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A comment on Senate to Vote on Web Censorship Bill Disguised as Kids Safety. Parent comment

Re:Senate to Vote on Web Censorship Bill Disguised as Kids S... by saurik on Thursday July 25, 2024 @11:28AM (#41069821)
Sure: if we believe that having a giant third-party in the sky that does verification of users itself a giant privacy violation that the web currently doesn't require us to subject ourselves to--and if we also believe that the information they collect won't be invasive, particularly when dealing with an international context--I absolutely agree that we can then use various cryptographic schemes to protect our information from the provider.

However, I certainly don't believe that: I believe that having a giant centralized verification service is inherently dangerous in a world where we are apparently reliant on inanity like CrowdStrike to feel a sense of security; and, in fact, there was even just recently a big hack of an identity provider company.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/hack-age-verification-...

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Re:Senate to Vote on Web Censorship Bill Disguised as Kids S... by ndriscoll on Thursday July 25, 2024 @12:27PM (#41070522)
You don't need a centralized service. In the US, individual states are adopting[0] the ISO 18013-5 mDL standard, for example, which allows each state to be authoritative on identity information for its residents (or, if I understand it correctly, something like "isOver18" signed attributes).

[0] https://www.mdlconnection.com/implementation-tracker-map/

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Re:Senate to Vote on Web Censorship Bill Disguised as Kids S... by tzs on Thursday July 25, 2024 @12:28PM (#41070536)
The "giant centralized verification service" can be some entity that already has your information such as your government.
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