Canada’s proposed Bill S-209, which addresses online age verification, is currently making its way through the Senate, and its passage would be yet another mistake in tech policy.
The bill is intended to restrict young peoples’ access to online pornography and to hold providers to account for making it available to anyone under 18. It may be well-intentioned, but the manner of its proposed enforcement – mandating age verification or what is being called “age-estimation technologies” – is troubling.
Globally, age-verification tools are a popular business, and many companies are in favour of S-209, particularly because it requires that websites and organizations rely on third parties for these tools. However, they bring up long-standing concerns over privacy, especially when you consider potential leaks or hacks of this information, which in some cases include biometrics that can identify us by our faces or fingerprints. […]
Its not "well intentioned”, the silpery slope is the point. Getting porn sites to essentially self censor by restricting what geographic regions have accesss until one day its the majority of places and suddenly banning porn sites in the remaining hold outs doesnt seem like such a hard sell, and then on to other subjects they dont like.
It’s always referred to as age verification, but it’s ID verification. It’s the introduction of a regime where you can’t use the internet without everyone knowing exactly who you are, and without the government being able to track your activity via your ID. Governments around the world are making what must surely be a coordinated effort to end anonymity, and thus privacy, online. In other countries this has gone along with a push to end encryption for phone calls and chat, and a push to outlaw VPNs. Canada’s government is embarking on a program that’s very hostile to its own population.
Looks like it’s time for a more self hosted and distributed web.
I was never excited for Carney (and the Liberals’ continuation of power), but I really didn’t think they’d anger me as much as they have been*. Yes, I’m happy we don’t have PP in power, but at times it’s feeling like we may as well have reached the same outcome minus the culture war shit.
I really hope the NDP makes a strong comeback**
Edit (corrections):
*Apparently it was not a bill put forward by Liberal MPs
**The NDP actually supported the first bill of this kind so they’re not much help in this situation
I’m not one to glaze Carney, but for the benefit of factuality - this bill was proposed by a senator, not a Liberal MP under Carney. We’ll see whether it goes further.
Thank you for the correction, I’ll update my comment
Afaik this is a senate bill and similar to s210 from last parliament, the NDP voted in favour of that one last session which I’m extremely disappointed about, I recall the NDP being pro privacy in the past, which totally got some of my friends interested in them in the first place.
It’s even more disappointing that the liberals were the only party with Nay votes on that one. I realise that wasn’t passing this bill but still, unimpressed.
Edit. This showed up earlier too in s203 back a few parliaments ago. Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne is the sponsor on all of these.
Ah, you’re correct (sadly). Now that you mention it I remember the NDP voting in favour for that which is depressing to say the least
I was never excited for Carney
Politicians gonna politician. They will all will be in favour of this kind of citizen tracking because it makes enforcing policy easier, doesn’t matter if it is Liberal, Conservative, or NDP.
The dark web became known as the hideout of internet criminals. Once we’re all internet criminals, it will just be the hideout of everyone. Time to drop all these commercial services that we’ve let take over the internet and go back to being anonymous weirdos talking to other anonymous weirdos on websites run by anonymous weirdos. The web was ironically a nicer place. Also a shittier place, but at the same time a nicer place. This is why we can’t have nice things.
They will try to ban websites run by anonymous weirdos.
They can try. Bans require enforcement, and they catch a few of us weirdos from time to time, but the hydra always grows more heads.
“Ban Website” sounds good in the news but those words together barely even parse to an idea.
A website is just a bunch of files hosted on a computer, put them behind some kind of access control and the outside world can’t even know that they exist. Unless ISPs decide to block all inbound traffic to subscribers you can always just
apt install apache2.Unless ISPs decide to block all inbound traffic to subscribers
I think some ISPs already do this, if they suspect you’re running any kind of server, to force you to subscribe to a more expensive “business” plan.
The shitty ones do this. Or you get stuck behind cNAT.
It’s never about porn or children. It’s about control, money and a fear of ones own citizenry.
It’s also about scanning everyone’s faces for their databases, and probably to feed Palantir in the end.
For sure, only pure evil motives. Establishment needs to destroy Canada to pillage it. Wrap it up in war on China and Russia. Deliver Canadian slaves to Israel and US oligarchy.
mostly its for tracking political dissidents, once you have to “upload your id eventually”, control of the female body is just a side benefit.
Nooooo, I thought Canada was very far from this bull shit
So did I 🥲
Call or write to your MP. Let them know that no one wants this.
Why? We are, and have always been, an economic appendage to the USA.
Lmao we’re a half step away from falling into fascism ourselves, no invasion needed.
It’s insane that NDP supports this. The minute we flip flop back to voting conservatives into power, anyone who gave up their personal information tied to this kind of stuff…do I really need to explain why it’s a bad idea here? Nah.
It is not a slippery slope, it is the intended purpose, with a different implementation.
Anyone with a few braincells working knows that it is all bullshit this crusade against porn “for the kids” .
In the end the objective is just ever more identification, tracking and control of everyone .
It gets even worse when you think of how the improper access could be properly mitigated…
Anyone with a few braincells working knows that it is all bullshit this crusade against porn “for the kids” .
Normies think “for the kids” is a 100% reasonable excuse to restrict freedoms and install authoritarian policy. That’s why it works.
I know it’s bullshit, you know it’s bullshit. Go convince someone who doesn’t understand that it is bullshit.
Stop that garbage bill that will expose your data to criminals in data breaches.
Criminals? What about politicians, advertisers and law enforcement?
Yeah, criminals.
synonyms
He already said criminals.
Well no child I know could’ve ever found porn if an adult had only blocked access…lol. The more forbidden it is, the bigger the thrill/reward of getting it.
When I was a kid, my parents always had big summer parties at our house and there was alcohol all over the place. I could try whatever I wanted (with lots of adults around - if not supervising, at least being nearby). I never cared about alcohol because casual “sampling” was never prohibited so who cares?
My kids (both under 10) have both tried mild alcoholic drinks.
When they get older into their teens, I’m making sure that as long as they are supervised, they can try any legal substance they want.
It may be well-intentioned
It may, but it is not.
I don’t care if it slows down the legislative process, I am firmly of the opinion that all politicians should be legally required to take a short exam designed by experts on the topic of any legislation they want to vote on (including things like basic understandings of the concept and potential consequences, both positive and negative, of the legislation), and any politician who fails isn’t allowed to vote on that legislation.
Politicians shouldn’t be allowed to vote on legislation that they demonstrably do not understand.
How i feel about voting in general
You have to answer a skill testing question to obtain any contest winnings, there should be one for your vote to count.
A skill testing question isn’t quite the same as a literacy test, but I get your point.
I’ll take it one step further.
Every second of every politicians life should be publicly available and steamed 24/7 excepting matters of national security.
If they want the kind of power that comes with being a politician then they should have to sacrifice their privacy. If they are public servants they need to be held accountable and serve the public.
I sincerely believe that extreme personal sacrifice for politicians should become the norm, and the only way for us to have a healthy thriving democracy.
The same way you sacrifice many rights when joining the military, or on being incarcerated. Service requires sacrifice. And the notion that politicians should be able to enjoy the same rights and freedoms as the rest of us is a huge part of why corruption can flourish.
That is an utterly terrible idea, that is going to lead to the very opposite of a healthy or thriving democracy. That is going to lead to 99% of politicians quiting, and the very, very few who don’t care about the constant surveillance will effectively be governing unopposed most of the time.
It’s also a humongous waste of tax payer money, it would cost hundreds of millions a year to host hundreds of 24/7 life streams.
Also, what about politicians who have children ? You wanna publicly livestream them bathing, or dressing their underage children ? Or do you just want to ban parents from being politicians all together ?
No offense, but sounds like the type of idea you come up with and that feels really clever when you’re high AF, and then falls apart as soon as you spend more than 5 seconds sober thinking about it. Like circular runways.
If they were serious about privacy-preserving age verification, they’d be looking at zero-knowledge proofs. Since ZKP is not on the table, this is really about control and surveillance.
How about instead we ban propaganda and bots?
But that would be impossible, you know. And we can’t just go around controlling what people say and think and consume, you know. Because free speech and such and so forth and so on.
collects lobbyist payment
“Those that trade privacy for security deserve neither.”
How about they start addressing the actual problem rather than half-measures from think tanks. If it was truly about children, they should be passing policies from a macro standpoint that encourage people to have a family and kids. Right now, it’s economically grim and has been sliding that way for many decades. The rise of fascist and surveillance state policies is only going to make it worse. Say bye-bye to your birthrate and we’re right back where we started again with the gov trying to pump the numbers via mass immigration.
What does all this have to do with this bill? The intent may be framed as protecting/preventing kids from adult material, but it’s also about making it desirable to have kids because “big brother is watching you/protecting you” (SMH here on how stupid this all is). These legislators are out of touch. We as a society need to address the root of the problem - why do we have a CSAM problem in the first place? It’s a horrific thing to have, and to be honest, those that turn to it likely have a mental illness.
As for kids accessing adult material online - why is the government being a nanny state? This is the parent’s job.
I have zero confidence that they can keep everyone’s data private and safe given how many breaches there are.
Now we deal with this shit even here?
They’ve been pushing this for years now.
