Senate Bill 26-051 reflects that pattern. The bill does not directly regulate individual websites that publish adult or otherwise restricted content. Instead, it shifts responsibility to operating system providers and app distribution infrastructure.
Under the bill, an operating system provider would be required to collect a user’s date of birth or age information when an account is established. The provider would then generate an age bracket signal and make that signal available to developers through an application programming interface when an app is downloaded or accessed through a covered application store.
App developers, in turn, would be required to request and use that age bracket signal.
Rather than mandating that every website perform its own age verification check, the bill attempts to embed age attestation within the operating system account layer and have that classification flow through app store ecosystems.
The measure represents the latest iteration in a series of Colorado efforts that have struggled to balance child safety, privacy, feasibility and constitutional limits.
They are coming for android first.
As a parent, I wish someone would develop a cross platform, open source, parental control tool that preserves privacy while allowing for strong controls that are simple to use. The best I could come up with is a separate instance of Pihole that any device my kids use is linked to. It would be nice if there was a software option or something implemented in hardware that allowed parents to register the device with the user’s age (no identifying info). Laws could then be passed forcing certain websites and apps to reject any users under a certain age. The restrictions could automatically lift when the user reaches a predetermined age. I’m not an expert so there are probably aspects of this I haven’t thought through but it seems better than what has been implemented so far.
Colorodo democrats have always been lousy. Here they are following texas and montana and tennessee, locking down the internet with dishonest arguments. No one in reality thinks this is about protecting kids, and it’s not the state’s place to do so, it’s the parents, it’s a violation of the 1st amendment to make adults expose their identities to people recording everything they do online and using it against them, and selling it to the government.
We need to repeal these bills, and we need a popular open source of model legislation to counter-act ALEC, that writes these bills and state lawmakers just fill in the blanks, after the united corporations give them a plausible excuse to and pay them off
I actually disagree, because hardware-level verification is basically the most privacy-conscious method of accurately verifying a user’s age. Rather than fighting age verification entirely, I think it’s more productive to start assuming users are under 18 until proven otherwise… Age verification is inevitable, (if you don’t like it, tor is always an option), so we should at least figure out secure and private ways of doing so. Rather than resisting it outright, present them with secure and safe ways to do it. The internet is a dark place full of a lot of creeps, and services like Roblox have proven that they will enthusiastically become nesting grounds for predators unless they’re forced to add safeguards.
Sure, it’s easy to say “just monitor your kids” but no parent can be present 24/7. And in fact, oftentimes parents end up using screen time so they can do other things like chores, without needing to watch their kid. So the “just watch your kids” argument is diametrically opposed to the reality of why parents tend to rely on screens. Sometimes you just need 15 minutes to wash the dishes, without a kid demanding your constant attention. Even I, a child-free person, can understand that. And it becomes increasingly difficult to monitor them as they grow into teens and (reasonably) start expecting their own privacy.
I’ve been saying for a while now that we need to shift to hardware verification. Your device (or for shared devices like desktops, your user account) verifies your age once. And then it doesn’t need to do so again. All of the various sites and apps can simply ask your device “hey, is this user over {age}?” And the device responds with a simple true/false. You’re not needing to give your PII to every single site you visit, and the device isn’t needing to report back to the government every time an age verification check happens. It’s all done locally. The handshake could even be cryptographically secured, to prevent tech-savvy kids from MITM’ing the age check. And then protecting kids online is as simple as not age-verifying their device (and protecting your own password on shared devices). Hell, devices like cell phones could even have the age bracket set by the parent directly, since the phone would be on the parent’s phone bill. Similarly, parents could create child accounts on their shared devices, so kids can access age-appropriate content. It won’t stop kids from getting a prepaid phone, but it’ll at least prevent them from easily verifying that phone.
And it’s also the most elegant for the user experience. As far as the adult user is concerned, they never even see an “are you over 18” verification when they visit a porn site. They simply get access to the site. And kids simply get redirected back to Google’s home page (or more realistically, a page on the porn site saying “hey you failed the age check. If you’re over 18, be sure you do that with your device before trying again, because this is the only page you’ll be able to access until then. Or if you’re under 18, click here to return to where you were before” explanation) as soon as the age check fails.
Hardware age verification is basically the best of every world. You don’t rely on a third-party service to verify your PII (which will inevitably leak it, like Discord did). You don’t need to verify with every single individual site and service. The government doesn’t get a record of every site that asks for verification. And kids are automatically prevented from stumbling across adult content.
I agree that Colorado democrats are typically the “if we cozy up to the right they might stop being mean to us” candidates. I think this bill is a poor implementation, but it’s at least done under the right premise. If we could force hardware manufacturers and/or OSes to support native age verification, it would solve a lot of the current issues that we have.
You make some good points. If what you say is true, then most countries and states won’t adopt this style of verification because compromising everyone is the point. But they could probably set it up so it does compromise everyone at the hardware level.
Is it unrealistic to expect no age checks? We’ve lived through an entire internet without age checks, why is it different now? There aren’t more creeps, the only thing that’s different is our politicians feel emboldened to surrender us to tech. To use age checks as a trojan horse, to get AI behind the walls, to make us all social scores to be used secretly against us.
So I don’t see it as inevitable at all, especially not in the US, with the first amendment. Not in blue states, Colorodo is the only blue state doing any of this as far as I’ve heard either. Because they are conservative sell outs.
So I am on the side or rejecting age checks, and calling them out for what they are, surrendering us to tech for total surveillance, and replacing every politician that has supported it.
It is the donors influencing all of them. Corrupt fucks
and it’s not the state’s place to do so, it’s the parents
Not every parent is a good steward or guardian of their children, like those who have been caught cyberbullying their own children or those who send their gay/trans children to conversion camps to “pray the gay away” or even parents who deny their children life-saving vaccination and medical procedures because it conflicts with parental beliefs. A technically proficient parent who is “protecting their kids” could easily be blocking their children from access to information that is important to the child’s development just as much as the government could be.
The argument that it’s always fully the parents right and no one else’s is an unintentional argument in favor of parents treating children like property and normalizing the ability for parents to abuse and control their children under the guise of the false idea that a parent always knows what is best for their child. Plenty of parents shat out kids while knowing fuck-all about how the world works and definitely don’t know what is best for their child.
Government is imperfect, but so are parents.
If America or any other society moves to have UBI as the basis of all things, children could have personal agency. If free housing and a monthly income is available to all, alongside free education and healthcare, a child could choose to leave their family at any time. This would go a long way to preventing abuse, allow children to fulfill their personal growth, and so much more.
Family, friendship, and community should exist because people like each other, rather than being a product of authority.
Absolutely agreed, but you’re still going to need a government authority for things like UBI, free housing, and deciding at what age it is reasonable for a child to be emancipated from their parents and live on their own. Obviously a four year old probably isn’t going to be capable of fully caring for themselves, even if they deserve the autonomy from their abusive parents. If I recall correctly, current emancipation laws are roughly around 13 years old, which is when a child is starting to be able to competently care for themselves. However, that still leaves over a decade of potential abusive parenting where someone needs to be raising the child whether it’s a good parent, or a foster parent, or a state institution. More importantly, that decade is the most important period for a child’s development, especially in terms of mental health. So whether we like it or not, there still needs to be some checks on parents just doing whatever the fuck they want to their children during that period.
If there is universal healthcare, caretakers for the elderly and the orphaned should be available. That means a young kid can ask for a caretaker and receive that aid. Kinda like an reverse adoption, where the kid chooses the parent, rather than the other way around.
The government can send a representative to households or schools with a kid under 10 years of age, with the job of asking whether they want to stay. Do this once a year, giving the kid a tablet through which they can securely send a simple survey without showing their parent what they put on it. Depending on what the kid wants, they stay with their family or can tell the state that they are unhappy with where they are.
It wouldn’t be perfect, but at least it gives pathways out of bad situations.
These people are idiots
At this point, it’s probably cheaper and more effective to have proper sex education in schools…
At which age? And how?
Google already allows you to save your ID in Google Wallet and share specific details via NFC. Why can’t I just use it to provide my year of birth?
Seriously. There are better ways to ensure privacy with identity verification.
What would be the point of that? If the check was done locally it would be trivial to spoof.
Technically, this can’t work. It’s a bad idea.
Fucking idiots don’t know how operating systems work or what they’re for.
I fully expect this to become a move to hamper linux, or any non-windows desktop usage, because “we can’t trust a user who has full access to their OS” or some other bullshit.
If I could trust that the people in government know how computers work I’d be down but well I can’t
Holy fuck this is bad
Only for privacy and anonymity, companies like Google and Microsoft will do fabulously however. Who donates to him I wonder.
AFAIK, only adults can sign up for internet access, so a minor watching porn on the internet is the same as said minor watching their parents’ adult DVDs or drinking alcohol their parents purchased. It’s already illegal for adults to give minors access to these things, so what’s next? Alcohol bottles that only open and DVDs / Bluerays that only play if you can provide an ID and prove your age every time?
its not about limiting children’s access to porn and other stuff, it never was.
DON’T give them ideas!
Hey Colorado. GFY and get your damn politicians under control.
First I’ve heard of it, dude. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.
Under the bill, an operating system provider would be required to collect a user’s date of birth or age information when an account is established.
It’s so fucking obvious the people who wrote this have no idea other operating systems than iOS, Windows and Android exist.
I think it is notable that it never makes assumptions about the verification method, so it could just be a simple parental control system. Granted I have no doubts that the corpos will take this as requiring Id, but the bill itself makes no such requirements.
What are you on about? If they get 95% of the population with this it’s still a huge win for them.
This is getting ridiculous.
Linux is the only reasonable choice anymore.
Linux won’t be legal in Colorado if they pass this. You’ll need an account with some age-policing, ID-reporting corporation to be able to use a computing device.
How do they imagine they could enforce this though? Presumably quite selectively, based on the user’s political leanings.
The courts should strike it down, I don’t have faith they will side with the constitution, but it’s clearly unconstititional and beyond the authority of the state as well, in the realm of interstate commerce which is explicitly given to the feds, whom can’t be trusted either obviously.
But the 1st amendment is clearly invalidating this, forcing people to identify themselves to groups that will record everything they say or do and sell it to everyone, including the government, that will chill speech, and groups will punish people for their speech.
Too bad scotus is all in on punishing people for speech though.
I don’t think it will be cut and dry on state vs federal, although if we follow trends it will get shutdown because the feds love abusing the commerce and elastic clause. And I’m not overly familiar with the Colorado constitution, but the actual text isn’t actually that invasive, it makes no requirements on data collection, it only requires for it to be obtained somehow, which could be self reporting ala parental controls, it only requires that once the data is obtained that they must provide an age bracket and only and age bracket to services that request it and only services that request it.
The very act of forcing it to be collected chills freedom of speech. Leaving it undefined how it’s done should make the law more likely to get overturned not less.
Knowing your age was collected, and is stored somewhere, connected to your computer, and that everything done on that computer can then be connected back to that positive ID, chills speech, as much as they might try to betray the bill of rights with this mealy mouthed attempt to surrender us to Tech.
Presumably quite selectively, based on the user’s political leanings.
Not defend Democrats too much here, but they clearly have far less of a habit of doling out enforcement based on political leanings than the Republicans, even if they do enforce things quite selectively when it comes to actual leftists while letting Nazis run around with seeming impunity.
Colorado has been a solidly Blue state since the end of the W. Bush years, and even then, it was pretty split down the middle with just over half of the votes going to Bush. It’s honestly been mostly-Blue-dominated since 1992. (Lauren Boebert notwithstanding)
Further, the two main sponsors of the bill are both Democrats. This genuinely seems to me to be another example of “heart in the right place but don’t know what the fuck they’re actually doing” which seems common for the tech illiterate and often for Democrats in general.
Once again, not saying Democrats aren’t guilty of selective enforcement, just pointing out that they’re far less likely to do so (or at least less likely to do so against conservatives, for genuine leftists it seems up for debate).
Now, that also means nothing in context to how other politicians can use this kind of legislation negatively, even if the writers and sponsors truly have the best of intentions. Democrats had the best intentions when it came to the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security as well, and way back then folks like me were saying “this seems pretty dangerous, especially if we ever have a despot take control of the country and the levers for these tools” which clearly has come to pass.
Democrats had the best intentions when it came to the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security as well,
How do you know what their intentions were?
Well, not all of them, obviously. Yet, for example, I tend to think Joe Biden actually did have good intentions considering the bulk of the PATRIOT Act was based on his prior legislation in the 90s, his Omnibus Counterterrorism Act. It’s worth noting this was in response to a wave of US homegrown right-wing white nationalist radicalism and terrorism in the 1990’s such as Waco and Ruby Ridge. The Oklahoma City Bombing would happen a month after this bill first appeared. Considering the shitstorm we’re in regarding virulent white nationalist terrorism, I kind of think back when he first wrote it that it wasn’t such a bad idea.
People who were more clearly war hawks like Hillary Clinton? Probably a lot less likely to have had great intentions.
Yet others, like Ron Wyden, who has been a consistent critic of the out of control national security state and voted against military intervention in Iraq in 2002 also voted for the PATRIOT Act. He also spent a great deal of time trying to amend the PATRIOT Act as well.
And as much as Democrats drink from the same well of corporate funding as Republicans, I wouldn’t say the majority of the party is outright evil or don’t care what happens to their constituents. Schumer obviously doesn’t give a fuck, but I also don’t think he’s actually representative of the party as a whole as much as he just has power in a party that puts seniority over merit in intraparty politics.
It’s easy to forget how much shock and terror 9/11 really did put into people which colored how quickly they foolishly signed off on the PATRIOT Act.
You lost all credibility early on in your first statement, to anyone living in reality paying attention, your analysis is worth nothing.
The left was saying that the PATRIOT Act was a bad idea from day one, just like we were with the Iraq War. People keep ignoring the left (or dismiss us as paranoid) and we keep getting proven right over and over and over again.
No shit, I was one of those people. I just don’t ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity, being out of touch, and not thinking through long-term political consequences. Once again, the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act was largely in response to white nationalist home-grown terrorism, which not having squashed that in the 90s is literally part of why we have the problems we have to day with a white nationalist government. Still didn’t make it great, but I have a lot more sympathy for its origins in that era.
Unfortunately, if left unchecked, an incompetent ally is just as destructive as a malicious adversary. If you are from Colorado and take issue with this legislation you should contact your representatives and let them know that they are being idiotic since that is the only meaningful difference between the two. Overall, we can continue giving the dems a pass because they are the lesser of the evils, or we can attempt to use what little political capital we have to make them realise their errors.
Are they going to check people’s PCs at the state borders as they move in then?
Do you have any
fruitcomputers to declare?
What is in the actual bill? I haven’t read any of this but if it was just a year of birth box at local signup then this could actually be pretty good. A sort of halfway between local only parental controls & age-policing, ID-reporting corporations.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/SB26-051
Here’s a summary, but the text of the actual bill can be gotten by clicking on “Recent Bill (PDF)”
This looks like self-reporting. ie: no third party ID snooping badness. Am I missing something?
I don’t think your missing anything, granted it doesn’t make any assertions about how the data should be attained, just that they must somehow obtain it. In general it reads as requiring at the minimum parental controls on a system.
Not really, the microsoft asshole that coded systemd wants chips on hardware for linux just like 10/11. He’s going to help fuck linux the same way they fucked windows.
Systemd is so much easier to use, absolutely was not a mistake.
Bro Poettering worked for Microsoft for four years after working for Red Hat for fourteen and then left to create Amutable, and no offense, but I don’t see his goals for Amutable to be about trying to force everyone to use his solution as much as giving groups who use massive numbers of Linux servers an option for something they can more securely lock down and ensure hasn’t been fucked with. I don’t think he’s out here building a desktop distribution and telling end-users they need it for security.
This is just FUD fearmongering, especially considering how small the company is. He isn’t forcing the entire ecosystem to adopt his ideas.
If you want to trust the pedomericans, that’s your problem.
Dude, Poettering is literally Guatemalan by birth, grew up in Brazil, and lives in Germany. Amutable is based out of fucking Berlin!
Stop reaching.
“Guys will do literally anything but
go to therapyuse systemd.”And who is he working for ? The pedomericans.
Show me who on the board of Amutable is who he is “working” for, since he’s one of the founders, and most of the people involved are European, or show me the funding for Amutable that’s coming from these “pedomericans” you claim or seriously shut the fuck up. Because none of what you’re saying makes a lick of sense.
You don’t have to like or use the tools these people create. Are you forced to use systemd? No, there are alternatives. There’s valid criticisms (of which there are many for Poettering) and then there’s whatever horseshit you’re peddling here.
Dude you sound like a Republican talking about china being behind everything. It’s time to fucking reassess and touch some fucking grass.
You might need help. If you’re unwilling to seek help, then at least learn to code and, you know, read the code.
