8 ms·

UK porn watchers could have faces scanned

51 points by intunderflow 3y ago

device_id 3y ago
[flagged]
- benj111 3y ago
  As a father of young children, the internet wasn't quite there for watching porn until the turn of the millennium. And a few more years again for mobile. Compared to today's landscape where teenagers and younger have a mobile phone and 24/7 access to porn. I have my concerns. I'm not anti porn, but I'd like my kids to have a healthy relationship with it, and with future partners.
aatd86 3y ago
"These are the singles in your area" but government sponsored.
pcdoodle 3y ago
No way this will happen, scanned with what? PC? Mac? iOS? Linux? Give me a break with these articles.
- adammarples 3y ago
  With a camera
- vidarh 3y ago
  I agree it probably won't happen (it's after all not the first time the UK government has tried similar nonsense). But e.g. the EU settlement scheme offered two options for me to scan my passport: Use a phone with NFC, or go to a government center to have it scanned there. There's nothing fundamentally preventing them from offering a similar set of options for this nonsense where the fallback for anyone who hasn't got a smartphone would be to go to a government center and tell some government official that they want to be authorized to watch porn (though given the current government, more likely it'd be outsourced without proper tender to a company run by the friends of a government minister). I'm going to predict that 1) a contract will be negotiated with someone with political connections, 2) the scheme will be silently scrapped after significant cost overruns and failing to produce a viable solution.
westmeal 3y ago
First of all this headline is hilarious, secondly not everything has a webcam and thirdly, of course its from the UK.
- Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
  Of cause it’s the UK. They also thought it would be a good idea to sell “porn passes” in local shops that you would use to prove your 18… The only reason you don’t think “oh that’s just China” is that the idea is just being floated in the news atm and hasn’t just been implemented. :-p
  - blitzar 3y ago
    Mobile networks already (and have for 10 years +) required proof of being over 18 to access anything they consider "adult content".
    - Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
      Very minimal requirements, so much so I forget they even exist. In my experience A brief chat to customer services is enough to bypass it (without the need to hand over ID), and that only happens for pay as you go, As contract plan presume you are of legal age (because well you have to be to sign up for a contract), and then its a simple question during sign up and/or a toggle in the account management site (which a password reset for needs access to the sim card for a text message, not exactly rocket science for a kid to get around). Same goes for fixed line broadband. Edit: oh and that doesn't include bypassing the network lockouts via using your own DNS, Using Apples IP address protection (basically a VPN), or any other 3rd party VPN..
calderknight 3y ago
just ban it
- zogrodea 3y ago
  Agreed.
- calamari4065 3y ago
  Porn has existed for literally all of human history, so good luck with that
  - calderknight 3y ago
    Topic at hand is internet pornography
vidarh 3y ago
If they try this, we'll have an excellent source of adversarial training of systems for better live 3d overlays of faces from photos on webcam output. Also the "big brother is watching" ad campaign for vpn providers is pretty much writing itself.
sonicanatidae 3y ago
Why in the holy hell as the world's governments taken such an interest in the sex lives of their citizens? Why is it their business in any way, shape or form? I'm not talking about excluded topics like CP. They are illegal and rightly so. This isn't that. This is monitoring who watches what, regardless of how this is written, and lied about to get passed.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > Why in the holy hell as the world's governments taken such an interest in the sex lives of their citizens? You're looking at it too narrowly. Anything anyone can "take away" from you has power over you. It's a dominance play. Government controls how you engage in sex. Telcos control who you talk to. Media controls what you see and hear. Automakers control how you move. Banks control how you trade. I'm sure there are more examples (look how difficult it is to homestead anywhere), but the point is that in gatekeeping functions critical to our existence, we're always beholden to someone. Capturing two of these forms the basis of a cult. No surprise the Church used to worm its way into as much of this stack as possible; these days it's Big Tech doing the same.
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  > Why in the holy hell as the world's governments taken such an interest in the sex lives of their citizens? Or their morals? Or their property? Or their family matters? Best of the philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists had thought about that but failed to produce any comprehensible answer. It's a mystery completely out of the man's reach, apparently. On a serious note: of course they're interested in that because that's one of the most basic and fundamental parts of human society and it has always been regulated, in one way or another, in all of the societies for millennia.
  - sonicanatidae 3y ago
    Yes to some, no to some. First, I'm not referring to 623 BC. I'm referring to the past decade or so, where there has been a huge spike in the government snooping on people's sex lives. The tech today, never existed before, so while I don't doubt there was maybe some sort of monitoring, historically, you can add all of it up and it still won't equate to the data gathering of today's tech. The usual for this type of control is Religion, not specifically chasing someone down who rubbed one out, to a pic of a furry.
cbeach 3y ago
How will they stop kids from running stable diffusion locally and generating any kind of porn they like? I suspect that will be an unintended side effect of this authoritarianism. The Conservative Party was previously the more libertarian option in the U.K. (effectively) two-party system. I’m not sure how we push back against authoritarianism?
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > How will they stop kids from running stable diffusion locally and generating any kind of porn they like? A dedicated chip that slaps Margaret Thatcher's face on all generated output.
- blitzar 3y ago
  The Conservative Party has always been the party of curtain twitching NIMBY authoritarians. The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist, the greatest trick the conservatives ever played was convincing the world that they were conservative.
- wait_a_minute 3y ago
  > I’m not sure how we push back against authoritarianism? This is one of the reasons why the 2nd Amendment is a good thing. However in the UK they lost track of why a population needs to be able to defend itself when a tyrannical regime tries to take over…
  - PhasmaFelis 3y ago
    In the US, the party in favor of unrestricted gun access is also the party that performatively hates porn, so I'm not sure if that would help in this case.
    - wait_a_minute 3y ago
      I do not think there is enough data to base this statement on. I am not aware of any high quality surveys or polling or better that would assess what overlap there is between people who highly favor freedom, with those who highly favor the 2nd Amendment, with those who highly oppose porn, with those who highly favor face scans.
codesnik 3y ago
"Let me see your O face!"
- westmeal 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zH9Zca1vRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zH9Zca1vRM
  - mindslight 3y ago
    [dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Facial age-estimation tech, that will scan users' faces and use software to infer if they are an adult, is also an option. Wouldn't this be trivially defeated by software which presents as a webcam and provides...any image you choose? Or is this also assuming a privileged, out of control of the user, remotely accessible camera?

51 points by intunderflow 3y ago

device_id 3y ago

[flagged]

benj111 3y ago
As a father of young children, the internet wasn't quite there for watching porn until the turn of the millennium. And a few more years again for mobile. Compared to today's landscape where teenagers and younger have a mobile phone and 24/7 access to porn. I have my concerns. I'm not anti porn, but I'd like my kids to have a healthy relationship with it, and with future partners.

aatd86 3y ago

"These are the singles in your area" but government sponsored.

pcdoodle 3y ago

No way this will happen, scanned with what? PC? Mac? iOS? Linux? Give me a break with these articles.

adammarples 3y ago
With a camera
vidarh 3y ago
I agree it probably won't happen (it's after all not the first time the UK government has tried similar nonsense). But e.g. the EU settlement scheme offered two options for me to scan my passport: Use a phone with NFC, or go to a government center to have it scanned there. There's nothing fundamentally preventing them from offering a similar set of options for this nonsense where the fallback for anyone who hasn't got a smartphone would be to go to a government center and tell some government official that they want to be authorized to watch porn (though given the current government, more likely it'd be outsourced without proper tender to a company run by the friends of a government minister). I'm going to predict that 1) a contract will be negotiated with someone with political connections, 2) the scheme will be silently scrapped after significant cost overruns and failing to produce a viable solution.

westmeal 3y ago

First of all this headline is hilarious, secondly not everything has a webcam and thirdly, of course its from the UK.

Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
Of cause it’s the UK. They also thought it would be a good idea to sell “porn passes” in local shops that you would use to prove your 18… The only reason you don’t think “oh that’s just China” is that the idea is just being floated in the news atm and hasn’t just been implemented. :-p
- blitzar 3y ago
  Mobile networks already (and have for 10 years +) required proof of being over 18 to access anything they consider "adult content".
  - Crosseye_Jack 3y ago
    Very minimal requirements, so much so I forget they even exist. In my experience A brief chat to customer services is enough to bypass it (without the need to hand over ID), and that only happens for pay as you go, As contract plan presume you are of legal age (because well you have to be to sign up for a contract), and then its a simple question during sign up and/or a toggle in the account management site (which a password reset for needs access to the sim card for a text message, not exactly rocket science for a kid to get around). Same goes for fixed line broadband. Edit: oh and that doesn't include bypassing the network lockouts via using your own DNS, Using Apples IP address protection (basically a VPN), or any other 3rd party VPN..

calderknight 3y ago

just ban it

zogrodea 3y ago
Agreed.
calamari4065 3y ago
Porn has existed for literally all of human history, so good luck with that
- calderknight 3y ago
  Topic at hand is internet pornography

vidarh 3y ago

If they try this, we'll have an excellent source of adversarial training of systems for better live 3d overlays of faces from photos on webcam output. Also the "big brother is watching" ad campaign for vpn providers is pretty much writing itself.

sonicanatidae 3y ago

Why in the holy hell as the world's governments taken such an interest in the sex lives of their citizens? Why is it their business in any way, shape or form? I'm not talking about excluded topics like CP. They are illegal and rightly so. This isn't that. This is monitoring who watches what, regardless of how this is written, and lied about to get passed.

jstarfish 3y ago
> Why in the holy hell as the world's governments taken such an interest in the sex lives of their citizens? You're looking at it too narrowly. Anything anyone can "take away" from you has power over you. It's a dominance play. Government controls how you engage in sex. Telcos control who you talk to. Media controls what you see and hear. Automakers control how you move. Banks control how you trade. I'm sure there are more examples (look how difficult it is to homestead anywhere), but the point is that in gatekeeping functions critical to our existence, we're always beholden to someone. Capturing two of these forms the basis of a cult. No surprise the Church used to worm its way into as much of this stack as possible; these days it's Big Tech doing the same.
Joker_vD 3y ago
> Why in the holy hell as the world's governments taken such an interest in the sex lives of their citizens? Or their morals? Or their property? Or their family matters? Best of the philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists had thought about that but failed to produce any comprehensible answer. It's a mystery completely out of the man's reach, apparently. On a serious note: of course they're interested in that because that's one of the most basic and fundamental parts of human society and it has always been regulated, in one way or another, in all of the societies for millennia.
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  Yes to some, no to some. First, I'm not referring to 623 BC. I'm referring to the past decade or so, where there has been a huge spike in the government snooping on people's sex lives. The tech today, never existed before, so while I don't doubt there was maybe some sort of monitoring, historically, you can add all of it up and it still won't equate to the data gathering of today's tech. The usual for this type of control is Religion, not specifically chasing someone down who rubbed one out, to a pic of a furry.

cbeach 3y ago

How will they stop kids from running stable diffusion locally and generating any kind of porn they like? I suspect that will be an unintended side effect of this authoritarianism. The Conservative Party was previously the more libertarian option in the U.K. (effectively) two-party system. I’m not sure how we push back against authoritarianism?

jstarfish 3y ago
> How will they stop kids from running stable diffusion locally and generating any kind of porn they like? A dedicated chip that slaps Margaret Thatcher's face on all generated output.
blitzar 3y ago
The Conservative Party has always been the party of curtain twitching NIMBY authoritarians. The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist, the greatest trick the conservatives ever played was convincing the world that they were conservative.
wait_a_minute 3y ago
> I’m not sure how we push back against authoritarianism? This is one of the reasons why the 2nd Amendment is a good thing. However in the UK they lost track of why a population needs to be able to defend itself when a tyrannical regime tries to take over…
- PhasmaFelis 3y ago
  In the US, the party in favor of unrestricted gun access is also the party that performatively hates porn, so I'm not sure if that would help in this case.
  - wait_a_minute 3y ago
    I do not think there is enough data to base this statement on. I am not aware of any high quality surveys or polling or better that would assess what overlap there is between people who highly favor freedom, with those who highly favor the 2nd Amendment, with those who highly oppose porn, with those who highly favor face scans.

codesnik 3y ago

"Let me see your O face!"

westmeal 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zH9Zca1vRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zH9Zca1vRM
- mindslight 3y ago
  [dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 3y ago

> Facial age-estimation tech, that will scan users' faces and use software to infer if they are an adult, is also an option. Wouldn't this be trivially defeated by software which presents as a webcam and provides...any image you choose? Or is this also assuming a privileged, out of control of the user, remotely accessible camera?