Canada’s proposed Bill S-209, which addresses online age verification, is currently making its way through the Senate, and its passage would be yet another mistake in tech policy.
The bill is intended to restrict young peoples’ access to online pornography and to hold providers to account for making it available to anyone under 18. It may be well-intentioned, but the manner of its proposed enforcement – mandating age verification or what is being called “age-estimation technologies” – is troubling.
Globally, age-verification tools are a popular business, and many companies are in favour of S-209, particularly because it requires that websites and organizations rely on third parties for these tools. However, they bring up long-standing concerns over privacy, especially when you consider potential leaks or hacks of this information, which in some cases include biometrics that can identify us by our faces or fingerprints. […]
It’s always referred to as age verification, but it’s ID verification. It’s the introduction of a regime where you can’t use the internet without everyone knowing exactly who you are, and without the government being able to track your activity via your ID. Governments around the world are making what must surely be a coordinated effort to end anonymity, and thus privacy, online. In other countries this has gone along with a push to end encryption for phone calls and chat, and a push to outlaw VPNs. Canada’s government is embarking on a program that’s very hostile to its own population.
Looks like it’s time for a more self hosted and distributed web.
I was never excited for Carney (and the Liberals’ continuation of power), but I really didn’t think they’d anger me as much as they have been*. Yes, I’m happy we don’t have PP in power, but at times it’s feeling like we may as well have reached the same outcome minus the culture war shit.
I really hope the NDP makes a strong comeback**
Edit (corrections):
*Apparently it was not a bill put forward by Liberal MPs
**The NDP actually supported the first bill of this kind so they’re not much help in this situation
I’m not one to glaze Carney, but for the benefit of factuality - this bill was proposed by a senator, not a Liberal MP under Carney. We’ll see whether it goes further.
Thank you for the correction, I’ll update my comment
Afaik this is a senate bill and similar to s210 from last parliament, the NDP voted in favour of that one last session which I’m extremely disappointed about, I recall the NDP being pro privacy in the past, which totally got some of my friends interested in them in the first place.
It’s even more disappointing that the liberals were the only party with Nay votes on that one. I realise that wasn’t passing this bill but still, unimpressed.
Edit. This showed up earlier too in s203 back a few parliaments ago. Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne is the sponsor on all of these.
Ah, you’re correct (sadly). Now that you mention it I remember the NDP voting in favour for that which is depressing to say the least
I was never excited for Carney
Politicians gonna politician. They will all will be in favour of this kind of citizen tracking because it makes enforcing policy easier, doesn’t matter if it is Liberal, Conservative, or NDP.
The dark web became known as the hideout of internet criminals. Once we’re all internet criminals, it will just be the hideout of everyone. Time to drop all these commercial services that we’ve let take over the internet and go back to being anonymous weirdos talking to other anonymous weirdos on websites run by anonymous weirdos. The web was ironically a nicer place. Also a shittier place, but at the same time a nicer place. This is why we can’t have nice things.
They will try to ban websites run by anonymous weirdos.
They can try. Bans require enforcement, and they catch a few of us weirdos from time to time, but the hydra always grows more heads.
“Ban Website” sounds good in the news but those words together barely even parse to an idea.
A website is just a bunch of files hosted on a computer, put them behind some kind of access control and the outside world can’t even know that they exist. Unless ISPs decide to block all inbound traffic to subscribers you can always just
apt install apache2.Unless ISPs decide to block all inbound traffic to subscribers
I think some ISPs already do this, if they suspect you’re running any kind of server, to force you to subscribe to a more expensive “business” plan.
The shitty ones do this. Or you get stuck behind cNAT.
It’s never about porn or children. It’s about control, money and a fear of ones own citizenry.
It’s also about scanning everyone’s faces for their databases, and probably to feed Palantir in the end.
Stop that garbage bill that will expose your data to criminals in data breaches.
Criminals? What about politicians, advertisers and law enforcement?
Yeah, criminals.
synonyms
He already said criminals.
It is not a slippery slope, it is the intended purpose, with a different implementation.
Anyone with a few braincells working knows that it is all bullshit this crusade against porn “for the kids” .
In the end the objective is just ever more identification, tracking and control of everyone .
It gets even worse when you think of how the improper access could be properly mitigated…
Anyone with a few braincells working knows that it is all bullshit this crusade against porn “for the kids” .
Normies think “for the kids” is a 100% reasonable excuse to restrict freedoms and install authoritarian policy. That’s why it works.
I know it’s bullshit, you know it’s bullshit. Go convince someone who doesn’t understand that it is bullshit.
It may be well-intentioned
It may, but it is not.
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How i feel about voting in general
You have to answer a skill testing question to obtain any contest winnings, there should be one for your vote to count.
I’ll take it one step further.
Every second of every politicians life should be publicly available and steamed 24/7 excepting matters of national security.
If they want the kind of power that comes with being a politician then they should have to sacrifice their privacy. If they are public servants they need to be held accountable and serve the public.
I sincerely believe that extreme personal sacrifice for politicians should become the norm, and the only way for us to have a healthy thriving democracy.
The same way you sacrifice many rights when joining the military, or on being incarcerated. Service requires sacrifice. And the notion that politicians should be able to enjoy the same rights and freedoms as the rest of us is a huge part of why corruption can flourish.
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That’s always been the point.
If they were serious about privacy-preserving age verification, they’d be looking at zero-knowledge proofs. Since ZKP is not on the table, this is really about control and surveillance.
“Those that trade privacy for security deserve neither.”
How about they start addressing the actual problem rather than half-measures from think tanks. If it was truly about children, they should be passing policies from a macro standpoint that encourage people to have a family and kids. Right now, it’s economically grim and has been sliding that way for many decades. The rise of fascist and surveillance state policies is only going to make it worse. Say bye-bye to your birthrate and we’re right back where we started again with the gov trying to pump the numbers via mass immigration.
What does all this have to do with this bill? The intent may be framed as protecting/preventing kids from adult material, but it’s also about making it desirable to have kids because “big brother is watching you/protecting you” (SMH here on how stupid this all is). These legislators are out of touch. We as a society need to address the root of the problem - why do we have a CSAM problem in the first place? It’s a horrific thing to have, and to be honest, those that turn to it likely have a mental illness.
As for kids accessing adult material online - why is the government being a nanny state? This is the parent’s job.
I have zero confidence that they can keep everyone’s data private and safe given how many breaches there are.
Yes and no
Call it a nanny state but companies have been abusing kids to help and back with social media which, IMHO is a much, MUCH bigger problem than porn. I’m all for a ban on social media for kids under 18 at least.
I fully agree that we need privacy and a system should be put in place that does t spy on the citizens bu at the same time we do need protections for the citizens
The entire “he who sacrifices privacy for security” is a bad faith argument. Tell that to a 70yo granny who just lost all of her life savings to scammers. Tell that to the 15 year old that just committed suicide due to some social media bullshit. Tell that to the countless teenagers wrestling with anxiety and can’t get themselves away from social media anymore because companies refined their algorithms so far that they’re addicting as fuck.
That is where governments are supposed to step in. Not everything should be legal or else we should also permit owning weapons grade plutonium. Yes, that is an extreme, but its to show that we need limits and the question is where
Yes, government can be abusive and very much on the wrong side, like with the marijuana prohibition that broke and ended countless lives. Now Europe wants to spy in all chats FFS.
Those are great examples.of bad government control but just because these bad examples exist doesn’t meant hat any government control is bad
I would favor an age verification system that is guaranteed anonymous. That shouldn’t be too hard to setup if the government gives out codes to the citizens, and they can give independent non profit foundations a list of the codes with only the birthdate. Citizen supplies the anonymous code to website, website requests age at foundation, that’s it.
Foundation can’t legally reveal to government (or anyone for that matter) what code visited what, and the foundation doesn’t know what code is what citizen
It’s just a random idea written on the toilet, I’m sure there are better algorithms out there to do this, but the point is that it can be done in a fair, dependable and anonymous way.
We need SOME control, no control just doesn’t work.
At least apply the controls to all the big players for starters
Your code would still be unchanging and unique to you, which would be easy to correlate activity with. It’s basically a government-issued ID number.
And if it could somehow be anonymous, there’s nothing to stop people from sharing it. It just becomes a password you need to access the internet, except all sotes must accept any of 20 million passwords, and you definitely know a bunch of people who will share.
I know, and as I said, it’s something that I was writing as a quick idea, there are better ways, for sure
My point was though that social media is ruining kids, and that is something that needs a fix.
I’m not saying my way is perfect (still better than what governments are trying), I’m saying we need something
I can’t think of any method of restricting content from children that couldn’t be leveraged to restrict content in general, or collect personal information.
The dangerous parts of social media affect adults too. Maybe we need to regulate social media platforms in some way.
Or just have better and more widely available local parental control systems. I can block specifically all social media without affecting other sites, but that’s because I know how. Perhaps DNS blockers need to be government recommended?
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I can agree with some points, but disagree with a lot of the other things.
Black mail and scams are not new. Just that the internet has enabled it on turbo speed. The culprit we know is social media algorithms aimed initially to maximize engagement and now completely refined to twist reality. It’s funny because during the time I commented and now, Australia banned anyone younger than 16 y/o from all social media. I can agree with this - I have no idea right now as how they will implement this flawlessly though. Companies that are structured for maximum “engagement” should be regulated. Look at theme parks and they have age and height restrictions on certain rides for safety - for the sake of mental health in youth, social media should be regulated in the same manner and attitude. But do video games fall into the same category - at what point are they considered more social media than game? All of these will have to be clearly defined - which I have no faith in politicians to be able to do so. As for the elderly, I can only say, the world changes fast and we must always be vigilant - especially in the age of AI. Fake phone calls, fake videos - what about all that? Even before the internet and social media people were already getting scammed - remember the Nigerian prince in your emails? There just wasn’t enough political will to truly fix the problem. The government is playing whack-a-mole by legislating it via invasion of privacy - I predict this is going to be a policy failure.
Our government can’t even keep the big telecoms in line to stop spam calls, what makes you think that they will even be able to stop some sophisticated scam? We can’t even manage to tax media companies properly. But sure, let’s all give government even more mass surveillance tools. Also, the weakest link in cyber security these days isn’t the computer itself - it’s you/the person.
If this ever becomes a thing, I’d want the spirit of this law written out in plain language on what this can and can’t be used for - especially in court. Also a sunset clause that this topic will be review every couple of years. Anything short of that is just asking for it to be abused.
Manwin is based out of Montreal, i.e. Pornhub. I can’t see this passing. Canada is quite literally the porn capital of the world, trust me I know I worked for 3 separate porn companies here in Canada. I just don’t see it happening.
I’d rather this type of legislation not even be entertained in Parliament and treated the same way as if someone tried to propose banning oxygen. I’ll be writing to my MP tomorrow and I encourage everyone reading this to do the same. If you let them take a centimetre of our privacy, they’ll take an entire kilometre.
You think business wont just pick up and move to a part of the world with less regulation?
The only way this would be acceptable is if they built a trustless authenticator. Until then they can fuck the hell off.
I’m not sure if it is a ‘slippery slope’. It sounds more like a fixed plan.
It doesn’t matter what Canada does. It seems the rest of the world is going this way and we we’ll be dragged behind whether we do something or not. I have no idea what is happening the fall of our era?
