Given that these laws are forthcoming, it would be wise in general to discuss how one could comply with these measures which most rich countries are soon enough to implement, while actually respecting the privacy of a user. For example, suppose an EU resident wishes to host his own non-commercial, but adult website a few years hence. (Alter the jurisdiction to taste; the precise choice is unimportant.) How can he do it, if he is convicted as we are that he has no business with a government ID or face scan? Opposition to these fiendish programmes is easy to find; actual plans to adapt to them are much scarcer.
It is easy enough to find open-source, zero-knowledge software which, given a birthdate, can attest that the user is of age. Even Chrome extensions can do it! As we discussed a bit in another thread, the user’s status can be embedded into a HTTP header. Standard networking filters should suffice to guard against the computer accepting requests to broadcast the user’s adulthood without his explicit permission. Perhaps this could even be managed through a browser permission, like requests for location or camera access.
The chief problem, in my opinion, is that the open-source age assurance method itself would, presumably, need be run on the client’s computer. Perhaps this could be done using specialised hardware, like that which some German banks use for PhotoTAN verification in lieu of a smartphone. It goes without saying that developing such hardware and ensuring its compatibility with Linux or BSD is more daunting. A more desirable method would not involve even local, offline processing of official documents or one’s physical likeness, even if no other computer is capable of accessing it. What alternative is there? A few ways which occurred to me over the last twenty-four hours which could guard anonymity are as follows:
- Proof of completing compulsory education. This would not involve uploading your diploma, of course! Rather, in the way that message boards pose trivial sums for users to prove their humanity, presenting problems which require more formal education than a teenager has got could serve. Personally, I think bidding the user to modify his HTTP header without giving him instructions should qualify as such a task. But if academic problems are required, the need to guard against teenagers cheating with WolframAlpha or the like is there. Perhaps elementary logic, a subject accessible to an early undergrad but nowhere taught below the tertiary level, would be a fertile source of problems.
- Anonymous, trivial payments. Ofcom today, and Aol twenty years ago, have used credit card charges of ¤1, refunded once processed, as age assurance. The legal situation we are considering here is perverse enough that this is a conceivable case where cryptocurrency might perhaps hold some value after all, as managing this sort of petty payment anonymously. Some method of anonymous payment which does not involve cryptocurrency would be preferable, of course.
- Certificates by a not-for-profit verifying agency. Such an agency would need setting up, of course, but its purpose would be to file affidavits that the anonymously registered holders of given certificates, which could be locally installed in the browser using existing technology, are aged eighteen or more.
- Scanning redacted receipts for tobacco purchases. As a non-smoker, buying and then returning a pack of cigarettes from a tobacconist in another town for proof that I am an adult would be tolerable.
