EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2026/04/17/eu-age-control-the-trojan-horse-for-digital-ids/

by gasull • 3 months ago

361 214 3 months ago

juraj.bednar.io

https://web.archive.org/web/20260426040218/https://juraj.bed...

wolvoleo3• 3 months ago

Site seems slashdotted? Or HNd? Do we call it that here? :)

QuantumNomad_• 3 months ago

Some call it the HN hug of death. Same like with Reddit.

dmitrygr• 3 months ago

DEAD, archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20260426040218/https://juraj.bed...

dang• 3 months ago

Thanks, we'll put that in the toptext too.

kimi• 3 months ago

Archive returns 503 ATM....

wolvoleo3• 3 months ago

In any case, it was always presented as a toolbox that countries should adapt into their apps – so judging the app by itself does not make much sense, it depends on how these techniques are implemented in each country’s verification app. There will be no single EU app, despite what the honchos of EU say.

Even more reason to make the "demo" app do things correctly because it's very unlikely that all member states actually implement things correctly.

The internet is scary, parents think they can’t protect their children from many bad things happening, and someone came to provide a “solution."

A simple solution is just not providing your kids with a phone or computer.

Don't forget that many sources of porn will not obey this. Think the pirate bay will ask for age verification? If they obeyed the law they wouldn't even exist.

It's a solution for nothing, as the article points out too.

6r172• 3 months ago

Whether there is a single app or not doesn't really matter - i'm more concerned about the database itself and the inter-connectivity between them and most importantly by which control acceptance protocol we abide between states.

The idea that we want a single database or a network without any kind of control is frightening me

delusional6• 3 months ago

What do you mean by "control" here? It's my understanding that EU law afford citizens the right to correct data that is wrong about them.

croes3• 3 months ago

A simple solution is just not providing your kids with a phone or computer.

That’s not a solution. Nowadays many schools require access to a computer.

rcbdev• 3 months ago

These schools, at least here where I am in Europe, have to provide their pupils with devices. How else would it be fair?

eikenberry• 3 months ago

Putting the computer in a common room addresses this case as they have access but the public space adds a level of restraint.

coumbaya• 3 months ago

ai;dr

zetanor• 3 months ago

It's HN, nobody reads articles even when they're not slop.

mayama• 3 months ago

With the way elections changed after social media became big. Govts want to have control back, like they did before. And are increasingly curbing open internet with boogeyman CP or terrorists, new fear of mass AI CP. Ultimately we'll get 2nd hand version of great firewall and social credit system. Some "liberal democracies" already have root of such systems implemented.

delusional6• 3 months ago

I don't know if it has anything to do with changes in elections directly. My government has been talking for a while making the case that social media use makes us dumber, sadder, and more scared. I believe it's true that they also see that playing out in elections, but that's not where they want to solve a problem.

Wouldn't it be strange if solving a problem didn't affect elections?

coldtea2• 3 months ago

My government has been talking for a while making the case that social media use makes us dumber, sadder, and more scared. I believe it's true that they also see that playing out in elections, but that's not where they want to solve a problem.

The governments themselves are "dumber, sadder, and more scared". They are worried because social media puts regular people talking on equal footing to official propagandas (being able to reach everybody else). That's what they fear, because they have the lowest approval ratings and legitimization in over half a century, and they're also making everything shittier and shittier to the benefit of their corporate overlords.

pjc502• 3 months ago

This has been noticeable since Tahrir square; I used to say that Twitter gives you a revolution whether you need it or not.

But it's becoming increasingly clear how badly compromised the whole thing is with fake opinions and enemy propaganda.

I don't like either of the options. I don't like control by the state, and I don't like control by mad billionaires. I don't like the far right cesspool of 4chan, but can't disagree with their position that they shouldn't have to care about OFCOM.

kivle• 3 months ago

I think it has more to do with digital verification for social media in a hope of killing bot accounts that are interfering in the public debate. Some of the biggest social media influencer accounts turns out to be Chinese/Russian bots trying to fuel hate/division our democracies, and with LLMs it is only getting worse. Some form of digital ID to verify social media account identities is probably the only hope left of having a real public debate.

vaylian• 3 months ago

Then the politicians should be honest about this goal. The best way to solve a problem requires understanding what the problem is. If we pretend to solve another problem, the solution for the actual will be less than ideal.

js8• 3 months ago

The bot problem is solvable by using a web of trust system. You don't need a digital ID for that (i.e. you don't need to tie your digital world identity to a real world identity, nor you need a central agency to manage these).

In web of trust, anyone could publicly certify who they know is a real person (i.e. validate a link from their id to another id). Then, if you received a message from someone, the system would find the path in the graph of real people you trust, to determine the trustworthiness of the source. So if the account is a bot, there would be no path from it to you in the trust graph.

The advantage is that everyone could supply their own subjective trustworthiness score, altering the graph. They could even publish it, so that other people could use trustworthiness assesment of accounts they personally trust.

The big issue with a system of web of trust is that it is too efficient, and just kills commercial advertising (and also propaganda). Because that is all about overcoming the natural web of trust that humans have.

sunaookami2• 3 months ago

Some of the biggest social media influencer accounts turns out to be Chinese/Russian bots trying to fuel hate/division our democracies

This is propaganda, none of those supposed networks exists or were successful in anything and when the media do show some supposed accounts they don't have a lot of views. Please stop falling for this, your democracy sucks because the politicians suck and the people want change so they turn to extremist parties.

petre4• 3 months ago

That's actually great for social media companies to create a profile on you and feed you ads. They don't care about the bots or denocracy. The only hope for a real public debate is to show up in person at the debate.

Pooge2• 3 months ago

Govts want to have control back

By forcing us to go through devices completely controlled by US companies?

esperent3• 3 months ago

What are you referencing here?

graemep4• 3 months ago

Yes. Control of information and citizen's behaviour is a higher priority for them than sovereignty.

subscribed4• 3 months ago

The governments don't mind AI CP even made with real children as long as you're a billionaire openly selling access to the generator.

That kind of serves as a proof to your opinion it's a boogeyman.

petre4• 3 months ago

They possibly do, which is why France invited Musk to attend a hearing.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/musk-summoned-by-fr...

But they would gladly use that for more control.

coppsilgold• 3 months ago

It seems unlikely that a true Zero Knowledge Proof system for things like age verification would ever be allowed.

Also, remote attestation doesn't work that way and for good reason. Under a true ZKP system, a single defector (extracted/leaked/etc key) would be able to generate an infinite number of false attestations without detection.

esperent3• 3 months ago

It seems unlikely that a true Zero Knowledge Proof system for things like age verification would ever be allowed

This article is about EU age verification which is specifically and definitely stated as using zero knowledge proof in all technical docs that I've seen:

https://eudi.dev/2.5.0/discussion-topics/g-zero-knowledge-pr...

subscribed4• 3 months ago

In that case Google play integrity cannot be used.

It certifies devices running on Oreo (because vendor didn't provide updates),meaning there are almost infinite vulnerabilities that will allow to leak the keys.

narennayagam• 3 months ago

Interesting point about ZKP systems. The challenge with age verification is balancing privacy with enforcement — any centralized solution creates a honeypot for data breaches.

grey-area9• 3 months ago

Digital ids are inevitable in my view, just as digital currency has become inescapable because it is more convenient and efficient, these ids will be issued and things like paper proofs of identity will fall away over time. Physical tokens like bank cards and driving licenses are neither necessary nor a good solution in a networked world.

Our focus therefore should be controlling what governments can do with them - for example disallowing blocking/removing someone’s id, just as we should disallow removing citizenship.

fc417fc8024• 3 months ago

I think even digital IDs will tend to exist as physical tokens? Also worth noting that you can have a digitized and cryptographically signed ID on "paper" which can serve much the same purpose (security, machine readability) as an electronic one. Where electronic tokens shine (for IDs or otherwise) is attesting to the physical possession of a single copy.

izacus2• 3 months ago

Many EU countries already issue a chipcard IDs which can be used to auth for government services (via NFC or a dedicated reader).

So yeah, I'd expect those to move to a phone as an alternative to the card

grey-area9• 3 months ago

I don’t see why they would bother with physical tokens nor would they be popular - things like passports are really quite expensive to manage and largely unecessary these days. An app or identity on people’s phone might be a good stopgap.

However I suspect biometric methods of id verification will render carrying anything redundant long term.

The databases for digital id already exist, they’re just not fully utilised yet and these databases will always be centralised.

jojocool0501• 3 months ago

Inevitable indeed. Rabbit hole ahead. UE has been for many years the way to prevent "controlling what governments can do with them". https://escapekey.substack.com/p/europe-goes-full-digital

shevy-java3• 3 months ago

I don't see it as inevitable at any stage. Why would it be necessary? Why is access to information tied to a digital id suddenly? Also, where is digital currency inscapable? I can not pay with a bank note suddenly?

Physical tokens like bank cards and driving licenses are neither necessary nor a good solution in a networked world.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with physical tokens. You could reason that this or that has more or fewer advantages but to insinuate that digital is always better, all of the time, is simply wrong.

phillc73• 3 months ago

I can not pay with a bank note suddenly?

In some places you cannot. I was in London post-COVID and there were a bunch of tourist things, like a riverboat on the Thames, where you could only pay with a card. Went to a craft cider bar out in the countryside and again, they didn’t accept cash. Personally, I think businesses should be forced to accept all legal tender, which means cash stays as a first class payment method, but that’s not how it is in many places.

On the other hand, in Austria there are many places that are cash only, especially small restaurants in the countryside or community sporting events with coffee bars.

graemep4• 3 months ago

just as we should disallow removing citizenship.

However lots of countries do allow removing citizenship In the UK it is a political decision too. Lots of countries allow locking people out of other things (e.g. freezing bank accounts). I therefore doubt we an effectively prevent this.

I do not see the problem with physical tokens. They are simple, do not create a single point of failure (if I lose my phone I still have my cards and cash), robust to network and systems failures. What is the drawback? Having to carry a few cards?

wongarsu• 3 months ago

The drawback of physical tokens is that you can't use them online. I don't want to spend an hour waiting in queue at the city hall for something I can do online in 10 minutes.

The ideal state is having both physical and digital ID. But that will lead to a slow erosion of the willingness to carry physical ID, even if it stays available (which I believe it will for many decades. Even if national ID cards and drivers licenses were to go digital only, passports won't)

grey-area9• 3 months ago

Yes and I find this deeply wrong - what politician would you trust with this decision? Debanking is also wrong in my view.

I think we should focus on laws against things like that which lead to tyranny rather than attempting to stop progress.

Cash in particular is expensive to produce/process and no longer honours the promise printed on it, it will be phased out as the transactions with it approach 0%.

Cards are really no different than a token in a phone and don’t work for long either in the absence of a network (both will work offline but do need to be reconciled). I haven’t habitually carried a card in about a decade, I think for similar reasons to cash they will die off by general consensus.

zelphirkalt3• 3 months ago

Actually, there is a good point in this: What if I don't want to carry my phone somewhere? I shouldn't be obligated to do so. For example what if I want to go to a demo? Or I simply don't want to be location tracked for an afternoon. There needs to be a non-electronic alternative. I guess we could carry some QR codes with us, that can be scanned by police officers.

bootsmann5• 3 months ago

for example disallowing blocking/removing someone’s id

If I lose my passport I am obliged to call the police so that they revoke it, if I lose my phone with my digital ID on it they also need to be able to revoke that ID.

grey-area9• 3 months ago

Sure, I meant disabling without replacement, making someone an unperson. Obviously updates and replacements would be required as with passports.

I don’t think governments should be allowed to do that. They do it with passports and I think it’s deeply wrong but also it would be far more damaging and immediate with a digital id (which will inevitably be used for a lot of services) - similar to being refused a bank account.

Muromec6• 3 months ago

I can't help but think people mean something else when they hear "digital ids" then what they are. Like I have a digital id from the government of the Netherlands that I use to log into their government systems to declare taxes or what not. I had an X509 certificate issued by Ukrainian government and have their app to do the same.

It's bad somehow?

jdrek1• 3 months ago

The problem is what follows. They will make it mandatory to use the electronic ID to do anything, resulting in total surveillance. And if you happen to land on their "bad" list (which eventually everyone will), you're locked out of life completely. No banking, no traveling, no communication with anyone, no buying food, nothing.

abc123abc1234• 3 months ago

How beautifully naive. When was the last time you controlled the government? This idea, that we just trust the government to be good, and that it listens to the voters needs to die.

The government should always be assumed to be evil, and work towards complete and ultimate power. It is a cancer that spreads.

Therefore decentralization, and a private libertarian society, is the only ethical and long term sustainable society possible. Every other society, eventually collapses into authoritarianism and the burning of the jews.

mentalgear• 3 months ago

Not a fan, but unfortunately a "digital proof of citizenship" seems to inevitable due to the en-shitification of the internet, autocratic state actor's doctrines to destabilise free societies through disinformation that matches well with social media's en-rage-ment business model, and the more recent AI slopification / AI bots running wild.

The question is whether citizens can build enough pressure for such verification systems to be state-based and truly zero-knowledge (akin to the EU's) versus having the private sector 'verify' each user to siphon data, profit off it (Thiel's Persona) and fortify surveillance-capitalism and autocratic administrations.

phatfish3• 3 months ago

At the moment in the UK (where any mention of digital ID sends half the population mental) you have to email a whole raft of ID docs and personal data to estate agents, mortgage brokers, solicitors etc. to get an ID check done. Or use a private ID service that can have a cost associated and may not be any more secure than my passport scan sitting in someones M365 mailbox. You can't know.

I'd be happy to have a government service replace all that nonsense, where a one-time challenge code could verify my ID. There is now a UK.gov "One Login" authentication used by other government services that is essentially a digital ID as far as I can see. It just needs to be made mandatory for ID checks by law.

Such a service can also be used for age verification with the correct privacy controls in place, far better than all the dodgy age verification services that exist now.

Digital ID and age verification are going to be a part of the internet going forward. I'd rather have a government service that (in a functioning democracy) has accountability to the citizens that use it. ID verification is also a natural monopoly, so the government picks a winner anyway.

croes3• 3 months ago

Where is the big to what we have now?

Not much more freedom, but the control is outside voters reach.

Just ask Nicolas Guillou

isodev• 3 months ago

We’ve had eID for a long time and I’m fine with it becoming more prominent online. Same for age verification, once we settle on a way to do it without US/Palantir being involved in the process.

shevy-java3• 3 months ago

There will be no single EU app, despite what the honchos of EU say.

This shows that the EU commission is systematically lying.

This problem used to exist in the past with Leyen - she is ultimately a lobbyist and that has to stop. Friedrich Merz too by the way - there is a reason why recent polls indicate that the german voters want him out of politics at once.

The EU needs to reform. Right now lobbyists have too much abuse-power. The age sniffing is a great example here - isn't it suspicious how this goes in sync right now in so many countries? Who is paying for this? Nobody needs that, except for some companies.

Big platforms must verify age for certain content.

But why is their concern, suddenly my concern? I see no need to be in support of any law that would require people to ID in order to access information on the world wide web. That's very obviously the real goal and agenda - everyone with a bit of brains sees this.

It is the same EU that hates these American corporations and wants EU alternatives for everything

That's not true. The EU commission I consider a lobbyist group, for instance. They lie and lie and lie.

The EU parliament is not much better - you can buy legislation quite easily: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...

Nothing will seriously changed. The current way how the EU is structure is totally wrong; and it will not be fixed because those in the system, benefit from it financially. See the recent attempt to force EU taxpayers to pay more for those goons. They constantly try to inflate their own budget, at our cost.

yet no one can make a phone usable for age verification without the blessing of Google

Indeed. We have total incompetence at the leadership level. It should be replaced with technical prowess, but as long as lobbyists such as Leyen are running the show, nothing will change. See the corruption scandals when she was still in Germany. Interestingly the AfD is also full of that, yet voters don't see it - Weidel was working for many years for Goldman sucks. So a next generation of lobbyists will replace the older generation soon. That's why this system how it is, is unfixable. It is broken by design.

jeroenhd7• 3 months ago

When did any EU representative ever lie about this? It has been very clear from the beginning that every member state would make their own apps.

I don't really see what internal German politics and lobbying has to do with anything.

As for the "Google" part, that's up to the member states to decide. In essence, the law states that apps should be secure and untampered. It doesn't specify any remote attestation partner, nor even the strict need for remote attestation although it's hard to accomplish any kind of phone-based authentication security without it. Android's native attestation solution also exists and works for phones sold without Google services, though it's an absolute pain to work with.

Sailfish, pmOS, or any other mobile OS could implement the security requirements if they ever get enough serious popularity to convince governments to make apps for them.

jeroenhd7• 3 months ago

It's not a trojan horse, it's spelled out in the decision, debates, and legal texts to be the explicit goal. The age verification requirement was picked both as a means to prove the technology is sound and as a simple starting point for a full digital ID solution.

The EU already has some form of digital ID in fact, every government provides some kind of OIDC-like service tied to either smart cards or accounts that authenticate the user against a government. The digital wallet solution is an extension to that system that will allow foreign EU citizens to authenticate themselves more easily (eIDAS 2 already implemented an OIDC-like solution but implementation isn't automatic) as well as offer to store the (often mandatory to carry) ID on your phone.

The "what if you buy alcohol for your kids" sscenario of somone giving someone else their age verification tokens is tired and nonsensical. You can already do that in the real world. We accept that risk and, depending on the country, make it a crime in case they do catch you. It hasn't made liquor stores send someone along to see you drink your booze or watch you enjoy your porn mag.

tpm2• 3 months ago

The digital wallet solution is an extension to that system that will allow foreign EU citizens to authenticate themselves more easily

Is there a roadmap and/or a timeframe for that? I have a Slovak ID same as the author, when will it be useful for accessing internet services?

jeroenhd7• 3 months ago

Age verification has taken about three or four years to reach the concept stage, and that's the first stage that will be rolled out.

The legal framework behind all this was released all the way back in 2014 and has been officially adopted ten years later.

Officially, by December 2026, each member state must have at least one official wallet solution available for its citizens.

That said, eIDAS 2.0 also mandated that, as of this year, whatever Slovak digital identity solution has been rolled out so far must also work in other member states. In my experience, different governments adopt different foreign identity services at different paces, most of them seemingly missing the deadline.

Banks and other private institutions permitted to ask for ID are supposed to accept the wallet solutions by late 2027.

I expect deadlines to be missed given we've barely gotten the age verification PoC done, but with the groundwork laid out, things might just work out.

pzo3• 3 months ago

The difference you barely have to show you physical ID - mostly only when interacting with bank, signing document, government. I never got asked when buying alcohol and if asked at least I would only let to have a look instead of snapping a picture.

Imagine if suddenly every grocery, pharmacy, petrol station, parking place, restaurant, bar etc. now would ask you for your ID AND would snap a picture and store in their database - you wouldn't be happy about it.

maccard• 3 months ago

If you want an example of how this will be abused by companies, https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/12/airport-shops-...

rglullis6• 3 months ago

Yeah, imagine if every convenience store had CCTV security filming everyone 24/7.

Oh, wait...

jeroenhd7• 3 months ago

Why would they? The only reasons to show ID I can think of is when watching porn or maybe when buying alcohol online, though I doubt stores will want to risk driving customers away with that.

vladvasiliu• 3 months ago

It's pretty common to have to show some form of state-issued ID when entering bars and the like in France if the bouncer thinks you're underage. Ditto for buying alcohol. Hell, in the US I've had to go back to the hotel to grab my passport to enter a bar. My French driver's license and balding head weren't enough.

But you do have a point about "storing the picture". I think that's why it's very important for whatever solution is chosen to be something that proves you're old enough without saying who you are.

mambru• 3 months ago

That's not now it works.

At least in my country, the ID app lets you generate 3 levels of QR:

Level 1: Just age (also shows a photo on the screen). This is what you would typically use to go in a club or buy alcohol.

Level 2: Adds Full name, birth date, validity date.

Level 3: All the data you can see on the physical ID card.

broken-kebab2• 3 months ago

You can already do that in the real world.

This argument stays on the sand of inadequate analogy. The way that flaw is described in the story it allows industrialization of bypassing the feature. It's huge difference with the "real world".

phatfish3• 3 months ago

The article is actually one of the better ones I've read. The technical analysis is somewhat above my head, but appears reasonable, and it is suggesting solutions in some cases rather than just dismissing the concerns of parents, and going full privacy nut about our democratically elected governments.

All i would say is that the solution doesn't need to be 100% effective. The same as real world "age gates" or ID verification (which is just some random person looking at your ID in most cases) are not.

The precedent set -- that everything online should NOT be immediately accessible to children -- provides parents (the ones that care at least) with some backup when trying to raise their children. Ultimately society as a whole is responsible children, and i don't want to live in a society that thinks it is fine for kids to scroll any content on social media and watch porn as soon as they are able to work out how to use a smartphone.

The replay attack mentioned may always be a loophole, I'm not sure. But any site hosting the replay attacks should be targeted for shutdown/blocking. The "source" ID must come from somewhere as well, so that could be a route to shutting them down (there are 100's of age verification requests against one ID each day, that's a bit weird...).

If parents are helping their kids bypass age gates or straight up don't care their 11 year old is watching porn, then there is not much to be done in that case. The key thing should be keeping the majority of children in compliance to give cover to the parents that do care. Not giving all the power to bad parents and social media companies as is the situation the moment.

jeroenhd7• 3 months ago

And unlike in the real world, there's little to no real benefit to it online.

What value is there to industrializing any of this? Kids who will pay someone for their age tokens to watch porn or create social media would probably be smart enough to download a free VPN instead.

Even in the very worst case scenario for the designers of this system, where large amounts of people manage to extract their tokens and hand them out for free, the downsides everyone fears won't apply anymore. I think a lot of people might be happy about that.

pando85• 3 months ago

Age verification today, digital ID tomorrow, mandatory tracking forever. The pattern never changes.

snvzz• 3 months ago

To understand the age verification push, got to follow the incentives[0].

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfukJ6uVHXs

PunchyHamster• 3 months ago

Many countries have digital IDs for years now.

It's not for digital IDs. It's for surveillance.

Digital IDs are fine (and desired even) if you are only requiring it for GOVERNMENT (same entity that released them) communication. Push for age control is scheme to make that info available for private companies and that's the trojan horse here.

jeroenhd7• 3 months ago

that info

That info being: {"over_18": true} or maybe {"over_16": true, "over_18": false} with a government signature.

Might be a problem if you've got a Vatican ID, I suppose? Though they don't participate in this system of course.

bootsmann5• 3 months ago

Real cryptographic unlinkability schemes like BBS+ or CL signatures would produce uncorrelated proofs even on reuse. This is not that.

This discussion was already led ad nauseam with the Swiss eID proposal (which is supposed to be EUID compatible) and the reason why the system relies on rotating signatures instead of ZKPs is that the cryptography hardware modules in most phones don't support algorithms such as BBS+. This creates a tradeoff where the states would have to essentially roll their own crypto storage and bank on this being safer than simply rotating through batches of signatures generated by the hardware cryptography modules (which is largely unproblematic in the grand scheme of things). The major advantage of using the hardware module is that it makes it much harder for attackers to extract the actual secret should the device ever fall into someone else's hands, something that happens to phones from time to time.

Overall, as with every digital ID thread, it would help if some of the fearmon gering commentators would read the actually EUDI specs for once in their lives as it already addresses most of the concerns copy-pasted into these threads https://eudi.dev/1.6.0/architecture-and-reference-framework-....

raverbashing• 3 months ago

Overall, as with every digital ID thread, it would help if some of the fearmon gering commentators would read the actually EUDI specs for once in their lives

Yeah

I'm getting really really tired of the "crying wolf" crowd

thomasingalls3• 3 months ago

Just because the government is not out to get you at this exact moment doesn't mean that a future government won't be. Surveillance capacity seems to be a one way ratchet.

jeroenhd7• 3 months ago

To be fair to some of them, across the Atlantic the Americans are implementing similar laws in absolutely ridiculous ways.

Many Americans don't even have ID (and plenty of those are reluctant to the general concept of any kind of government ID), let alone any kind of digital ID. However, their governments are pushing frankly weird and absurd ID verification laws to businesses online. Meta seems to be bankrolling lobbying around these laws, so whatever their game is, it's probably very bad for normal people.

If you're coming from a place where the government tells companies they need to set up a system or hire private companies to verify users' ages without providing any kind of official mechanism themselves, leading to ridiculous hacks from cheap and incompetent "age verification" companies, I can understand why the European system seems absurd.

If the US is going to adopt their weird age verification laws, the least they could do is fork the European system already laid out for them. Put a little American flag on it, call it "America First Christian Age Truthness" or whatever the people in charge like, but at least keep the basic privacy properties intact.

fauigerzigerk2• 3 months ago

Have you read the spec? I have, but I don't understand how the revocation flow is supposed to be safe against collusion between issuers/governments and site owners to reveal the identity of (age verified) users.

bootsmann5• 3 months ago

Can you model the flow of the attack you want to mount here?

Is it the following:

Issuer revokes the wallet of Alice and then publicly says “This ID is Alice btw” and then verifiers can check their lists to see whether any of their received signatures are revoked (in which case they must be Alice)

gspr• 3 months ago

I'd very much like to read up on the various proposed ID systems, pros and cons and experience. Do you have a good starting point to recommend beyond "(insert country) eID" on Wikipedia?

jonathanstrange2• 3 months ago

A digital ID not based on EU hardware should be taken down with prejudice. It's a direct threat to national security. US companies and, by extension, US government authorities have control over every popular endpoint (mobile phones, desktop OS).

Besides, if someone wants a digital ID, it already exists in many countries. Phones with NFC chips can read many passports, e.g. Germany has an "electronic passport" since 2005. It's barely used, though, because it's bullshit.

TacticalCoder• 3 months ago

How's this going to work now that there are, arguably, already more AI agents online than humans? Or close to it. Most of the web if fake AI slop already. Many websites are more crawled by bots than by real people.

We'll need to apply for digital IDs for bots and AI agents?

pveierland• 3 months ago

It's frustrating to see how shortsighted and tech-illiterate politicians are on these topics. This article from Norway today presents the attitude of the minister of digitization as simply "Social media companies are making billions and we expect them to adequately implement age verification systems with solutions that respect privacy and we will fine those who fail at doing this".

The fantastic irony is that in some weak attempt to protect against the "evil big tech companies" they directly facilitate increased mass surveillance and removal of individual rights, instead of choosing more scalable and robust answers such as funding and promoting the development of protocols and open standards that can be applied voluntarily and in a decentralized manner to help mitigate these problems.

I have computers side by side on my desktop running Linux, and it is amazing to me how I can call `wormhole send --message hello` and receive it on the machine next to me, knowing that only I can receive this message, without it running through an age approval mechanism, without it being client-side scanned, and without being logged in some government database.

This is the century of AI and robotics - technologies which can facilitate great concentration of power and wealth. Gradually introducing mechanisms that facilitate digital fascism seems like a really bad way to guard us against this.

https://www.nrk.no/norge/datatilsynet-bekymret-for-personver...

lukeschlather• 3 months ago

A decentralized government ID system is a contradiction in terms. Government ID is and must be centralized. For me the decentralization is precisely the problem. I shouldn't end up with my government ID registered in a newspaper's database because I bought a newspaper subscription. Decentralization is not good here. In order for identification to work, decentralization requires that everyone who tangentially has access to your identity has persistent verifiable knowledge of your identity. Even in a centralized system it is hard to avoid this.

sublimefire• 3 months ago

There are slight contradictions in this open list of complaints with a bit of guesstimates.

As mentioned digital ids are a thing and this is where everything is moving. The author mentions that it would be great to use it but does not believe it is possible and then says age checks will lead to it and it is bad. There are reasons why digital ids will be forced and one of the big ones is because bigtech companies do not want to invest into looking after the content, e.g. misinformation, bullying, etc. Not to mention the inability of companies to control the age of users, and everyone knows this is not in the interest of advertisers.

Criticism is good but it also has to offer some options. Saying everything is bad bad does not help. All in all I have kids and it is very difficult to filter all of their internet traffic and I am not your average parent. Kids are reading crap and get brainwashed everyday, and the idea that you should just let them is ridiculous. Cyber bullying is a thing and I wonder what would you do when your kids get to be on the receiving side.

IMO this is trying to blame politicians who represent their electorate who wants this without acknowledging that the issue is in huge ad funded companies whose interest is to gather all that private data without any supervision or filtering. BTW Data is constantly being leaked from large companies as well, not only gov entities.

In relation to guesstimates the author jumps to possible conclusions without sufficient proof.

What would the author suggest to fix the main issues though?

imrozim• 3 months ago

I am 20.idea showing to govt I'd just to browse feels wrong even if the crpto works the habit of verifying Identity everywhere is the real problem.

sunshine-o• 3 months ago

In the end the dilemma goes like this for most users:

- If you rely on Big Tech for your identity and data you loose all privacy but can expect some security.

- If you go with your government you still loose your privacy but also all security.

I saw on HN just in the last month that the EU and France got hacked and very sensitive data is now on the Internet.

moezd• 3 months ago

Internet used to be a cyberpunk escape hatch. Now we want to get rid of any and all anonymity at all costs, to the point of waking your phone up with a face id and your internet history tied to your government ID 1-1. This is just sad.

Bender2• 3 months ago

I do not know about others here but I will not be participating in anything that requires ID verification. Such domains will be blocked on my DoH servers both private and public though I doubt many here would want to use something other than Cloudflare DoH.

Anyone else here planning on blocking sites that require age / ID verification? Are there any publicly available domain deny-lists that could be added to uBlock yet?

sunnybeetroot• 3 months ago

I guess you can start by blocking every social media website?

Bender2• 3 months ago

Yes. I think I would block the social media sites that implement Age/ID checks as they implement them.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 3 months ago

May I share a different perspective

"EU Age Control" is not a Trojan Horse. The software (app) does what it purports to do. No one _wants_ to use it

The "Trojan Horse" is the corporate mobile OS. It's a "free gift". People such as the author happily accept it. These people _want_ to use the corporate mobile OS for what they believe it is, which is something other than software to defeat privacy for the benefit of Google, Apple and their advertiser business partners and customers

People don't think of the software as performing that function. Meanwhile it is the core "business model" of its distributor. The corporate mobile OS is a Trojan Horse

This is why the "age verification" app only works when using the corporate mobile OS. The author states:

"The apps will not work unless you have a Google or Apple approved device. Forget Linux, GrapheneOS, Huawei, after-market firmwares. It's part of the security model."

The bogus justification for requesting ID is not "age verification" it is "security". That's the nonsense reason why the computer owner cannot use an OS he/she compiles himself/herself and why people happily accept the Trojan Horse. The corporate mobile OS is an instrument of data collection, surveillance and online advertising but that's not how the author sees it. He does not see what's inside, he sees a beautiful "free gift"

EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

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