14 ms·

Never Give Them Your Face

749 points by audiodude 3mo ago

inigyou 3mo ago
Age assurance is the law in California and age verification is illegal in California. We should push more jurisdictions to adopt this model. While many age verification laws are malicious mass surveillance, some are because politicians didn't see a better option.
- pseudalopex 3mo ago
  < age verification is illegal in California What law?
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    AB1043. Age signals shall not contain more data than required.
    - pseudalopex 3mo ago
      The law will take effect next year. And it would not cover web sites. Another bill would expand the law.
panny 3mo ago
[flagged]
- rafram 3mo ago
  1. What an odd analogy. Covid vaccination was a clear net positive. 2. When was the last time you needed to show a vaccine card for anything, much less buying groceries?
  - rylando 3mo ago
    Honestly I lost mine, I think all I’ve got is a picture in my phone, and I don’t think it includes my booster shot. I’ve never been asked for it since.
- billyoyo 3mo ago
  What does getting the COVID vaccine have to do with surveillance or grocery shopping? Where I live I simply queued up at the local vaccination centre, got vaccinated, and left. I probably had to show some id or something I guess but no more than accessing any other government services
  - panny 3mo ago
    >What does getting the COVID vaccine have to do with surveillance Google and Apple built contact tracing directly into iOS and Android during Covid. And it's still there. And all they'd need to do to make it opt-out or required is to flash an update with some small print in an EULA. It is WAY more invasive and you probably already gave your phone your face with features like face unlock too. But hey, we can stop this discussion, because the covid vaccinated have flagged this point down for wrongthink. You see, when you want to fight the surveillance sleepwalkers, they fight back. They really really really want to stay asleep.
    - billyoyo 3mo ago
      You're describing contact tracing, that is not vaccination. If people were less afraid of vaccinations, invasive practices like contact tracing would be less necessary. Arguing against that sort of contact tracing may have merits (Not necessarily saying I agree but it's a discussion worth having). Arguing against vaccination is dangerous and ends up with people dead.
      - panny 3mo ago
        >may have You're splitting hairs because clearly you cheered on the surveillance state. That didn't stop with contact tracing. Contact tracing was just the most egregious example. I watched you people scan QR codes to let big government know where you were when going to the toilet. I know where I'm at. I know you just want more reasons to flag my posts for covid wrongthink. Knock yourselves out if it makes you feel better about injecting that stuff. The Director of National Intelligence just posted proof that Fauci funded gain of function research in Wuhan and that submission was flagged immediately. That's the guy you trusted before injecting your covid vax. Try to square that circle all you want with censorship however. The truth is out. I knew I was correct to avoid the mRNA. All the proof exists and supports my position. Edit: Well billyoyo, since HN tells me "You're posting too fast. Slow down." I'll just have to answer you in an edit. >With that in mind, why are you against vaccination? Let's go back to before we knew how it kills people via myocarditis, blood clots, and whatnot. We can map out the options on a very simple chart. On one axis: Get it, Don't get it. On the other axis: You're fine, injury/death. If I don't get it, but I'm injured, the vaccinated will openly mock me. The unvaccinated will care and try to help me if they can. At least someone will try to support me. If I get it but I'm injured, the unvaccinated will blame me for volunteering to get it while the vaccinated will say I'm faking the injury to smear the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. Social media like HN will [flagged][dead] me for talking about my injuries. I'm all alone, no one supports me at all. Don't get it and I'm fine, the vaccinated seethe and talk about seizing my children and making me unemployable until I comply. Get it and I'm fine, I get a krispy kreme donut made with GMO flour + corn syrup and become associated with the bad behavior of the vaccinated. As you can see from this chart, I really don't want to be associated with a lot of self righteous assholes and the only possible benefit is donut slop.
- RankingMember 3mo ago
  Especially in the modern era where peoples' attention is particularly stretched thin, trying to get the average person to add another thing to be hyper-vigilant about is going to be a hard sell. People only have so many spoons. Not sure why you shoehorned some antivax nonsense in there though.
- reinsdyr 3mo ago
  This analogy doesn't hold up. What does covid have to do with anything?
  - functionmouse 3mo ago
    probably a sentiment agent trying to equate being anti-age verification with being an antivaxxer
- brettermeier 3mo ago
  I mean the analogy sounds about right, why downvoting?
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    How does it
    - dwd 3mo ago
      The Covid vaccination should have only been given to those in the population that were most at risk: The elderly and those who were at risk due to comorbidities. 81% of deaths alone occurred in the over 65 population. [1] There's the analogy, it was primarily beneficial for a small group yet for many, particularly Government workers and those in medical care it became a condition of employment that you were vaccinated. [2] There was a lot of pointless policies despite knowing: - Being vaccination did nothing to prevent transmitting Covid, it only gave the vaccinated individual better protection from mortality. [3] - Herd immunity for Covid was known to be impossible once the infection rates got too high with Delta and Omnicron. So trying to vaccinate everyone including children was pointless. [4] - There is Evidence that being vaccinated actually increases transmission of respiratory viruses. You were less likely to get seriously ill, while potentially increasing the risk of passing it on to your family. [5] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/covid/risk-factors/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/covid/risk-factors/index.html [2] https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/1000-nsw-health-workers-sacked-or-quit-after-refusing-to-be-vaccinated-20220114-p59oa8.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/1000-nsw-health-workers-... [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39283431/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39283431/ [4] https://theconversation.com/herd-immunity-was-sold-as-the-path-out-of-the-pandemic-heres-why-were-not-talking-about-it-any-more-183918 https://theconversation.com/herd-immunity-was-sold-as-the-pa... [5] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1716561115 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1716561115
      - inigyou 3mo ago
        IIRC 95% of people had a comorbidity?
  - 3mo ago
- cjs_ac 3mo ago
  > Sorry. You can refuse the covid vaccine, but that won't stop everyone else from blithly accepting it. I agree with this part, but then, I personally don't have a problem with everyone else giving up their privacy. > Then once the critical mass is reached, your ability to buy groceries can just be terminated. The 20% of the population that refuses just isn't important enough to matter. Wut? Can you provide any information about a supermarket chain (or law affecting supermarket chains) anywhere in the world that prevents (or prevented) people who weren't vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter or buy groceries from those supermarkets? Taking these age-assurance laws at face value, I don't have a problem with them, because I think algorithmically-personalised social media feeds are an intrinsically bad product and I don't see anything that any society would lose if they went away. My concern about these laws is how far politicians are willing to go to close loopholes like VPNs, because I think that's where the potential is to cause inadvertent collateral damage to systems that really matter.
  - dwd 3mo ago
    Crazy times https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-10413211/Covid-19-Australia-Northern-Territory-IGA-bans-unvaccinated-Aussies-shopping-groceries.html https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-10413211/Covid-19-Aus...
- inigyou 3mo ago
  When was the last time someone checked you were vaccinated for COVID?
RankingMember 3mo ago
I agree 100% with the message and think we should strive to reject this kind of gathering wherever possible, but it feels like the horse is already out of the barn insofar as each and every one of our faces being out there. Hell, we have entire states where people can't watch porn without uploading their ID. The inertia is such that (I'm in the U.S.) we really need a constitutional amendment at this point to stop this.
- jkestner 3mo ago
  New privacy legislation is about 20 years overdue. Between age verification, privately owned national camera networks, and above all else, data brokers, citizens need to reassert their right to anonymity. In the face of government hostility, at least we here can make more tools like Signal or at least choose not to feed customer data to the beast.
- greentea23 3mo ago
  New people are born every day whose faces necessarily are not out there.
Nevermark 3mo ago
Democracies building the tools of total autocracy. Real but fringe threats used to create the ultimate centralization of leverage. Can we actually think of the children? All the children? Their future? When democracies forget that government is the greatest natural threat to freedom, they forget and undermine the reason we have democracies. Technical solutions to zero-knowledge proofs of age-of-adulthood without loss of anonymity are recent but available now. The strongest argument for these is to take the wind out of alternatives. Strangely, promoters of surveillance avoid these solutions. Even stranger: the bizarre but prevalent counter argument that anonymity protecting solutions won't work, because the surreptitious goal of other solutions is precisely to strip anonymity. We apparently shouldn't do that, because the abusers won't like the wind being taken out of their "front" problems, with real but freedom-preserving solutions!
- inigyou 3mo ago
  You can just lie by using someone else's ZKP. If that's not considered to be a problem, then the California approach of just asking the device owner is much better and you still don't need the ZKP.
  - dredmorbius 3mo ago
    ZKP: Zero Knowledge Proof, for the unfamiliar. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof>
  - Nevermark 3mo ago
    I am fine with device vouched sessions. That protect my and my devices' identities. > You can just lie by using someone else's ZKP. Yes, it is trivial to share access/identity, purposely or carelessly. Not sure what point you are making, since that isn't specific to ZKP.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      If it's not ZK you can get arrested for sharing it
sda2 3mo ago
Can we start a trend of wearing ski masks and other face coverings in public?
- goda90 3mo ago
  Sounds miserable in summer. Let's start a trend of removing cameras from public spaces instead.
- M95D 3mo ago
  Too late. I'm pretty sure it's already not allowed in many countries, including most of Europe. They wanted to ban hijab/burka, but that would be discrimination, so they banned all face covers: ski masks, balaclavas, "V" plastic masks, motorcycle helmets when not driving one, everything.
- codedokode 3mo ago
  I saw food delivery couriers on scooters having a balaclava-style mask (only eyes visible).
  - ccozan 3mo ago
    ...when driving.
    - codedokode 3mo ago
      Today I saw one who also had kind of snowboard goggles in addition to a mask.
rylando 3mo ago
Is there even an option at the airport to refuse face scanning? I assume that signs you up for a one way trip to a cavity search. TSA does it, Customs does it when entering the USA after a trip too.
- beachwood23 3mo ago
  There is a small sign in front of the facial scanner that says "Photo verification not required." You can always say "I decline the photo verification", and they will check your license like back in the old days. This is what I have been doing for years now.
  - jandrese 3mo ago
    Things may not be quite so simple if your skin color is on the darker side, especially with the current administration. Doubly so if your passport shows you come from a country who's name ends in -stan.
    - gosub100 3mo ago
      All the previous administrations have extended the patriot act and other laws that enable warrantless spying and collecting data in the name of "security".
      - inigyou 3mo ago
        Yep but only this one has teams of people roaming the streets to round up unauthorized black people and concentrate them in camps.
    - the_doctah 3mo ago
      Pure conjecture, Reddit-coded, seal-clapping bait.
      - jandrese 3mo ago
        Tell that to Omar Artan.
tsukikage 3mo ago
I particularly like the form at the bottom for collecting your email address and adding it to a big list. EDIT: looks like it's gone now. Gonna count that as a win.
- blahblaher 3mo ago
  Don't be fucking stupid equating these 2 things together
  - Nevermark 3mo ago
    A nicer way to say that is: "I can't decide whether to up vote or down vote you!" There is real irony that we still use non-unique-to-purpose addressing to sign up for no-need-for-our-identity newsletters. In this case, in particular.
    - tsukikage 3mo ago
      I would personally be much happier sharing that link with others if it did not have the information-collecting form.
      - Nevermark 3mo ago
        That makes perfect sense to me. I am sure the site's motives are fine, and yet the tech we still use is ridiculously aged and unsecure. Even on pro-security sites.
giacomoforte 3mo ago
I completely agree with this, but my banking apps, my broker, my health insurance, my simcard provider all already require my face for identification.
- yunwal 3mo ago
  FYI the processing for FaceID on iPhones is entirely offline. I think the Samsung androids have offline face id as well.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Perhaps we should distinguish between institutions that require strong identity (phone networks shouldn't be in this list but are, which is a separate argument) and institutions that really shouldn't, like random websites.
  - nickelpro 3mo ago
    A pointless distinction for OP's (heavy handed, LLM-generated) point: >The database you are helping build for a trustworthy government does not stay in trustworthy hands. Administrations change. A registry that merely catalogs who you are today becomes, under a future government, a map of who to find. This is an objection to driver license databases, to passports; they don't want face scans at airports, much less for banking or insurance. They want off-the-grid, untrackable anonymity. This is incompatible with much of modern life, at least in the mainstream.
- notabotiswear 3mo ago
  I hate that banks do that, right after that asinine Apple/Google monopoly proliferation. But “giving my face” to an institute where I was, since forever, required to submit a photo ID to join is a far cry from handing it over to earn the privilege of being exposed to whatever brainrotting garbage infests antisocial media these days…
himata4113 3mo ago
I just have obs with a video of mkbhd downloaded playing in a loop, whenever I am asked for age verification I just start the virtual camera, select it at the age verification website and it immediately passes it (most of the time). MKBHD was just the first person that I could come up with that records extremely high res video.
- heroku 3mo ago
  [dead]
- maerF0x0 3mo ago
  Please post how to do this. Maybe we can combine it with something like https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/en https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/en and video generation?
  - himata4113 3mo ago
    idk, youtube worked a lot better than any avatar. I tried avatars at first with little success. and you don't need any guide it's dead simple: add video source path: path/to/your/video loop video checkmark: yes Start Virtual Camera then just select it when prompted in browser. The left/right movements are sort of a meme for most checkers and just pass randomly, the ones that need you to open your mouth get bypassed by them talking in the video.
neither_color 3mo ago
If we're going to have self-censorship due to everything we say online tied to our real identity can we at least get some shiny buildings and high speed trains out of the deal too? I've been online since early 2000s internet and for all the soapboxing about freedom of speech over the years it seems a foregone conclusion that we'll get the same surveillance state as those other "less free" countries else without anything to show for it.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  You can have all that if you immigrate to China.
reactordev 3mo ago
Here in the US, there’s a giant database of faces the government uses to ID people with an app. In the UK, they want this same level of invasive policing. Technology will always be used nefariously by police agencies until someone stops them, which no one will. No one, politically, wants to come out and “restrain policing” but that’s how the rich will position it so they can sell more flock cameras, more app platforms, more tech to the ever bottomless pockets of government. We are in a Thiel world.
jupr 3mo ago
Im sure a lot of people know about tor on this site...but let me remind everyone. Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me. And happens to be good enough that criminals use it too. This is the two sided nature of technology. Tor is a networks of peers across the globe volunteering their network bandwidth to support people under oppression by their government. The amount of privacy that can be gained from tor is proportional to the amount of people using it. The more that people utilize the technology, the more that everyone looks the same, and protects the people that need it the most. Tor enables me to say no to these things and carry on, without permission.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  I'm using Tor right now! Everyone should. It's too bad that many websites block it, but most of those websites are slop anyway.
  - jupr 3mo ago
    Everyone should study the basics on a server backend and full stack web. If you can master what it takes to design and run your site on localhost....you are literally one step away from sharing it with anyone on the planet who has internet access for zero dollars because of the power of tor, and the global network that supports it. The reality is, there is no gate there, just the knowledge of how to do it. Tor is first and foremost a router. Sites that block tor IP's do happen, this is because of the dual use nature of the technology. Its also well suited for abuse.
- esseph 3mo ago
  Tor is very much for US overseas intelligence operatives, among other things.
  - btilly 3mo ago
    That is who it was created for.
    - 3mo ago
9dev 3mo ago
Can't we even write a short text like this without LLMs anymore, not even when it's really important, when it's about humans against the inhumane?
- Jasp3r 3mo ago
  Here is the trick:
- bklosky 3mo ago
  it's wild to me how many AI written articles get front page on HN
  - garciansmith 3mo ago
    I'm always amazed too. I waste so much time clicking on links like that only to find slop that just wastes my time. I'm guessing a huge number of people never even bother to click on the article and just comment based on the title, so there's that. Then there's cases where they are sympathetic to the subject or opinion and talk about that in the comments and ignore that the machine-written article doesn't actually contribute to the conversation at all.
  - da_grift_shift 3mo ago
    Yeah. If the "don't post AI generated comments" guideline was extended to cover posts, I wonder what % of recent front page articles would be impacted.
    - ranger_danger 3mo ago
      Either way how could that even be enforced? Even if it's "painfully obvious", that's not proof.
  - red-iron-pine 3mo ago
    You're on Y-Combinator here, a start-up incubator all about AI and launching new things, that literally used to be run by Sam Altman, and that was the launching pad of OpenAI. And you're surprised there is a lot of AI content? bots are like 50% of the internet now brah: https://cybersecuritynews.com/bots-surpass-humans-in-web-traffic/ https://cybersecuritynews.com/bots-surpass-humans-in-web-tra...
fl4regun 3mo ago
This is a little bit of a tangent compared to the post, but can someone explain to me why it's NOW that we have multiple countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and probably others that I am not aware of) all looking at age verification for a technology (the internet and all the things it lets you access) has existed for over 2 decades, and has been mature for at least 10 years? You could buy illicit drugs and watch porn on the internet since the 2000s, but it's NOW that we're legislating things (in incomprehensibly stupid and hopelessly unenforceable ways)? The worst part is these are all stupid poorly thought out band-aid solutions to "protect the kids" from platforms that are also detrimental to adults.
- outime 3mo ago
  Global meetings (whether secret or not) where select people decide what to do next to minimize potential threats to their power. There isn't much more to it, really.
  - btilly 3mo ago
    Not just minimize threats, but often to maximize their power. Lobbyists do not just try to convince a politician that X is a good idea. Lobbyists give the politician money to introduce already drafted legislation, and then give other politicians money to support it. And if they can get the legislation passed in one place, they'll try it again. The result is that suspiciously similar legislation appears in many places close in time, due to it being pushed by particular interests.
    - outime 3mo ago
      I'm not convinced this is about money as much as it is about blackmail, given how centralized data collection has become and how many intelligence agencies appear to have access to numerous 0-days for routinely gathering additional information. It could be both things as well. What bothers me most isn't their corruption, but their apparent belief that it won't eventually affect them or their families - perhaps sooner than they think.
greenavocado 3mo ago
Has it ever occurred to you that this is intentional? All those Bilderberg and WEF forums and Peter Thiel's Dialog Club are not for nothing
- frm88 3mo ago
  Peter Thiel's Dialog Club Off topic but I was really astonished to find Ezra Klein on the list of permanent members.
jh00ker 3mo ago
At Disneyland, there are separate park entrance lanes that don't use facial recognition software. I like that I can opt-out passively there. At TSA checkpoints at the airport, you have to actively ask to opt-out. I'm always worried that actively opting-out puts you on a government list and there could be later, much larger ramifications, so I passively opt-in to blend in with the masses.
- tejohnso 3mo ago
  Yup. Most people are going to say "I have nothing to hide" and go with the flow. The ones who don't are signalling that perhaps they do have something to hide.
  - mannanj 3mo ago
    Yes I do have something to hide. my face. I don't want you to own it in a data base of yours that you have a bad track record of knowing how to secure. unless of course, you are willing to take ownership and accountability of my data and promise me minimum of $100k in compensation for data breaches and leaks indefinitely from your storage of my face. You can figure out how to pay for insurance to pay for this. /oh you're not interested in even talking about this? Sounds like you have something to hide. (this fun conversation would not be well perceived when you that you ask for accountability for their actions and propose a solution. making a contract for this surely can't be super hard, but getting them to sign it and be accountable to it would be blocked hard)
  - ccozan 3mo ago
    best anonymization would have been "hide in plain sight". If you really are a perpetrator: you would use a mask to perform the said fellony. So face is just on factor: now they look at gait, and other body parts that can serve for identification.
- triceratops 3mo ago
  I don't see the point of opting out at an airport, of all places. They already know (or should know) the real names of everyone who's flying. Fully agree that facial recognition at an amusement park, or any private business, is egregious.
harel 3mo ago
It ends with "The platforms need you far more than you need them". And I think this is the misconception. No, they don't. The amount of people who will sign this, is a fraction of a fraction of a "platform"'s users. They will not care if they lose 50,000 users out of 2 Billion. A drop in the ocean. Not the target audience anyway. And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verification but I know when the time comes, and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. It sucks, but I don't think a petition will help. Unless of course you get the 50 million to sign the petition AND stick to it.
- munk-a 3mo ago
  You are correct that your data isn't particularly impactful for these platforms - but you're also overestimating the value that many of these services have. A fair few of them have competitors with better features and privacy offerings so the only reason you need them is purely for the network effect of everyone else using them.
  - harel 3mo ago
    If there is a substitute and I am not time constrained 100% i'm switching. But I've been in a situation already where a platform I'm using required me to face-up. I can't even remember which to be honest but I had no alternative or recourse to refuse. In addition, in the UK company directors are legaly required to face-up to Companies House and confirm their identity, so they have my face too. Ah, and so is every single CCTV camera around London. I don't know how to fight this particular battle.
    - soperj 3mo ago
      Move from London, you have all of Europe to... nevermind.
      - harel 3mo ago
        Your pessimism is warranted. But there are places that are more welcoming still.
Duanemclemore 3mo ago
Who runs this site? There doesn't appear to be any information on this. A whois search returns nothing illuminating. So... is it part of the parable they're trying to tell that they're seeing who will go against the exact sort of advice they're giving? Or does this -just happen to be- the kind of shady data gathering that they're warning against? to quote the site itself, "We spent a generation teaching people the first rule of the internet: never give out your real identity to strangers."
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- btbuildem 3mo ago
  > whois search returns nothing illuminating Which is something you should expect from someone intent on privacy
  - Duanemclemore 3mo ago
    Absolutely, if they're not asking for your information, as they were when I visited the site. The Wayback Machine snapshot here [0] shows a site identical to the one I visited. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20260622140511/https://nevergivethemyourface.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260622140511/https://nevergive...
- dmantis 3mo ago
  > Or does this -just happen to be- the kind of shady data gathering that they're warning against? How? There are no forms on the website. Wouldn't it actually be logical for a person advocating for privacy not disclosing his identity?
  - Duanemclemore 3mo ago
    When I visited the page there was a field to enter your email to "sign" a pledge of refusal. The state I saw appears to be preserved in the first Wayback Machine snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20260622140511/https://nevergivethemyourface.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260622140511/https://nevergive...
lbotos 3mo ago
I..... love the idea, but if you aren't from a Shengen country you can't get into Shengen countries without a fingerprint scan and a face photo at the airport: https://travel-europe.europa.eu/ees/data-held-by-ees https://travel-europe.europa.eu/ees/data-held-by-ees No way to opt out of the scan.
- chatmasta 3mo ago
  Those face scans are matching to the biometrics you’ve already provided to your own government when you obtained your modern passport. My passport currently has a broken chip and I’ve been traveling extensively, so I need to go into the border guard queue every time I enter. It’s very annoying. And they take the face scan each time and their computer compares it to past images of my entry.
- aftbit 3mo ago
  Same in the USA I believe.
  - bjourne 3mo ago
    You can actually opt out of it. The guards will be a bit miffed but it is your right. In the EU the face scans are mandatory and the data will be retained.
speedgoose 3mo ago
Who is the author?
- norskeld 3mo ago
  Either Claude van Code or Chad McGpt.
  - volkk 3mo ago
    Wow both of these guys are prolific writers. I see them everywhere
  - chadgpt3 3mo ago
    I'm not the author
chatmasta 3mo ago
I verified my age with Apple by clicking one button and Apple said it assumed I was 18 based on the age of my Apple account (2011). I guess I’m lucky to be in the cohort that avoids the face scans, and I feel a bit dirty about enabling this, but so far — even living in the UK — the privacy concerns have not manifested for me as I thought they might. To me, the most disingenuous framing of the “protect the children” narrative is not “children can’t access the stuff,” but “adults can access the stuff, once they provide their biometrics.” The default is to deny access.
- trollbridge 3mo ago
  Yeah. Suddenly those piles of Apple accounts lying around seem a bit more useful.
shinobi-apps 3mo ago
Yea u, me and few others, when they say it is must everyone will follow and give them even kids faces. cos majority of ppl are sheeps that are waiting for orders same as they did with covid vaccines. During covid at some point i had feeling that my cousins will tied me up and drag to hospital to get vaccine if authorities said yes, go, hunt unvaccinated
taosu_la 3mo ago
sry but at first, I thought it was about Anthropic's authentication.
Synaesthesia 3mo ago
A while back I opened a bank account for my daughter. All that I needed was to scan my face, then the bank got everything from the department of home affairs (South Africa) That means my goverment already has my face, with all my details associated with it. Bit Orwellian but there we are.
vlucas 3mo ago
The phrase "people will not just [...]" comes to mind here. The amount of people that let the TSA take a scan of their face when going through airport security - even when the signage clearly says you can opt out - proves that this effort, while noble, will fail. I (and the family members I am with) always opt-out, but every time I look around, I am the only one doing it. If I had to guess, I'd put a compliance figure somewhere around 98%+. Here is a good article on it: https://medium.com/womenintechnology/you-can-and-should-opt-out-of-tsas-facial-recognition-47b22e8d9702 https://medium.com/womenintechnology/you-can-and-should-opt-...
- trollbridge 3mo ago
  The TSA already knows what your face looks like, though.
  - vlucas 3mo ago
    They have photos, but not a voluntary full face scan.
- jupr 3mo ago
  I found the signs to be hard to find and poorly placed. But since I knew about it before traveling, I just said no photo please and it was pretty frictionless. The people behind me did not even realize you could say no, and no one really wants to be late for their flight. Make the sign bigger. Its not a good test in my view.
- huehehue 3mo ago
  Good heavens, the comments on that article make me want to vomit: "Thanks to people with your mindset our streets and borders are not as safe as they should be." This option is made freely available to passengers, but by choosing it you're signaling that you hate your country and public safety? It's no wonder people are scared to push back on invasive and discriminatory practices.
- deeteecee 3mo ago
  The signage is not clear and also, you're directly faced in an environment that's not friendly so yeah, it will fail.
codedokode 3mo ago
There is actually a way to prove the age anonymously. Yubikey-like devices support attestation - they can have a private key proving authenticity of a device. So some organization could release Yubikeys with a certain private key and distribute them in stores that allow only adult customers - like liquor stores or sex shops. Owning a key proves that one is adult without disclosing identity. Keys support USB and bluetooth and can be easily supported on any device. Also, OS developers should implement simple parent mode - such that parents only need to flip a switch and set a password, and do not have to whitelist apps or websites - the OS should use government-provided lists. You might not like the government, but 99% of parents do not want to bother compiling white lists manually.
- panny 3mo ago
  The problem with that is, parents be like: >Here kid, take my key, go get me some beer. Everyone everywhere gets forced to deal with bullshit, then the people it is supposed to be protecting circumvent it directly.
  - yolo3000 3mo ago
    The same can happen with any type of authentication, unless you are ok with someone pointing a webcam and authenticating you non stop.
    - panny 3mo ago
      No, I think there are parents who would find a long enough webcam cable to point the cam at themselves while Jeff Epstein is grooming their kids in roblox. The core point is that it isn't my responsiblity to take care of your children. When less than half of millennials (40% men, 55% women) have children, the "think of the children" catchphrase really starts to fall flat. Why should I think of the children? I don't even have children. It's the parents' problem, not mine. Stop making it my problem.
    - andrewla 3mo ago
      This is underselling it -- an adult can sell these yubikeys untraceably, pocket the cash, and never think about it again in their life. If we tie the person's identity to the token (THIS IS A BAD IDEA) then if underage use is detected, the adult who sold the token can be prosecuted for selling adult tokens to minors.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
shevy-java 3mo ago
> It is not age verification. It is identity verification. Very true. They are currently orchestrating the attack. It is also why I call age sniffing age sniffing like that; "age verification" is the propaganda term. We need to look which actors are behind this push. I smell a trail of corruption money following these actors pushing for it. It is also fascinating to see how quickly democracies fall victim to this. Soon age sniffing will be mandatory everywhere. The free world wide web will be gone. Right now people think this is hyperpole. Well, we saw that with other technology too ...
radium3d 3mo ago
They already have your face.
- ForceBru 3mo ago
  Yeah, "they" probably simply have our FaceID data that we're willingly collecting ourselves, supposedly for our own security.
  - trollbridge 3mo ago
    Face ID is entirely on device and it is cryptographically difficult to extract the data even with a jailbroken device.
    - ForceBru 3mo ago
      Well, hopefully this is indeed the case!
    - dackdel 3mo ago
      i mean so they say? but really?
  - zahlman 3mo ago
    Would be rather difficult for "them" to get it off my $80 CAD vertical flip phone, I dare say.
    - radium3d 3mo ago
      It's not coming from any of your devices.
ForceBru 3mo ago
So does this mean that, say, Apple actually doesn't have access to our FaceID data? Otherwise there'd be no need for no laws: just force Apple, Google, etc to share face information with "the government". Well, I guess technically "they" would probably need some kind of law to do this anyway. I feel like tons of people use various kinds of FaceID-type technologies for unlocking their phones, laptops, etc. So it would make sense if "they" already had all of our faces. I personally don't use FaceID because I'm not thrilled about having my face scanned with utmost precision. BTW, I'm looking at my phone typing this and I know my phone has its face-scanning device pointed right at me. Is it sending "them" my face data all the time? Or sometimes? I can't tell. What if I'm showing something on my phone to another person? Is it going to scan their face too? Maybe, maybe not.
- judge2020 3mo ago
  Face unlock on iPhone is completely on-device. This is why you have to set it up again every time you buy a new device.
ghusto 3mo ago
This and every post like it hurts the cause. Don't argue "Resist!" like a child, argue with an alternative. You're not bringing anything to the table other than teenage angst, ensuring nobody takes the _very valid and terrifying concerns_ seriously. Instead, suggest a feasible alternative. Bonus points if it works better, cheaper, and safer.
- kspacewalk2 3mo ago
  And don't handwaive away the real problem with children on social media. It's not good enough, not gonna cut it, there's strong consensus around fixing this big societal problem. Go ahead and blame the parents all you want - to a critical mass of people nowadays, it reads like the equivalent of blaming them for a 10 year old being let into a casino and getting addicted to slot machines. The debate will then just move on right past you because you're not being serious. We need privacy-respecting age verification. It's not rocket science, it's just a matter of implementation. The bad actors - which are mostly bad by virtue of being ignorant - will win the debate if we're throwing hissy fits and telling parents to fuck off instead of coming up with constructive criticism of this approach to age verification.
  - sailfast 3mo ago
    I have kids, and I don't think we need age verification. I'm not blaming the websites for content my kids access, and I have to work to make sure I'm tracking what my kids are doing. Not saying we should stop trying to verify age in a privacy-respecting way, but the current incentive structure means that we cannot really EXPECT this in the near term. If we cannot expect it, then we should not legislate or require it until the right solution has been found and we need to encourage our lawmakers to FUND the right way to do this. I'm not handwaving the problems of children on social media, but it is within parental control to a certain extent, and preventing access with age verification will not prevent access in other places, nor help them deal with the onslaught when they are of age to make decisions.
AdmiralAsshat 3mo ago
I have yet to receive my federal tax refund because I submitted my taxes through a preparation service and, thinking that physical checks were still an option (the tax software didn't tell me otherwise), I did not give the federal government an ACH account number for direct deposit. The IRS then told me I'd have to open an account to update/provide direct deposit info, which in turn requires me to register with ID.me to create an account. ID.me has an obnoxious signup policy which includes sending them a boatload of documentation, and a headshot. I'm not doing it. So to date, I have yet to receive my federal refund. Somewhere on the IRS website I had found buried in an article that if they can't submit my refund via direct deposit after some period of time, they are supposed to mail me a physical check. Yet so far, nada.
- sailfast 3mo ago
  While I agree that this is annoying, you're trying to interact with the federal government which actually does require IDENTITY verification and not age verification in order to perform its duties. That id.me account allows you to take actions on behalf of a citizen, so they need to confirm some things first. It's not great, but it's not what the original poster is against.
  - AdmiralAsshat 3mo ago
    The frustration, I suppose, is that the government doesn't seem to demand this level of scrutiny to take my money, in the event that I owed on my tax returns for that year. But when they have money to give to me, suddenly it's 12 interviews and a colonoscopy to get approved.
    - sailfast 3mo ago
      True. It absolutely will take your money :)
  - sufficientsoup 3mo ago
    My issue with it is that it's a vendor. The need for identification is fair, and I'm not worried about the govt having it. I'm worried about _id.me_ having it.
0x59 3mo ago
it may benefit: children, social media, marketing, police state, ai, data brokers, and many others does it benefit you?
kyledrake 3mo ago
> We run background checks on people who want to buy a gun, but we do not background check everyone at all times just in case. And the other thing is, you can use a gun to murder people. If you try to use a porn site to murder someone, you're fundamentally hitting them with a laptop. A major reason nobody can think clearly about this anymore is that there are people out there that genuinely believe porn sites and social media are as dangerous to human health as assault rifles and cigarettes. I'm almost as disturbed that people can't differentiate between harm risks as I am about horrible internet age checking laws.
yuvrajsa 3mo ago
[flagged]
adamtaylor_13 3mo ago
How is this different from sending my government ID to access things like Stripe, Robin Hood, etc? It seems that without legal obligation things will continue to go this route.
1970-01-01 3mo ago
I will give them faces, just not my faces. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45081323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45081323
steele 3mo ago
Well-monied providers will steal it, perhaps with the courtesy of a buried and penalized opt-out.
jdw64 3mo ago
[dead]
SoftTalker 3mo ago
Your face is already everwhere. Your supermarket records it as you check out. Every retailer records it as you enter the store. The state has it. The Federal government has it if you have a passport or other federal ID. Your mortgage company probably required it when you digitally "signed" your loan application. Socials have it from all the selfies you've posted. It's a lost cause.
- w4yai 3mo ago
  Yeah, I was going to say that as well. Your face is extremely easy to capture, and except if you permanently live under a mask, there's 0% chance to avoid it. Don't get me wrong, I like "fight the system" vibes but we need to be realistic. This fight is a lost one.
- marcta 3mo ago
  I was going to say the same. Also, if you go to shops like Screwfix or Toolstation (in the UK), you have to give your postcode and name to them before they sell to you. I tried opting out once and they refused to sell to me. I give them fake postcodes and names instead now, but it's very invasive and completely unnecessary.
cute_boi 3mo ago
Only regulation can solve such issue. However, our government is very weak....
RandyRanderson 3mo ago
I like that how in the same place that they have been trying to "protect the children" for like a decade [1], they have also had a real rape gang epidemic [2]. It's almost like they are, in fact, not really trying to protect the children. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_in_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooming_gangs_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooming_gangs_scandal Hilariously, a commenter asked me for a citation for the epidemic. Commenter: you're not mr current events are you?
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Citation was provided for "protect the children" but not for rape gang epidemic? But suppose there was a rape gang epidemic - wouldn't that be a good reason to want to protect the children?
  - RandyRanderson 3mo ago
    It's import to solve the meta-issues here: 1 you didn't google current events before asking the first Q. Try that before asking someone else to. 2 mid-tier LLMs are capable of reasoning through your second Q. Go ahead try that next time. 3 you haven't accepted that 2 is true and the ramifications thereof.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      the meta-meta issue is that you did not provide any response other than "just google it" and "just chatgpt it"
__MatrixMan__ 3mo ago
I quit facebook over a decade ago. Then, a few months back, I was under some pressure to sell something, and the facebook marketplace appears to be the way to go locally. So I tried to create a facebook account. They wanted to scan my face, and in a moment of weakness, I performed the ritual. Thirty seconds later, they suspended my account due to violations of their terms of service: "this decision cannot be appealed". So now they have my face and I still can't use the marketplace. I can only assume I'm suspended due to the behavior of somebody who tried to use my identity for something during the decade when I had no facebook account. Apparently not even my face is strong enough authentication for me to convince them that I'm not whoever it was that caused whatever the problem was. This is why biometrics will never make sense. They're too immutable. Maintaining multiple accounts is not a bug, it's a debugging mechanism. Since I have only the face that I do, I can't even figure out why I'm banned. We need to instead stop trusting people merely because they have an account. 10k upvotes/likes/5-star-reviews should mean nothing if I don't explicitly or transitively trust the upvoters/likers/reviewers. We have to build things that make decisions by traversing the trust graph so instead of being banned with no recourse, I can create a no-trust identity and elevate it back to personhood status by convincing my meatspace friends to trust it by having a conversation with them in meatspace.
- jazzyjackson 3mo ago
  I tried to make an account while forgetting my VPN was engaged. Another US IP address but one from a block of IPs I’m sure is used for nefarious purposes. So because I briefly shared an IP block with ne’erdowells, I am, without an option to appeal, banned from interacting with Facebook forever. Google Ads is ghosting me too. I really could get behind legislation that requires companies to have a human point of contact in these cases, but I guess a private company has the right to ignore people they don’t want as customers.
  - b40d-48b2-979e 3mo ago
    but I guess a private company has the right to ignore people they don’t want as customers. The problem is the monopolistic power these companies have.
socalgal2 3mo ago
I'm sympathetic to this but this page is preaching to the choir. You didn't sell me in the first paragraph.
andai 3mo ago
Thank you, ChatGPT, very interesting. I agree with the article, but the LLM-isms cheapen it by two orders of magnitude.
cma256 3mo ago
They've got mine... Fly to Canada and your face gets scanned. I forgot this event and was surprised, walking through an American airport flying to another domestic location, that my picture and name appeared on an airline's screen without input. Not a government screen, mind you. I forget the exact context but the feeling persists. Very unnerving.
- HWR_14 3mo ago
  If it's the same system I saw, it's branded with the airline, but hooked to the government passport database. And if you read the disclosure, the airline promised to delete your data within some small number of minutes or face stiff penalties. Stiff enough that I believe that there is no additional information on you from using that system.
Hasz 3mo ago
An unpopular opinion for this site probably, but all the same arguments apply to gun control and civil liberties in general. In the united states, the first amendment (what this post is primarily concerned about) and the second amendment are equally important rights, and we should be just as judicious about applying restrictions to the second as the first. Instead, you see attacks on the 2nd in the name of "safety, verification, age assurance. A small step to protect children". The exact same playbook used against civilian gun ownership will be rolled out against the first amendment, the 4th amendment, etc. Civil rights and protections should be expanding, not contracting, and the primary focus point for the last 30 years (and the playbooks that will be used elsewhere) are being tested on the second amendment.
Havoc 3mo ago
I wouldn’t mind as much if it was entirely in house gov run. They realistically know a lot about me already - incl blood donations so could get dna even. Outsourcing this to random ass for profits is a problem though.
- stephbook 3mo ago
  As a European with a digital-ID passport that supports age verification without identification, the lack of technical support for this infuriates me. Maybe once we have the euro-wide digital wallet and make it compulsory to support it.
hubbahubbahubba 3mo ago
Why would you cite a Bloomberg reference in the article? Are you completely tone deaf on open source software and private ownership and use of 3d printers? FFS don’t direct traffic towards an opponent of free software.
hootz 3mo ago
The problem is that for most people, facial recognition is just another method of account verification. Sometimes worse than alternatives, but also sometimes more convenient, and convenience wins over privacy if people are not actively made aware of the consequences.
stephbook 3mo ago
That's kind of a bleak vision. I wonder how the author would explain that the ID and age systems we already have – cigarette dispensers, liquor stores, club entry, driver's license, to name a few – work "kind of fine" though.
nmlt 3mo ago
This article is AI slop
remus 3mo ago
> They are built to know who you are: your name, your date of birth, your document number, your face. This is not age verification at all. It is forced identity tracking. This doesn't have to be the case. https://www.w3.org/TR/digital-credentials/ https://www.w3.org/TR/digital-credentials/ seems a sensible system where you can have a single identity provider (hopefully someone you trust) who can then verify things like "is this person over 18?" without givin away any excessive information to a third party. Hopefully it gains some traction.
- pseudalopex 3mo ago
  A sensible system would require no trust. You could trust no provider would collude or be hacked ever. But to prevent governments to demand records requires records not exist.
LZ_Khan 3mo ago
Are you allowed to do this in places like airports?
- azdle 3mo ago
  I was just at a US airport and there were a bunch of signs saying you can opt out of having your face scanned at security, you just have to tell them. Though, if you have a passport or driver's license, its not like they don't already have your face...
josefritzishere 3mo ago
This article is spot on. It's a red line for me. Biometrics are not great for security but definitively bad for privacy. I would move to a federal ban on biometrics outside of intelligence agencies.
electrotype 3mo ago
I'm quitting Claude AI because of https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14328960-identity-verification-on-claude https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14328960-identity-ver... .
- mikodin 3mo ago
  Gah - this is unfortunate. This will have me quit as well - I wonder when they will begin to enforce this on the Claude Code front. I remember when OpenAI tried (maybe they still are?) putting this in for GPT 5 and this had me switch from them to Anthropic.
nntwozz 3mo ago
The battle is lost, technological determinism is an unstoppable force. Once the camera was invented the die was cast. "Technological determinism is the theory that a society's technology drives the development of its social structure, cultural values, and history."
hennell 3mo ago
> Name the places now demanding "age verification," and see how many will accept a plain government document that says only that you are over eighteen — and nothing else. Almost none will. Because age was never the point. Name the physical places that would accept a plain government document that says only that you are over eighteen and nothing else? None will, not because 'age was never the point', or because every bar or casino is stealing your face - but because a plain document doesn't offer any proof you are it's owner. Photo ID has been standard as age verification because it's the best way to prove the official ID actually links to the person holding it. There are more concerns in a digital world with giving your ID / face, but the idea that the demand for photo ID proves it's all a big data grab not remotely about age is a conclusion looking for evidence. (Plus they acknowledge some sites have done age verification where all they want is your face to confirm you look over 18 - which they then ignore, claiming it's all really a ploy to get your documents. So why isn't the site 'Never give them your documents'?)
aappleby 3mo ago
this would be more convincing if it wasn't ai written.
schrodinger 3mo ago
Maybe this is making a slightly different point (i.e. the usage of immutable physical features as "passwords", which I agree is largely useless), I think we're just entering a post-privacy era. Being around 40, I willingly fed the machine (Facebook) with hundreds of pictures during university, and had I not, my friends would have more than made up for it. It's absolutely possible to photograph every person you pass by every day, and Facebook most certainly has the keys to identify most all of the people. That dystopian combination means that unless you're welling to move to a largely uninhabited place, each of our whereabouts can be largely resolved with technology available _today_ at a completely reasonable cost. Not only that, almost everyone on this forum walks around with a device that shares their identity and location with unscrupulous companies (cell phone carriers) whose data is available en masse to the government. (N.B. I have an iPhone and appreciate and even _trust_ all the privacy work put into it; however, the cell phone tower thwarts location tracking, and participation in social networks thwarts face tracking.) I've long thought that rather than try to limit the information about us, we ought to _flood_ the Internet with information about us. Make the data available untrustworthy. Or, accept it. So long as it remains in the hands of corporations and not solely the government, it guts both ways — a senator can no longer be publicly opposed to same-sex equality legislation while engaging in a homosexual relationship themselves. AI seems to be pushing us down the former road.
coolThingsFirst 3mo ago
I am against this but acting like LinkedIn isn’t basically a database of pictures is naive. You want to date your pic ends up on a server. That’s just the way this works.
Scroll_Swe 3mo ago
Okay, but then they lock my bank login behind face verification. Now what?
tim333 3mo ago
To take the other side as nearly all comments agree, I'm not too worried about my face. My socials - twitter, fb, linkedin all have my face and 2/3 real name. When I do things in the real world I also have a face. Also if I want to be anonymous on social networks you can still pretty much. You can worry too much about that stuff. Not that the author worries, being an LLM.
butlike 3mo ago
Who's "they?"
Jackie1402 3mo ago
[flagged]
chris_explicare 3mo ago
[dead]
tsoukase 3mo ago
Let's describe it simply: in the name of children protection, pushed by govs and parents, the companies found the chance to pass full identification of all. They use the former as a Trojan horse for the latter. The sollution is simply to decouple the two processes. Now it'seasy as it's still early. The first step is for the people to realise the sneaky link and for the govs to stop any lobbying.
anonanon123z 3mo ago
they already read people minds non invasively, they don't really need faces, at best its just the image to put on the icon of your digitally cloned brain
monksy 3mo ago
Partly this is there to kill off services that the politicans don't like. I.e. porn.

749 points by audiodude 3mo ago

Age assurance is the law in California and age verification is illegal in California. We should push more jurisdictions to adopt this model. While many age verification laws are malicious mass surveillance, some are because politicians didn't see a better option.

pseudalopex 3mo ago
< age verification is illegal in California What law?
- inigyou 3mo ago
  AB1043. Age signals shall not contain more data than required.
  - pseudalopex 3mo ago
    The law will take effect next year. And it would not cover web sites. Another bill would expand the law.

panny 3mo ago

[flagged]

rafram 3mo ago
1. What an odd analogy. Covid vaccination was a clear net positive. 2. When was the last time you needed to show a vaccine card for anything, much less buying groceries?
- rylando 3mo ago
  Honestly I lost mine, I think all I’ve got is a picture in my phone, and I don’t think it includes my booster shot. I’ve never been asked for it since.
billyoyo 3mo ago
What does getting the COVID vaccine have to do with surveillance or grocery shopping? Where I live I simply queued up at the local vaccination centre, got vaccinated, and left. I probably had to show some id or something I guess but no more than accessing any other government services
- panny 3mo ago
  >What does getting the COVID vaccine have to do with surveillance Google and Apple built contact tracing directly into iOS and Android during Covid. And it's still there. And all they'd need to do to make it opt-out or required is to flash an update with some small print in an EULA. It is WAY more invasive and you probably already gave your phone your face with features like face unlock too. But hey, we can stop this discussion, because the covid vaccinated have flagged this point down for wrongthink. You see, when you want to fight the surveillance sleepwalkers, they fight back. They really really really want to stay asleep.
  - billyoyo 3mo ago
    You're describing contact tracing, that is not vaccination. If people were less afraid of vaccinations, invasive practices like contact tracing would be less necessary. Arguing against that sort of contact tracing may have merits (Not necessarily saying I agree but it's a discussion worth having). Arguing against vaccination is dangerous and ends up with people dead.
    - panny 3mo ago
      >may have You're splitting hairs because clearly you cheered on the surveillance state. That didn't stop with contact tracing. Contact tracing was just the most egregious example. I watched you people scan QR codes to let big government know where you were when going to the toilet. I know where I'm at. I know you just want more reasons to flag my posts for covid wrongthink. Knock yourselves out if it makes you feel better about injecting that stuff. The Director of National Intelligence just posted proof that Fauci funded gain of function research in Wuhan and that submission was flagged immediately. That's the guy you trusted before injecting your covid vax. Try to square that circle all you want with censorship however. The truth is out. I knew I was correct to avoid the mRNA. All the proof exists and supports my position. Edit: Well billyoyo, since HN tells me "You're posting too fast. Slow down." I'll just have to answer you in an edit. >With that in mind, why are you against vaccination? Let's go back to before we knew how it kills people via myocarditis, blood clots, and whatnot. We can map out the options on a very simple chart. On one axis: Get it, Don't get it. On the other axis: You're fine, injury/death. If I don't get it, but I'm injured, the vaccinated will openly mock me. The unvaccinated will care and try to help me if they can. At least someone will try to support me. If I get it but I'm injured, the unvaccinated will blame me for volunteering to get it while the vaccinated will say I'm faking the injury to smear the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. Social media like HN will [flagged][dead] me for talking about my injuries. I'm all alone, no one supports me at all. Don't get it and I'm fine, the vaccinated seethe and talk about seizing my children and making me unemployable until I comply. Get it and I'm fine, I get a krispy kreme donut made with GMO flour + corn syrup and become associated with the bad behavior of the vaccinated. As you can see from this chart, I really don't want to be associated with a lot of self righteous assholes and the only possible benefit is donut slop.
RankingMember 3mo ago
Especially in the modern era where peoples' attention is particularly stretched thin, trying to get the average person to add another thing to be hyper-vigilant about is going to be a hard sell. People only have so many spoons. Not sure why you shoehorned some antivax nonsense in there though.
reinsdyr 3mo ago
This analogy doesn't hold up. What does covid have to do with anything?
- functionmouse 3mo ago
  probably a sentiment agent trying to equate being anti-age verification with being an antivaxxer
brettermeier 3mo ago
I mean the analogy sounds about right, why downvoting?
- inigyou 3mo ago
  How does it
  - dwd 3mo ago
    The Covid vaccination should have only been given to those in the population that were most at risk: The elderly and those who were at risk due to comorbidities. 81% of deaths alone occurred in the over 65 population. [1] There's the analogy, it was primarily beneficial for a small group yet for many, particularly Government workers and those in medical care it became a condition of employment that you were vaccinated. [2] There was a lot of pointless policies despite knowing: - Being vaccination did nothing to prevent transmitting Covid, it only gave the vaccinated individual better protection from mortality. [3] - Herd immunity for Covid was known to be impossible once the infection rates got too high with Delta and Omnicron. So trying to vaccinate everyone including children was pointless. [4] - There is Evidence that being vaccinated actually increases transmission of respiratory viruses. You were less likely to get seriously ill, while potentially increasing the risk of passing it on to your family. [5] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/covid/risk-factors/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/covid/risk-factors/index.html [2] https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/1000-nsw-health-workers-sacked-or-quit-after-refusing-to-be-vaccinated-20220114-p59oa8.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/1000-nsw-health-workers-... [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39283431/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39283431/ [4] https://theconversation.com/herd-immunity-was-sold-as-the-path-out-of-the-pandemic-heres-why-were-not-talking-about-it-any-more-183918 https://theconversation.com/herd-immunity-was-sold-as-the-pa... [5] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1716561115 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1716561115
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      IIRC 95% of people had a comorbidity?
- 3mo ago
cjs_ac 3mo ago
> Sorry. You can refuse the covid vaccine, but that won't stop everyone else from blithly accepting it. I agree with this part, but then, I personally don't have a problem with everyone else giving up their privacy. > Then once the critical mass is reached, your ability to buy groceries can just be terminated. The 20% of the population that refuses just isn't important enough to matter. Wut? Can you provide any information about a supermarket chain (or law affecting supermarket chains) anywhere in the world that prevents (or prevented) people who weren't vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter or buy groceries from those supermarkets? Taking these age-assurance laws at face value, I don't have a problem with them, because I think algorithmically-personalised social media feeds are an intrinsically bad product and I don't see anything that any society would lose if they went away. My concern about these laws is how far politicians are willing to go to close loopholes like VPNs, because I think that's where the potential is to cause inadvertent collateral damage to systems that really matter.
- dwd 3mo ago
  Crazy times https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-10413211/Covid-19-Australia-Northern-Territory-IGA-bans-unvaccinated-Aussies-shopping-groceries.html https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-10413211/Covid-19-Aus...
inigyou 3mo ago
When was the last time someone checked you were vaccinated for COVID?

RankingMember 3mo ago

I agree 100% with the message and think we should strive to reject this kind of gathering wherever possible, but it feels like the horse is already out of the barn insofar as each and every one of our faces being out there. Hell, we have entire states where people can't watch porn without uploading their ID. The inertia is such that (I'm in the U.S.) we really need a constitutional amendment at this point to stop this.

jkestner 3mo ago
New privacy legislation is about 20 years overdue. Between age verification, privately owned national camera networks, and above all else, data brokers, citizens need to reassert their right to anonymity. In the face of government hostility, at least we here can make more tools like Signal or at least choose not to feed customer data to the beast.
greentea23 3mo ago
New people are born every day whose faces necessarily are not out there.

Nevermark 3mo ago

Democracies building the tools of total autocracy. Real but fringe threats used to create the ultimate centralization of leverage. Can we actually think of the children? All the children? Their future? When democracies forget that government is the greatest natural threat to freedom, they forget and undermine the reason we have democracies. Technical solutions to zero-knowledge proofs of age-of-adulthood without loss of anonymity are recent but available now. The strongest argument for these is to take the wind out of alternatives. Strangely, promoters of surveillance avoid these solutions. Even stranger: the bizarre but prevalent counter argument that anonymity protecting solutions won't work, because the surreptitious goal of other solutions is precisely to strip anonymity. We apparently shouldn't do that, because the abusers won't like the wind being taken out of their "front" problems, with real but freedom-preserving solutions!

inigyou 3mo ago
You can just lie by using someone else's ZKP. If that's not considered to be a problem, then the California approach of just asking the device owner is much better and you still don't need the ZKP.
- dredmorbius 3mo ago
  ZKP: Zero Knowledge Proof, for the unfamiliar. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof>
- Nevermark 3mo ago
  I am fine with device vouched sessions. That protect my and my devices' identities. > You can just lie by using someone else's ZKP. Yes, it is trivial to share access/identity, purposely or carelessly. Not sure what point you are making, since that isn't specific to ZKP.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    If it's not ZK you can get arrested for sharing it

sda2 3mo ago

Can we start a trend of wearing ski masks and other face coverings in public?

goda90 3mo ago
Sounds miserable in summer. Let's start a trend of removing cameras from public spaces instead.
M95D 3mo ago
Too late. I'm pretty sure it's already not allowed in many countries, including most of Europe. They wanted to ban hijab/burka, but that would be discrimination, so they banned all face covers: ski masks, balaclavas, "V" plastic masks, motorcycle helmets when not driving one, everything.
codedokode 3mo ago
I saw food delivery couriers on scooters having a balaclava-style mask (only eyes visible).
- ccozan 3mo ago
  ...when driving.
  - codedokode 3mo ago
    Today I saw one who also had kind of snowboard goggles in addition to a mask.

rylando 3mo ago

Is there even an option at the airport to refuse face scanning? I assume that signs you up for a one way trip to a cavity search. TSA does it, Customs does it when entering the USA after a trip too.

beachwood23 3mo ago
There is a small sign in front of the facial scanner that says "Photo verification not required." You can always say "I decline the photo verification", and they will check your license like back in the old days. This is what I have been doing for years now.
- jandrese 3mo ago
  Things may not be quite so simple if your skin color is on the darker side, especially with the current administration. Doubly so if your passport shows you come from a country who's name ends in -stan.
  - gosub100 3mo ago
    All the previous administrations have extended the patriot act and other laws that enable warrantless spying and collecting data in the name of "security".
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      Yep but only this one has teams of people roaming the streets to round up unauthorized black people and concentrate them in camps.
  - the_doctah 3mo ago
    Pure conjecture, Reddit-coded, seal-clapping bait.
    - jandrese 3mo ago
      Tell that to Omar Artan.

tsukikage 3mo ago

I particularly like the form at the bottom for collecting your email address and adding it to a big list. EDIT: looks like it's gone now. Gonna count that as a win.

blahblaher 3mo ago
Don't be fucking stupid equating these 2 things together
- Nevermark 3mo ago
  A nicer way to say that is: "I can't decide whether to up vote or down vote you!" There is real irony that we still use non-unique-to-purpose addressing to sign up for no-need-for-our-identity newsletters. In this case, in particular.
  - tsukikage 3mo ago
    I would personally be much happier sharing that link with others if it did not have the information-collecting form.
    - Nevermark 3mo ago
      That makes perfect sense to me. I am sure the site's motives are fine, and yet the tech we still use is ridiculously aged and unsecure. Even on pro-security sites.

giacomoforte 3mo ago

I completely agree with this, but my banking apps, my broker, my health insurance, my simcard provider all already require my face for identification.

yunwal 3mo ago
FYI the processing for FaceID on iPhones is entirely offline. I think the Samsung androids have offline face id as well.
inigyou 3mo ago
Perhaps we should distinguish between institutions that require strong identity (phone networks shouldn't be in this list but are, which is a separate argument) and institutions that really shouldn't, like random websites.
- nickelpro 3mo ago
  A pointless distinction for OP's (heavy handed, LLM-generated) point: >The database you are helping build for a trustworthy government does not stay in trustworthy hands. Administrations change. A registry that merely catalogs who you are today becomes, under a future government, a map of who to find. This is an objection to driver license databases, to passports; they don't want face scans at airports, much less for banking or insurance. They want off-the-grid, untrackable anonymity. This is incompatible with much of modern life, at least in the mainstream.
notabotiswear 3mo ago
I hate that banks do that, right after that asinine Apple/Google monopoly proliferation. But “giving my face” to an institute where I was, since forever, required to submit a photo ID to join is a far cry from handing it over to earn the privilege of being exposed to whatever brainrotting garbage infests antisocial media these days…

himata4113 3mo ago

I just have obs with a video of mkbhd downloaded playing in a loop, whenever I am asked for age verification I just start the virtual camera, select it at the age verification website and it immediately passes it (most of the time). MKBHD was just the first person that I could come up with that records extremely high res video.

heroku 3mo ago
[dead]
maerF0x0 3mo ago
Please post how to do this. Maybe we can combine it with something like https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/en https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/en and video generation?
- himata4113 3mo ago
  idk, youtube worked a lot better than any avatar. I tried avatars at first with little success. and you don't need any guide it's dead simple: add video source path: path/to/your/video loop video checkmark: yes Start Virtual Camera then just select it when prompted in browser. The left/right movements are sort of a meme for most checkers and just pass randomly, the ones that need you to open your mouth get bypassed by them talking in the video.

neither_color 3mo ago

If we're going to have self-censorship due to everything we say online tied to our real identity can we at least get some shiny buildings and high speed trains out of the deal too? I've been online since early 2000s internet and for all the soapboxing about freedom of speech over the years it seems a foregone conclusion that we'll get the same surveillance state as those other "less free" countries else without anything to show for it.

inigyou 3mo ago
You can have all that if you immigrate to China.

reactordev 3mo ago

Here in the US, there’s a giant database of faces the government uses to ID people with an app. In the UK, they want this same level of invasive policing. Technology will always be used nefariously by police agencies until someone stops them, which no one will. No one, politically, wants to come out and “restrain policing” but that’s how the rich will position it so they can sell more flock cameras, more app platforms, more tech to the ever bottomless pockets of government. We are in a Thiel world.

jupr 3mo ago

Im sure a lot of people know about tor on this site...but let me remind everyone. Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me. And happens to be good enough that criminals use it too. This is the two sided nature of technology. Tor is a networks of peers across the globe volunteering their network bandwidth to support people under oppression by their government. The amount of privacy that can be gained from tor is proportional to the amount of people using it. The more that people utilize the technology, the more that everyone looks the same, and protects the people that need it the most. Tor enables me to say no to these things and carry on, without permission.

inigyou 3mo ago
I'm using Tor right now! Everyone should. It's too bad that many websites block it, but most of those websites are slop anyway.
- jupr 3mo ago
  Everyone should study the basics on a server backend and full stack web. If you can master what it takes to design and run your site on localhost....you are literally one step away from sharing it with anyone on the planet who has internet access for zero dollars because of the power of tor, and the global network that supports it. The reality is, there is no gate there, just the knowledge of how to do it. Tor is first and foremost a router. Sites that block tor IP's do happen, this is because of the dual use nature of the technology. Its also well suited for abuse.
esseph 3mo ago
Tor is very much for US overseas intelligence operatives, among other things.
- btilly 3mo ago
  That is who it was created for.
  - 3mo ago

9dev 3mo ago

Can't we even write a short text like this without LLMs anymore, not even when it's really important, when it's about humans against the inhumane?

Jasp3r 3mo ago
Here is the trick:
bklosky 3mo ago
it's wild to me how many AI written articles get front page on HN
- garciansmith 3mo ago
  I'm always amazed too. I waste so much time clicking on links like that only to find slop that just wastes my time. I'm guessing a huge number of people never even bother to click on the article and just comment based on the title, so there's that. Then there's cases where they are sympathetic to the subject or opinion and talk about that in the comments and ignore that the machine-written article doesn't actually contribute to the conversation at all.
- da_grift_shift 3mo ago
  Yeah. If the "don't post AI generated comments" guideline was extended to cover posts, I wonder what % of recent front page articles would be impacted.
  - ranger_danger 3mo ago
    Either way how could that even be enforced? Even if it's "painfully obvious", that's not proof.
- red-iron-pine 3mo ago
  You're on Y-Combinator here, a start-up incubator all about AI and launching new things, that literally used to be run by Sam Altman, and that was the launching pad of OpenAI. And you're surprised there is a lot of AI content? bots are like 50% of the internet now brah: https://cybersecuritynews.com/bots-surpass-humans-in-web-traffic/ https://cybersecuritynews.com/bots-surpass-humans-in-web-tra...

fl4regun 3mo ago

This is a little bit of a tangent compared to the post, but can someone explain to me why it's NOW that we have multiple countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and probably others that I am not aware of) all looking at age verification for a technology (the internet and all the things it lets you access) has existed for over 2 decades, and has been mature for at least 10 years? You could buy illicit drugs and watch porn on the internet since the 2000s, but it's NOW that we're legislating things (in incomprehensibly stupid and hopelessly unenforceable ways)? The worst part is these are all stupid poorly thought out band-aid solutions to "protect the kids" from platforms that are also detrimental to adults.

outime 3mo ago
Global meetings (whether secret or not) where select people decide what to do next to minimize potential threats to their power. There isn't much more to it, really.
- btilly 3mo ago
  Not just minimize threats, but often to maximize their power. Lobbyists do not just try to convince a politician that X is a good idea. Lobbyists give the politician money to introduce already drafted legislation, and then give other politicians money to support it. And if they can get the legislation passed in one place, they'll try it again. The result is that suspiciously similar legislation appears in many places close in time, due to it being pushed by particular interests.
  - outime 3mo ago
    I'm not convinced this is about money as much as it is about blackmail, given how centralized data collection has become and how many intelligence agencies appear to have access to numerous 0-days for routinely gathering additional information. It could be both things as well. What bothers me most isn't their corruption, but their apparent belief that it won't eventually affect them or their families - perhaps sooner than they think.

greenavocado 3mo ago

Has it ever occurred to you that this is intentional? All those Bilderberg and WEF forums and Peter Thiel's Dialog Club are not for nothing

frm88 3mo ago
Peter Thiel's Dialog Club Off topic but I was really astonished to find Ezra Klein on the list of permanent members.

jh00ker 3mo ago

At Disneyland, there are separate park entrance lanes that don't use facial recognition software. I like that I can opt-out passively there. At TSA checkpoints at the airport, you have to actively ask to opt-out. I'm always worried that actively opting-out puts you on a government list and there could be later, much larger ramifications, so I passively opt-in to blend in with the masses.

tejohnso 3mo ago
Yup. Most people are going to say "I have nothing to hide" and go with the flow. The ones who don't are signalling that perhaps they do have something to hide.
- mannanj 3mo ago
  Yes I do have something to hide. my face. I don't want you to own it in a data base of yours that you have a bad track record of knowing how to secure. unless of course, you are willing to take ownership and accountability of my data and promise me minimum of $100k in compensation for data breaches and leaks indefinitely from your storage of my face. You can figure out how to pay for insurance to pay for this. /oh you're not interested in even talking about this? Sounds like you have something to hide. (this fun conversation would not be well perceived when you that you ask for accountability for their actions and propose a solution. making a contract for this surely can't be super hard, but getting them to sign it and be accountable to it would be blocked hard)
- ccozan 3mo ago
  best anonymization would have been "hide in plain sight". If you really are a perpetrator: you would use a mask to perform the said fellony. So face is just on factor: now they look at gait, and other body parts that can serve for identification.
triceratops 3mo ago
I don't see the point of opting out at an airport, of all places. They already know (or should know) the real names of everyone who's flying. Fully agree that facial recognition at an amusement park, or any private business, is egregious.

harel 3mo ago

It ends with "The platforms need you far more than you need them". And I think this is the misconception. No, they don't. The amount of people who will sign this, is a fraction of a fraction of a "platform"'s users. They will not care if they lose 50,000 users out of 2 Billion. A drop in the ocean. Not the target audience anyway. And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verification but I know when the time comes, and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. It sucks, but I don't think a petition will help. Unless of course you get the 50 million to sign the petition AND stick to it.

munk-a 3mo ago
You are correct that your data isn't particularly impactful for these platforms - but you're also overestimating the value that many of these services have. A fair few of them have competitors with better features and privacy offerings so the only reason you need them is purely for the network effect of everyone else using them.
- harel 3mo ago
  If there is a substitute and I am not time constrained 100% i'm switching. But I've been in a situation already where a platform I'm using required me to face-up. I can't even remember which to be honest but I had no alternative or recourse to refuse. In addition, in the UK company directors are legaly required to face-up to Companies House and confirm their identity, so they have my face too. Ah, and so is every single CCTV camera around London. I don't know how to fight this particular battle.
  - soperj 3mo ago
    Move from London, you have all of Europe to... nevermind.
    - harel 3mo ago
      Your pessimism is warranted. But there are places that are more welcoming still.

Duanemclemore 3mo ago

Who runs this site? There doesn't appear to be any information on this. A whois search returns nothing illuminating. So... is it part of the parable they're trying to tell that they're seeing who will go against the exact sort of advice they're giving? Or does this -just happen to be- the kind of shady data gathering that they're warning against? to quote the site itself, "We spent a generation teaching people the first rule of the internet: never give out your real identity to strangers."

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
btbuildem 3mo ago
> whois search returns nothing illuminating Which is something you should expect from someone intent on privacy
- Duanemclemore 3mo ago
  Absolutely, if they're not asking for your information, as they were when I visited the site. The Wayback Machine snapshot here [0] shows a site identical to the one I visited. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20260622140511/https://nevergivethemyourface.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260622140511/https://nevergive...
dmantis 3mo ago
> Or does this -just happen to be- the kind of shady data gathering that they're warning against? How? There are no forms on the website. Wouldn't it actually be logical for a person advocating for privacy not disclosing his identity?
- Duanemclemore 3mo ago
  When I visited the page there was a field to enter your email to "sign" a pledge of refusal. The state I saw appears to be preserved in the first Wayback Machine snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20260622140511/https://nevergivethemyourface.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260622140511/https://nevergive...

lbotos 3mo ago

I..... love the idea, but if you aren't from a Shengen country you can't get into Shengen countries without a fingerprint scan and a face photo at the airport: https://travel-europe.europa.eu/ees/data-held-by-ees https://travel-europe.europa.eu/ees/data-held-by-ees No way to opt out of the scan.

chatmasta 3mo ago
Those face scans are matching to the biometrics you’ve already provided to your own government when you obtained your modern passport. My passport currently has a broken chip and I’ve been traveling extensively, so I need to go into the border guard queue every time I enter. It’s very annoying. And they take the face scan each time and their computer compares it to past images of my entry.
aftbit 3mo ago
Same in the USA I believe.
- bjourne 3mo ago
  You can actually opt out of it. The guards will be a bit miffed but it is your right. In the EU the face scans are mandatory and the data will be retained.

speedgoose 3mo ago

Who is the author?

norskeld 3mo ago
Either Claude van Code or Chad McGpt.
- volkk 3mo ago
  Wow both of these guys are prolific writers. I see them everywhere
- chadgpt3 3mo ago
  I'm not the author

chatmasta 3mo ago

I verified my age with Apple by clicking one button and Apple said it assumed I was 18 based on the age of my Apple account (2011). I guess I’m lucky to be in the cohort that avoids the face scans, and I feel a bit dirty about enabling this, but so far — even living in the UK — the privacy concerns have not manifested for me as I thought they might. To me, the most disingenuous framing of the “protect the children” narrative is not “children can’t access the stuff,” but “adults can access the stuff, once they provide their biometrics.” The default is to deny access.

trollbridge 3mo ago
Yeah. Suddenly those piles of Apple accounts lying around seem a bit more useful.

shinobi-apps 3mo ago

Yea u, me and few others, when they say it is must everyone will follow and give them even kids faces. cos majority of ppl are sheeps that are waiting for orders same as they did with covid vaccines. During covid at some point i had feeling that my cousins will tied me up and drag to hospital to get vaccine if authorities said yes, go, hunt unvaccinated

taosu_la 3mo ago

sry but at first, I thought it was about Anthropic's authentication.

Synaesthesia 3mo ago

A while back I opened a bank account for my daughter. All that I needed was to scan my face, then the bank got everything from the department of home affairs (South Africa) That means my goverment already has my face, with all my details associated with it. Bit Orwellian but there we are.

vlucas 3mo ago

The phrase "people will not just [...]" comes to mind here. The amount of people that let the TSA take a scan of their face when going through airport security - even when the signage clearly says you can opt out - proves that this effort, while noble, will fail. I (and the family members I am with) always opt-out, but every time I look around, I am the only one doing it. If I had to guess, I'd put a compliance figure somewhere around 98%+. Here is a good article on it: https://medium.com/womenintechnology/you-can-and-should-opt-out-of-tsas-facial-recognition-47b22e8d9702 https://medium.com/womenintechnology/you-can-and-should-opt-...

trollbridge 3mo ago
The TSA already knows what your face looks like, though.
- vlucas 3mo ago
  They have photos, but not a voluntary full face scan.
jupr 3mo ago
I found the signs to be hard to find and poorly placed. But since I knew about it before traveling, I just said no photo please and it was pretty frictionless. The people behind me did not even realize you could say no, and no one really wants to be late for their flight. Make the sign bigger. Its not a good test in my view.
huehehue 3mo ago
Good heavens, the comments on that article make me want to vomit: "Thanks to people with your mindset our streets and borders are not as safe as they should be." This option is made freely available to passengers, but by choosing it you're signaling that you hate your country and public safety? It's no wonder people are scared to push back on invasive and discriminatory practices.
deeteecee 3mo ago
The signage is not clear and also, you're directly faced in an environment that's not friendly so yeah, it will fail.

codedokode 3mo ago

There is actually a way to prove the age anonymously. Yubikey-like devices support attestation - they can have a private key proving authenticity of a device. So some organization could release Yubikeys with a certain private key and distribute them in stores that allow only adult customers - like liquor stores or sex shops. Owning a key proves that one is adult without disclosing identity. Keys support USB and bluetooth and can be easily supported on any device. Also, OS developers should implement simple parent mode - such that parents only need to flip a switch and set a password, and do not have to whitelist apps or websites - the OS should use government-provided lists. You might not like the government, but 99% of parents do not want to bother compiling white lists manually.

panny 3mo ago
The problem with that is, parents be like: >Here kid, take my key, go get me some beer. Everyone everywhere gets forced to deal with bullshit, then the people it is supposed to be protecting circumvent it directly.
- yolo3000 3mo ago
  The same can happen with any type of authentication, unless you are ok with someone pointing a webcam and authenticating you non stop.
  - panny 3mo ago
    No, I think there are parents who would find a long enough webcam cable to point the cam at themselves while Jeff Epstein is grooming their kids in roblox. The core point is that it isn't my responsiblity to take care of your children. When less than half of millennials (40% men, 55% women) have children, the "think of the children" catchphrase really starts to fall flat. Why should I think of the children? I don't even have children. It's the parents' problem, not mine. Stop making it my problem.
  - andrewla 3mo ago
    This is underselling it -- an adult can sell these yubikeys untraceably, pocket the cash, and never think about it again in their life. If we tie the person's identity to the token (THIS IS A BAD IDEA) then if underage use is detected, the adult who sold the token can be prosecuted for selling adult tokens to minors.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

shevy-java 3mo ago

> It is not age verification. It is identity verification. Very true. They are currently orchestrating the attack. It is also why I call age sniffing age sniffing like that; "age verification" is the propaganda term. We need to look which actors are behind this push. I smell a trail of corruption money following these actors pushing for it. It is also fascinating to see how quickly democracies fall victim to this. Soon age sniffing will be mandatory everywhere. The free world wide web will be gone. Right now people think this is hyperpole. Well, we saw that with other technology too ...

radium3d 3mo ago

They already have your face.

ForceBru 3mo ago
Yeah, "they" probably simply have our FaceID data that we're willingly collecting ourselves, supposedly for our own security.
- trollbridge 3mo ago
  Face ID is entirely on device and it is cryptographically difficult to extract the data even with a jailbroken device.
  - ForceBru 3mo ago
    Well, hopefully this is indeed the case!
  - dackdel 3mo ago
    i mean so they say? but really?
- zahlman 3mo ago
  Would be rather difficult for "them" to get it off my $80 CAD vertical flip phone, I dare say.
  - radium3d 3mo ago
    It's not coming from any of your devices.

ForceBru 3mo ago

So does this mean that, say, Apple actually doesn't have access to our FaceID data? Otherwise there'd be no need for no laws: just force Apple, Google, etc to share face information with "the government". Well, I guess technically "they" would probably need some kind of law to do this anyway. I feel like tons of people use various kinds of FaceID-type technologies for unlocking their phones, laptops, etc. So it would make sense if "they" already had all of our faces. I personally don't use FaceID because I'm not thrilled about having my face scanned with utmost precision. BTW, I'm looking at my phone typing this and I know my phone has its face-scanning device pointed right at me. Is it sending "them" my face data all the time? Or sometimes? I can't tell. What if I'm showing something on my phone to another person? Is it going to scan their face too? Maybe, maybe not.

judge2020 3mo ago
Face unlock on iPhone is completely on-device. This is why you have to set it up again every time you buy a new device.

ghusto 3mo ago

This and every post like it hurts the cause. Don't argue "Resist!" like a child, argue with an alternative. You're not bringing anything to the table other than teenage angst, ensuring nobody takes the _very valid and terrifying concerns_ seriously. Instead, suggest a feasible alternative. Bonus points if it works better, cheaper, and safer.

kspacewalk2 3mo ago
And don't handwaive away the real problem with children on social media. It's not good enough, not gonna cut it, there's strong consensus around fixing this big societal problem. Go ahead and blame the parents all you want - to a critical mass of people nowadays, it reads like the equivalent of blaming them for a 10 year old being let into a casino and getting addicted to slot machines. The debate will then just move on right past you because you're not being serious. We need privacy-respecting age verification. It's not rocket science, it's just a matter of implementation. The bad actors - which are mostly bad by virtue of being ignorant - will win the debate if we're throwing hissy fits and telling parents to fuck off instead of coming up with constructive criticism of this approach to age verification.
- sailfast 3mo ago
  I have kids, and I don't think we need age verification. I'm not blaming the websites for content my kids access, and I have to work to make sure I'm tracking what my kids are doing. Not saying we should stop trying to verify age in a privacy-respecting way, but the current incentive structure means that we cannot really EXPECT this in the near term. If we cannot expect it, then we should not legislate or require it until the right solution has been found and we need to encourage our lawmakers to FUND the right way to do this. I'm not handwaving the problems of children on social media, but it is within parental control to a certain extent, and preventing access with age verification will not prevent access in other places, nor help them deal with the onslaught when they are of age to make decisions.

AdmiralAsshat 3mo ago

I have yet to receive my federal tax refund because I submitted my taxes through a preparation service and, thinking that physical checks were still an option (the tax software didn't tell me otherwise), I did not give the federal government an ACH account number for direct deposit. The IRS then told me I'd have to open an account to update/provide direct deposit info, which in turn requires me to register with ID.me to create an account. ID.me has an obnoxious signup policy which includes sending them a boatload of documentation, and a headshot. I'm not doing it. So to date, I have yet to receive my federal refund. Somewhere on the IRS website I had found buried in an article that if they can't submit my refund via direct deposit after some period of time, they are supposed to mail me a physical check. Yet so far, nada.

sailfast 3mo ago
While I agree that this is annoying, you're trying to interact with the federal government which actually does require IDENTITY verification and not age verification in order to perform its duties. That id.me account allows you to take actions on behalf of a citizen, so they need to confirm some things first. It's not great, but it's not what the original poster is against.
- AdmiralAsshat 3mo ago
  The frustration, I suppose, is that the government doesn't seem to demand this level of scrutiny to take my money, in the event that I owed on my tax returns for that year. But when they have money to give to me, suddenly it's 12 interviews and a colonoscopy to get approved.
  - sailfast 3mo ago
    True. It absolutely will take your money :)
- sufficientsoup 3mo ago
  My issue with it is that it's a vendor. The need for identification is fair, and I'm not worried about the govt having it. I'm worried about _id.me_ having it.

0x59 3mo ago

it may benefit: children, social media, marketing, police state, ai, data brokers, and many others does it benefit you?

kyledrake 3mo ago

> We run background checks on people who want to buy a gun, but we do not background check everyone at all times just in case. And the other thing is, you can use a gun to murder people. If you try to use a porn site to murder someone, you're fundamentally hitting them with a laptop. A major reason nobody can think clearly about this anymore is that there are people out there that genuinely believe porn sites and social media are as dangerous to human health as assault rifles and cigarettes. I'm almost as disturbed that people can't differentiate between harm risks as I am about horrible internet age checking laws.

yuvrajsa 3mo ago

[flagged]

adamtaylor_13 3mo ago

How is this different from sending my government ID to access things like Stripe, Robin Hood, etc? It seems that without legal obligation things will continue to go this route.

1970-01-01 3mo ago

I will give them faces, just not my faces. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45081323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45081323

steele 3mo ago

Well-monied providers will steal it, perhaps with the courtesy of a buried and penalized opt-out.

jdw64 3mo ago

[dead]

SoftTalker 3mo ago

Your face is already everwhere. Your supermarket records it as you check out. Every retailer records it as you enter the store. The state has it. The Federal government has it if you have a passport or other federal ID. Your mortgage company probably required it when you digitally "signed" your loan application. Socials have it from all the selfies you've posted. It's a lost cause.

w4yai 3mo ago
Yeah, I was going to say that as well. Your face is extremely easy to capture, and except if you permanently live under a mask, there's 0% chance to avoid it. Don't get me wrong, I like "fight the system" vibes but we need to be realistic. This fight is a lost one.
marcta 3mo ago
I was going to say the same. Also, if you go to shops like Screwfix or Toolstation (in the UK), you have to give your postcode and name to them before they sell to you. I tried opting out once and they refused to sell to me. I give them fake postcodes and names instead now, but it's very invasive and completely unnecessary.

cute_boi 3mo ago

Only regulation can solve such issue. However, our government is very weak....

RandyRanderson 3mo ago

I like that how in the same place that they have been trying to "protect the children" for like a decade [1], they have also had a real rape gang epidemic [2]. It's almost like they are, in fact, not really trying to protect the children. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_in_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooming_gangs_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooming_gangs_scandal Hilariously, a commenter asked me for a citation for the epidemic. Commenter: you're not mr current events are you?

inigyou 3mo ago
Citation was provided for "protect the children" but not for rape gang epidemic? But suppose there was a rape gang epidemic - wouldn't that be a good reason to want to protect the children?
- RandyRanderson 3mo ago
  It's import to solve the meta-issues here: 1 you didn't google current events before asking the first Q. Try that before asking someone else to. 2 mid-tier LLMs are capable of reasoning through your second Q. Go ahead try that next time. 3 you haven't accepted that 2 is true and the ramifications thereof.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    the meta-meta issue is that you did not provide any response other than "just google it" and "just chatgpt it"

__MatrixMan__ 3mo ago

I quit facebook over a decade ago. Then, a few months back, I was under some pressure to sell something, and the facebook marketplace appears to be the way to go locally. So I tried to create a facebook account. They wanted to scan my face, and in a moment of weakness, I performed the ritual. Thirty seconds later, they suspended my account due to violations of their terms of service: "this decision cannot be appealed". So now they have my face and I still can't use the marketplace. I can only assume I'm suspended due to the behavior of somebody who tried to use my identity for something during the decade when I had no facebook account. Apparently not even my face is strong enough authentication for me to convince them that I'm not whoever it was that caused whatever the problem was. This is why biometrics will never make sense. They're too immutable. Maintaining multiple accounts is not a bug, it's a debugging mechanism. Since I have only the face that I do, I can't even figure out why I'm banned. We need to instead stop trusting people merely because they have an account. 10k upvotes/likes/5-star-reviews should mean nothing if I don't explicitly or transitively trust the upvoters/likers/reviewers. We have to build things that make decisions by traversing the trust graph so instead of being banned with no recourse, I can create a no-trust identity and elevate it back to personhood status by convincing my meatspace friends to trust it by having a conversation with them in meatspace.

jazzyjackson 3mo ago
I tried to make an account while forgetting my VPN was engaged. Another US IP address but one from a block of IPs I’m sure is used for nefarious purposes. So because I briefly shared an IP block with ne’erdowells, I am, without an option to appeal, banned from interacting with Facebook forever. Google Ads is ghosting me too. I really could get behind legislation that requires companies to have a human point of contact in these cases, but I guess a private company has the right to ignore people they don’t want as customers.
- b40d-48b2-979e 3mo ago
  but I guess a private company has the right to ignore people they don’t want as customers. The problem is the monopolistic power these companies have.

socalgal2 3mo ago

I'm sympathetic to this but this page is preaching to the choir. You didn't sell me in the first paragraph.

andai 3mo ago

Thank you, ChatGPT, very interesting. I agree with the article, but the LLM-isms cheapen it by two orders of magnitude.

cma256 3mo ago

They've got mine... Fly to Canada and your face gets scanned. I forgot this event and was surprised, walking through an American airport flying to another domestic location, that my picture and name appeared on an airline's screen without input. Not a government screen, mind you. I forget the exact context but the feeling persists. Very unnerving.

HWR_14 3mo ago
If it's the same system I saw, it's branded with the airline, but hooked to the government passport database. And if you read the disclosure, the airline promised to delete your data within some small number of minutes or face stiff penalties. Stiff enough that I believe that there is no additional information on you from using that system.

Hasz 3mo ago

An unpopular opinion for this site probably, but all the same arguments apply to gun control and civil liberties in general. In the united states, the first amendment (what this post is primarily concerned about) and the second amendment are equally important rights, and we should be just as judicious about applying restrictions to the second as the first. Instead, you see attacks on the 2nd in the name of "safety, verification, age assurance. A small step to protect children". The exact same playbook used against civilian gun ownership will be rolled out against the first amendment, the 4th amendment, etc. Civil rights and protections should be expanding, not contracting, and the primary focus point for the last 30 years (and the playbooks that will be used elsewhere) are being tested on the second amendment.

Havoc 3mo ago

I wouldn’t mind as much if it was entirely in house gov run. They realistically know a lot about me already - incl blood donations so could get dna even. Outsourcing this to random ass for profits is a problem though.

stephbook 3mo ago
As a European with a digital-ID passport that supports age verification without identification, the lack of technical support for this infuriates me. Maybe once we have the euro-wide digital wallet and make it compulsory to support it.

hubbahubbahubba 3mo ago

Why would you cite a Bloomberg reference in the article? Are you completely tone deaf on open source software and private ownership and use of 3d printers? FFS don’t direct traffic towards an opponent of free software.

hootz 3mo ago

The problem is that for most people, facial recognition is just another method of account verification. Sometimes worse than alternatives, but also sometimes more convenient, and convenience wins over privacy if people are not actively made aware of the consequences.

stephbook 3mo ago

That's kind of a bleak vision. I wonder how the author would explain that the ID and age systems we already have – cigarette dispensers, liquor stores, club entry, driver's license, to name a few – work "kind of fine" though.

nmlt 3mo ago

This article is AI slop

remus 3mo ago

> They are built to know who you are: your name, your date of birth, your document number, your face. This is not age verification at all. It is forced identity tracking. This doesn't have to be the case. https://www.w3.org/TR/digital-credentials/ https://www.w3.org/TR/digital-credentials/ seems a sensible system where you can have a single identity provider (hopefully someone you trust) who can then verify things like "is this person over 18?" without givin away any excessive information to a third party. Hopefully it gains some traction.

pseudalopex 3mo ago
A sensible system would require no trust. You could trust no provider would collude or be hacked ever. But to prevent governments to demand records requires records not exist.

LZ_Khan 3mo ago

Are you allowed to do this in places like airports?

azdle 3mo ago
I was just at a US airport and there were a bunch of signs saying you can opt out of having your face scanned at security, you just have to tell them. Though, if you have a passport or driver's license, its not like they don't already have your face...

josefritzishere 3mo ago

This article is spot on. It's a red line for me. Biometrics are not great for security but definitively bad for privacy. I would move to a federal ban on biometrics outside of intelligence agencies.

electrotype 3mo ago

I'm quitting Claude AI because of https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14328960-identity-verification-on-claude https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14328960-identity-ver... .

mikodin 3mo ago
Gah - this is unfortunate. This will have me quit as well - I wonder when they will begin to enforce this on the Claude Code front. I remember when OpenAI tried (maybe they still are?) putting this in for GPT 5 and this had me switch from them to Anthropic.

nntwozz 3mo ago

The battle is lost, technological determinism is an unstoppable force. Once the camera was invented the die was cast. "Technological determinism is the theory that a society's technology drives the development of its social structure, cultural values, and history."

hennell 3mo ago

> Name the places now demanding "age verification," and see how many will accept a plain government document that says only that you are over eighteen — and nothing else. Almost none will. Because age was never the point. Name the physical places that would accept a plain government document that says only that you are over eighteen and nothing else? None will, not because 'age was never the point', or because every bar or casino is stealing your face - but because a plain document doesn't offer any proof you are it's owner. Photo ID has been standard as age verification because it's the best way to prove the official ID actually links to the person holding it. There are more concerns in a digital world with giving your ID / face, but the idea that the demand for photo ID proves it's all a big data grab not remotely about age is a conclusion looking for evidence. (Plus they acknowledge some sites have done age verification where all they want is your face to confirm you look over 18 - which they then ignore, claiming it's all really a ploy to get your documents. So why isn't the site 'Never give them your documents'?)

aappleby 3mo ago

this would be more convincing if it wasn't ai written.

schrodinger 3mo ago

Maybe this is making a slightly different point (i.e. the usage of immutable physical features as "passwords", which I agree is largely useless), I think we're just entering a post-privacy era. Being around 40, I willingly fed the machine (Facebook) with hundreds of pictures during university, and had I not, my friends would have more than made up for it. It's absolutely possible to photograph every person you pass by every day, and Facebook most certainly has the keys to identify most all of the people. That dystopian combination means that unless you're welling to move to a largely uninhabited place, each of our whereabouts can be largely resolved with technology available _today_ at a completely reasonable cost. Not only that, almost everyone on this forum walks around with a device that shares their identity and location with unscrupulous companies (cell phone carriers) whose data is available en masse to the government. (N.B. I have an iPhone and appreciate and even _trust_ all the privacy work put into it; however, the cell phone tower thwarts location tracking, and participation in social networks thwarts face tracking.) I've long thought that rather than try to limit the information about us, we ought to _flood_ the Internet with information about us. Make the data available untrustworthy. Or, accept it. So long as it remains in the hands of corporations and not solely the government, it guts both ways — a senator can no longer be publicly opposed to same-sex equality legislation while engaging in a homosexual relationship themselves. AI seems to be pushing us down the former road.

coolThingsFirst 3mo ago

I am against this but acting like LinkedIn isn’t basically a database of pictures is naive. You want to date your pic ends up on a server. That’s just the way this works.

Scroll_Swe 3mo ago

Okay, but then they lock my bank login behind face verification. Now what?

tim333 3mo ago

To take the other side as nearly all comments agree, I'm not too worried about my face. My socials - twitter, fb, linkedin all have my face and 2/3 real name. When I do things in the real world I also have a face. Also if I want to be anonymous on social networks you can still pretty much. You can worry too much about that stuff. Not that the author worries, being an LLM.

butlike 3mo ago

Who's "they?"

Jackie1402 3mo ago

[flagged]

chris_explicare 3mo ago

[dead]

tsoukase 3mo ago

Let's describe it simply: in the name of children protection, pushed by govs and parents, the companies found the chance to pass full identification of all. They use the former as a Trojan horse for the latter. The sollution is simply to decouple the two processes. Now it'seasy as it's still early. The first step is for the people to realise the sneaky link and for the govs to stop any lobbying.

anonanon123z 3mo ago

they already read people minds non invasively, they don't really need faces, at best its just the image to put on the icon of your digitally cloned brain

monksy 3mo ago

Partly this is there to kill off services that the politicans don't like. I.e. porn.