To think face scanning for age verification for porn is a great idea?

[AdamRyan]

The Government are considering how to prevent children from accessing porn and are looking into face scanning technology.

I think this is a good idea as we already use facial recognition for verification on banks etc and if people are adults they should not feel embarassed about their choice to watch porn so no problem.

Privacy campaigners are worried about potential for blackmail though. Wish they were as worried about men illegally uploading films of their OHs having sex with them....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67615719

IABU - I think porn doesn't need age verification/existing verification is good enough

IANBU - this is a good idea

Seriously, Reddit? It's such a diverse site... I mainly go there for the quilting subreddit.

What you are talking about is dystopian. And it's easily circumventable with a VPN.

I was reading the Ofcom guidance this morning.

I think Asda was considering something similar for its self serve tills so you can go ahead and buy your bottle of wine without calling someone over.

There are companies that actually provide age verification services, so it would be easiest if porn sites used them.

Query whether someone is going to want to provide ID to watch porn, though!

Sub-reddits of Reddit can be blocked on a country level. Germany recently implemented such a block on a sub-reddit with Israel and Palestinian tensions, where support for Palestine was explicit and against the values of the German state. This wasn't even at ISP level, this was an active block enforced by the government on a private company.

So it could easily be done and you wouldn't need to block the entire site as there are some good sub-reddits doing wholesome things and not porn or violence.

They aren't at all ineffective. If they were they wouldn't be making the kind of profits that they do. They don't stop people who are determined to watch films or sports without paying for them of course, but they make it difficult enough for the majority of people to view illegally distributed content that the majority of users pay.

Similarly, an ISP block against non-compliant porn websites won't put off the more determined perv, but they will block many users, particularly younger children the majority of whom won't be capable of setting up a VPN, or finding proxies and mirrors.

No-one is claiming that this is a panacea, simply that it will reduce the easy availability of pornography to children, particularly young children. Sure, the average 15 year old will no doubt find a way round it if they really want to, but I bet the average 9 year old won't be able to on their own.

Regarding parents educating their children about internet safety, pornography, respect etc - you do realise that a lot of parents are feckless idiots right?

In Russia they do similar but with VK login details that are usually verified by credit card, passport (internal domestic) or other valid ID. They don't do selfies but if they did, they should do it similar to the VideoIndent service in Germany that is used with banks and other providers of financial services.

That said, I actively disagree that porn should be blocked and have all hurdles to prevent children accessing. We need a better sex education system and talks about what is appropriate and what isn't. Making it hard pushes for underground access that leaves the door open to much worse porn access.

Pretty easy to do when a company has a legal and physical presence in your country, as Reddit does in both Germany and the UK.

Of course the company in question could threaten to rage-quit the country - I doubt if anyone would care if Reddit packed up and left the UK but this tactic certainly seems to be working for Whatsapp in the UK.

I mean the porn sites could be required to ensure their UK based users 1) provide facial recognition 2) aren't on VPN

And how does the UK government enforce that in e.g Albania?

Logically, yes.

Reddit can host porn. It's a US site so the British government cannot require them to change their architecture to require verification for parts of the site. Nor could the site realistically police in a timely manner which subreddits have what content. And of course they moderate to US standards, not those of foreign countries.

So either reddit becomes banned in UK (potential porn, no age verification), or anyone going there for any reason from UK would have to age verify (and u18s could no longer use at all). Now I don't know if the latter can actually be made to work. I do know it could easily be circumvented though. And once households have a set up so they can still access reddit, then everything is back available again.

UK government cannot require foreign sites to do anything.

Other than perhaps to consent to block UK users. Something the user can get round pretty easily.

Who wouldn't want their image linked to porn? 😮I can't see that ever happening as porn users are not known for their desire for porn tied fame as opposed to anonymity.
There are loads of filter options that can prevent porn being accessed on your system in use at schools and libraries and can be used at home. I think that is a better answer. I agree porn isn't great and causes loads of problems but I also think its been in existence as long as humans have in one form or another and now with AI can be readily created in any way you desire. As they say, every new technology invented is for purpose first and adopted by porn within minutes.😕

Of course the British government can require Reddit to have age verification. Reddit has a UK subsidiary, directors, office and employees and therefore is subject to UK law. Germany have literally done just the same (told Reddit to block access to certain subreddits), and they can do so because Reddit has a legal presence in Germany. Foreign companies are fully subject to the laws of the country that they have a legal presence in.

No, it's a ridiculous idea. The most obvious reason is that there's no guarantee of the security of the service holding the scans.

There's also the blindingly obvious fact that as soon as they try to implement this, everybody who wants to visit those sites will grab a cheap (or free) VPN service and bypass it entirely, and there's no practical way for any website to determine the location of an individual using a VPN.

Then, of course, the government will try to ban VPNs (they've tried that already, but this time they'll have an added "Won't somebody think of the children?" argument), regardless of the fact that tunnelling is one of the basic services required to keep the Internet running and secure (not that MPs will ever understand that).

In fact, I'd guess that trying to ban VPNs and other tunnelling services is the actual reason for this - they make the security services' job harder because of the encryption involved, and this government really doesn't like its citizens having access to high-grade encryption.

An alternative to requiring websites to implement this is to put the scanning tech at the ISPs - but, as things stand, there's no way that ISPs have the capability of decrypting VPN connections on the fly, so that's defeated too. Unless...the government "helps" them stay legal by putting GCHQ's realtime decryption tech in there (something that's been defeated several times already).

Which, of course, is something the security services have been trying to do for nearly two decades now.

Don't kid yourselves that this is anything to do with porn and protecting children. It's just a way to try to get a decent chunk of the population to support something that's really, really not good for them.

Many sites already stop the use of VPNs as I have found for banking, news and entertainment (i.e. Disney not porn). The sites keep up a race with VPN to stop/by-pass each other and the pay sites are getting better at preventing VPN access. I know someone will come along "not my VPN site" but yes some places are able to completely block VPN totally - its an arms race that changes monthly but some of mine have found ways to block everything in 2023.

Except...those sites have a vested interest in preventing access from other countries, whereas every porn site in the world will have a vested interest in allowing people from other countries (and thus VPNs) to access them.

The point is that the UK government doesn't control the Internet, and cannot do anything about sites that are run from other countries. The sites that it could influence would actively lose money if they keep running legally in the UK, so they'd simply move elsewhere and do a deal with a VPN provider to advertise on their site. Job done.

You aren't using a very good VPN, DH is currently streaming American TV without issue. Only thing I've seen blocked is banking even then it doesn't block the app. Usually if something blocked one week it's not the next.

I'm in my 30s, it was pirates bay and limewire in our youth that parents tried to block......it was a fun hour or so getting round the latest block then sharing it with friends for a couple of £. IT used to be forever blocking VPNs to access MySpace usually it wasted an IT lesson finding another one that worked. Would have been better to just let us use it.

Let teenagers be teenagers it does them no harm, they need to push boundaries. To be honest I would rather DS be watching porn then out doing drugs or similar.

You're incorrect, they are trying to tackle these things but they haven't been 'tackled'.. this is still going on in high quantities as will the porn situation.

Op you have started a conversation about a very touchy subject yet when anyone replies engaging in the conversation your being touchy and sarcastic as in replying 'cool story 😎'. Why start a thread if you don't want to hear other peoples views?

My other question is why only young people? Is it not damaging for adults? But as long as you're 18 then fill your boots??

As others have said, education and transparency is the best way of tackling the issue. The problem is that young people see the more extreme sorts of standard born and think every woman should love being choked, spat on and left with a gaping arsehole. And girls feel pressured to do it. Education in schools and at home would be far more effective than banning porn.

Just ban it entirely.

Why are the government supporting the exploitation and trafficking of women?

Well exactly, I think that's why they are going for face verification so people wouldn't have to give any details
Depending on the tech it might not even need to store the data

The data would have to be transmitted, which means that there's no control over what's done with it at the other end. So what's at the other end?

Option A - A private company contracted to handle the verification. Private companies have a history of swearing blind they're not storing data, and then being rumbled and "Oh, sorry, what we meant to say was..." when the damage is irrevocably done.

Option B - The government, who've been wanting to get their hands on biometric-linked snooping data for 20 years now.

Yeah, that's going to work out wonderfully.

As I said before...this is nothing to do with porn or protecting children (because it's fundamentally impossible for it to work). If you really believe that, I've got a timeshare I can sell you...

Don't be a conspiracy theorist
Availability and use of porn by children is linked to misogynistic views of women and dangerous sexual practices causing some times lifelong injuries.
It's also a great tool for groomers.

More and more children have phones, most have seen porn by age 11. That's not OK

Of course the government want to restrict access to porn and its nothing to do with the security services wanting to stop people using VPNs 😂

No it wouldn't need to be transferred. A capability could use scanning and biometrics to assess the age of a face, this could all be done client side if needed. Like the service to unlock your phone.

It's not a loony-town theory - they've seriously been trying to force people to link their real-world identities with Internet activity since Blair tried to mandate ID cards.

Write me off as a loon if you want, but it's pretty well-known in most tech and political circles that the government's trying to do this. Hell, they wanted to do it as recently as last year with the Online Safety Bill, because they're fully aware that a VPN effectively bypasses all the controls in it.

And both Conservative and Labour MPs are on record - recently - saying that they want to find a way to ban VPNs.

OK, so it has to be done client-side. So...what about people running devices with no client-side installable software, like Chromebooks (commonplace with children)? Or alternative operating systems, like Linux? Hell, even devices that aren't capable of handling the AI processing required to do it?

And, of course, that's before you get to the fact that as soon as something like this is implemented, half the world's hobby coders and privacy experts will be hard at work finding the vulnerabilities in it. Once they find those vulnerabilities...what then? There's no company in the world, and certainly no government department, capable of staying ahead of that many people. Believe me when I say that breaking this software will become priority #1 for huge numbers of people, because they'll want to show their own governments how stupid the idea is. Meanwhile, our own government will continue to piss money up the wall by the billions in a futile effort to stay ahead of it.

By all means live in your fantasy land where this is magically workable, but it really isn't - not from a legal perspective, not from a privacy perspective, and definitely not from a technical and security perspective.