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Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
- WarOnPrivacy 10mo agoJudge Robert Pitman said that it violates the First Amendment and is "more likely than not - unconstitutional." The Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book. We enjoy 1A protections of speech and assembly. When we consider our rights, the productive, default position is that government is told no (when it wants to restrict us).
- echelon 10mo agoI hope we can use the First Amendment and freedom of assembly to tackle these ID age verification (read: 1984 surveillance) laws. I don't have faith that this will work. We need to amend the constitution to guarantee our privacy. It should be a fundamental right.
- WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago> We need to amend the constitution to guarantee our privacy. It should be a fundamental right. As far as government intrusion into our privacy, it's addressed by the 4th Amendment's guarantee - that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects and that our rights against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. The challenge is that courts repeatedly and routinely support and protect the government in it's continual, blatant violation of our 4A protections. This has allowed governments at every level to build out the most pervasive surveillance system in human history - which has just been waiting for a cruelty-centric autocrat to take control of it. And for the most part, we have both parties + news orgs to thank for this. They've largely been united in supporting all the steps toward this outcome.
- j-bos 10mo agoThe other challenge is that in the modern era the houses, papers, and effects of most people have been partially signed off to corporate entities who are more than happy to consent away their access into our effects.
- irishcoffee 10mo ago> The other challenge is that in the modern era the houses, papers, and effects of most people have been partially signed off to corporate entities who are more than happy to consent away their access into our effects. Do you mean those who rent their homes? I rented for a long time. I bought a house. None of my house, papers, or effects are owned by anyone but myself. I guess a credit union owns the mortgage, but they haven't and won't sell it. To those who will jump to disagree with me about the credit union selling my mortgage: they won't. They don't engage in that market, never have.
- shkkmo 10mo ago> None of my house, papers, or effects are owned by anyone but myself. Do you self host your own email? No? Those are "papers" that your email hosting provider can consent to providing law enforcement access to without a warrant. Do you use search engines? Your search history is in the same boat with the search engine company. Don't use a VPN? All of your internet traffic is in the same boat with your ISP You use a VPN? All your internet traffic is in the same boat with the VPN. The list goes on and on. It is almost certainly true that some company has private information about you that they can turn over without a warrant.
- irishcoffee 10mo agoYou forgot “houses” there, boss.
- shkkmo 10mo agoAmazon's echo and other such IoT devices do extend this to "houses" but isn't quite as ubiquitous.
- nunez 10mo agoBetween AI improvements, laws like this and Telly, we are a few steps away from the telescreen. (I saw a Telly recently. This device should be terrifying, but "free" makes people make weird choices.)
- jandrewrogers 10mo agoIt is difficult to square the notional unconstitutionality of this with the fact that the exercise of other Constitutional rights have long been conditional on age. This just looks like another example. What is the consistent principle of law? I am having difficulty finding one that would support this ruling.
- amanaplanacanal 10mo agoI'm interested: the only one that I can think of that has some limitations is the second amendment? Are there others? As to the first amendment: Although not equal to that of adults, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that "minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection." Only in relatively narrow and limited circumstances can the government restrict kids' rights when it comes to protected speech. (Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205 (1975).)
- jfengel 10mo agoWhy is the second amendment excepted? Nothing in the text says anything different from the others with regards to age. And don't say "because it's insane for kids to buy deadly weapons" because that doesn't seem to figure into any other part of second amendment interpretation.
- mothballed 10mo agoThat didn't happen until 1968 and by that time the constitution was basically toilet paper. The answer is ever since the progressive (and on some occasions, before that) era the constitution was more of a guideline, occasionally quoted by judges much like you can quote the bible to support pretty much anything if you twist it enough.
- wqaatwt 10mo ago> since the progressive (and on some occasions, before that) Wasn’t it the other way around? E.g. the fir amendment was pretty much ignored (barely a guideline) by everyone almost until the 1900s. Even the founders themselves discarded it almost entirely just a few years after the constitution was ratified..
- emptysongglass 10mo agoAll of us in the EU could learn something from this judge's ruling and from the Constitution. The EU is on the fast-track to turning into a vast surveillance state the way things have been going (the increasing rise of arresting people who post mean things on the internet, Chat Control, age restrictions now rolling out in Denmark). We love to regulate here in the EU and now that love of regulation is being weaponized against its own people.
- robkop 10mo agoFor those curious about the "consistent principle of law" here - SCOTUS wrestled with nearly exactly this question in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton earlier this year, and effectively emboldened more of these laws. Previously the Fifth Circuit had relied heavily on Ginsberg v. New York (1968) to justify rational basis review. But Ginsberg was a narrow scope - it held that minors don't have the same First Amendment rights as adults to access "obscene as to minors" material. It wasn't about burdens on adults at all. Later precedent (Ashcroft, Sable, Reno, Playboy) consistently applied strict scrutiny when laws burdened adults' access to protected speech, even when aimed at protecting minors. In Paxton the majority split the difference and applied intermediate scrutiny - a lower bar than strict - claiming the burden on adults is merely "incidental." Kagan had a dissent worth reading, arguing this departs from precedent even if the majority won't frame it that way. You could call it "overturning" or "distinguishing" depending on how charitable you're feeling. The oral arguments are worth watching if you want to understand how to grapple with these questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckoCJthJEqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckoCJthJEqQ On 1A: The core concern isn't that age-gating exists - it's that mandatory identification to access legal speech creates chilling effects and surveillance risks that don't exist when you flash an ID at a liquor store. Note: IANAL but do enjoy reading many SC transcripts
- dmurray 10mo agoI would read your summaries of legal precedents again, ahead of lots of people who AAL.
- monocularvision 10mo agoHighly recommend the podcast “Advisory Opinions” if you are interested in Supreme Court analysis.
- cmptrnerd6 10mo agoI also recommend that podcast but I would suggest balancing it with '5-4' podcast or 'strict scrutiny'. Sara and David do a very good job explaining both sides and the law but there are times I think advisory opinions could spend more time on the arguments made by the other side or the weaker portions of their supported view.
- selinkocalar 10mo agoThe technical implementation is messy too. Most age verification systems either don't work well or create massive privacy risks by requiring government ID uploads.
- shostack 10mo agoThat feels like a feature and not a bug given the way some of this stuff is heading.
- DANmode 10mo agoDon’t let it.
- Forgeties79 10mo agoLinkedIn’s verification is maddening
- lostlogin 10mo agoLinkedIn is maddening. If you make the mistake of signing up, it takes years to escape their spam and bs.
- toast0 10mo agoI got years of their spam without signing up. Only after several years did they add a way to opt out an email address without making an account.
- fc417fc802 10mo agoIf they don't provide an easy opt-out link then why not just block the sender and move on? Unlike the less legal operations I wouldn't expect a legitimate business to rotate domains or otherwise attempt to evade blocks.
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- The_President 10mo agoFalse analogy given by this federal judge. App stores are gateways to social environments and unknown or future content. Every book in a bookstore can be verified because the content can be known and audited. Regardless of opinion on the root issue, this judges statement aligns books with the Internet and they are absolutely not the same.
- mjd 10mo agoHave you read the opinion?
- The_President 10mo agoYes and I am addressing the quoted remark above which stands out.
- lmz 10mo agoWith that argument you could argue for age gating wifi access and mobile data.
- The_President 10mo agoBookstore and libraries are environments where content is known. I am not making any sort of argument that identifies internet access as something to age gate. Correct analogies should be used to present the most fool proof argument.
- Refreeze5224 10mo agoWho cares if you don't like his analogy? His point is that this is a violation of the 1st Amendment. Which, by the way, does not mention anything about content being known or not.
- The_President 10mo agoI should have contacted you, Refreeze98, prior to posting my comment that contained far less of an abstraction than you've condescendingly supplemented.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- knodi123 10mo ago> "would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors..." It's a dumb law, but, devil's advocate - isn't that how porn shops work? And porn shops also sell some non-porn items, too.
- killingtime74 10mo agoYes, first amendment is not absolute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
- CrossVR 10mo agoOnly the second one is absolute for some reason.
- fc417fc802 10mo agoFar from it, but I'd rather not drag things so severely off topic. I'll just point out that you used to be able to mail order some surprising (at least by modern sensibilities) stuff.
- tt24 10mo agoInteresting, you think the second amendment is absolute? Can you elaborate on that?
- akerl_ 10mo agoThis is the difference between standing on a street corner shouting "shit" and taking a shit on a street corner. The court is generally pretty adept at navigating the difference between "a bookstore that has some spicy books" and "a sex shop that has some non-spicy books".
- jaco6 10mo agoBookstores that carry porn are porn shops. Apps that carry porn are porn shops, and since the app store has apps that carry porn, the app store is a porn shop.
- paulddraper 10mo agoThat is exactly the case for movies, yes? Movie theatres require a chaperon for minors for R rated films? (And theatres often block some ages entirely.)
- heavyset_go 10mo agoThere is no law mandating this, theaters self-regulated. Movies don't have to be rated and anyone can watch them, as per the law. That's a fundamental difference than the heavy handed approach of using the state to mandate KYC laws to post on the internet.
- zkmon 10mo agoJudges are struggling to find the analogies known to them from the world of 70's. Apps are not like books only. They are like movies, sports, tools, postal mailbox, pet, friend, bank, money, shop, cab and anything you can imagine. When movies require age-restriction, apps can do so too.
- tremon 10mo agoAnd which movies, when broadcast on TV (i.e. viewed inside people's homes), verify the age of everyone watching before continuing? Your analogy is just as flawed.
- mikkupikku 10mo agoWhen movies are broadcast on TV, they must first be censored according to the FCC's rules. Of course this only applies to broadcast, not cable, but cable doesn't get broadcast into people's houses without them signing up for it.
- ImPostingOnHN 10mo ago> cable doesn't get broadcast into people's houses without them signing up for it Neither do apps, so it seems apps over an ISP are more equivalent to adult content on cable tv, which do not require age verification to watch.
- pipes 10mo agoAs a UK subject, with a government that has begun implementing the online safety act, prosecuting people for tweets that clearly weren't inciting violence and getting rid of jury trials for cases with fewer than five years sentences, I look on with envy at your constitutional protections of the individual.
- piekvorst 10mo agoAmerican constitution is underappreciated. It ensures peace but faces profoundly undeserved hatred in return.
- owisd 10mo agoThe problem interpreting the intent of that tweet is that Lucy Connolly herself admitted to authorities she was inciting violence so becomes hard to build a defence at that point. Incitement isn’t first amendment protected in the US either https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-procedure/18-usc-sect-2101.html https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-pr...
- pipes 10mo agoI should be clearer and provide references etc, I was refering to this: https://freespeechunion.org/labour-reported-me-for-racial-hatred-a-jury-cleared-me-in-less-than-20-minutes/?v=7885444af42e https://freespeechunion.org/labour-reported-me-for-racial-ha... The major part of this case is that without a jury trial he'd probably have had zero chance of being cleared. Countless others were persuaded to plead guilty to avoid a long time in prison and then were given long sentences. h he was strong enough not to give in. You are right, freedom of expression in the US doesn't cover inciting violence, but it has an high bar, imminent lawless action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio Yes in Lucy Connolly's case she admitted to inciting violence, though I'm not certain what she did justifies a 31 month sentence.
- TimByte 10mo agoAge gates at the App Store level aren't a narrow restriction, they're a universal checkpoint
- Waterluvian 10mo agoThis protection is not provided by judges or the Bill of Rights. It’s provided by the attitude and behaviours of all Americans. If enough Americans start treating 1A as conditional, the court decisions will slowly start reflecting that. The system won’t protect the people from themselves.
- morshu9001 10mo agoYeah, but slowly is an understatement. Scotus judges serve until death, and they're appointed rather than elected. Even then, they're allowed to make very unpopular decisions.
- IAmBroom 9mo agoThat presumes that SCOTUS represents the "general" attitudes of all Americans. But when they overturned Roe v. Wade, they explicitly went against the majority consensus of Americans. General != majority, but SCOTUS is not a gauge of American opinion. Perhaps a better example is Brown v. Board of Education, at a time when a very large portion of the public was not in favor of integrating the races in public schools. TL;DR: Protection is absolutely provided by the courts, which is the highest authority on what the Constitution (and Amendments) and other laws mean.
- dnautics 10mo agoNot defending the law but questioning your interpretation. Does requiring by law an age of 21 to enter a bar violate freedom of assembly? Lots of important political events and discussion historically in the US have occurred at taverns.
- IAmBroom 9mo ago"Have occurred" probably mostly includes incidents before children were legally forbidden from bars. The 21yo limitation as a uniform restriction only dates back to circa 1980s.
- akmarinov 10mo agoAnd i just got a ton of apps updated and ready for it… Thanks, Obama
- ls612 10mo agoThe only reason the earlier age verification laws were upheld were because they narrowly targeted porn. This is an entirely unsurprising outcome.
- senshan 10mo agoI do not see how this is an argument. If porn can be narrowly targeted, why apps can not be targeted narrowly as well? It seems to be more about harmonizing Texas law (SB2420) under the constraints of federal law (1A), so we will likely to see this question all the way to the USSC.
- etchalon 10mo ago"If porn can be narrowly targeted, why not books?" You cannot narrowly target a medium.
- HDThoreaun 10mo agoApps aren’t a narrow target
- lelandfe 10mo ago> "The Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door" Presumably for the same reason why libraries can not be targeted narrowly
- nunez 10mo agoPorn is a category; apps are a concept Like age laws for vape pens vs age laws for shopping.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- tonyhart7 10mo agowait, so its not affect apple users ???? Google just sent me a email today that Google would push forward
- keerthiko 10mo agoI just received an email from Google Play Developer today morning that they will not be activating the age verification APIs (they will throw an exception) because of the injunction, so there's nothing Apple specific about this.
- Terr_ 10mo ago> they will throw an exception Reminds me of HTTP error code 451, Unavailable For Legal Reasons. I can imagine some future programming language with a LegalRestrictionException.
- senshan 10mo agoIf the judge finds that apps and books are so equivalent, then letting the apps require age verification should do no harm -- everyone underage or privacy-concerned will simply go to the bookstore or a library. Right? Apparently, these are not quite equivalent. Like books and weapons, like books and alcohol, etc.
- ls612 10mo agoThe equivalence is that children have first amendment rights (see Tinker v Des Moines) and speech delivered by the internet is still speech.
- senshan 10mo agoGood point, but judge's reduction it to a book equivalence is misleading and weakens the judgement. Porn may provide a suitable model: not all movies need age verification, so those can be viewed at any age. Some movies, however, do require age verification. Similar age ratings could be applied to apps. For example, Facebook only after 18 regardless of parent's approval.
- ls612 10mo agoPorn has always been treated differently than other speech that is why most age verification laws want for it first. As for your other examples those are all technically voluntary, as it’s unlikely a government mandate that nobody under 17 can watch an R rated movie would pass constitutional muster. Parents can restrict what speech their kids say or hear but the government generally cannot in the US.
- senshan 10mo ago> Parents can restrict what speech their kids say or hear but the government generally cannot in the US. Good in theory, but practically impossible. Peer pressure is too high for parents to be a significant barrier. If you were successful, please share how you did that.
- GeekyBear 10mo ago> we are concerned that SB2420 impacts the privacy of users by requiring the collection of sensitive, personally identifiable information to download any app, even if a user simply wants to check the weather or sports scores. Avoiding the collection of user data in the first place (if it's possible) is exactly the correct approach to user privacy.
- TimByte 10mo agoSoo the strongest form of privacy protection isn't better storage or better policies, it's simply not creating the data in the first place
- xgulfie 10mo agoYes. It's more secure to have your website simply not require the user's SSN than to implement the best security in the world to handle their SSN.
- nine_k 10mo agoInstead of fixing consequences, eliminate the cause? It sounds almost like common sense. I think most laws should look reasonable from the common-sense viewpoint. And when they don't, there should be a serious explanation.
- bigyabai 10mo agoPrivacy legislation and infrastructure are both designed to eschew common-sense. It's how the fed gets away installing backdoors in iOS and Android: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
- nine_k 10mo agoBeautiful :-\ But it's not a backdoor on devices, it's eavesdropping push notifications when they pass Google's or Apple's servers. Corollary: a secure notification should consist of a link with a random number token which opens the real message via an authenticated API on an encrypted channel. Would look a bit weird though. iOS at least has silent notifications for that.
- whatsupdog 10mo agoJudicial Authoritarianism.
- larusso 10mo agoI spend well over a month now on the topic to implement the different half cooked APIs into our apps. The chance that this gets overturned or blocked was high but we had to race anyways. I’m curious what this means for similar legislations in others states line Utah and Louisiana that where planned to get into effect later this year. I very much saw the irony that Texas of all regions tried to restrict the Wild West that is the digital App Store landscape. I think something needs to be done but the implementation proposed is not just problematic but also downright technically impossible. Our first implementation simply failed open for all kinds of errors. Reading the AppStore Age Verification APIs (except Apple) they tried to make this an app problem ala: Playstore is not up to date. Show a message to the user yadayadayada… There so many reasons why this call can go wrong. And the apps won’t start blocking all users just because this call failed. Not to speak about the issue that just for Texas we had to implement said call globally. Because the law states that a an account created after 1.1.26 of a Texas “resident” needs these additional checks. Well let’s see what happens next.
- TimByte 10mo agoMy guess is that Utah\Louisiana will either pause, copy-paste the same approach and hit the same wall
- Palmik 10mo agoI wonder why Texas did not start by targeting NSFW / porn apps specifically, like other states. I also wonder why smut literature (the best selling category of books on Amazon) seems to get a free pass.
- Nasrudith 10mo agoBecause people were so sick of their shit, and they already got their asses beaten so hard that they turned a fundamentalist city into an atheistic one. Banned in Boston used to be a thing. Boston itself got sick of that puritan bullshit. They know that re-litigating that is a road to ruin because 'artistic merit' is so well tread a ground in literature.
- pjc50 10mo agoThe app stores already block porn on their own initiative. > I also wonder why smut literature (the best selling category of books on Amazon) seems to get a free pass. It's popular with women and basically invisible to men.
- pmdr 10mo agoAnd being long-form written text, likely invisible to minors as well.
- AlotOfReading 10mo agoIt's extremely visible to teenagers. They're one of the main audiences for booktok.
- Palmik 10mo agoThere are plenty of NSFW oriented apps, especially in the AI category. > It's popular with women and basically invisible to men. Mostly true, and this might be a reflection of reality, but certainly not a justification.
- TimByte 10mo agoText has always been treated differently than images or video, partly for historical reasons and partly because regulating it runs straight into classic First Amendment landmines
- zkmon 10mo agoSo, the law seems broken as judges question and interpret a law as unconstitutional. If every judge across the country does this, we can dismantle entire law. Awesome. The power of capitalism and platform monoply is at full display.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- TimByte 10mo agoWhat also gets glossed over is the privacy tradeoff: to "protect minors," you end up collecting more sensitive data about everyone, including adults downloading trivial apps
- jwnin 10mo agoin some people's eyes, that's a feature, not a bug.
- einsteinx2 10mo agoThat’s exactly why they keep pushing these laws.
- bobse 10mo ago[dead]
- FpUser 10mo agoI completely agree with the federal judge's rationale and the decision
- tronicjester 10mo agoNot so fast partner, the Supreme Court has upheld as Constitutional, routine and regular administrative requests including documentation to prove age and income. Otherwise, we would have a paper tiger Income Tax.
- jdprgm 10mo agoI don't understand why it feels like out of the blue there is suddenly a rampant and somehow worldwide effort left and right to increase censorship, age verification, etc on the internet. Also I don't get why it seems like so few people care in comparison to years ago during the whole SOPA/PIPA thing where there seemed to be widespread and significant vocal opposition. On the age verification thing the only reasonable proposition i've heard would be a feature that allows parents to set some setting that gives a device users age or age range for mobiles and tablets. I think this covers a reasonable percentage of use cases if your goal is actually protecting kids and not just using that as deceptive cover to sneak in widespread surveillance laws. A simple setting that says for example this ipad user is 10-13yrs is privacy preserving enough and would not negatively impact adults and because it would be coming from the device itself would actually be harder to get around vs VPN's or spoofing IDs, etc. The idea of trying to address all devices in all scenarios is absolutely preposterous in my opinion.
- 93po 10mo agoit's a mixture of 1. easy wins for politicians in conservative areas of "won't somebody think of the children?!?!" so they can look like they're doing stuff to stick it to big tech while appealing to their voters' sensibilities 2. wanting to de-anonymize the internet as much as possible in the name of CSAM and anti-terrorism but is actually about wanting unchecked surveillance. the same reason we have to bang the drum against anti-encryption laws that they try to pass every several years
- Slava_Propanei 10mo ago[dead]