UK age verification for porn sites
It appears that the proposed UK law about who can access porn sites
will require all visitors to identify themselves, or run nonfree
software which is likely to snoop on them.
The intended purpose of that law is to prevent minors from accessing
porn sites. To exclude everyone under 18 is unreasonably strict.
They try to justify this by referring to all minors as "children".
Even a person of age 17 is a "child" according to them.
To exclude only children -- real children -- from porn sites might be
ok in principle. But how to determine whether a given user is under
the specified age? The methods mentioned in the article either
directly require a user to identify perself, or indirectly require per
to make perself vulnerable to being identified.
"Contacting your mobile network provider to allow your phone to access
[porn]" would seem to permit only access through devices that are
untrustworthy: mobile phones, communicating through a cellular
network).
Regarding "Facial age estimation technology", one question is, will
that glimpse of your face enable identifying you by facial recognition?
Another question is, how will they make sure it is operating on a
real-time image of your own face rather than someone else's? I
suspect that will depend on locked-down nonfree software, simply
because I don't see how else it could work.
I don't have a concrete idea of what a "digital identity wallet" would
do, but I have a hunch that only locked-down nonfree software will be
accepted.
If you know more about those last two approaches, and if you can tell
whether they can be made to work without unjust surveillance or unjust
nonfree software, I would appreciate your telling me about them.
GNU Taler can be used for age verification in a way that does not
permit web sites to identify the user, and does not require nonfree
software.