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> There is a problem with schemes like that. /goes on to discuss how government legislation of specific schemes is the issue, not the schemes themselves. Then we don't legislate specific schemes? The GDPR doesn't do that, for instance, it spells out responsibilities and penalties but doesn't say "Though shalt use this specific algorithm". Remember, this discussion started with a call to ban all age checks, which itself is a government action and restriction on the agency of private business. There are ways that private entities can implement age checks both securely and without leaking much other information, so it seems very heavy-handed to ban them. Private entities are building such systems between themselves already, without government mandates on the specifics.