It's also worth stating that the worst part of that proposed amendment [1] isn't even necessarily the VPN ban, it's the next clause, on page 20:
"The “CSAM requirement” is that any relevant device supplied for use in the UK
must have installed tamper-proof system software which is highly effective at
preventing the recording, transmitting (by any means, including livestreaming)
and viewing of CSAM using that device."
"Regulations under subsection (1) must enable the Secretary of State, by further
regulations, to expand the definition of ‘relevant devices’ to include other
categories of device which may be used to record, transmit or view CSAM"
> any relevant device supplied for use in the UK must have installed tamper-proof system software
It's happening. Computer freedom, everything the word "hacker" ever stood for, will be officially destroyed if this passes. We're about to be robbed of control over our computers by force of law. It's just the UK now but eventually it will be every country.
This is a very dark day. I've been prophesizing its arrival for a while now. I was secretly hoping I was wrong about everything, that we'd turn this around, that we'd enshrine a right to control our computers into law. The opposite is happening instead. It's so sad...
I wouldn't give up. When it gets to the level of mandatory government rootkits there are bound to be underground organisations circumventing this and/or trading old hardware.
I'd even go as far to say that if things become this authoritarian, certain "direct" acts would be justified in preventing or fighting it.
The absurd thing is that the amendment only covers smartphones and tablets - which means those who the bill aims to target can easily break the law by using a laptop, desktop, camera, smart TV etc.
In short, the Pandora's Box of automated surveillance and security risk on any smartphone or tablet is opened, while a gigantic loophole for serious offenders is left open.
They just won't stop. We needed to have laws in place to prevent digital IDs being continuously pushed on people because the powers that be want total control of all information.
It's happening in the US now under the guise of AI data centers for consumers but I suspect it will be instead used to surveillance everyone who doesn't agree with the fascist government. This is Larry Ellison's public vision but Musk and Thiel also play a role.
It's already the law in Brazil that online services and "terminal operating systems" must perform age verification in a secure, auditable manner. This presumably includes smartphones and computers, meaning you can't just run an arbitrary Linux distro in Brazil anymore. I expect similar laws to pass in at least a few U.S. states by 2030—places like Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, maybe Florida...
When I say "the future is signed, verified code from bootloader to application level" I mean it will likely be backed up by force of law. No one complains about the mandatory safety features various governments require cars to come equipped with. The voices of a handful of nerds will go unheard when the law starts insisting computers come equipped with safety features also.
While that's really terrifying about Brazil, is it actually enforced? I can't really imagine there being a "Linux Police" kicking down the door of a hooded teenager and prying the Ubuntu DVD from his clammy hands.
I mean this is the country of favelas where even the police don't dare to enter.
The modern societies run via those devices and the enforcement will move to the mostly free Internet that was "a long time ago, when it didn't matter as much".
Apple tried to do it in a way where nobody would see your personal data until they had multiple confirmed matches against known CSAM - and even then a human would check the results before involving any law enforcement.
But the internet had one of their Misunderstanding Olympics and now we're here again - with an even shittier solution, being formed into actual law.
Law never had anything to do with reason, but this is one more law that mandates an unreachable goal. This will trigger an untold amount of brain-rotten despotism.
They're probably thrilled with themselves because everything will have to be closed, locked down platforms and devices.
IMO the solution to child safety is education with strong user controls. Hell, just delete the social media apps from existence if the other option is dystopian control of our communications.
I know what you're thinking: these restrictions are easy to work around. But don't worry, we can just layer more restrictions on top. Eventually the children will be safe! The government just needs to...
- require proof of age (ID) to install apps from unofficial sources on your phone or PC. Probably best to block this at both the OS and also popular VPN downloading sites like github.com and debian.org.
- require proof of age (ID) to unblock DNS provider IP addresses like 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 at your ISP.
- make sure children aren't using any other "privacy" tools that might be a slippery slope to installing a VPN.
This makes it so much easier for the parents too! The internet will be so safe that they won't even need to talk to their children about internet safety.
You joke, but as I understand it, all internet in the UK has Government mandated 'adult content' filtering by default and you have to go through a process to prove you're over 18 to have it removed...
So they are much more than halfway there already...
It's worse than that sadly, there is no way to have it globally removed. You either have to use a VPN or age check with every website that requires it (or at least whichever service they partner with, I've not even looked).
It's so organic and grass roots and good for democracy™ that every single Western country suddenly decided that eliminating privacy online in lockstep was the top priority despite none of the ruling parties running on it as a platform or with any meaningful referendums from the voting public. But to what end?
> The Security Service Act 1989 sets out our functions and gives some examples of the nature and range of threats we work to disrupt.
> In summary, our functions are:
> to protect national security against threats from espionage, terrorism and > sabotage, from the activities of agents of foreign powers, and from actions intended to overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means
Imagine you and I pay likely billions a year and these jokers just let asset managers like Larry Fink influence policies affecting fundamental rights of British people like it's nothing.
The country is corrupt beyond belief and soon we will wake up in corporate prison as slaves.
Far more people strongly support it than strongly oppose
The idea it's being done in spite of the public doesn't seem to track with reality. You also don't have to look very hard on social media to find lots of British people supporting strong government policing of the internet.
The House of Lords is the most democratic hereditary system in the world. The 90 of the 92 heredities are elected from amongst the available candidates.
The house of lords is a stamping system at this point, and maybe a stopgap to authoritarianism. All power resides in the House of Commons which is elected
The true issue lies in the fact that the Westminster style of government is de facto an elective tyranny, with no real checks and balances other than the misused ECHR
It is though. This is one of the few surveillance issues actually driven by grassroots organisations like (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Shout) in particular when it comes to adult content who have been at this globally for well over a decade.
There's no shadowy cabal trying to age-restrict porn or social media, this is more like a modern day Carrie Nation. Puritanism always comes from the bottom up
Collective Shout are a tiny fringe group, they have had a massively outsized impact because of some extremely effective and clever lobbying but few people here in Australia where they are based know about them (they're definitely not a household name by any stretch of the imagination).
Oh hey, that's the group that got payment processors to ban lots of legal content off of many platforms including Steam, all the while denying everything when the public outrage turned against them. Nothing speaks grassroots more than hiding when everyone hates what you're doing.
On the other hand, what's your solution for completely anonymous people to be infiltrating western democracies information space and spreading propaganda lies and falsehoods. I'm 100% not in favor of this level of authoritarianism, i'm just honestly curios what your solution is? Just let it continue? Let your children be subjected to misinformation about the holocaust etc? Let children be exploited and images of them being sexually assaulted just run wild online ? Again I'm just curious what the alternatives might?
The alternative is to refuse to delegate the formation and development of the character of our children and culture to automated systems and regulatory policies. Engage with your children on topics that matter. Discuss the pros and cons of various viewpoints and political platforms with your friends and neighbors, colleagues and fellow bus-riders. We, ourselves, are the psychosocial immune system for society, and if we construct an environment in which we can not be exposed harmful concepts, then we will never learn how to respond and combat it when we inevitably are exposed to it.
This is not to say that we should not actively work to prevent criminal acts, but that trying to establish a world in which such acts are impossible will cripple society in ways which will leave us vulnerable to much larger and more systemic abuses. Benjamin Franklin’s statement rings as true as ever, if in a rather updated context: “ They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
On a related note, they built their digital ID so that third parties could verify attributes (it's NOT just a single-service login across government + a linking ID across government services, which is how it was sold by the BBC).
They're pretty close to completely de-anonymising the internet for UK citizens. Say they introduce an Australian-style social media ban for under 16s, then requires all social media to link their accounts to digital IDs for this verification.
Naturally the only remaining loophole is if a UK citizen manages to avoid being flagged as British ever by using a VPN, so I expect they will focus on that going forwards. Keep in mind the UK already arrests and imprisons vast numbers of people for speech offences, there's no slippery-slope argument here because the UK is already at the bottom of the slope as an ultra-authoratitarian anti-speech nation.
> On a related note, they built their digital ID so that third parties could verify attributes
Isn’t that the entire point of government ID of any variety? The only reason anyone ever asks to see ID is so they can use it verify attributes of your identity, such as name and age. Otherwise what’s the point of an Identity Document, if it’s not to document something?
Digital ID has always been sold as something approximating your passport/Driver License (there is no official government ID in the UK), but digital, on your phone, and actually a government identity document. Rather than a government document that has a specific purpose (such as crossing the border or driving a car), which people pretend is government ID. Something that can cause a serious problem for people because passports and driver’s licenses aren’t free to obtain, replace or keep valid. Plus the government departments that issue them refuse to take any responsibility or liability for the accuracy or validity of the documents for any use case outside their very specific role in narrow government functions, like crossing the border, or figuring out if you’re allowed to drive a car.
The UK already has citizen SSO that stretches across all digital government services, and has had that for a decade plus now. Although it’s not really attached your identity, it’s just a unified auth system so government departments don’t end up creating their own broken auth systems instead.
> Isn’t that the entire point of government ID of any variety?
Ideally this could be done without deanonymizing accounts to service providers unless the user wants to for a 'verified' account linked to their identity publically but I don't think any digital ID system has been built that way. Imagine it acting like OAuth but instead of passing back an identity token it's just verification of age, platforms would store that which would show they had performed the age verification and could be used for other age gates if there are any.
A digital ID can be better than a passport / driver license, because it can verify only specific attributes of the bearer to a third party. E.g. only the fact that you're older than 21 in a liquor store or a car rental, but not other details readily visible in a passport.
You mentioned "on your phone". Is it only for phone OSes? A depressing "download from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store only" app? Are UK citizens required to have it?
It's not a "citizen SSO", even non-residents use it when paying taxes, for self-assessment purposes.
It's Government services SSO.
And no, Digital ID wasn't sold as something like this, it has been sold as a way to prevent (?) "illegals" from working, by introducing system entirely similar to the current eVisa.
Unless you slept through all these televised discussions where Keir Starmer with a stern face explained how a wholly-digital system replacing wholly-digital system will stop these pesky immigrants from getting work (it's almost like in the current systems employers didn't have to do these checks already).
There's been SO, SO MANY lies, like that this system wi be similar to the Polish/Estonian, only these two are primarily physical documents, additionally bearing certificates that can be used to authenticate against the participating systems.
Sure, some countries ALSO have a digital form of the ID, but never advertised as a hate-whip against the others.
The primary problem with the only-electronic Certificate you call ID, is that it's supposed to be always online (never cached, like, say...... Um.....actual Digital ids or cards in the normal phones), so it can be cancelled at any point, also due to the errors of the government employees or systems.
The problem is that MANY people had a very serious problems with eVisa already, leading to being bounced off the Border Patrol or failing to prove right to rent.
Even if the idea of the ID was in general good (and I use one I really love, works wonderfully well), this government lied too many times and is forcing us to eat the frog that we've seen many times prior, is half baked and will burst in someone's face.
This idea is tainted because we're lied to and it's half-baked, and hostile in principle, not helpful.
> Officers from 37 police forces made 12,183 arrests in 2023, the equivalent of about 33 per day. This marks an almost 58 per cent rise in arrests since before the pandemic. In 2019, forces logged 7,734 detentions.
then you haven't been paying attention. the UK is in fact arresting people for all sorts of speech online. the vast majority is not a call for violence at all.
Parallel realities. Over here it seems like the US is a dystopia, with how hostile their leadership is to democratic institutions and how greatly it empowers oligarchs.
They think that European countries (or commonly just "Europe") are about to arrest all citizens for criticizing politicians. "Europe" must be saved from their leftist fascist regimes. For now using propaganda. Soon militarily.
Don't forget that Digital ID really has been pushed by Labour after a meeting with Larry Fink and BlackRock. This is how democracy gets bypassed by the wealthy and in functioning country it should result in the entire government going to prison. Unfortunately MI5 that is in charge of that is asleep at the wheel - probably corrupt themselves.
The UK is the country with the biggest yearly outflow of millionaires in the world. And the numbers are huge: there are about the same number of millionaires in the UK and in France, about 3 million. And yet there are 20x more net millionaires outflow leaving the UK than leaving France (16 000 vs 800 net outflow).
Make of that what you will but to me the net outflow is the canary in the coalmine.
This is one of dozens of amendments proposed by members, so it's more accurate to say "three members of the House of Lords attempting to ban the use of VPNs".
Brit here. The HoL's role is to review and scrutinise legislation as part of the parliamentary process of turning bills into acts (laws). Most legislation originates in the (directly elected) House of Commons. But all parliamentary bills pass through the Lords, and they can propose ammendments, but those ammendments have to be approved by the Commons. Those that aren't are sent back to the Lords for reconsideration. In the event of deadlock, the Commons has primacy and can overrule the Lords.
Legislation often bounces back and forth between the Commons and the Lords a few times. The Lords won't block things which have a strong mandate, e.g. things promised in an election manifesto; but they can at least stall and amend things.
So lemme guess - in order to prove one's age, one needs to obtain a digital ID and use said ID to gain access to the internet thereby creating a perfect system to monitor one's internet activity.
Gotta hand it to them - "protecting the children" is a pretty good pretext.
Interesting to see these kinds of comments more in this thread compared to the one from yesterday.
The one from yesterday was discussing how australia is banning social media for anyone under 16. Most comments were supportive because they hate social media.
A few comments were discussing how it is just a way to propagate more KYC.
It's way easier to justify banning social media entirely than banning it for under-sixteens. Paradoxically it infringes on freedom less, as it bans a type of business model for being too harmful rather than restricting people's rights to view and share information.
As an Australian it's so irritating how enthusiastic people are to give up their privacy and freedom of speech, and also force everyone to hand over personal information to private companies, on the flimsiest of pretexts from our perpetually technologically incompetent government.
After the number of data breaches we've seen, they want to do this, and in the least privacy-preserving way possible.
Why not set up a government api where a site can get a yes/no answer about age using tokens, so the site itself gets no information but if the age is ok? Nope, we'll just pick a few sites and force everyone to give them their data, what could go wrong?
And if you actually look at the suicide statistics, there's no epidemic of suicides going on...
It's just lazy parents who can't be bothered parenting looking for a quick fix. I want to hand my phone to little tommy and turn my brain off.
What's even more galling is that the quick fix with so many obvious negatives won't even fix anything. As a kid I had unlimited time to get around any blocks. It's so dumb.
4chan is perfectly fine, but reddit must be stopped! Just to be clear I don't think either should be blocked.
Make the entire internet 18+ only and put the parents who let kids on the net in jail, I don't care.
I think the separation is in how 'algorithmic engagement' in social media is at least as dangerous as stuff that even the US still has banned in other forms of media [0].
Especially because it's gotten so bad. At first it was just 'making things popular in your network more visible'. But now it's to where when I use something like Facebook there is more 'algorithm spam' than anything actually happening with my friends. It's become something where the primary purpose is 'driving views' rather than communicating. [1]
A VPN is a bit different; it's a tool, and I will note one that depending on the specific definition has legitimate (or at least morally/ethically legitimate) uses.
[0] - e.x. unless it has been reversed in the last decade or two, in the US you still can't cut from a kid's cartoon right into a commercial for a toy/game related to said cartoon. I mean FFS that was a rule that got put in before 'attention hacking' was even a term.
[1] - TBH I'd love if we could get back to Myspace or maybe even early Facebook type social media. There's a lot of excitement lost when an algorithm feeds you shit versus a friend sharing it, and it was a lot less noise...
There is a difference between a concept (banning social media for kids) and the actual implementation (requiring ID to visit sites or whatever they are going to do).
Blacklists are an inherently terrible, rights infringing approach to this sort of issue vs whitelists. It would be a lot better if the internet by default was simply considered 18+ (or 16+ or whatever a country wants). Instead, the tld system could be easily used to have age based domains where anyone who wanted one had to meet some set of requirements for content standards, accountability and content vetting, didn't allow user contributed content at all without review or whatever was needed.
At that point all the technical components exist to make this an ultra easy UI for parents. Require ISP WiFi routers at least to support VLANs and PPSKs, which ultra cheap gear can do nowadays no problem, and have an easy to GUI to "generate child password, restrict to [age bracket]", heck to even just put in a birthday and by default have it auto-increment access if a parent wants. Add some easy options for time-of-day restrictions etc, done. Now parents are in charge and no adult needs anything ever.
Now I highly doubt politicians are all being honest about full motivations here, clearly there are plenty of forces trying to use this issue as a wedge to go after rights in general. But at the same time parental concern is real, and non-technical people find it overwhelming. It'd be good if industries and community could proactively offer a working solution, that'd reduce the political salience a great deal. It's unfortunate the entire narrative has been allowed to go 100% backwards in approach.
To be frank, while it may have a level of technical beauty, this kind of "opt-in whitelist" approach is an authoritarian's dream.
Once the baseline is established, the playbook becomes simple: Shift that age bracket up to the very moment when someone can vote. Make sure that every new voter spends all their formative years unable to access even basic resources on the struggles that marginalized groups go through, and the history of their existence; set the bars for the "whitelist" so high that one must toe the party line in every bit of messaging, and thus is effectively a list of propagandists whose businesses can be fined astronomically if they deviate. Take away the parent's choice, and make it mandatory to use routers that block the non-whitelisted TLDs for any device that doesn't cryptographically authenticate as being operated by an adult. Find ways to impose this on groups other than children (for instance, by making it illegal for criminals to access the non-whitelisted web, then greatly expanding that definition). All in the name of peace and tranquility.
If you want V for Vendetta, this is how you get V for Vendetta.
... only to the degree it hasn't been manufactured by tabloid media and Russian propaganda warfare, that is.
With every little news about local shootings, robberies, rapes, beatings, thefts, whatever not just making national, but in the worst case international headlines, one might think that Western countries are unsafe hellholes of the likes of actually legitimately failed states - despite criminality rates often being on record lows. Of course parents are going to be afraid for their children, and it's made worse by many Western countries financially only allowing for one, maximum two children.
On top of that, a lot of the panic is simply moral outrage. Porn and "trans grooming" it seems to be these days, I 'member growing up with the "Killerspiele" bullshit after some nutjob shot up a school in the early '00s. My parents grew up with the manufactured fear of reading too much as it was supposed to make you myopic. Again, all manufactured fear by organized groups aiming to rip our rights to pieces.
Parents should relax and rather teach their children about what can expect them on the Internet, how people might want to take advantage of them, and most importantly, that their children can always come to them when they feel something is going bad, without repercussions. When children think that they cannot show something to their parents, that is where the actual do-bad people have an in.
Readit News
"The “CSAM requirement” is that any relevant device supplied for use in the UK must have installed tamper-proof system software which is highly effective at preventing the recording, transmitting (by any means, including livestreaming) and viewing of CSAM using that device."
"Regulations under subsection (1) must enable the Secretary of State, by further regulations, to expand the definition of ‘relevant devices’ to include other categories of device which may be used to record, transmit or view CSAM"
Apple, what did you start?
[1] https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63901/documents/746...
It's happening. Computer freedom, everything the word "hacker" ever stood for, will be officially destroyed if this passes. We're about to be robbed of control over our computers by force of law. It's just the UK now but eventually it will be every country.
This is a very dark day. I've been prophesizing its arrival for a while now. I was secretly hoping I was wrong about everything, that we'd turn this around, that we'd enshrine a right to control our computers into law. The opposite is happening instead. It's so sad...
I'd even go as far to say that if things become this authoritarian, certain "direct" acts would be justified in preventing or fighting it.
In short, the Pandora's Box of automated surveillance and security risk on any smartphone or tablet is opened, while a gigantic loophole for serious offenders is left open.
Yea, I know that's never going to happen. Still, I can dream
It's happening in the US now under the guise of AI data centers for consumers but I suspect it will be instead used to surveillance everyone who doesn't agree with the fascist government. This is Larry Ellison's public vision but Musk and Thiel also play a role.
When I say "the future is signed, verified code from bootloader to application level" I mean it will likely be backed up by force of law. No one complains about the mandatory safety features various governments require cars to come equipped with. The voices of a handful of nerds will go unheard when the law starts insisting computers come equipped with safety features also.
I mean this is the country of favelas where even the police don't dare to enter.
The modern societies run via those devices and the enforcement will move to the mostly free Internet that was "a long time ago, when it didn't matter as much".
Apple tried to do it in a way where nobody would see your personal data until they had multiple confirmed matches against known CSAM - and even then a human would check the results before involving any law enforcement.
But the internet had one of their Misunderstanding Olympics and now we're here again - with an even shittier solution, being formed into actual law.
Deleted Comment
They're probably thrilled with themselves because everything will have to be closed, locked down platforms and devices.
IMO the solution to child safety is education with strong user controls. Hell, just delete the social media apps from existence if the other option is dystopian control of our communications.
- require proof of age (ID) to install apps from unofficial sources on your phone or PC. Probably best to block this at both the OS and also popular VPN downloading sites like github.com and debian.org.
- require proof of age (ID) to unblock DNS provider IP addresses like 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 at your ISP.
- make sure children aren't using any other "privacy" tools that might be a slippery slope to installing a VPN.
This makes it so much easier for the parents too! The internet will be so safe that they won't even need to talk to their children about internet safety.
So they are much more than halfway there already...
Deleted Comment
> The Security Service Act 1989 sets out our functions and gives some examples of the nature and range of threats we work to disrupt.
> In summary, our functions are:
> to protect national security against threats from espionage, terrorism and > sabotage, from the activities of agents of foreign powers, and from actions intended to overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means
Imagine you and I pay likely billions a year and these jokers just let asset managers like Larry Fink influence policies affecting fundamental rights of British people like it's nothing.
The country is corrupt beyond belief and soon we will wake up in corporate prison as slaves.
See:
https://thewinepress.substack.com/p/tokenization-blackrocks-...
https://www.cityam.com/reeves-and-starmer-meet-blackrocks-la...
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-digital-id-scheme-to-...
You claim to pay tax in the UK. You dislike many many aspects of the UK fundamentally so I'm curious, why stay?
But yes in the last ~20 years are so it's somehow become a top EU goal as well.
Far more people strongly support it than strongly oppose
The idea it's being done in spite of the public doesn't seem to track with reality. You also don't have to look very hard on social media to find lots of British people supporting strong government policing of the internet.
house of lords
it's really not a problem, they're essentially a reviewing chamber
it works quite well
The true issue lies in the fact that the Westminster style of government is de facto an elective tyranny, with no real checks and balances other than the misused ECHR
It is though. This is one of the few surveillance issues actually driven by grassroots organisations like (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Shout) in particular when it comes to adult content who have been at this globally for well over a decade.
There's no shadowy cabal trying to age-restrict porn or social media, this is more like a modern day Carrie Nation. Puritanism always comes from the bottom up
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Deleted Comment
This is not to say that we should not actively work to prevent criminal acts, but that trying to establish a world in which such acts are impossible will cripple society in ways which will leave us vulnerable to much larger and more systemic abuses. Benjamin Franklin’s statement rings as true as ever, if in a rather updated context: “ They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
They're pretty close to completely de-anonymising the internet for UK citizens. Say they introduce an Australian-style social media ban for under 16s, then requires all social media to link their accounts to digital IDs for this verification.
Naturally the only remaining loophole is if a UK citizen manages to avoid being flagged as British ever by using a VPN, so I expect they will focus on that going forwards. Keep in mind the UK already arrests and imprisons vast numbers of people for speech offences, there's no slippery-slope argument here because the UK is already at the bottom of the slope as an ultra-authoratitarian anti-speech nation.
Isn’t that the entire point of government ID of any variety? The only reason anyone ever asks to see ID is so they can use it verify attributes of your identity, such as name and age. Otherwise what’s the point of an Identity Document, if it’s not to document something?
Digital ID has always been sold as something approximating your passport/Driver License (there is no official government ID in the UK), but digital, on your phone, and actually a government identity document. Rather than a government document that has a specific purpose (such as crossing the border or driving a car), which people pretend is government ID. Something that can cause a serious problem for people because passports and driver’s licenses aren’t free to obtain, replace or keep valid. Plus the government departments that issue them refuse to take any responsibility or liability for the accuracy or validity of the documents for any use case outside their very specific role in narrow government functions, like crossing the border, or figuring out if you’re allowed to drive a car.
The UK already has citizen SSO that stretches across all digital government services, and has had that for a decade plus now. Although it’s not really attached your identity, it’s just a unified auth system so government departments don’t end up creating their own broken auth systems instead.
Ideally this could be done without deanonymizing accounts to service providers unless the user wants to for a 'verified' account linked to their identity publically but I don't think any digital ID system has been built that way. Imagine it acting like OAuth but instead of passing back an identity token it's just verification of age, platforms would store that which would show they had performed the age verification and could be used for other age gates if there are any.
It's Government services SSO.
And no, Digital ID wasn't sold as something like this, it has been sold as a way to prevent (?) "illegals" from working, by introducing system entirely similar to the current eVisa.
Unless you slept through all these televised discussions where Keir Starmer with a stern face explained how a wholly-digital system replacing wholly-digital system will stop these pesky immigrants from getting work (it's almost like in the current systems employers didn't have to do these checks already).
There's been SO, SO MANY lies, like that this system wi be similar to the Polish/Estonian, only these two are primarily physical documents, additionally bearing certificates that can be used to authenticate against the participating systems.
Sure, some countries ALSO have a digital form of the ID, but never advertised as a hate-whip against the others.
The primary problem with the only-electronic Certificate you call ID, is that it's supposed to be always online (never cached, like, say...... Um.....actual Digital ids or cards in the normal phones), so it can be cancelled at any point, also due to the errors of the government employees or systems.
The problem is that MANY people had a very serious problems with eVisa already, leading to being bounced off the Border Patrol or failing to prove right to rent.
Even if the idea of the ID was in general good (and I use one I really love, works wonderfully well), this government lied too many times and is forcing us to eat the frog that we've seen many times prior, is half baked and will burst in someone's face.
This idea is tainted because we're lied to and it's half-baked, and hostile in principle, not helpful.
I think you’ve been spending too much time on Twitter
https://freespeechunion.org/daily-mail-investigation-exposes...
> Officers from 37 police forces made 12,183 arrests in 2023, the equivalent of about 33 per day. This marks an almost 58 per cent rise in arrests since before the pandemic. In 2019, forces logged 7,734 detentions.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C...
Online Communication Offence Arrests Volume 847: debated on Thursday 17 July 2025
They think that European countries (or commonly just "Europe") are about to arrest all citizens for criticizing politicians. "Europe" must be saved from their leftist fascist regimes. For now using propaganda. Soon militarily.
Make of that what you will but to me the net outflow is the canary in the coalmine.
The UK is headed for a dark future.
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Dead Comment
No it fucking doesn’t.
Vast? No, they really don't.
Dead Comment
It's generally fine-tuning rather than another massive hurdle after getting it through the Commons that the Lords might not pass it at all, though.
You might be thinking of 'royal assent' which is pretty much just a rubber stamp, yes, post-Lords.
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Gotta hand it to them - "protecting the children" is a pretty good pretext.
The one from yesterday was discussing how australia is banning social media for anyone under 16. Most comments were supportive because they hate social media.
A few comments were discussing how it is just a way to propagate more KYC.
After the number of data breaches we've seen, they want to do this, and in the least privacy-preserving way possible.
Why not set up a government api where a site can get a yes/no answer about age using tokens, so the site itself gets no information but if the age is ok? Nope, we'll just pick a few sites and force everyone to give them their data, what could go wrong?
And if you actually look at the suicide statistics, there's no epidemic of suicides going on...
https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/populat...
It's just lazy parents who can't be bothered parenting looking for a quick fix. I want to hand my phone to little tommy and turn my brain off.
What's even more galling is that the quick fix with so many obvious negatives won't even fix anything. As a kid I had unlimited time to get around any blocks. It's so dumb.
4chan is perfectly fine, but reddit must be stopped! Just to be clear I don't think either should be blocked.
Make the entire internet 18+ only and put the parents who let kids on the net in jail, I don't care.
Especially because it's gotten so bad. At first it was just 'making things popular in your network more visible'. But now it's to where when I use something like Facebook there is more 'algorithm spam' than anything actually happening with my friends. It's become something where the primary purpose is 'driving views' rather than communicating. [1]
A VPN is a bit different; it's a tool, and I will note one that depending on the specific definition has legitimate (or at least morally/ethically legitimate) uses.
[0] - e.x. unless it has been reversed in the last decade or two, in the US you still can't cut from a kid's cartoon right into a commercial for a toy/game related to said cartoon. I mean FFS that was a rule that got put in before 'attention hacking' was even a term.
[1] - TBH I'd love if we could get back to Myspace or maybe even early Facebook type social media. There's a lot of excitement lost when an algorithm feeds you shit versus a friend sharing it, and it was a lot less noise...
At that point all the technical components exist to make this an ultra easy UI for parents. Require ISP WiFi routers at least to support VLANs and PPSKs, which ultra cheap gear can do nowadays no problem, and have an easy to GUI to "generate child password, restrict to [age bracket]", heck to even just put in a birthday and by default have it auto-increment access if a parent wants. Add some easy options for time-of-day restrictions etc, done. Now parents are in charge and no adult needs anything ever.
Now I highly doubt politicians are all being honest about full motivations here, clearly there are plenty of forces trying to use this issue as a wedge to go after rights in general. But at the same time parental concern is real, and non-technical people find it overwhelming. It'd be good if industries and community could proactively offer a working solution, that'd reduce the political salience a great deal. It's unfortunate the entire narrative has been allowed to go 100% backwards in approach.
Once the baseline is established, the playbook becomes simple: Shift that age bracket up to the very moment when someone can vote. Make sure that every new voter spends all their formative years unable to access even basic resources on the struggles that marginalized groups go through, and the history of their existence; set the bars for the "whitelist" so high that one must toe the party line in every bit of messaging, and thus is effectively a list of propagandists whose businesses can be fined astronomically if they deviate. Take away the parent's choice, and make it mandatory to use routers that block the non-whitelisted TLDs for any device that doesn't cryptographically authenticate as being operated by an adult. Find ways to impose this on groups other than children (for instance, by making it illegal for criminals to access the non-whitelisted web, then greatly expanding that definition). All in the name of peace and tranquility.
If you want V for Vendetta, this is how you get V for Vendetta.
... only to the degree it hasn't been manufactured by tabloid media and Russian propaganda warfare, that is.
With every little news about local shootings, robberies, rapes, beatings, thefts, whatever not just making national, but in the worst case international headlines, one might think that Western countries are unsafe hellholes of the likes of actually legitimately failed states - despite criminality rates often being on record lows. Of course parents are going to be afraid for their children, and it's made worse by many Western countries financially only allowing for one, maximum two children.
On top of that, a lot of the panic is simply moral outrage. Porn and "trans grooming" it seems to be these days, I 'member growing up with the "Killerspiele" bullshit after some nutjob shot up a school in the early '00s. My parents grew up with the manufactured fear of reading too much as it was supposed to make you myopic. Again, all manufactured fear by organized groups aiming to rip our rights to pieces.
Parents should relax and rather teach their children about what can expect them on the Internet, how people might want to take advantage of them, and most importantly, that their children can always come to them when they feel something is going bad, without repercussions. When children think that they cannot show something to their parents, that is where the actual do-bad people have an in.
"everyone should just adopt my values and then all these political problems would just disappear. voila!"