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Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

>age verification requires identity verification. Identity verification requires digital IDs. Digital IDs require everyone — not just children — to prove who they are before they can speak...

Not if it's done in a half arsed way. I'm in the UK and so far my age verification has involved doing a selfie with the webcam for Reddit. That's it. No one needing my name, ID number etc. (Apart from banks of course).

Really this is just the modern equivalent of putting the porn mags on the top shelf at the newsagent to stop the kids getting them. We don't need more.

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A photo identifies you. This is the digital equivalent of having a photo taken of you upon entering the mag store, stored digitally forever, shared with government, and tied to every magazine you read and purchase.

In the real world though people see your face and you wandering around and doing stuff. Also I have my name and face up on things like linkedin. I don't think it's necessary to be that obsessive about privacy and secrecy for most people.

I understand they could do facial recognition on my photo. If I want to post something criminal or some such I'd make a new account.

> I'm in the UK and so far my age verification has involved doing a selfie with the webcam for Reddit. That's it. No one needing my name, ID number etc. (Apart from banks of course).

a convenient record of your face is all we need

doing a selfie with the webcam

First, that's easily enough to identify you from biometric data, and it's naive to assume it won't be resold. Second, I kept getting asked for ID into my 40s because I looked young. People don't all age in the same way, so this system will fail for people at the tails of a normal distribution - some 15 year olds will easily pass for 25 and vice versa.

In the US, the plan is to require adults to take a picture of their state ID and upload it to a third party that provides age verification. It's not explicitly part of the proposed law but there are only a handful of companies who meet the qualifications to provide this service (id.me, Persona) and this is how they do it.

I believe if you are a "minor" then you can go the post-a-selfy route.

Imagine so if that was a pltr right Or like someone who uses pltr What could possibly go wrong? People are being paranoid for no reason!

If someone wanted to be a martyr and just uploaded all their personal documents so they could be accessed by everyone, I wonder if an interesting court case might follow.

I could imagine it ending with a court ruling that people are responsible to protect their own personal documents which... yeah, that would muddy the waters in a world where every website expects to see your ID.

The verification apps are starting to require live video selfies to verify that the person doing the verifying is the same face as the person on the scanned ID credential.

> In the US, the plan is to require adults to take a picture of their state ID and upload it to a third party that provides age verification.

That's not just the plan - that's what's already legally required in many US states.

These laws were introduced by the explicitly religious right-wing groups like Exodus Cry and Morality in Media, as ways to de facto outlaw pornography (in their own words). They've since been laundered into the mainstream so the general public is unaware of the root cause.

Whether it can be done this way is besides the point. It is about how regimes like ours in the US that have demonstrated an interest in spying on their subjects choose to regulate this over time.

Now Persona has your picture and PII. Pray they never have a breach.

Reddit is one thing but would you do the same for a porn site?

Does it not sound insane to you that you need to expose your biometrics to a corporation just to make anonymous posts on a forum?

It really is insane that some people don't realize how biometrics are just as bad as every other option.

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