The online digital ID age verification creep in the US continues from a number of directions, through “recommendations” and “studies” – essentially, the government is nudging the industry to move in the direction of implementing digital ID age verification tools.
At this point, it is happening via various initiatives and legislation, still, without being formally mandated.
One instance is a recommendation coming from the Biden-Harris Administration’s Kids Online Health and Safety Task Force, which is telling online service providers they should “develop and inform parents about age verification tools built into the app or available at the device level.”
The task force is led by the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS (its Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, SAMHSA,) in what is referred to in official statements as “close partnership” with the Department of Commerce.
This initiative is presented as an industry guidance that will ensure the safety of youths on the internet, as well as their health and privacy.
One of the steps presented in the fact sheet refers to age verification. This is a hot-button issue, particularly among privacy and security advocates, considering the methods that would be necessary to prove somebody’s real-life identity online, and that this would have to apply to all users of a site or app.
Yet, the current White House is now “urging” the tech industry to, among other “critical steps” inform parents about developing and building digital ID tools into either apps or devices themselves.
The setting up of the task force and its recommendations are supposed to contribute to Biden’s “Unity Agenda,” while a report released last week talks about an “unprecedented youth mental crisis” as the reason for coming up with these recommendations for families and industry.
The initiative, announced in May, bases its claims about the metal crisis of previously unwitnessed proportions on a report put together by the US surgeon-general and his advisory concerning social platforms.
In addition to “sneaking in” the mention of age verification, the report also talks about the need to enact bipartisan federal legislation aimed at protecting the health, safety, and privacy of young people online.
Another point is urging the industry to advance “action to implement age-appropriate health, safety, and privacy best practices on online platforms through federal legislation and voluntary commitments.”
The documents’ authors from the several departments behind the task force also want platform data to become available to “independent researchers.”
Terrible thing that’d get implemented in a terribly invasive way and be used in harmful manners, but it does make me wonder though if there’d be a way to do this with a cryptographic zero knowledge proof.
It’d probably need to be a biometric scan otherwise you could just share a pin or password (not that you can’t fake a fingerprint either…but it’s a bit more of a barrier…) but the idea that when you get your photo ID, it comes with a USB stick like a yubikey (edit and it has a fingerprint reader), and activating it proves you’re over a specific age without leaking any information about who you are.
Websites know you’re over an age. They get 0 information aside from that, and it’s impossible to ever track who you are even from the government.
Edit: and it wouldn’t need to be a single specific age, the zero knowledge proof could answer any question about your age assuming you choose to proceed after the website asks. It could also be restricted to a single age as well.