Age verification as mass surveillance infrastructure

https://tboteproject.com/surveillancefindings/

by rurban • 4 months ago

296 103 4 months ago

direwolf20• 4 months ago

Don't confuse the passport ID check with the "are you over 18?" checkbox. Both types of laws exist.

alliao• 4 months ago

what do governments get out of this? Like I get it from ad/commercial perspective, but I don't see how this is highly unpopular from governments and still being implemented

Noaidi2• 4 months ago

It depends on the type of government. A totalitarian government gets control out of it.

andai• 4 months ago

The normalization of the nanny state.

Gigachad3• 4 months ago

It’s not highly unpopular. When polled, the Australian public were in favour of banning kids from social media.

The harms of big tech, social media, and addiction mechanics are a lot more tangible to the average person than the anonymity aspect.

elric• 4 months ago

Age Verification and "banning kids from social media" are two different things. The former being an overzealous method of achieving the latter.

Parental responsibility and better parental controls would be a MUCH better way of going about this.

Of course, the polling public is blissfully unaware of the wide ranging consequences of such an Age Verification implementation. People will continue to pave the road to fascist hell with good intentions.

crest• 4 months ago

You have to understand children are only cute little extensions of their parents until they 18, but on that day they better be ready for the real world™. /s

seb12044• 4 months ago

Hold on a minute. Australians are for kids and teens social media ban. They have not been asked if their minors are all face catalogued by pop up companies that these social media companies externalise the verification process to. Insta and others simply opened the need for such 3rd party verification services, it's a way to limit their liability and risk. For Insta and co it's not their problem if these new 3rd party services become the next identity database of minors. I hate it.

gnfargbl2• 4 months ago

Age verification is highly unpopular amongst heavily online users, but the voting population overall is in favour: https://yougov.com/en-gb/daily-results/20250731-91334-2

stingraycharles• 4 months ago

Seems like even under young voters more people support it than being against it; 30% of people aged 18-23 are strongly in favor, 57% of people in that age group supports it.

I wonder why? Maybe these types of surveys don’t consider the implementation / what you need to give up in order to have age verification?

like_any_other2• 4 months ago

Perhaps the voting population should first be made acutely aware of the extent of surveillance they are under, and how much age verification would expand that surveillance, and then be asked again.

They'll claim they already "know", but watch their opinion change after they get paper mail with a list of recently visited websites, or their words written on public or unencrypted chats, or their movement history thanks to phone spyware.

izacus• 4 months ago

Yp, similarly how gambling and smoking restrictions aren't popular among gamblers and smokers.

randusername• 4 months ago

I don't think surveys like this are a meaningful indicator of societal attitudes.

"age verification" is not unlike "DEI" in that everyone will have different schemas about what it is and how it will be assumed to be implemented. We're not learning anything about the public unless we try to pose the question more directly.

https://yougov.com/about/methodology

palata2• 4 months ago

Disclaimer: talking about functioning democratic governments (obviously authoritarian governments are different).

We do regulate a lot of things to protect the people, especially the children. It's common to make it illegal for children to drink alcohol, smoke stuff and drive vehicles, and it seems completely natural for many of us. We usually don't say "it should be legal for a schools to sell cigarettes and whisky to kids, because it's the responsibility of the parents to educate their kids".

The same applies to the Internet: just like we don't want children to be able to buy porn in a store, we don't want them to be able to access porn on the Internet. Or, more recently, social media. So the obvious idea to prevent that is to do what we do in store: age verification.

The problem on the Internet is mass surveillance, and done incorrectly, age verification adds to that. Technically, we can do age verification in a privacy-preserving way, but:

- Politicians are generally not competent to understand "the right technical way", and the tech giants do benefit from surveillance. Even if they mean well, it's hard for them to take the right decision out of incompetence.

- In some big countries that tend to set the technical norms (e.g. the US), many people completely distrust the government. But private companies have no interest in implementing the privacy-preserving solution, so the only viable way is with the help of government regulations (I would argue that the government should be the ones owning the service).

- The vast majority of people, including the vast majority of politicians, do not understand and do not give a damn about surveillance capitalism. It just does not exist for them. And in those conditions, there is of course no reason to even consider a privacy-preserving solution, because it is technically more complex.

I strongly believe that in many countries they mean to do well. They are just not competent to understand the problem, and they turn to tech giants who do understand it, but have an interest in making sure that the politicians implement it wrongly.

gausswho• 4 months ago

In the case of government representatives' role, I think you've reached for Hanlon's razor incorrectly. Malice better explains what is happening here than ignorance. The actual representatives are cardboard with makeup - they each have a whole team of folks doing the detailed diligence on this stuff. That team knows there's a privacy-preserving way to do this. There's a reason those solutions are not the ones on offer. Corporate regulatory capture is behind all of this.

raincole• 4 months ago

This is highly unpopular... on HN. Which heuristically implies it's popular in the real world.

apples_oranges• 4 months ago

So to avoid it all I have to do is stop using social media? LGTM

c7b• 4 months ago

And operating systems...

Noaidi2• 4 months ago

....and email....

musha68k• 4 months ago

Creeping normalcy into the substrate:

Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.

[MERGED]

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/24/foss_age_verification...

As a parent: the hard-won lesson is that most of this threat surface shrinks when you're genuinely present (listen/talk/educate).

p2detar2• 4 months ago

While I agree with you to a very much degree, the last thing teens usually do is listen to their parents. It’s not that simple.

p2detar2• 4 months ago

Every copy of the Persona SDK contains a hardcoded AES-256-GCM encryption key in TrackingEventUtilsKt.java line 22

Seems like a pretty big fuck up, if so. I wonder why did they not use asymmetric encryption.

tom-blk• 4 months ago

There have been pushes to implement similar instances of this for a while now. If this turns out to not be successful, expect futher efforts in a similar guise

kungito• 4 months ago

the internet is not the same as it was 20 years ago. the average person is now online, but they werent before. they dont understand where they are and need protection. there is still space on the internet, or whatever the next place will be, for the enthusiasts and other minorities. if we lose internet, something new will pop up. also, 20 years ago i didnt care so much about privacy on the internet, i just needed a cultural filter for the community im engaging with. privacy has always been a game of cat and mouse. 0 chance things stay the same for long

Findecanor• 4 months ago

I wonder if not private age verification could not be solved with the right cryptographic protocol.

You would have to register using a digital ID with a government agency, to get a age certificate. Most European countries already have digital IDs, used for all sorts of things: such as taxes, online banking etc.

Then that certificate could be used in some sort of challenge-response protocol with web sites to verify your age, creating a new user ID in each session but without divulging anything that identifies that particular certificate.

I'm afraid that the alternative would be that social media would instead require login with the digital ID directly.

verisimi• 4 months ago

Always with the increasing government control. Heaven forbid people go online without training wheels. We need safety nets everywhere - a grazed knee means the state failed.

the_real_cher2• 4 months ago

In my opinion public private key is the base of all identification should be done.

You keep your own private key and the government has your public key.

rmnclmnt2• 4 months ago

Agreed. But would mean having to educate people on security, privacy and computing in general… Pretty sure most government like having most people uneducated on such things

kkfx3• 4 months ago

On which hw? Because a smart-card (if open hardware and FLOSS) might be safe, certainly not a smartphone.

rurban3• 4 months ago

That's what I did with my Austrian goverment ID during the COVID times. Had to go the embassy to identify myself. Those times the Deutschland ticket was still cheap, so no problem.

JimDabell• 4 months ago

This is what Verifiable Credentials are for.

https://walt.id/verifiable-credentials

kkfx3• 4 months ago

And what exactly would be the purpose of age verification? Because defining someone "mature" based on their age is pretty hit-and-miss: we have plenty of adults, even of a certain age, who it's hard to imagine have ever finished adolescence, for instance. On paper, they are absolutely of age. We also had a certain Alexander the Great, emperor of a large part of the planet at 20. We had 13-year-old Pharaohs active in government.

We also have gazillions of examples of apparently innocent rules being used to boil Chomsky's frog, one small temperature rise at a time. For the first time in a long while, I'm starting to sense a certain fanaticism on this topic here on HN, which sounds very much like the molecular agitation when water starts to boil.

tzs3• 4 months ago

And what exactly would be the purpose of age verification? Because defining someone "mature" based on their age is pretty hit-and-miss: we have plenty of adults, even of a certain age, who it's hard to imagine have ever finished adolescence, for instance. On paper, they are absolutely of age. We also had a certain Alexander the Great, emperor of a large part of the planet at 20. We had 13-year-old Pharaohs active in government.

That's really no different than age of consent laws. In the majority of US states (33+DC) that age of consent for sex is 16, 17 in 6 states, and 18 in 11 states.

In Europe it is 14 in 14 countries, 15 in 12 countries, 16 in 20 countries, 17 in 2 countries, and 18 in 3 countries.

All of those are somewhat arbitrary. There are many people over 18 who lack whatever maturity age of consent laws are trying to ensure people have before they can consent.

Going the other way there are people who are under the age of consent in most of those countries or states who are mature enough that there would be no harm in letting them consent.

Any particular population wide age of consent in a state or country then cannot simultaneously protect everyone who needs protection and avoid forcing protection on people who do not need it.

It would in theory be possible to make the age of consent an individual thing where you have to be psychologically evaluated and if you pass you get your consent license. (A hybrid approach might also be possible--a high automatic age of consent like 21, with people under that able to apply for a lower age. Probably also combined with "Romeo and Juliet" laws so people under 21 who just want to fool around with people close to their own age can do so without having to be psychologically evaluated first).

I expect that very very few people would be in favor of replacing the one size fits all approach to age of consent with such an individualized system.

uniq72• 4 months ago

In your proposed scheme, it is in the best interest of web sites to store the certificates from users indefinitely, since it's the only evidence they have that prove that their users are not minors.

Since authorities have the power of accessing that data and identify the user who created the certificate, this scheme is not anonymous.

Authorities can access that data via court orders today, or via a global automatic mandatory data sharing law in the future.

In the example of USA, even if for some reason people still trust the current Government (although ICE already accessed private medical records to track and arrest people), I don't see why they should trust all future Governments which will have retroactive access to all that data.

Epa0952• 4 months ago

So let's make it illegal to keep the tokens more than e.g 6 months.

We should not underestimate the power of the legal system to enforce freedom and anonymity. And on the flip side, it's hard to create a technical system which can actually withstand the force of the government if it chooses to come after you.

I believe the correct battlefield for freedom is the political one, in the end it decides everything. And neither guns nor technical tricks can secure freedom against a tyrannical state.

Wuth that said, it does tickle the curiosity to think about! A technical-political solution could be to introduce a new actor, the broker. It sits between the webpage and the age-verifier, receiving the age-verification, but then giving it's own proofs to the webpage (so acting as a trusted middleman). Now to match up visitors with identities you need to get the data from both the webpage, the broker and the age-verifier.

You could imagine that the broker were in a different jurisdiction, maybe even one without a close cooperation with the government. Maybe people could even choose their own brokers (among certified ones).

sneak• 4 months ago

You misunderstand. The child protection angle is just a cover story. The actual reason for this legislation is to ban anonymous publishing; to ensure that every post on the internet can be linked back to an identity for retaliation.

Verified anonymous age credentials don’t allow for this, so they don’t matter.

The negative privacy implications are the primary features of these laws, not a bug. It is intentional.

O1111OOO• 4 months ago

The child protection angle is just a cover story. The actual reason for this legislation is to ban anonymous publishing; to ensure that every post on the internet can be linked back to an identity for retaliation.
Verified anonymous age credentials don’t allow for this, so they don’t matter.
The negative privacy implications are the primary features of these laws, not a bug. It is intentional.

This is it. Perfect.

The amount of money pouring into surveillance of all kinds (led by companies like palantir and so many others). It's surveillance capitalism without the capitalism.

People create these illusions about a system, about a country and will fight to the end to defend those illusions. The reality of what actually exists beneath the shiny (propagandized) surface is so much darker.

Xelbair• 4 months ago

I hate this approach to them problem, because it is not a technical problem.

Because it focuses on technical aspects and accepts the premise of 'age verification must be solved'. It doesn’t, and discretion what content and and what age children and teenagers can consume should be up to parents.

Not government, nor corporations.

chii• 4 months ago

"but we can't trust the parents to protect the children!"

coffeefirst• 4 months ago

You don’t need anything this elaborate.

Set parental controls on set up, pass a single flag to websites and apps, similar to the Global Privacy Control.

No privacy is lost. Control is handed to the device owner, and implementation is technically trivial.

Epa0952• 4 months ago

Would it not be trivial to make a webpage which proxies sites but with the headers removed, bypassing the whole thing?

tzs3• 4 months ago

That's essentially the approach California is taking.

mirpa• 4 months ago

All you need is one authority which defines who can verify age threshold (government). Those who can verify age threshold need to know your age and identity (bank). Those who are bound to restrict access based on age only need to know in which country you live (website). Nothing else is needed eg. bank, identity and age is not known to the website, website is not known to your bank or government.

anticrymactic• 4 months ago

While this would solve the technical problem at hand. It lacks any safeguard against a very simple workaround of sharing your certificate or even posting for everyone to use.

Fullly anonymous + untraceable attestation --> unlimited certificate sharing

ndsipa_pomu2• 4 months ago

We've already got age verification protocols (in the UK) with the sale of alcohol and tobacco. If we also use those shops to sell age verification tokens (e.g. something like a scratchcard) for a nominal amount, then people could reliably verify that they're an adult without the privacy concerns and without shoddy websites leaking credentials.

akdev1l3• 4 months ago

Then you can give the tokens to whoever you want

that does happen with alcohol but it’s rare because well people don’t wanna go to jail for giving alcohol to a minor

So your proposal would have to come with liability towards the individual

michaelt2• 4 months ago

It can't be solved, but you can choose different loopholes and privacy trade-offs.

Untraceable-but-single-use proof-of-age tokens? Good for privacy, but now that 14-year-old can get tokens from an 18-year-old friend for cash.

Proof tokens that only last a few minutes, or a three-way handshake between user, government and website? Harder to trade, but now the government's got a good guess about who's opening pornhub.

Requiring sites to keep audit records, to prove they really did the verification procedure? Wildly insecure, we don't want them storing passport photos. Requiring them to not keep audit records? Then they can skip or half-ass the checks.

Camera-based age estimation? Once again the 14-year-old can have an 18-year-old pass the check for them. Or a video game character creator or something. Scanning a government ID card? Better hope Dad never leaves his wallet unattended for 5 minutes. And not everyone has a passport or driver's license.

Age attestation from an electronic driver's license, plus face id biometric validation, with a secure element, trusted execution environment and code attestation? Congrats, now you've handed your national ID database to the world's largest adtech/tracking company. Hope you weren't trying to distance your nation from US tech dominance.

heavyset_go• 4 months ago

I've never seen the government try to make laws as damn bulletproof as this one "for our own good".

You'd think we were dealing with access controls for nuclear waste here, but it's actually as banal as preventing a kid from just liking a photo his friend took using an app.

It's insane seeing how this moral panic plays out.

tzs3• 4 months ago

Yes, it can be. Google has a zero-knowledge proof based system in Google Wallet that lets you store store signed credentials such as government ID and then prove to third parties that you have such a signed ID and to disclose to them facts of your choosing from that ID, with the third party gaining no information other than that you have such an ID and that it confirms those facts. This has been running in production for a few months.

They have opened source this [1][2].

This was designed to comply with eIDAS in Europe so that it could be incorporated into the EU Digital Identity wallet.

Current implementations depends on smartphones but it should be possible to make it runs on other devices that have similar cryptographic hardware.

[1] https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu...

[2] https://github.com/google/longfellow-zk

raxxorraxor2• 4 months ago

My government (probably illegally) saves connection information, so any scheme will fail regardless of implementation.

Also, you probably just don't want any gatekeepers here and I think the net will just move to other services.

I would also not want to use my "digital ID" for anything other than perhaps state services.

I prefer to not give an inch as it is not in my interest, so trying to sell any solution is probably futile in my case.

progval• 4 months ago

I wish people would stop sharing this website, their research is massively written by LLMs and looks good at a glance, but it goes in every direction at the same time and lacks logical connections. And the claims don't really match their sources.

Their initial publication was backed by a Git repository with hundreds of pages of documents written in just three days (https://web.archive.org/web/20260314224623/https://tboteproj...). It also contained nonsense like an "anomaly report" with recommendations from the LLM agent to itself, which covers an analysis of contributors to Linux's BPF, Android's Gerrit, and parser errors in using legislative databases. https://web.archive.org/web/20260314103202/https://tboteproj... . The repository was rewritten since, though.

This post follows their usual pattern. The second source they link to has been a dead link for 11 months (https://web.archive.org/web/20250501000000*/https://www.pala...). There's a lot about Persona's design, MCPs, vulnerabilities, data leaks, but nothing proving they use it for mass surveillance. The entire case for it being mass surveillance rests on two points: that they interact with AI companies and they offer MCP endpoints (section titled "Persona's Surveillance Architecture")

caaqil• 4 months ago

It's currently #1 on the front page too. HN drowning in AI slop, what a sight to behold.

Esophagus4• 4 months ago

It seems like there are a few stories HN will really bite on:

- age verification

- chat control

- RTO vs. remote work

- AI bubble

- ditching American tech

armchairhacker2• 4 months ago

I support a rule to ban AI-generated/edited posts.

Initially I thought they'd be fine, because AI-generated isn't intrinsically an issue and the comments can be good. But in practice, the AI posts tend to be slop, and usually there's a better human-written source for the same topic (for example, one of the many other recent "age verification is mass surveillance" posts here).

strgrd• 4 months ago

The vast majority of HN commentors react to the headline and don't bother to click through.

akdev1l3• 4 months ago

seems a lot of people already consumed this as truth.

In the meantime a FOSS maintainer who is just trying to put the pieces in place to comply with the law (as written) got doxxed and harassed.

I hate it here

michaelt2• 4 months ago

In the meantime a FOSS maintainer who is just trying to put the pieces in place to comply with the law (as written) got doxxed and harassed.

In my experience, when a country like Britain passes a censorship law, people in other countries like America don't enjoy being given the tools to comply with it, even if the tools are entirely optional.

cromulent2• 4 months ago

Thank you. Investigative journalism is so important and I would happily believe some of the claims made here, but when I encounter even just a few sentences that sound LLM-written, suddenly I don't trust any of the statements in the source anymore. This site goes way beyond that, with a vibe-coded UI and generated articles. There might be value in what's reported here, but currently it requires a lot of work from the reader.

rurban3• 4 months ago

You dont trust LLM's, writers with an IQ and knowledge much higher than ours? /s

waffleiron• 4 months ago

Yes, and HN isn't a place to submit things that require work from the reader. Or at least that seems to be the consensus by reporting it.

Quite disappointing tbh.

windexh8er2• 4 months ago

There's a lot about Persona's design, MCPs, vulnerabilities, data leaks, but nothing proving they use it for mass surveillance.

And this is where I'd say I disagree. There's nothing about Peter Thiel, and his current business focus, that shows anyone he's not in the business of surveillance. Look at the company he keeps and then align that with many of the things Peter and who he surrounds himself with have said publicly. Thiel is tied to Palantir and Alex Karp. That relationship alone should tell you very clearly that, even if Thiel wasn't actually in the game of surveillance (opinion: he is) he would be very much associated with supporting it.

Karp said: “I love the idea of getting a drone and having light fentanyl-laced urine spraying on analysts that tried to screw us.”

Yeah, sure... I mean I can't imagine the fact that Thiel is tied at the hip to Palantir that he doesn't have an agenda with it other than data analytics and, what, ad rev? Right.

Thiel said, publicly, that everyone should be concerned about surveillance AI [0]. Let's call spade a spade. Thiel is in the business of surveillance whether or not there's some poor LLM generated sites stating that is the case, but then using that as the basis to give Thiel a pass on this because: not enough evidence here.

Thiel is a big part of what's wrong with his class. He's worried about something that he wants to control. He's not actually worried about you or I though. He's worried about someone else having the full surveillance view and so he's aimed to build and be part of that. So, maybe, we shouldn't give Thiel a pass just because he hasn't fully proven himself to be the person that the world paints him into a picture of.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/22/palantirs-peter-thiel-survei...

anon_shill• 4 months ago

For what it’s worth, Persona claims to not work or interact with Thiel.

https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona-2

rurban3• 4 months ago

It's written by a bot to avoid fingerprinting.

https://tboteproject.com/git/hekate/surveillancefindings-new...

da_grift_shift• 4 months ago

Stylometry avoidance is not a valid excuse for factual omissions, fabrications, and "DYOR dumping" (bullshit asymmetry).

seb12044• 4 months ago

Thanks for flagging this. I still think the headline is right, so where are the good sources and articles and outcries?

villgax• 4 months ago

It’s good that for non SFW stuff you do the need the internet anymore, just 72GB VRAM for all modalities. Public internet only for news/payments. Everything else can be offline, no more npm or React garbage needed either for frontend.

ck2• 4 months ago

There is a very simple alternative to age verification

WHO IS PROVIDING INTERNET TO A CHILD

they are liable

there's no such thing as free open access internet without someone paying the bill

unless it can be demonstrated the child stole internet somehow, hacking, etc.

then the person providing the internet is liable for the child's activity

Same if you aren't going to supervise your child and they come home for hours after school and watch porn on the TV

They don't age verify to get cable TV

If you have a credit card, you are an adult

Someone is paying the bill, they are the adult, they are responsible

farfatched3• 4 months ago

What if the parent is not responsible?

Should society help the child, by making it more difficult for them to access harmful material, in the same way we age verify alcohol?

What if the parent is responsible, but finds themselves in a situation where they don't have the time/ability to either educate or set up robust controls? Should we make their responsibilities easier?

toenail2• 4 months ago

With this line of reasoning you can just take away any agency from individuals and put it into the hands of the state, which leads to totalitarianism.

bingoMen• 4 months ago

Instead of controlling the children, we should control the source. Perhaps we should ban harmful content from the internet. Not the government. But we, as users, need content to be reviewed by moderators. People should decide what is harmful. I’m sure we all know what is harmful, not just for children. Psychology shows us what goes on in an adult’s brain, it is exactly the same as what goes on in a child’s brain.

seb12044• 4 months ago

What a nice vanilla view of the world. It's way to simple as an answer and lacking links to reality.

If not before but with high school kids will need access to a computer and also the internet in many schools and countries.

I get that parents are responsible but parents have limited resources. Even the best parenthood will not keep kids from wanting to engage with peers. Even the best filter or block by parents will not cover the www and their millions of websites and services.

razodactyl• 4 months ago

LLM feedback loops are scary because they self-reinforce by training over their own data drift and vulnerable people interface with the noise and follow the downward spiral.

incomingpain• 4 months ago

To ban 16 and younger from social media will require every user to be identified.

The social media also cant just do it themselves with a box, "are you over 16, yes no" they will require to identify against the government.

Essentially this makes it so that every user's actual ID is being tracked. Fully intended to control speech online.

waNpyt-menrew• 4 months ago

More slop. To think this site used to be extremely high signal to noise

edoceo• 4 months ago

It's easy-ish to verify someone is human and of-age without needing any intrusive agent. One big problem is that the folk pushing for surveillance via verification hate that model and have capital to crush the idea. Another is adoption of some system that works; where the perfect blocks what's good which results in no progress.

shevy-java2• 4 months ago

This makes a lot more sense than merely assuming that Meta pushes for it. There are several actors here and none of them have the good of the people in mind. This is why Age Sniffing, labeled "Age Verification", must be abolished. It's an entry door of evil actors here. It has nothing to do with age "verification" yet alone "protecting the chilren" - that's just a lie. I am noticing this more and more, e. g. if you claim to want to protect children, but then you have underage people on youtube create content? So how does that make sense if you want to restrict them on the one hand (or, everyone else, in addition to that) but then let the de-facto censorship here be "loose"? In fact - why are any children viewable on youtube to begin with? That contradicts those age sniffing entities.

ac50hz• 4 months ago

Share an attribute, not an identifier, https://yivi.app/en/for_developers/

seb12044• 4 months ago

This is what I think a gov org should offer, not yet another corporate entity.

grigio• 4 months ago

Thanks for sharing

nedt• 4 months ago

Really seems to be a government issue. I have an app on my phone where I can generate a QR code which proves my age. Nothing else is transmitted - no birthdate or name. And it's based on an open standard. You can read any verify everything yourself. You just can't fake it as you can't sign it without the private key.

Age verification as mass surveillance infrastructure

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