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- Hacker News
- Democracies want data from their slaves, I mean, ... citizens.by shevy-java
- The only way to have age verification on an international level, is to have treaties allowing for the sharing of information about citizens, digitally, in that context.
And this is that level of cooperation. And it has all the hallmarks of what comes next, identity verification. And this, is what this is for.
In order to prosecute anyone, you need to validate who did the crime. And that requires knowing who that person is. Not hearsay, not postulated, but validated "who this is". So you need to lock down anonymous access to the internet, in order to ensure you can easily and always prosecute such crimes.
And one of the issues right now, is that if someone in the UK does "bad thing" in Canada via the internet? It's doubly hard to track. So creating frameworks which will (on the backend) require some form of identity verification to work effectively, well... that tracks from where I sit and have seen in the last 2 years.
Frankly, from a government's perspective, this is no different than all the changes with KYC, for example 50 years ago the Government of Canada knew pretty much nothing about its citizenry. Certainly, it had no clue about bank account balances, transactions, investment holdings, a person's wealth and more. Now it knows enormous amounts of data, perhaps an arbitrary example is that your RRSP and TFSA(like American 501k) information, balances, and more are now yearly sent to the GoC. I believe also all information on trades made are, too, even in non-registered accounts. This absolutely wasn't the case, not to this degree, even a decade or two ago.
Some of these obligations are via ratified international treaties. The degree of surveillance, fiscally, is astonishing now. Americans know of this of course, after 9/11 they gave their government enormous data, and keep giving it, eg credit card transactions.
I remember when I was young, my parents arguing about having to get SIN cards (social insurance number). While it as introduced in the 60s, something happened which made it more of a requirement. Its only purpose at the time was for Revenue Canada to track info. Everyone argued about it, discussed it, was upset! It was the first time people needed "a number" to open certain bank accounts.
Yet we come from that, to this in really one generation's lifetime.
One of the problems is that, there is a massive, immense, enormous problem here right now, in terms of bots/foreign actors/asshats spreading immense disinformation for profit or state actor based goals. And with LLMs, it's going to get so much worse. People on HN at least are capable of some filtering, but the average Joe just sees video and 100% believes it is factual and true.
I wish I could see another path to locking out the asshattery, whilst keeping the internet anonymous. But I don't really. And unless a grass roots movement comes around, to ensure that every crime on the internet has a very high degree of success for prosecution? Then we'll be getting an identity managed internet.
I'm sure a lot of people will say "We can force companies to filter!", well, can you? For every forum out there? For torrents? For everything? And even if you think the "big boys" can be the main filter points, well, do you want a private company to decide what you post or not? And they'll need some way to ensure people don't just create a new account when banned! So they'll want ID too, if they're legislated to filter.
And if they're legislated to filter, can you fight decisions in court? Do you have the presumption on innocence? Do you have the right to face your accusers? A jury of your peers? With Google, Facebook, anyone these days, you get banned and it's nigh impossible to even find out why.
While there are exceptions, our governments are required to have criminal courts, and things prosecuted there.
I really don't want private, fiscally motivated companies to be the gatekeepers, if gatekeepers there must be.
Ah well. This is all a very unpleasant path.
by b112 - "We wish it could have a better solution, but you all just couldn't behave" is often the argument in these debates. You seem to be dissatisfied with it, but tacitly accept it as the only way. Let me put a finger on why I will never agree with it:
1. The current situation isn't that apocalyptic.
2. The alternative is so much more horrifying.
The first is a weaker argument because there is always a bottomless bag for the opponents to reach into and grab counterexamples. But none of these things are new. It's been 30 years since the average person could freely communicate with anyone in the world over the internet. 20 or so since the maturing of online scams. Probably at least 15 since nation-level actors started using the internet for propaganda purposes. The elephant in the room is AI, but I feel like AI use has diminishing returns, much like in any other fields. It offers a quick boost, but it's not infinitely scalable. The internet can't be completely taken over by scams and garbage in a way where everyone just keeps consuming it and goes crazy in their own ways. It's almost an ecosystem - pour too much garbage in, and you'll see people retreating into private communities and self-enforce trust, no universal carding necessary. Right now it's just tech people doing this on a large scale, but at a certain point of misinformation and incomprehensibility, treating the internet as untrustworthy by default would just become a mainstream view. It would likely fracture into massive social networks with strong identity verification and small communities that enforce trust in their own ways. As much as I don't like most private businesses, but your suggestion that they could take upon the role of the verifier is more palatable to me because that still leaves air in the room for small, private communities, and because businesses don't have perfect communication with each other or the government, preventing the universal tracking of everything.
The second argument is the real one. Technology would enable governments to track absolutely everything about everyone if we let them. Now this is a space where AI actually provides a novel use case - if before you had to have suspicion about a specific person and have someone look into them, AI will enable them to inspect everything and then form suspicion or document undesirable behaviors by default. It will be like having a personal private investigator that sees everything you do, being on the lookout for anything unusual 24/7. Online identity verification is nothing like having a SIN or a driver's license, because those two are used in specific contexts and don't enable tracking-by-default. The internet is used for ALL communications, so automated tracking of it is tracking of everything we do and say. Instead of showing your driver's license to the officer one time in a defined spot, the officer would come to you because your driver's license is etched into your skin for all to see at all times, and they're concerned about your recent movements that were automatically recorded and processed by a billion cameras. It would be a world without secrets, a world of perfect knowledge and ruthless enforcement. I don't want to live in it. I'm fine with the current world, thank you.
by tavavex - this is insightful.. From a behavioral psychology point of view, there is an assumption among many law and order adherents that "we just need more control-info-courts-punishment" and we will have this done. However, history has shown enormous missteps and in fact tragic actions of harm, from the very people that claim to be the ones that are Doing The Right Thing.
Does an entire society have to make the same choices of autonomy and record keeping that are common among members of the uniformed services? Mostly in the West, the answer was "No" but, here we go again.
by mistrial9 - I wish this was setup like a certificate authority so only the government is able to unmask an individual, but it's going to be pictures of government ID.
I don't think the government themselves are prepared for the amount of identity theft that is going to follow mass collection of government documents.
by hacker_homie - When are we going to see substantive legislation advancing digital rights instead of chipping away at them?
For the US, we need a new bill of rights, a bill of digital rights that constitutionally protects right of repair, right to root our own devices, right to be free from dragnet surveillance, right to general purpose computing, and the right to access speech without government-mandated age or identity checks.
With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley and the venture capital space, why can't we make that happen?
by failbuffer - Because libertarians generally want fewer laws, not more.by mcsniff
- Frankly? Never. And the root cause is because majority of people have access to the internet now. The small voice of people who care about some stuff is completely overshadowed by billions of people scrolling through YT Shorts / Reels / TT.by tokioyoyo
- > … why can't we make that happen?
Greed. More money to provide the tools of oppression via government contracts.
- We don't need a "new" bill of rights. If they don't respect the first one why do you think they'll respect the next one?
There's a different remedy for the current situation.
- The libertarian technologist space specifically prefers technological solutions because they don't depend upon fallible and corruptible humans implementing the laws. This is the ideological wing that gave us the PC, encryption, the Gnu project, free software, the Internet, P2P filesharing, Bittorrent, social media, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tor, Freenet, Mullvad and other VPNs, Monero, etc.
When it comes to laws, libertarianism faces an internal contradiction. A libertarian believes that they shouldn't be able to control other people; therefore, if a company wants to make an unrepairable unrootable surveillance device and the population consents to using it, the libertarian believes that it is not their right to interfere. The only thing they can do is create a better repairable rootable device, which is how we got GCC, Linux, Ubuntu, Firefox, Graphene, etc.
by nostrademons - As a Canadian user of HN it's really frustrating to see a rare post about a Canadian subject be immediately dominated by a thread about American politics.
Twenty words into your post and you've pivoted to the US.
What mechanism or discussion can we have to encourage the users to show some restraint on this?
by Teever - The effort to erode privacy is so much greater than the effort to preserve it. Governments around the world are like a dog with a bone when it comes to increasing surveillance.
An apathetic and ill informed public doesn’t help matters.
by brandon272 - Thomas Massie introduced the best privacy bill I have seen. I know nothing about political strategy but i would think a democrat would have been a better cosponsor. Will it even get voted on if the house speaker doesn't want it?
https://www.surveillanceaccountability.com/
>Warrant required Government must go before a judge to access your metadata, location, or financial records — just like searching your home.
>No Data Shopping Agencies can no longer simply purchase data from brokers to bypass the warrant process.
>Face recognition banned Warrantless facial recognition and AI biometric surveillance in public spaces is prohibited.
>You Can Sue Private right of action means if the government violates your rights, you have legal recourse.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8470...
by Cider9986 - Wrong. The government cares.by andrewstuart
- Canada signs most UN stuff
- About "cybercrime" in general my feeling is there is a status quo between the criminals and countries. Something like we do not take down your economy and you do not go after us.
I know for a fact that even the most powerful organizations are powerless to have some relatively unsophisticated group caught and put behind bar.
The idea we would need conventions to start acting is a joke.
by sunshine-o - Distantly related: similar to the local councils here in the UK that don't go after the obvious and prolific drug-front barbers and takeaways, because they pay business rates (local business tax) and probably employee taxes too for just enough staff for it to be believable.by gib444
- So has Australia, the EU, and the UK [0].
That said, being a signatory has limited impact as long as it isn't ratified.
[0] - https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mt...
by alephnerd - > the EU, and the UK
The EU has their own cybercrime treaty: https://commission.europa.eu/law/cross-border-cases/judicial...
But you'll never hear a peep from "no logs at all costs" VPN companies based in the EU.
by ignoramous - Yeah, but normally when you sign something its because you intend to ratify it in short order.by bawolff
- >As of May 2026, the following 76 participants have signed the treaty: Algeria, Angola, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Columbia, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Cuba, Czechia, North Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, European Union, Fiji, France, Ghana, Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Ireland, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Laos, Libya, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Palestine, Sweden, Thailand, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.
Some wonderful countries here: North Korea, Saudi Arabia, China. Thankfully the US hasn't signed it and probably won't because it thinks itself too above international law.
Interestingly, Qatar signed it with [the reservation](https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mt...) that
>The State of Qatar does not consider itself bound by the provisions of Articles (16), (15), and (14) of the Convention, as they contradict the provisions of Islamic Sharia, national legislation, and the social and cultural values of the State of Qatar.
These provisions [being](https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/cybercrime/convention/text/co...) Article 14: Offences related to online child sexual abuse or child sexual exploitation material, Article 15: Solicitation or grooming for the purpose of committing a sexual offence against a child, Article 16: Non-consensual dissemination of intimate images.
I am trying to figure out what this means, as I am aware the Prophet married a 9 year old, but Google assures me the minimum age of marriage in Qatar is 16 with parental approval, and it's rare, and I thought Islam required no images of really anything at all, much less females of any age who are to be in burqas when in public.
by leonvoss - Canada is so lucky to have someone like Michael Geist. He's been reporting on and doing in depth investigations on privacy invasions for about 2 decades now.by panarchy
- It would be luckier if the government actually listened to him.by fidotron
- Yes, and I'd include Cory Doctorow in the list of Canadians paying attention and writing about it.
Back to 2024: "Holy CRAP the UN Cybercrime Treaty is a nightmare"
https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-07-23...
by emptybits - It feels like there’s this weird layer to domestic and international politics where you do a lot of signalling to one audience while simultaneously winking at other audiences that you’re not actually serious. (I can never tell who is getting winked at…)
I feel like WYSIWYG politics is what most of us want, but probably doesn’t actually work. The Ned Stark character that is righteous and right and quickly meets the headman’s axe of the game theory and brinksmanship of everyone else.
by Waterluvian - Isn’t it very ironic to post this under a pseudonym?
Which by definition contains some signalling that deviates from WYSIWYG.
by MichaelZuo - > I feel like WYSIWYG politics is what most of us want, but probably doesn’t actually work.
Well, it wouldn't work for politicians that pick decisions based on what end benfit they get. Would work fine for people. Would need actually honest media tho
- You are quite right. Some laws have a pre-determined break-point; others are to introduce legislation that is not as severe initially, but will become more severe lateron. Age sniffing is one such case. A few EU countries rushed forward; then they are pulled back by the EU commission. The next step will be restrictive measures for all EU countries - I am certain about that part.by shevy-java
- I could imagine true WYSIWYG politics, but it would need a very different temporal organizational structure than current politics.
Currwntly, politicians each have a series of meetings over time with different parties (constituents, lobbyists, domain experts, coalition members) and then at some point one of them drafts and tables a law (that's probably already been informally planned for ages among those in the know) and others vote for it (where many of those votes have probably also been informally pre-arranged for ages.)
To get WYSIWYG, every bit of all of those meetings would need to occur in the open. And likely the only way to practically accomplish that, in a “nothing up my sleeve” manner (i.e. to guarantee that there were no meetings outside of the official ones), would be to have all those meetings occur contiguously as part of one long recorded session in one place, with everyone who wants “a seat at the table” needing to operate on that session’s schedule; and where the politicians involved (i.e. those everyone else is there to influence) have a political career that starts and ends with that single session.
In other words, basically do the papal-election thing, or the sequestered-jury-trial thing: lock all the concerned parties (politicians + PAC leaders + lobbyists + etc) in a building together, and don’t let them out until they make a year’s worth of law. (But unlike either of those—record everything! Don’t allow any two people to be in the same room together without a camera.)
by derefr