I have a solution to the age verification problem. There is a way to affirmatively prove someone is a real human adult without invasions of privacy. We can use the same ID verification system we’ve been using for centuries: public notaries.
Governments could hand anonymous cryptographic tokens to notaries. These contain no information on the individual. They’re simply a unique cryptographic token. You can go to a notary, pay a nominal fee, show your ID, and grab one of the tokens (possibly just a code printed on a card) from a large bin of them. You can then use this token to register for any number of sites. The notary themselves does not need to note which cryptographic token you grab. The notary doesn’t even know what token you received. The goal is merely to prove you’re an adult human, not to create a cryptographic key tied to your specific identity.
I would then let people do this as many times as they want. You can get a hundred such IDs. They wouldn’t cost much, a few dollar or Euros. This would be no barrier to individuals accessing the net, but it would make them unsuitable for mass spamming.
It’s a legit idea, and there’s a thing like that, called Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKP).
IMO it’s possible in theory. Like set up and managed in good faith, it can work mathematically, and you can prove it does.
My worry tho is that it wouldn’t be in good faith. It’ll be corrupted somehow. Or it turns out that enough other signals leak that it isn’t very effective. Like fingerprinting and stylometry and w/e allow ID’ing despite the ZKP layer.
I didn’t like the age verification law either, but as it would be introduced everywhere, yes or yes, at least it’s mandatory to search an privacy protecting methode, which isn’y not so easy, Because of this I asked Sketchapedia, which shows an zero knowledge system, the service provider only receive an OK or Not OK with it.
In problems which I can’t avoid, I always prefer to search solutions or at least workarrounds to fix it.
I have a solution to the age verification problem. There is a way to affirmatively prove someone is a real human adult without invasions of privacy. We can use the same ID verification system we’ve been using for centuries: public notaries.
Governments could hand anonymous cryptographic tokens to notaries. These contain no information on the individual. They’re simply a unique cryptographic token. You can go to a notary, pay a nominal fee, show your ID, and grab one of the tokens (possibly just a code printed on a card) from a large bin of them. You can then use this token to register for any number of sites. The notary themselves does not need to note which cryptographic token you grab. The notary doesn’t even know what token you received. The goal is merely to prove you’re an adult human, not to create a cryptographic key tied to your specific identity.
I would then let people do this as many times as they want. You can get a hundred such IDs. They wouldn’t cost much, a few dollar or Euros. This would be no barrier to individuals accessing the net, but it would make them unsuitable for mass spamming.
It’s a legit idea, and there’s a thing like that, called Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKP).
IMO it’s possible in theory. Like set up and managed in good faith, it can work mathematically, and you can prove it does.
My worry tho is that it wouldn’t be in good faith. It’ll be corrupted somehow. Or it turns out that enough other signals leak that it isn’t very effective. Like fingerprinting and stylometry and w/e allow ID’ing despite the ZKP layer.
But then how are you supposed to surveil citizens?
It would only work if the law mandated that this token cannot be stored or tracked across the web.
I think the idea is that you can use different tokens for each thing.
Right but people won’t and if you do they can still track you by combining other metadata
I didn’t like the age verification law either, but as it would be introduced everywhere, yes or yes, at least it’s mandatory to search an privacy protecting methode, which isn’y not so easy, Because of this I asked Sketchapedia, which shows an zero knowledge system, the service provider only receive an OK or Not OK with it.
In problems which I can’t avoid, I always prefer to search solutions or at least workarrounds to fix it.