The Case for Privacy and “Forget Your Customer”
There’s a plague sweeping across state legislatures. In the name of protecting children, they are adding requirements to add age attestations and even full identity verification, similar to banks, to use computers and/or install software with severe penalties to individual developers, including hobbyists writing free and open source software. This is a patchwork of different bills with different severity. Some just require people to state their age and some require photos and uploading of Real IDs. There’s talk of doing this at all layers: hardware, operating system, application distribution/installation, and websites.
They are building a world of computing of “own nothing and be happy” where the government has full surveillance and control over all hardware and software. There are quickly eliminating all technical workarounds. In addition to being an Orwellian nightmare of tyranny, it will legally require data to be collected and stored in enormous honeypots that will be breached and sold on the dark web. Data can’t and won’t ever be protected.
To paraphrase a famous cybersecurity quote, there are two types of databases, those that have been breached and those of which you don’t know have been breached. Even more ominously, even the most light touch of age attestation will require all computers to inform all predators and pedophiles who query the computer who the children are. Put differently, it’ll make it clear who all of the children are and paint giant bullseyes on them for predators to target.
In his recent veto of age verification of social media web sites, Governor Tony Evers called upon legislators to instead require age verification at the operating system and hardware level. The only way to protect people, including children, is for firms to Forget Your Customer. In the Information Age, privacy is security. Age verification is a veil of security when in reality, it singles out the most vulnerable.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
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