Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- bruhghghbmphf, the VPNs! the VPNs! can't have those! What's that good sir? You say ssh? Do not shh me sir. Oh, SSH... yes, SSH, can't have that! It's elementary, any system which one accesses MUST report to parliament. Personally Identifiable Documents for General Evaluation Of Ne'er-do-wells. We'll call it the P.I.D.G.E.O.N. network.by reactordev
- I'm very much in favour of blocking children from social media - it's an absolutely vile cesspit of cognitive addiction, bullying and social (and potential sexual) abuse. But none of it requires a mass-surveillance network to be put in place.
Just for one example; it would be trivial for Apple and Google to put age estimation on my phone, verify it on opening the web browser and provide a zero-knowledge proof of age to websites in a way that does not reveal my identity. All the infrastructure is already there, and it's relatively trivial to turn it on. The downside is that this will only work for people who are older than about 25 because of the uncertainty of face-to-age recognition, but it would be a start.
Another way to do it is for my bank, who know my age already, providing a similar credential that I can feed into the zero-knowledge proof engine on the phone.
This was all done properly for the covid tracking apps, at a time when the phone providers actually wanted to do tracking with anonymity - this is a similar problem, and it's easily cracked by technical means.
And you don't even need zero knowledge proofs if you perform on-device content detection - turn it on for kids, keep it off for adults. Modern phones have more than enough TPU capacity to do this.
But none of the actual implementations I've seen are truly anonymizing, and they all rely on trusting some really dodgy companies with your identity and browsing habits. Yes, the more respectable ones have security and privacy policies that are audited, but will they always? The cynical answer is "no", because history shows that someone will always do something sooner or later if (a) it makes money, and (b) they can get away with it.
Everything I see suggests that the desire for mass surveillance is the driver, and the "protect the children" front on this is a strategem by the people who are really driving this from behind the curtain. There are huge amounts of money to be made by capturing verifiable, blackmailable, personal data, and this is a magic money fountain for those who will be able to mine it.
by lambdaone - In a way, the cack-handed way they've gone about this makes me slightly more optimistic. If we must have such a law, please let it be one which:
* Creates a market for privacy tech of several million teenagers
* Wastes police time chasing down social forums which kids are hosting abroad using their pocket money
* Rubs the noses of the securirati in the fact that they've made it easier for terrorists to hide their comms among the thousands of teenage speakeasies
This is not the 80's when comms tech required capital and man-years of engineering. Setting up forums online isn't even a high-school project.
by ajb - At least we get to raise the next generation of IT geeks because they'll have to understand a bunch of networking basics to watch porn, and might get hooked on it. (on IT)by farbklang
- Some context - Birmingham Mail is one of dozens of clickbait-driven publications owned by Reach plc.
They're not a high quality source of news - they've more than decimated their journalism staff and replaced them with 'content' staff who are performance monitored on the number of clicks their articles generate.
Content is syndicated in different accents across their range of papers from the national papers, The Mirror and The Daily Express down into a large number of notionally 'local' outlets.
So, take it with a pinch of salt.
by 4ndrewl - I've been using a VPN in the UK on my laptop and phone exclusively for 20 years, and the state has been working with ISPs to make "connection records" for most of that time.
On mobile a VPN isn't always effective in avoid geoblocks. Some apps are able to determine I'm in the UK and still ask for ID - reddit is one for example, if you stumble on to an adult subreddit. Using the web interface avoids this.
The UK has also moved to force ISPs to block certain bittorrent search engines.
The UK is not shy when it comes to invading your privacy or censoring the Internet.
by nly - > the main thing that we've done is we've commissioned additional research on this because I've not been happy with the evidence.
Ah, yes, the existing research doesn't agree with our biases, so let's fund new "research" that does.
by kouteiheika - In Russia, they claimed that new measures to block websites are necessary to protect the children online. Of course, they immediately used these new capabilities to block opposition websites and sources critical of the government.
Now, seeing many European governments tirelessly push for these new measures to protect the children, I'm pretty sure that the children are finally going to be safe online.