Readit NewsAfter all, they can legitimately claim it solves much of the issues with other verification schemes - no need to trust third party sites or apps, lower risk of phishing, easier to implement internationally and with foreign nationals, etc.
Of course, the downside (for individuals) is it would take just one legal tweak or pressure from the government to destroy anonymity for good.
- If I can do a zero knowledge proof with an arbitrary age, I can eventually determine anyone's birthday.
- If the only time people need to verify their age is to visit some site that they'd rather not anyone know they visit and that requires showing identity - even if it's 100% secure, a good share of people will balk simply because they do not believe it is secure or creating a chilling effect on speech.
- If the site that verifies identity is only required for porn, then it has a list of every single person who views porn. If the site that verifies identity is contacted every time age has to be re-registered, then it knows how often people view porn.
- If the site that verifies identity is a simple website and the population has been trained that uploading identity documents is totally normal, then you open yourself up to phishing attacks.
- If the site that verifies identity is not secure or keeps records, then anyone can have the list (via subpoena or hacking).
- If the protocol ever exchanges any unique identifier from the site that verifies your identity and the site that verifies identity keeps records, then one may piece together, via subpoena (or government espionage, hacking) every site you visit.
Frankly, the fact that everyone promoting these systems hasn't admitted there are any potential security risks should be like an air raid siren going off in people's heads.
And at the end of all of this, none of it will prevent access to a child. Between VPNs, sharing accounts, getting older siblings/friends to do age verification for them, sites in jurisdictions that simply don't care, the darkweb, copying the token/cert/whatever from someone else, proxying age verification requests to an older sibling/rando, etc. there are way, way too many ways around it.
So one must ask, why does taking all this risk for so little reward make any sense?
> "The government of Guyana — which borders Venezuela — said in a statement Wednesday the ship was falsely flying the Guyanese flag, despite not being registered in the South American country"
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-we-know-oil-tanker-the-ski...
(Context reminder: Guyana is the country Venezuela's Maduro threatened to invade in 2023).
(Also context: the sanctions on this ship's Russian owner date from 2022, and are about violating US sanctions on Iranian oil).
It feels a little sketchy to force countries to deregister ships in order to seize them, but they could have flown Venezuela's flag instead of taking the risk of being stateless instead.
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The great powers (China, Russia and America) have each, at this point, explicitly rejected this principle. More broadly, internationa law does contain broad exemptions for piracy.
But if we're using that as a justification, are we admitting the US has turned pirate then?
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/us/politics/oil-tanker-ve...
Are we blockading Venezuela? That would generally be considered an act of war.
The only thing I'm shocked about is that it hasn't wasn't illegal before.