5 ms·

Illinois introduces OS-level age verification law

60 points by rickcarlino 7mo ago

jmclnx 7mo ago
One thing that I find interesting and has me wondering, it is this quote from the article I linked below: >During the legislative window for AB 1043, none of the major open-source institutions submitted formal comment or testimony. https://www.linuxteck.com/california-age-verification-law-linux/ https://www.linuxteck.com/california-age-verification-law-li...
- phendrenad2 7mo ago
  People are slowly realizing that the OSI, FSF, and Linux Foundation have become colonized by MBA flopouts, professional fleabags who jump from one 501(c)(3) to another, collecting a paycheck and laundering influence. If you took the board of the OSI, FSF, and Linux Foundation, and the boards of the World Wildlife Foundation, the ACLU, and the NRA, and scrambled them all, they would duly show up to work the next day and probably wouldn't notice anything beyond their desks being rearranged. What do people think the chance is that someone from the OSI, FSF, or Linux Foundation WROTE this bill? Curious where people's mental models are at.
  - jmclnx 7mo ago
    >What do people think the chance is that someone from the OSI, FSF, or Linux Foundation WROTE this bill? I would not be surprised, but I think it is more likely these organizations are staying quiet due to "donations" from large corporations. Or tax deductible bribes. I know OSI and the Linux Foundation is owned by big tech, but the FSF surprises me.
  - pocksuppet 7mo ago
    or maybe there's just, like, nothing actually wrong with this bill. It requires an age input on the user creation page, and that's it.
    - phendrenad2 7mo ago
      That's how it always starts. First they get a law in place, then they mutate the terms until it accomplishes what they ___actually___ wanted. For instance, first they give the federal government the ability to inspect citizens at the border because somehow, the 4th amendment doesn't apply. Then they define everything within 50 miles of the border a "special border zone" there the 4th amendment doesn't apply. Then later, it's 200 miles.
  - iamnothere 7mo ago
    It’s ICMEC, supported by Meta, Google, and the Gates Foundation. And the Heritage Foundation. https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rr3f3n/followup_to_my_bill_text_comparison_i_traced_who/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rr3f3n/followup_to_... https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the_actual_bill_text_from_5_state_age/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the...
    - phendrenad2 7mo ago
      So it's just Zuckerberg building a moat around Meta. Lovely. Or maybe he's just anti-free-speech because people keep criticizing him. Hard to tell.
curt15 7mo ago
Is there a common group of lobbyists trying to push these laws in multiple states? It doesn't seem like a coincidence that these are all popping up around the same time.
- Elfener 7mo ago
  It's actually two templates that are being copied by different states: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the_actual_bill_text_from_5_state_age/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the...
- pocksuppet 7mo ago
  It's usually not a coincidence that several people or groups of people faced with similar environments perform similar actions. All the hikers ran away screaming around the same time, because they all saw the bear attack. This Illinois law seems to be based on the California one, which is the completely unintrusive one with no mass surveillance or anything like that. It says every operating system must have a parental controls feature, to be enabled or disabled by the device owner, and every app must respect it. In addition, unlike the California one, the Illinois one specifies certain specific things that must be parentally controlled, such as financial transactions, and addictive feeds. All of it can be overridden by the device owner without providing ID or anything. It also clearly specifies the penalty for a violation: it's to be treated as consumer fraud/unfair trading practices.
  - bluGill 7mo ago
    These laws also won't work. Kids are smart, and it only takes one to figure out a bypass and all kids in the school know (and they pass it to other schools).
    - matheusmoreira 7mo ago
      The purpose of the law is to surveil adults. Nobody actually cares about children, they're just political weapons used to justify everything they want to do. Everybody knows only literal child rapists would ever dare to argue against child protection laws.
puppycodes 7mo ago
Aside from the fact that legislating how operating systems can be designed is an extremely bad idea, I don't understand how you can create state laws for ubiquitus or open source software that aren't an absolute joke.
MisterTea 7mo ago
So where does this leave open source operating systems? I also want to know how they think this assinine system will guarantee no one can lie to the computer about how old they are.
- dietr1ch 7mo ago
  If there's any good intentions in the bill, I guess the end-state must be having a way to mark an account as a kid's account and have that user's access limited. This is what old parental controls look like on phones that can be handed off to kids.
  - pocksuppet 7mo ago
    That's literally what the bill says
    - dietr1ch 7mo ago
      Yeah, and the constitution literally says that many things shouldn't be happening. Pens are a weapon for more civilised times than the current one.
      - pocksuppet 7mo ago
        Then why argue anything at all?
- matheusmoreira 7mo ago
  They don't matter. They'll be outlawed soon enough. Their ultimate objective is to make it illegal for a computer to run unauthorized software. One day they will make it so it's illegal for a computer to boot into a non-government approved operating system.
- pocksuppet 7mo ago
  Debian, Fedora et al. will just comply. It's really no problem to do so - it just requires an age input on the user creation page, and for that to be saved somewhere. Porn apps mustn't work if the user is under 18, but I don't think they distribute porn apps. If you build your own operating system out of open-source parts, then of course you don't need to comply with consumer product law, since you're not making a consumer product. If you import an operating system from outside of the US and sell it, responsibility for compliance is on you, like any other imported consumer product.
bluGill 7mo ago
Age verification doens't solve my problems as a parent. Sure I'm worried about things like porn (I know some of the parents around me share a beer with their kids. I'm sure some give their kids porn. They might not buy tobacco, but only because that is now very out) - but that isn't my real problem. My real problem is my kids are using their devices to play game when they should do homework - often the games are just fine but only after the other things are done. (I'm sure this type of thing goes back to the first schools - kids reading the wrong scrolls.) The parent controls on devices is terrible. Android won't let me block hotspot at all (which they have turned on so their can use their school device after I turn the router off for the night). I can limit a game to only 5 minutes - but they have a dozen games like and that is an hour between them all (both not enough to really get into the game, and way too much time when they really do need a study break). I can block youtube, but if there is an educational video they need I have to unblock everything not just that one (or a limited selection). There are new play a game websites popping up daily, and when they to every kid in school is playing until we block it (or more likely the school blocks it as they are all playing in class on the school device) - but trying to block all but a whitelisted set of websites is no better since there are so many legitimate ones teachers really do need kids to see. When you read the above remember not only do I need a solution it needs to be one I can figure out. My degree is human-computer interaction and I'm not sure I can design something I as an expert could make work - but I still need something. Again, this problem is not new. However parents are still mad about the situation and governments who don't really have any better ideas see a need to solve it.
- qup 7mo ago
  Discipline seems to be what you're after. When my dad told me to stop doing something, I stopped doing it. Because the consequences were guaranteed, and not fun.
  - h4ch1 7mo ago
    I mirror what you're saying but non-gentle parenting along with corporal punishment can take a strong psychological toll on a child (speaking from experience). It took me quite a while to find my voice because I a had not-so-great childhood all in the name of obedience and discipline. But I also see, the new generation of parents taking gentle parenting to an extreme raising feral iPad kids who call their moms a bitch. I really don't think there's an optimal framework for proper parenting but a firm hand delivered gently and logically seems to be a good starting point.
jijji 7mo ago
forcing the OS to authenticate the age of the person using the machine? age verification can easily be done by using the DMV as a conduit or using login.gov as a conduit or using id.me as a conduit. these interfaces are already used by dozens of government agencies to authenticate citizens of the United States, and there doesn't need to be any special software installed on the machine
qup 7mo ago
How is this going to play out in reality? Are OSes going to ban sales in Illinois? Are the 8,000 flavors of Linux going to comply? What about adduser? Will we be using bootleg or foreign OSes soon? What an asinine law.
- Simulacra 7mo ago
  I'm actually interested in the more mundane things, like how would this play out with self check out? Calculators? Vending machines…
- gomijacogeo 7mo ago
  Over time, require trusted boot and a TPM. Require a signed age-verification cert to get tokens to access io devices and net. It feels like part of a long play to claw unregulated general purpose computing out of the hands of the masses. Or, at least, get as much as can be moved into the cloud which can be easily surveilled and shut down.
tomhow 7mo ago
The content is inaccessible and I can't find any cached copy, so I'm burying this for now. Will restore if/when there's an accessible source.
- h4ch1 7mo ago
  I can access it fine? The site loads after a quick bot check.
  - qup 7mo ago
    Same, worked with an automatic bot check, not even a captcha.
    - tomhow 7mo ago
      Aha, OK. I see what's going on. For reasons to do with a yak-shaving process that was required for our HN moderation software to work, I use Chromium, and it seems that requests from Chromium user-agents are blocked on that server, perhaps due to a presumption that they're bots. But yes, as tptacek points out, proposed legislation is off-topic here, unless it's effectively certain it will pass.
- Scion9066 7mo ago
  From the General Assembly's website: https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus?DocNum=3977&GAID=18&DocTypeID=SB&LegId=167475&SessionID=114 https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus?DocNum=3977&GAID...
  - tptacek 7mo ago
    This is proposed legislation, isn't it? Proposed bills are generally off-topic on HN; they're a dime a dozen.
    - Scion9066 7mo ago
      I just provided a more direct link but yeah it is just proposed at this point. The age assurance part appears to be substantially similar (very similar verbiage) to the bills that have already passed in California and Colorado though so I guess we'll see it again in a few weeks or months at this point.
hackingonempty 7mo ago
Kids are circumventing this so now we need to enforce it with cryptographic attestation of unmodified approved software on an approved device.
- matheusmoreira 7mo ago
  And anyone who doesn't support this is obviously a child raping pedophile terrorist.
marak830 7mo ago
I'm getting really tired of people trying to use "for the children" to be able to identify every user and remove anonymity from the internet.
- pocksuppet 7mo ago
  There's no identification in this bill. You know what makes me angrier than age verification requirements? People complaining about age verification requirements that don't exist.
  - marak830 7mo ago
    I'm a big believer in the slippery slope, once the smallest hurdle is passed, it's a small thing to say "Oh anyone can lie, so now we need them to ensure it's true."
iamnothere 7mo ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47359401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47359401 for a project planning to actively fight these laws on the technical level. Legal/political means will also be required.
daft_pink 7mo ago
I’m very torn because I think if you accept the idea that age verification is going to happen. An anonymous os level signal is probably the best way to do it vs using some data hungry vendor and sending them all my info and having them collect data on every site I visit. But also I’m not thrilled because I think parents should decide etc. But pragmatically this is a good solution vs what’s happening with age verification solutions that pop up when I use apple private relay and my ip address is showing as being from some southern state.

60 points by rickcarlino 7mo ago

One thing that I find interesting and has me wondering, it is this quote from the article I linked below: >During the legislative window for AB 1043, none of the major open-source institutions submitted formal comment or testimony. https://www.linuxteck.com/california-age-verification-law-linux/ https://www.linuxteck.com/california-age-verification-law-li...

phendrenad2 7mo ago
People are slowly realizing that the OSI, FSF, and Linux Foundation have become colonized by MBA flopouts, professional fleabags who jump from one 501(c)(3) to another, collecting a paycheck and laundering influence. If you took the board of the OSI, FSF, and Linux Foundation, and the boards of the World Wildlife Foundation, the ACLU, and the NRA, and scrambled them all, they would duly show up to work the next day and probably wouldn't notice anything beyond their desks being rearranged. What do people think the chance is that someone from the OSI, FSF, or Linux Foundation WROTE this bill? Curious where people's mental models are at.
- jmclnx 7mo ago
  >What do people think the chance is that someone from the OSI, FSF, or Linux Foundation WROTE this bill? I would not be surprised, but I think it is more likely these organizations are staying quiet due to "donations" from large corporations. Or tax deductible bribes. I know OSI and the Linux Foundation is owned by big tech, but the FSF surprises me.
- pocksuppet 7mo ago
  or maybe there's just, like, nothing actually wrong with this bill. It requires an age input on the user creation page, and that's it.
  - phendrenad2 7mo ago
    That's how it always starts. First they get a law in place, then they mutate the terms until it accomplishes what they ___actually___ wanted. For instance, first they give the federal government the ability to inspect citizens at the border because somehow, the 4th amendment doesn't apply. Then they define everything within 50 miles of the border a "special border zone" there the 4th amendment doesn't apply. Then later, it's 200 miles.
- iamnothere 7mo ago
  It’s ICMEC, supported by Meta, Google, and the Gates Foundation. And the Heritage Foundation. https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rr3f3n/followup_to_my_bill_text_comparison_i_traced_who/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rr3f3n/followup_to_... https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the_actual_bill_text_from_5_state_age/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the...
  - phendrenad2 7mo ago
    So it's just Zuckerberg building a moat around Meta. Lovely. Or maybe he's just anti-free-speech because people keep criticizing him. Hard to tell.

curt15 7mo ago

Is there a common group of lobbyists trying to push these laws in multiple states? It doesn't seem like a coincidence that these are all popping up around the same time.

Elfener 7mo ago
It's actually two templates that are being copied by different states: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the_actual_bill_text_from_5_state_age/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the...
pocksuppet 7mo ago
It's usually not a coincidence that several people or groups of people faced with similar environments perform similar actions. All the hikers ran away screaming around the same time, because they all saw the bear attack. This Illinois law seems to be based on the California one, which is the completely unintrusive one with no mass surveillance or anything like that. It says every operating system must have a parental controls feature, to be enabled or disabled by the device owner, and every app must respect it. In addition, unlike the California one, the Illinois one specifies certain specific things that must be parentally controlled, such as financial transactions, and addictive feeds. All of it can be overridden by the device owner without providing ID or anything. It also clearly specifies the penalty for a violation: it's to be treated as consumer fraud/unfair trading practices.
- bluGill 7mo ago
  These laws also won't work. Kids are smart, and it only takes one to figure out a bypass and all kids in the school know (and they pass it to other schools).
  - matheusmoreira 7mo ago
    The purpose of the law is to surveil adults. Nobody actually cares about children, they're just political weapons used to justify everything they want to do. Everybody knows only literal child rapists would ever dare to argue against child protection laws.

puppycodes 7mo ago

Aside from the fact that legislating how operating systems can be designed is an extremely bad idea, I don't understand how you can create state laws for ubiquitus or open source software that aren't an absolute joke.

MisterTea 7mo ago

So where does this leave open source operating systems? I also want to know how they think this assinine system will guarantee no one can lie to the computer about how old they are.

dietr1ch 7mo ago
If there's any good intentions in the bill, I guess the end-state must be having a way to mark an account as a kid's account and have that user's access limited. This is what old parental controls look like on phones that can be handed off to kids.
- pocksuppet 7mo ago
  That's literally what the bill says
  - dietr1ch 7mo ago
    Yeah, and the constitution literally says that many things shouldn't be happening. Pens are a weapon for more civilised times than the current one.
    - pocksuppet 7mo ago
      Then why argue anything at all?
matheusmoreira 7mo ago
They don't matter. They'll be outlawed soon enough. Their ultimate objective is to make it illegal for a computer to run unauthorized software. One day they will make it so it's illegal for a computer to boot into a non-government approved operating system.
pocksuppet 7mo ago
Debian, Fedora et al. will just comply. It's really no problem to do so - it just requires an age input on the user creation page, and for that to be saved somewhere. Porn apps mustn't work if the user is under 18, but I don't think they distribute porn apps. If you build your own operating system out of open-source parts, then of course you don't need to comply with consumer product law, since you're not making a consumer product. If you import an operating system from outside of the US and sell it, responsibility for compliance is on you, like any other imported consumer product.

bluGill 7mo ago

Age verification doens't solve my problems as a parent. Sure I'm worried about things like porn (I know some of the parents around me share a beer with their kids. I'm sure some give their kids porn. They might not buy tobacco, but only because that is now very out) - but that isn't my real problem. My real problem is my kids are using their devices to play game when they should do homework - often the games are just fine but only after the other things are done. (I'm sure this type of thing goes back to the first schools - kids reading the wrong scrolls.) The parent controls on devices is terrible. Android won't let me block hotspot at all (which they have turned on so their can use their school device after I turn the router off for the night). I can limit a game to only 5 minutes - but they have a dozen games like and that is an hour between them all (both not enough to really get into the game, and way too much time when they really do need a study break). I can block youtube, but if there is an educational video they need I have to unblock everything not just that one (or a limited selection). There are new play a game websites popping up daily, and when they to every kid in school is playing until we block it (or more likely the school blocks it as they are all playing in class on the school device) - but trying to block all but a whitelisted set of websites is no better since there are so many legitimate ones teachers really do need kids to see. When you read the above remember not only do I need a solution it needs to be one I can figure out. My degree is human-computer interaction and I'm not sure I can design something I as an expert could make work - but I still need something. Again, this problem is not new. However parents are still mad about the situation and governments who don't really have any better ideas see a need to solve it.

qup 7mo ago
Discipline seems to be what you're after. When my dad told me to stop doing something, I stopped doing it. Because the consequences were guaranteed, and not fun.
- h4ch1 7mo ago
  I mirror what you're saying but non-gentle parenting along with corporal punishment can take a strong psychological toll on a child (speaking from experience). It took me quite a while to find my voice because I a had not-so-great childhood all in the name of obedience and discipline. But I also see, the new generation of parents taking gentle parenting to an extreme raising feral iPad kids who call their moms a bitch. I really don't think there's an optimal framework for proper parenting but a firm hand delivered gently and logically seems to be a good starting point.

jijji 7mo ago

forcing the OS to authenticate the age of the person using the machine? age verification can easily be done by using the DMV as a conduit or using login.gov as a conduit or using id.me as a conduit. these interfaces are already used by dozens of government agencies to authenticate citizens of the United States, and there doesn't need to be any special software installed on the machine

qup 7mo ago

How is this going to play out in reality? Are OSes going to ban sales in Illinois? Are the 8,000 flavors of Linux going to comply? What about adduser? Will we be using bootleg or foreign OSes soon? What an asinine law.

Simulacra 7mo ago
I'm actually interested in the more mundane things, like how would this play out with self check out? Calculators? Vending machines…
gomijacogeo 7mo ago
Over time, require trusted boot and a TPM. Require a signed age-verification cert to get tokens to access io devices and net. It feels like part of a long play to claw unregulated general purpose computing out of the hands of the masses. Or, at least, get as much as can be moved into the cloud which can be easily surveilled and shut down.

tomhow 7mo ago

The content is inaccessible and I can't find any cached copy, so I'm burying this for now. Will restore if/when there's an accessible source.

h4ch1 7mo ago
I can access it fine? The site loads after a quick bot check.
- qup 7mo ago
  Same, worked with an automatic bot check, not even a captcha.
  - tomhow 7mo ago
    Aha, OK. I see what's going on. For reasons to do with a yak-shaving process that was required for our HN moderation software to work, I use Chromium, and it seems that requests from Chromium user-agents are blocked on that server, perhaps due to a presumption that they're bots. But yes, as tptacek points out, proposed legislation is off-topic here, unless it's effectively certain it will pass.
Scion9066 7mo ago
From the General Assembly's website: https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus?DocNum=3977&GAID=18&DocTypeID=SB&LegId=167475&SessionID=114 https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus?DocNum=3977&GAID...
- tptacek 7mo ago
  This is proposed legislation, isn't it? Proposed bills are generally off-topic on HN; they're a dime a dozen.
  - Scion9066 7mo ago
    I just provided a more direct link but yeah it is just proposed at this point. The age assurance part appears to be substantially similar (very similar verbiage) to the bills that have already passed in California and Colorado though so I guess we'll see it again in a few weeks or months at this point.

hackingonempty 7mo ago

Kids are circumventing this so now we need to enforce it with cryptographic attestation of unmodified approved software on an approved device.

matheusmoreira 7mo ago
And anyone who doesn't support this is obviously a child raping pedophile terrorist.

marak830 7mo ago

I'm getting really tired of people trying to use "for the children" to be able to identify every user and remove anonymity from the internet.

pocksuppet 7mo ago
There's no identification in this bill. You know what makes me angrier than age verification requirements? People complaining about age verification requirements that don't exist.
- marak830 7mo ago
  I'm a big believer in the slippery slope, once the smallest hurdle is passed, it's a small thing to say "Oh anyone can lie, so now we need them to ensure it's true."

iamnothere 7mo ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47359401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47359401 for a project planning to actively fight these laws on the technical level. Legal/political means will also be required.

daft_pink 7mo ago

I’m very torn because I think if you accept the idea that age verification is going to happen. An anonymous os level signal is probably the best way to do it vs using some data hungry vendor and sending them all my info and having them collect data on every site I visit. But also I’m not thrilled because I think parents should decide etc. But pragmatically this is a good solution vs what’s happening with age verification solutions that pop up when I use apple private relay and my ip address is showing as being from some southern state.