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The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux (www.sambent.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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[–] 58 points 7 months ago (9 children)

2000s: war on general purpose computing because of copyright

2020s: war on general purpose computing because of child protection

In the 2000s the forces of freedom mostly won, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Broadband_and_Digital_Television_Promotion_Act didn't become law. So far it seems that we are currently losing. :(

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  • [–] 43 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    In Europe too, chatcontrol keeps being pushed no matter how often it's being struck down.

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Yes; recent news have made me somewhat optimistic that the resistance to it is winning though.

    Age verification laws currently look like a much greater danger to freedom.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Personally I think that win (while really a win) is being overcelebrated.

    It's easily reverted. All they'll have to do is find some csam or terrorism related scandal in the news and pump it as a big deal, and all the resistance will be gone at the next vote.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    With chat control we actually have to distinguish two different things that people sometimes confuse:

    • voluntary chat control ("chat control 1.0"), which is currently already the law in the EU
    • mandatory chat control ("chat control 2.0"), proposed in 2022

    Voluntary chat control is about letting operators of communication services voluntarily scan messages for certain illegal activity (without this constituting a violation of data protection laws). This doesn't break encryption and isn't a part of a war on general purpose computing. While there are many good arguments against it, it's not especially catastrophic. It's a detail of business regulation.

    Mandatory chat control is about forcing them to do so, which must necessarily break encryption and impose limits on software freedom. This is what is most important to oppose.

    The most recent win ended up rejecting even (most) voluntary chat control, which is a good sign that mandatory chat control won't get a majority either.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It has very nearly got a majority several times. I'm sure that with some media manipulation (eg milking an incident) it will be easily pushed through.

    Imagine if the Dutroux scandal would happen now. They'd jump on that to push all kinds of monitoring on everyone. Even though this would not be prevented by it in any way (and in fact that all happened long before WhatsApp even existed)

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    It has very nearly got a majority several times. I’m sure that with some media manipulation (eg milking an incident) it will be easily pushed through.

    "Several times"? There were two votes to date.

    The only "majority" we've been hearing about were the "these governments support this idea" maps, which have minimal bearing on how the EU Parliament actually votes.

    Correct me if I'm wrong.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    I hear you 100%. This sort of shit comes back with a different name each year. I am SOOOO sick of voting down abortion bans every election cycle.

    26 US states, including mine, have initiative or referendum processes allowing citizens to place an issue on the ballot. In some states, that's how the anti-abortion laws are ending up on the ballot, but we an use their own tools against them. In many states, these initiatives failed so we know we have a minimum of 51% support if it's a law, and at least 33% support if it's an amendment (depending on that state and their rules). Polling shows, an even larger percentage, most Americans, do not support these laws. The numbers are on our side.

    https://ballotpedia.org/States_with_initiative_or_referendum

    If we can collect enough signatures, the voters can put an end to this. If we add it to the state constitution, where the process allows this, we can completely prevent laws doing this from being considered because the only thing that can overrule a constitutional amendment is another constitutional amendment.

    I'm gauging interest to do this in Colorado to foil age attestation laws, but we could potentially end the back and forth bullshit in multiple states.

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    • [–] 194 points 7 months ago (21 children)

    “It’s just a harmless field; what’s the big deal?”

    The big deal is that it’s on the heels of age verification bullshit that fascists are pushing through with the help of tech bros, so that they can eventually push all of us into a scenario where we have zero privacy.

    It’s not the adding of the field itself or the fact that it can be filled with nonsense. It’s the reasoning backing it.

    “But it’s the law!”

    Yeah, fucking and…? It’s a stupid mass surveillance law disguised as a protection, and per usual, it’s written like vague dog shit. This is the smallest part of the wedge. More will come of this and if developers like this keep volunteering themselves to help the fascists, we will all be fucked. Here’s an alternative approach: just don’t add this. You can fight back by not fucking implementing this. Easy.

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  • [–] 45 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Twenty Lessons For Fighting Tyranny

    1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

    https://www.carnegie.org/our-work/article/twenty-lessons-fighting-tyranny/

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  • [–] 54 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    “But it’s the law!”

    I was just following orders!

    this same person would be chuckling to themself about how pointless this all is as he locks the door on the gas chambers.

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  • [–] 37 points 7 months ago

    Also, they will use it as a means to lock content they don't want. Like in some jurisdictions it's already forbidden to share any kind of LGBTQ information even medical with minors.. Even in EU, like Hungary. Clearly this age verification will be used for this too. And people not willing to age verify will be locked out too.

    It's part of their campaign of forcing conservative 'values' onto everyone.

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago*

    Agreed. To elaborate:

    Sure, the developer is a bit of a Judas for complying in advance, but our anger should be aimed at the people with power and reach promoting these laws in the political sphere (the metaphorical Pharisees).

    To those saying "it's just a field", please consider that the timing is a more significant statement than the addition of the field itself. Why now? If you don't support fascism, don't build the frameworks that support it and don't let fascists use YOUR platforms or software to make THEIR point, make them fork it and let them fail. I don't think many members of the senate or house would be capable of adding this themselves. I'd be surprised if they could code hello world in TI-83 BASIC. If they ask you to do it, stub your toe and call in sick. Make it really shitty. Leave in a bunch of bugs that crash the program then blame the age attestation feature to turn users against it. Use copywrited code that they'll have to remove later due to license incompatibilities. Report your boss to HR for every indiscretion that you might have normally overlooked. Or do nothing; that's still better than complying in advance.

    We have to break the narrative that this is inevitable. There's enough of us, with concentrated enough knowledge and influence (aka, you folks are a bunch if nerds and I love it!), that if we collectively stop, the whole train stops or derails.

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  • [+] -19 points 7 months ago* (4 children)

    You don't understand.

    The alternative to device based private attestation which is what this is or could be part of is constant online verification by Palantir.

    Is every time you want to view porn or adult content you have to verify your real identity so evil corporations and the government who pays them know exactly what your fetishes are and can blackmail you. So they know exactly what you're posting online because you have to face-scan and ID-scan to set up an email account, a social media account, any account with anything that allows posting content online. Is training the population not to enter a date for their kids or themselves when setting up a computer or device account for the first time, once but upon demand scan their face, scan their ID, comply, sit meekly in fear because everything they do online is known.

    What does this know? Your birthday. That's nothing. As it stands it you can enter anything you want. Fight them when they come to add a verification system to this and point out parents would be in a position to set this up for their kids anyways and its just spying. Fight on stronger ground.

    We've already lost the maximalist position. The internet scanning and ID verification has already been enacted in several states and countries and we risk a world where it becomes the norm and hosting companies drop anyone who doesn't implement it because they're made liable as well. This stuff won't be repealed. People don't live in democracies. They live in a dictatorship of the wealthy and the corporations. Your dissent doesn't matter and it cannot reach most tech illiterate people who have far more pressing concerns than to riot over this.

    This is a compromise solution and I wish more people would see it. If you can bend you don't break. If you don't bend and your enemy is the government they are stronger than you and they will snap you like a twig.

    Linux desktop market share is too small to matter. And if you make this push fail then the only alternative, the only viable solution these politicians who are being cajoled and urged to implement this will see is online live-scan face and ID verification and it'll sweep everything. You'll have destroyed the internet and having saved Linux won't matter. After that it'll be a quick move to ban encryption that the government cannot break and ISPs will block traffic they can't inspect. Game over. A simple maneuver from the place you force them to by refusing to cooperate and enact this compromise, privacy-preserving solution. We need strong defensible positions to protect privacy and the internet and free software and to understand that the old ways have been lost, they've died, they've been strangled and a compromise position must be taken up to endure and avoid a total loss.

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  • [–] 22 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    They can already put it on the parents to verify if they want. Just buy age compliant devices. Stop shilling this nonsense and forcing fear and hopelessness down everyone's throat. This is bullshit and you know it. We already have a defensible position.

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  • [+] -9 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It is defensible in this kind of community, but I doubt it's defensible in a board voter base. For instance people see billionaires and are saying the government should step in and do something, because as individuals we are somewhat helpless. In this instance we're like we can fork/we can revert so the government ideally just needs to back off. But if you ask a non-tech savvy voter (and a parent in your example) they will just see big tech and say the government should step in and do something. Has this method of governance been compromised? Sure, is this law an example of that? Sure. But what can we do? The government... Well until people can agree on that, I think we are just trying to find a compromise so that most people can easily dismiss the perspective that parenting tech is too hard. And if people can believe that typing in an age for their child and see big penalties for big tech if they ignore that age, that seems to me the placebo this situation needs.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    Am I the only one that is sick and tired of explaining to clueless people why this type of legislation should be shot down. This has been going on since SOPA and PIPA in the US around 2010 or whatever. I feel like I'm blue in the face.

    Parents can get child compliant devices if they want. They need to leave our shit alone. How hard would it be to fork a child resistant Ubuntu or have Mac and Windows do it so these Karen's can protect their own damn kids. But forget the guns and pedophiles running every country in the world. Let's just fuck with the passions of the FOSS community and open the door for more surveillance.

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  • [+] -36 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    Yep, then using linux will be illegal, great fucking idea boss

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  • [–] 37 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    You’re welcome to be a spineless muppet trying to obey unethical laws, but I won’t be.

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  • [+] -23 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Nope, I am a muppet whose livelihood depends on them respecting the law. If you are from one of the godforsaken regions doing stupid laws you should vote against them, I need to comply with your laws because I need to work to feed my family.

    You can call me a spineless muppet all you want but I am not the cause stupid laws exists, take it on the californianas for that crap, they elected the idiots doing this. I vote our own idiots and until now they made it clear this bullshit is not on their table, thank you wery much but I did my part.

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    • [–] 74 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Then he said Arch Linux should implement it anyway because the law requires it. archinstall PR #4290

    Well, it's not "the law", it's your local law. To most people on the planet, it doesn't apply any more than for example North Korea's laws. As far as I can find, Arch Linux is not owned by a foundation or similar legal entity (i.e. which could have been located in California), but the lead developer appears to live in Germany.

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  • [–] 20 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I mean they kidnapped maduro and are trying him under new york law so....

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    So... if the law interferes with your goals, apparently it is now perfectly fine to just ignore it.

    That seems to be the approach the US government is taking.

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    • [–] 36 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Petition to name the inevitable fork of this "SystemFree"

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  • [+] -8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Beautiful performative activism.

    Why actually make a PR, do any code changes or participate in any project discussions when you can just make a fake petition on social media to grab a tiny hit of dopamine before moving on to something else for your next hit of outrage.

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    • [–] 32 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I still don't understand why it needs to be implemented as part of systemd, and not - say - as a service. Or, if we want to "go with" the law - make it a kernel module, which sounds more impressive ("we are complying at the kernel level!") but in practice so much easier to opt out of.

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  • [–] 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    I don't see what's wrong with implementing it as an add-on to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecos_field as the PR in question does. It's the most logical place as the location to store user information and is even easier to opt out of—you just edit a file—than choosing whether to compile Linux with/add to DKMS a kernel module.

    Edit: One can see https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/8878df45c1a58afdfb500fdc53ec50e057a240ce/docs/USER_RECORD_BLOB_DIRS.md?plain=1#L103 for an example of a user record file and its path. Further documentation you can read at https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/8878df45c1a58afdfb500fdc53ec50e057a240ce/man/systemd-userdbd.service.xml#L36 and https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/8878df45c1a58afdfb500fdc53ec50e057a240ce/docs/USER_RECORD.md .

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    • [–] 15 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Test your understanding of the Dylan Taylor age verification story and what it reveals about open source infrastructure

    I'm very suspicious of whether one would create 10 questions for nearly every blog post of zirs by hand.

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    [–] 28 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    He didn't just try. He succeeded in doing so. His pull request was merged into systemd and will land into your distro eventually (if it is systemd-based).

    There are distros free of systemd, like Devuan, based on Debian.

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  • [+] -9 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    systemd already stores your realName and location. It has stored that information since the beginning.

    There is nothing that birthDate will tell a person that they can't find out using your realName and location.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (4 children)
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  • [+] -6 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    I don't think that it does, if this were a wikipedia discussion where bad faith arguments and trolling were removed then I'd agree.

    But since the moderation on this topic doesn't exist, the only thing remaining to Team 'Don't Dox and Harass Developers' is the blunt instrument of repetition.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    You are trying to protect the villain in the story.

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    • [–] 74 points 7 months ago* (38 children)

    to all y'all with the "it's just a text field": what if the field is "race"? "sexual orientation"? "jerks_off_to"? what the fuck has a system managing daemon got to do with any of that? and why would you preemptively put it in there without even a pretense of a fight?

    fuck you make us! make linux illegal, in Cali of all places. guess how long that will last?

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (37 children)

    Yeah, scary.

    What about some other scary fields like:

    • Real Name
    • Office Address
    • Office number
    • Office telephone number
    • Home telephone number
    • external e-mail address

    I mean if those fields were stored, could you imagine the danger that Linux users would be in?

    You don't have to imagine, because those fields have been stored in UNIX/Linux since 1962. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecos_field

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  • [–] 23 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    I think back then it was generally assumed this simply assisted with office communication.

    Imagine telling a UNIX engineer in the 70's how almost everything you enter into a machine would eventually be used to manipulate or entrap you by the State and surveillance capitalism.

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Imagine telling a UNIX engineer in the 70’s how almost everything you enter into a machine would eventually be used to manipulate or entrap you by the State and surveillance capitalism.

    This isn't a hypothetical. North Korea uses a version of Linux which does exactly that.

    It still doesn't make these fields inherently dangerous, and that same argument applies to birthDate. Even if systemd build a verification system that required photo identification and a DNA sample it wouldn't be a problem.

    The community would just fork the project before the totalitarianism update. The FOSS world already has a process to avoid massively unpopular changes. This change isn't massively unpopular, this is a vocal minority who is stirred up by web articles leveraging clickbait and outrage to drive ad revenue.

    The age verification laws are unpopular, I'm personally completely against them. However, they do exist and adding an optional field in order to allow project, who choose to do so, to store that data is not a red line or the start of a slippery slope.

    In the future, if there was a red line that was crossed, we would fix it with a fork and not with a harassment campaign.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

    That's you. You have no issues giving anyone an inch and then wondering why you're being lined up on the street afterwards once they've taken the mile.

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    Those are also entirely optional and not having them filled in doesn't cause other software to stop doing what the user wants.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    (same for the birthDate field)

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    Not true. Because the stated purpose of the laws at play is to enable that to be queried so that sites can decide what is appropriate for you to see.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    That is the purpose, but the field is implemented as optional and modifiable with admin privileges.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (5 children)

    That is not the point and you know it.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (4 children)

    Your point is true, but I'm saying its impact is also optional.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (3 children)

    The option is not supposed to be there at all. Don’t comply with ANY part of it, especially in advance.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (2 children)

    exactly, users should disable the optional birthDate field

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    No. It shouldn't be part of the OS at all. It should be a third party package that one can choose to then add the repo or download the package, and manually install. And then click that you agree you want age tracking before it actually installs. It's should be very manual and opt in only, and never installed by default. That way those that wish to can have it, and no one else need comply in advance to fascism. Opt out is an awful plan. You know that. You're just trolling or are for a deeper police state.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    I didn’t say that it should be part of the OS. You’re repeating a different (compelling) argument that doesn’t change whether this field is opt-out when this entire subthread is about whether these fields are opt-out since kent_eh said the other fields were opt-out.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (14 children)

    Stored "because law", right?

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  • [–] -4 points 7 months ago (13 children)

    Who cares why it is stored, these fields exist for every user in every Linux system and they have existed for decades.

    Either birthDate the field is dangerous or it isn't. If it is, how?

    It is no different than data fields that ask for way more identifiable and personal information such as Real Name and Office number which have, again, existed for decades without issue.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago* (9 children)

    I care. One thing is "you know, fields with this name have been around since before you were born", another thing is "some idiots passed the law half the globe away, now we are preparing your system to comply. Someone has to (c)". The field is not the danger, the thinking, attitude and act is

    Edit: some local law, for fuck's sake

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    That's a fair argument.

    Is it fair to say: The field is benign but there is contention about if it should be added or not and users of the software are concerned that their voices were not heard on the issue. That can be handled in the normal project framework, perhaps by suggesting a publicly stated policy about these issues around legal compliance so the community can determine if they want to support the project or not.

    My argument is that I don't think that the damage that was done justifies the hitpiece in the OP which is, almost literally, painting a target on the developer with the mugshot photograph and loaded language.

    So, if you're not one of the people then we're having different conversations. In that conversation, I do agree with what you just said. I'd like to see the very large projects, which affect a lot of users, such as systemd, have a more formal way to accept public comment and respond on contentious changes and feature requests.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Is it fair to say: The field is benign

    It is benign if it is optional, remains 100% local and under the user's control and doesn't prevent other software from functioning as expected.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    It is optional, 100% local, under the user's control and does not prevent other software from functioning as expected.

    If it ever is not, then you can simply fork the project at or before that change.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    It is not a hit piece. No call to action was stated.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    It paints him as an active danger, puts his picture on a wanted poster, includes his full name, workplace and the city and state where he lives and then writes up an article like an after action report of a cyberattack.

    It then implies that he's going to do it again and that he can't be persuaded and so will be 'harder to stop'.

    Taylor believes what he's doing is right, which makes him harder to stop than someone acting for money. Taylor already has the resume line and knows the codebase well enough to try again. That's the true believer pattern. The argument is ideological, so persuasion is off the table.

    So if he's done a bad thing, he's going to do it again, and you can't persuade him.

    If you can't read the implied call to action then you're being deliberately dense.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    He’s not an active danger to the code and community? He’s volunteering to help implement the tools of fascism. I consider that dangerous. There is no call to action. If you were worried he was in danger, you’d contact the authorities, not try to identify yourself with him so vehemently.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    To be fair, I am bit split on this. On one hand, name and shame is an effective strategy and should be used. On the other hand, "put age verification into Linux" is a hilarious stretch. And yes, it feels strange that I have yet to see any kind of response from other systemd maintainers and managers - after all, the man authored a pull-request, not merged into into upstream. I have not been looking for that kind of response myself though, which also serves your point: putting all the blame and anger on this one man (I purposefully omit name) is too much

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Ah, but this time the government wants it to be able to be queried so that applications and web sites can decide what to do with you. That's the difference.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    The government's wants are not in the PR. The PR is an optional JSON field.

    The field isn't dangerous, you're conflating two different things.

    The age verification laws are the threat, not an optional text field or the developer who added it.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Your argument is an informal fallacy called Whataboutism.

    I invite you to educate yourself by reading about it on Wikipedia

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