Colorado Lawmakers Push for Age Verification at the Operating System Level (pcmag.com)
- Reference: 0180865354
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/02/26/233213/colorado-lawmakers-push-for-age-verification-at-the-operating-system-level
- Source link: https://www.pcmag.com/news/colorado-lawmakers-push-for-age-verification-at-the-operating-system-level
> The bill comes from state Sen. Matt Ball and Rep. Amy Paschal, both Democrats. "The intent is to create thoughtful safeguards for kids online through a privacy-forward framework for age assurance," Ball told PCMag. "Unlike some laws in other states, SB 51 doesn't require users to share personally identifiable information or use facial recognition technology."
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> The legislation also promises to centralize the age check through the OS, rather than mandating that each app enforce their own age-verification mechanism, which can involve scanning the user's official ID, thus raising privacy and security concerns. The bill also forbids the sharing of the age-bracket data for any other purpose. But it looks like it's easy to bypass the age check proposed by SB26-051. The legislation itself doesn't mention any state ID check to verify the owner's age. In addition, the bill doesn't seem to cover websites, only apps and app stores.
The report notes that the legislation was based on California's bill [3]AB 1043 , which was passed last year and expected to [4]take effect January 1, 2027.
[1] https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/SB26-051
[2] https://www.pcmag.com/news/colorado-lawmakers-push-for-age-verification-at-the-operating-system-level
[3] https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab1043
[4] https://www.hunton.com/privacy-and-cybersecurity-law-blog/california-introduces-new-age-verification-requirements-for-software-applications
Operating System Level per govment rules will brea (Score:2)
Operating System Level per govment rules will break the internet in many ways also who is runing the ID check in the 1st place and will that even work in all states??
Re: (Score:2)
Not just that: how about operating systems that do not require account creation - such as FreeDOS? And why should government dictate account creation in the first place?
The parental controls that exist in most operating systems are adequate, and place the power and responsibility where it belongs - in the hands of parents/guardians. It's not the job of OS admins to police any of that
Re: (Score:2)
> how about operating systems that do not require account creation - such as FreeDOS?
Then you won't be able to run apps that make use of the age verification API. Maybe a dating or sports betting app won't provide useful function if they can't get an answer from the OS about user age.
Re: (Score:2)
It'll break everything.
If a toaster is running a low level RTOS, how does that toaster verify the age of its users?
Do linux compilation scripts have to refuse to compile if someone doesnt compile the youthbanner.so module
Will my automatic telescope tracker now require me to punch in my drivers license into its little LED panel?
Technologically illiterate dystopian stupidity.
Linux (Score:3)
Good luck getting non-USA hackers to add this to Linux. Good luck preventing kids from downloading and installing Linux from non-USA sources.
Or are these geniuses going to outlaw an entire OS?
most server run LINUX so good luck banning that an (Score:2)
most server run LINUX so good luck banning that and going ISS
Re:Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry, the systemd team is already on it!
Re: (Score:1)
And all that's required to bypass liquor store age verification laws (which some people seem real fond of using as a real-world analogy) is a kid swiping the stuff from their parent's fridge. Oops. We don't really go through extraordinary lengths to age gate things even in meatspace; a car for example, will start and drive just fine as long as you have the key and can physically reach the controls, regardless of your age.
Realistically, all this has to cover is OSes that are preinstalled on mainstream cons
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And then you will find that lots of things become inaccessible if you are not running one of those mainstream systems. So instead of a free and open internet, you have "the microsoft network".
Re: (Score:2)
you very much do not need good luck to prevent kids from installing linux
Re: (Score:2)
Well yes, we already have plenty of banking/"security" apps that will only run on a phone. Now strictly speaking Android is Linux, but it's getting locked down tighter and tighter.
Re: (Score:1)
Lawmakers may eventually declare that social media, games, and other web services check the age verification provided by your web browser or operating system, and refuse access if it is not present or unverified. So sure, Linux does not have to provide age verification, but good luck doing anything interesting online without it.
They won't let you buy hardware (Score:2)
That will run Linux.
This is a systemic problem. You cannot solve it by hiding in your own little world. You are going to have to engage with politics or you are going to have to get used to having no rights and no privacy.
And if you are currently engaged with politics and you lean right, you're going to have to stop doing that. Because this think of the children bullshit is entirely driven by the right wing. You are going to have to shift the country back to the left. Or again you are going to have
Self-Attestation? (Score:5, Insightful)
If there really is no ID check, then it's a self-attestation of age by whoever set up the device.
So, essentially the same as what websites have been doing since forever, except you only punch it into the device once, not per-site.
Out of all the proposals I've seen floating around, this is by far the one I'd take. Presumably parents supervise which devices their kids use much more easily than which app they're on, and will set the child's real age on the device prior to giving it to them.
Re: (Score:2)
> If there really is no ID check, then it's a self-attestation of age by whoever set up the device.
I'm not gonna go read the law right now because I only have to worry about California's version, but I would be stunned if they didn't require that you do it in some effective fashion, and then the question will be, what fashion is going to be effective? And it's going to come down to government ID verification, and if the OS vendor doesn't want to do it themselves, then it will be handed off to an approved vendor. And that's going to boil down to, you guessed it, id.me.
Re: (Score:2)
The US isn't the [1]worst [slashdot.org] when it comes to this by far.
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/20/2150205/uk-mulls-australia-like-social-media-ban-for-users-under-16
Re: (Score:2)
Every government wants to implement this. Most are less overt about it. They are waiting for a black swan event to impose it. ie 9/11 and the Patriot Act
Re: Get out of the US (Score:2)
You would have to leave planet Earth to get away from the madness. And it is far easier to kick off the lunatics than for the majority or sane people to leave
Sounds like a win (Score:3)
It checks the "doing something to save the children" checkbox, checks the the privacy checkbox, and check the easily bypassable checkbox. For parents that actually care, they can give their kids devices that have the kid's age properly set (and not give the kid admin on the device), so it provides reasonable path. Sure, some smarter kids could figure out how to bypass, but those kids are gonna bypass anything. For adults, it's a low configuration bar, and doesn't require exposing actual birthdate or anything sensitive to a lot of apps. For lawmakers, they have done "something".
Weakness of the law doesn't excuse its overreach (Score:2)
Of course, protecting children is just a convenient lever to justify this giant overreach into everyone's privacy. The ultimate goal of these people is to minitor everything everyone does. Once the mechanisms are in place, they will be used. And they will eventually be used to their full extent no matter what assurances we are given at the start.
Your justification that the law will be easy to bypass if flawed, too. Passing laws that we know will be ignored or bypassed just destroys public respect for th
The intent is universal surveillance and silence (Score:2)
The protecting the children narrative doesn't correspond to the consequences of these bills.
It's taking away control over the operating systems you run on your own equipment and putting it under the AI big brother gaze so that government can enforce any future rules they so desire.
I can imagine the big tech players like Google, Microsoft and Apple will love this because it means they can lock down their operating systems even more, while sucking up even more info. Broadening their dominance over user leve
Re: (Score:2)
How does it work? I can guarantee that many Linux distros haven't been modified to handle this. And I doubt that any BSD version has, except, if you want to be very generous, Apple.
Does it mean you can't use Slackware in California or what?
Children lie about their age (Score:3)
People did it when I was a teenager.
People did it when my parents were teenagers.
People did it the in the American Revolutionary War.
People probably did it when the pharaohs ruled Egypt.
Anyone that thinks they can protect children with age verification is either:
1) A moron.
2) A lying scumbag that wants to track adults using the "think about the kids" scam.
I am thinking about the kids, you cannot stop them from lying about their age because they care far more about tricking you then you do about stopping them.
sounds awesome. (Score:2)
I definitely want this on my smart fridge.
Solution in search of a problem. (Score:4, Informative)
Kids only have access to the Internet if someone gives them that access. Generally speaking, that's going to be at home, on a phone, at school, or on a friend's device.
Parents already have the tools to regulate what their kids can do online through existing parental control tools baked into mobile OSes and apps. So a solution like this is superfluous.
Schools lock down their devices already, so that's a non-issue.
If they're on a friend's device, that's not something age-verification legislation can address unless they expect the device to take a face scan every 30 seconds to verify that the user using the device is the one who authenticated their age already.
So again I ask - what problem are we solving exactly?
Re: (Score:2)
These parental controls are generally easily bypassed, and kids usually know a lot more about this stuff than their parents.
Old hardware is available cheaply or even for free, and is more than adequate for accessing "forbidden" content, there are plenty of public wifi networks a kid could connect to.
Any "controls" that exist will be seen as a challenge for the kid to overcome.
And what is an "operating system"? (Score:4, Informative)
I noticed it's not explained at all in the bill.
Does that mean my car entertainment system needs to verify my age? My phone? My watch? Alexa? My "smart" light switches?
Does the account I made for my Playstation work on all Playstation devices, or just the one where I made the account?
Pretty sure my cable modem has an operating system... But I'm not even allowed to upgrade it, how am I supposed to log in and verify my age? Wait, my whole family uses that same cable modem. Does that mean it's going to need to segment traffic based on the device that it's connected to? That would mean that the OS of all my devices would need to publish my age to all my other operating systems so they can properly sort me into the correct box.
Re: And what is an "operating system"? (Score:2)
And what about people who visit the state? Will people who go to Colorado be in violation of the law for having a device without age verification?
Good Luck securing it..... (Score:1)
this is every web vulnerability ever from a user interface context. at some point web engineering becomes all user access policies that developers use to ignore standardization.
All they need to get around it.. (Score:2)
Is a fake ID that says McLovin.
Re: (Score:3)
Yep...parents all the way. /S
We should let kids go into physical stores for porn. alcohol, weed too....oh wait they require ID.
Best leave it online where PDFs can scam kids into performing for them....
In the meantime take away a woman's right to her own body, take away rights of medical professions to do actual healthcare for women. Let the churches say what is what while they have a major PDF problem.
This same attitude is why the USA leads in school sh00tings and mass sh00tings.
You have the
Hmm ... (Score:2)
Protecting people from things/material they have to actively seek out to do/view. Parents, it's not others people's job to prevent your children from doing/viewing something, it's yours. Adults, if you don't want to do/view something, don't go looking for it. Everyone, take responsibility for your own actions. Some people, stop being so puritanical and wanting/trying to control others to conform to your narrow-minded thinking -- you know who you are. /rant
They should go fuck themselves (Score:2, Insightful)
I can verify that these lawmakers are old enough to go fuck themselves.
Re:They should go fuck themselves (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I applaud them. These are non-technical people who are doing their best to find a solution to a real-world problem that still satisfies the concerns of more technical people.
It may still be a flawed approach (arguably *any* age verification is inherently flawed) ... but compared to so many other mindless idiot lawmakers in other states, who pass all sorts of idiotic nonsense with a "won't someone please think of the children!" mindset (and zero desire to understand or address technical concerns), these folks are rocking it!
Not a rhetorical question (Score:2, Insightful)
What problem do you think they are trying to solve?
Re: Not a rhetorical question (Score:3, Informative)
Do you not think that, as a parent, you should have the ability to prevent your young children from seeing violence and sexuality (including videos of murders, extreme fetish videos, etc.)... without having to completely block them from the Internet?
I don't know of any reasonable people who are against solving that. What reasonable people are concerned about are the side effects (for adults) of any solution.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't prevent anyone from seeing such things unless you keep them locked in a windowless room. Sooner or later they are going to come into contact with such material. If this material is forbidden it will also be more attractive, so kids will share it amongst themselves at school for example.
So given that sooner or later kids are going to come across this material unless you take draconian measures to prevent it, surely its better that when they first encounter such things they do so under the guidance
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Sooner or later they are going to come into contact with such material.
Correct. This is as it should be. Young kids are simply not equipped to deal with some of this. It can cause real trauma. As kids get closer to adulthood, parents with good judgement will relax the controls as they see their kids' judgement developing.
If this material is forbidden it will also be more attractive
So this isn't any of your business, regardless of how true your statement may be. Parents get to parent how they see fit
Re: Not a rhetorical question (Score:2)
You know, I'm both old enough to have kids and young enough to have grown up with unfiltered internet in the late 90s. And plenty of gore and sex in good old fashioned PG13 and R rated movies in the mid 90s.
Boys being boys, we got our share of nudity over 56k dialup and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of us didn't grow up into sex perverts and deviants. It's the genxers and boomers who couldn't really handle it apparently. Not sure what the greenhaired zoomers are on about, but they seem to be a small min
Re: (Score:1)
Or you could be a good parent that doesn't allow children unfettered, unsupervised access to the internet. Parents who are all for this are failures.
Re: (Score:3)
> Honestly, I applaud them. These are non-technical people who are doing their best to find a solution to a real-world problem that still satisfies the concerns of more technical people.
Mark my words now, what you're applauding is snitchware. It will wind up with a specific legal requirement to a specific standard which can only be met by assholes whether that's in the bill now or not. The state will interpret its legislation through the courts in a way that produces odious requirements. The only reasonable thing to do when the state is requiring that your operating system collect information about you is fight against it.
Re: They should go fuck themselves (Score:1)
Did you read my post? I fully granted that any age verification, of any sort, might be inherently flawed.
But still, I applaud these lawmakers for taking a very different approach from most other lawmakers, who have tried to solve this in much worse ways (many of whom didn't appear to even understand their own country's constitution!)
Re: (Score:1)
> But still, I applaud these lawmakers for taking a very different approach from most other lawmakers
I'll applaud when they take their approach and stick it up their ass.
At no point will I applaud anything about this idea. Make parents take responsibility for parenting again.
Re: (Score:1)
Lawmakers are not responsible for YOUR children. Stop letting the law replace you as the parent just because you agree and are lazy and/or stupid.
Re: They should go fuck themselves (Score:2)
Probably would be better to make it illegal for children to use the internet or a computer. These gadgets are really fucking them up.