Porn age verification system in UK expected to be delayed again

Quote:

---

Was due to start on 15th July, but now looks set to be delayed indefinitely.

---

Read more.

I don't trust any verification system implemented from the government or the sites operating such a system. It seems like the only thing it will achieve is being a nuisance, while not blocking stumbling upon porn sites to 'protect our kids' but instead only work when people know full well what they were doing. Frankly my faith in the government has been particularly dwindling in recent years. I also feel like parents need to be made more responsible, not less.

I wonder how much money they've wasted this time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FRISH

Frankly my faith in the government has been particularly dwindling in recent years. I also feel like parents need to be made more responsible, not less.

---

Agree on both counts. Many parents, these days, just seem to want to offload all their responsibilities as parents onto to someone else, who they can then blame for their own failings.

But they're adamant the Irish border problem will be solved with 'technology'.

Clowns, the lot of them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hoonigan

I wonder how much money they've wasted this time.

---

If only Labour were in power... Then it'd be someone else's money they'd wasted!!

Ideal opportunity for some organisation like YOTI

(I posted about YOTI elsewhere after unusually noticing - and even more rarely, responding - to an ad on HEXUS. If anyone is interested in this, I’ve reposted the link

www.yoti.com )

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by simonpreston

But they're adamant the Irish border problem will be solved with 'technology'.

Clowns, the lot of them.

---

Exactly what I thought. Technology and MPs don't mix... I'm sure Capita are rubbing their hands in glee at another contract they will never have to deliver!

I'm sort of surprised they've delayed it again, something not working and issues don't normally stop them from implementing it, it certainly didn't stop them from implementing the Snoopers charter.

Also they had someone on BBC today saying how the reason we need these AV checks is because current parental controls don't work very well, she was meant to be pro-AV check but i guess it escaped her that she was essentially saying because current parental controls don't work very well we should put in another system that doesn't work very well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by peterb

Ideal opportunity for some organisation like YOTI

(I posted about YOTI elsewhere after unusually noticing - and even more rarely, responding - to an ad on HEXUS. If anyone is interested in this, I’ve reposted the link

www.yoti.com )

---

DANGER:

It should never be done by a private company, to begin with.
They are there for the money, no matter how good willing are they.
Any kind off identification should be non-profit (AKA government based) organization with transparent processus and you in control off your identity.

Prefer Littlewwods myself, when the sword needs a polish.

Does anyone feel like this is the Nortel-BT custom system contract all over again...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by darcotech

DANGER:

It should never be done by a private company, to begin with.
They are there for the money, no matter how good willing are they.
Any kind off identification should be non-profit (AKA government based) organization with transparent processus and you in control off your identity.

---

You had better tell HMRC who use private companies for their (rather clunky) authentication system.

In this case thougb the sites are required to authenticate the individual - and they are private sites. If you look at the YOTI site it explains how your identification data is stored. Of course it is up to the individual to decide how far they trust any organisation with their data - bearing in mind the provisions of GDPR.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Corky34

I'm sort of surprised they've delayed it again, something not working and issues don't normally stop them from implementing it, it certainly didn't stop them from implementing the Snoopers charter.

Also they had someone on BBC today saying how the reason we need these AV checks is because current parental controls don't work very well, she was meant to be pro-AV check but i guess it escaped her that she was essentially saying because current parental controls don't work very well we should put in another system that doesn't work very well.

---

According to the BBC earlier, reporting what the Gov't told them, it's not "technological".

It's actually that to do this, the UK needs needs to notify EU regulators and they ..... ummm .... forgot. Alledgedly, that can take up to 6 months.

Also, it can't really be technological reasons because there is no single technological solution. It seems that how, and indeed if, a porn site implements AV will be up to the porn site. So, 10 different major sites could implement 10 different solutions.

The sting in tbe tail is that if they don't implement something that complies with UK standards, those sites will be "blocked" in the UK.

But ..... accessing via VPNs will still, first, work, and second, be legal.

So tbat should be a really effective deterrent, then. :rolleyes:

A well-known adage about the inability to organise a booze-up in a brewery comes to mind. Gov't would orobably 'forget to book the brewery. Or forget which one they booked.

But it's okay .... these muppets are only running the country. Someone please stop the planet, I want to get off.

I forgot this was a thing. I'll be glad if they would drop it altogether, as it is a waste of time and resources.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Saracen999

According to the BBC earlier, reporting what the Gov't told them, it's not "technological".

It's actually that to do this, the UK needs needs to notify EU regulators and they ..... ummm .... forgot. Alledgedly, that can take up to 6 months.

Also, it can't really be technological reasons because there is no single technological solution. It seems that how, and indeed if, a porn site implements AV will be up to the porn site. So, 10 different major sites could implement 10 different solutions.

The sting in tbe tail is that if they don't implement something that complies with UK standards, those sites will be "blocked" in the UK.

But ..... accessing via VPNs will still, first, work, and second, be legal.

So tbat should be a really effective deterrent, then. :rolleyes:

A well-known adage about the inability to organise a booze-up in a brewery comes to mind. Gov't would orobably 'forget to book the brewery. Or forget which one they booked.

But it's okay .... these muppets are only running the country. Someone please stop the planet, I want to get off.

---

Agreed, it's utterly unworkable. Consider this: Online child pornography is illegal in virtually* every country in the world. In virtually* every country access to it is blocked as soon as it is discovered. Yet as we see in the news when cases go to court it is still possible to find it if you go looking hard enough. Standard online pornography is legal in most countries, and only 1 country is going to be trying to block access to it. What do you make of their chances?




*It may even be every, but I haven't the time or inclination to check the laws of every single country!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by spacein_vader

Standard online pornography is legal in most countries, and only 1 country is going to be trying to block access to it. What do you make of their chances?

---

<69%

The money wasted will have been by the companies implementing age-checking systems. The reason it's delayed? Political, nobody wants something controversial happening when there is a leadership change, which will likely trigger an early general election.

I don't have any particular reason to think the age verifier platforms are inherently evil, or are in-bed with the government for harvesting porn habits. At the end of the day, the tech looks like a simple token based authentication system - a porn site hands you off to their age verifier, who you logon with, and that passes you back to the porn site. The authenticator knows which porn site you visited, but not much more than that. The porn site knows nothing about you, apart from you passed an external authentication check.

Sounds all great. But when the big porn sites owns the big authenticator (MindGeek) there is the opportunity to correlate some data. Then there is also the risk of hackers doing the same, and the risk of law enforcement requiring information.

Yoti is also subject to the same risks - it's not about whether they're privately owned, use good encryption, run by the church, whatever, it's about the fact that they have that information and what else it could be used by.

Remember that data protection laws grew out of WW2 where registers of people in invaded countries were used to round up people the Nazis didn't like. It's not the original use of the data, but it's what can be done with that data by a malicious actor. The Nazi party invading doesn't seem like an immediate threat at the moment, but a data breach is something we hear about all the time. LinkedIn and Adobe are two large technology companies that come to mind who lost their customer data.

I think the data issue comes back to something I've been harping on about for years .... unless there's a good reason for me, I see the only way to minimise the risk of my data being abused, or even just lost, is to be very careful who I let get hold of any of it.

It's impossible, short of unrealistic extreme measures, to keep absolute privacy but it certainly is possible to minimise how much is known, and who knows it.

The only question is whether we each, as individuals, care enough or even care at all, to go to the trouble of doing the minimising. I do, but that's a personal decision.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by simonpreston

But they're adamant the Irish border problem will be solved with 'technology'.

Clowns, the lot of them.

---

You see why they all get senior management positions when they leave politics right?

No real grasp of the problem or it's solutions - tick.
Certain some "technical wizard" will solve it all for them - tick.
Definitely going to take the credit but not the blame - big f'ing tick!

Born for it!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by spacein_vader

Agreed, it's utterly unworkable. Consider this: Online child pornography is illegal in virtually* every country in the world. In virtually* every country access to it is blocked as soon as it is discovered. Yet as we see in the news when cases go to court it is still possible to find it if you go looking hard enough. Standard online pornography is legal in most countries, and only 1 country is going to be trying to block access to it. What do you make of their chances?




*It may even be every, but I haven't the time or inclination to check the laws of every single country!

---

While entirely taking your point, I do think child porn isn't a good comparison.

Firstly (and obviously) they're not trying to bl8ck porn, but to age-restrict access. The 'blocking' bit is really a stick to beat porn sites with if they don't implement acceptable age-verification. The most obvious way to do that is by credit-card identification as you need to be (IIRC) 18+ to get one (* note) but the obvioys problem, I'd guess, is that a high percentage of pornsite users don't want that on their card history.

And if you remove subscription chsrges, the other major revenue stream for pirn siites will be ad-generated rdferrals etc, and targetting those is going to be hit if usrrs access vua a VPN, especially anonymised, and could therefore be anyone, from anywhere.

I woulx suspect the "blocking" thing isn't actually intended to bl8ck the sites ax such, but to disrupt their marketing and business plans.


Also, as I understand it, child moves about. It's FAR less overt, and rather more underground, with access to serious sites communicated by word of mouth among insiders. Or at least. that's what an FBI agent said on a documentary, a couple of years ago. So .... a site gets discoved it vanishes and re-appears somewhere else, with private chat redirecting core users that are (or should be) aware that what theyre doing is highly illegal.

"Legit" porn sites can't do that .. or not without loads of members/users lising track of them.

The methods, therefore, used to deter non-AV sites and those used to try to catch child pirn users will be very different.

It's a bit like trading standards checking that off-licences aren's selling beer or cider to kids, compared with intensive police action against drug dealers and importers.



* Note = I serm to remember there's nothing technically stopping card issuers giving cards to under-18's but under 18's cannot enter into a legally enforceable debt, so the card could incur unrecoverable debt if the "child" defaulted. Unless an adult is on the contract as a guarantor. But it's sufficiently a minefield that card companies don't want to know.

I take your point, but off-licences selling booze to U18s is hardly 100% adhered to either. Either way it won't work.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by spacein_vader

I take your point, but off-licences selling booze to U18s is hardly 100% adhered to either. Either way it won't work.

---

Indeed. But adherence to that law, and indeed most laws, is largely a consequence of the level of pain from punishment if caught, and the perceived likelihood of getting caught.

Any analogy tends only to work up to a point, and in the case of off-licences, the reward to the licensee isn't huge but that tells you the minimum expectation of getting caught.

I strongly suspect tbat child porn users have another factor too .... a driving compulsion. It's very much getting off the point, but I wonder if they have any more choice than gays do about being gay, heteros do about being hetero, etc.

And before anyone gets upset if I've used politically incorrect terminology, it's because I have no idea what the politically correct terminology is this week/year. I'm not trying to offend anybody.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Saracen999

And before anyone gets upset if I've used politically incorrect terminology, it's because I have no idea what the politically correct terminology is this week/year. I'm not trying to offend anybody.

---

It changes on an hourly basis these days, keep your eyes glued to twitter or perish! ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aidanjt

It changes on an hourly basis these days, keep your eyes glued to twitter or perish! ;)

---

Me? Twitter? Am I supposed to use Akexa to do Google search too?

You trying to get me to fuse the forum's swear filter into a single, molten blob? Or give me an aneurysm? Or both? :D

Might as well expect me to deny Br..... ahhhh, me head.

P.S. Yup, noticed the wink. :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Saracen999

You trying to get me to fuse the forum's swear filter into a single, molten blob?

---

Oh Ебать, someone hit the Forum AZ-5, quickly...!!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Saracen999

P.S. Yup, noticed the wink. :D

---

Might as well get used to that... a 'wink' is all you'll get without a verification ID!

If anyone's interested in the technical legal detail for the delay:

“In April of last year we laid three instruments before the House for approval. One of those instruments, on guidance for age verification arrangements, set out standards that companies need to comply with.

“This should have been notified to the European Union Commission in line with the technical standards and regulations directive. And it was not.”

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jonatron

If anyone's interested in the technical legal detail for the delay:

[...]

---

Yup, spotted that earlier. Funny, that's not the real technical problem that they're going to face.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jonatron

“This should have been notified to the European Union Commission in line with the technical standards and regulations directive. And it was not.”

---

What are they going to do, throw us out of Europe?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aidanjt

Yup, spotted that earlier. Funny, that's not the real technical problem that they're going to face.

---

What, like "It don't work", you mean?

Isn't that standard for government IT projects? And mandatory for defense contracts. I mean, heaven forfend that they should actually get value for (our) money.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

What are they going to do, throw us out of Europe?

---

Now that is a strategy I hadn't considered. Dammit, where'd I put Boris' phone number?

:D

And that's the end of that :-

https://news.sky.com/story/governmen...kinks-11837055

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jonj1611

https://news.sky.com/story/governmen...kinks-11837055

---

Porn law hits 'kinks'... ha ha, did you see what they did there? :lol:

"The controversial scheme had prompted campaigners to raise concerns that it would enable widespread tracking of porn watchers' identities and browsing habits, creating the potential for blackmail and online surveillance"
Many places already know who you are and what sort of filth you watch.
My wife and I have both been security vetted for government work and in the interview they ask you what sort of stuff you're into. They already know, they're just looking for honesty.... but they DO still know, already!!!

"MindGeek stood to increase its already considerable market share by offering age verification services to smaller sites"
Aren't MindGeek also a sales website where you can buy all the gaming/movie/geek merchandise and anime bobblehead figurines?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jonj1611

And that's the end of that :-

https://news.sky.com/story/governmen...kinks-11837055

---

yup, it's also on the BBC now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50073102

And no-one predicted that did they?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster

Porn law hits 'kinks'... ha ha, did you see what they did there? :lol:

"The controversial scheme had prompted campaigners to raise concerns that it would enable widespread tracking of porn watchers' identities and browsing habits, creating the potential for blackmail and online surveillance"
Many places already know who you are and what sort of filth you watch.
My wife and I have both been security vetted for government work and in the interview they ask you what sort of stuff you're into. They already know, they're just looking for honesty.... but they DO still know, already!!!

"MindGeek stood to increase its already considerable market share by offering age verification services to smaller sites"
Aren't MindGeek also a sales website where you can buy all the gaming/movie/geek merchandise and anime bobblehead figurines?

---

Doesn't surprise me at all! I kind of always assumed the intelligence services could find that out. It would be more worrying if they couldn't. But that is very different from a database accessible by commercial companies and whichever gov dept or local gov dept felt like it, that was linked not to an IP or online profile, but someone's passport or driver's licence etc etc.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ik9000

....

And no-one predicted that did they?

---

Absolutely nobody, except anyone with the slightest clue what they're on about ..... from 8-year olds up.

Which of course excludes most MPs and especially ministers. They seem to think that if they want it, and order it or pass a law, it'll happen .... like a pizza delivery.

Anyone with a tech clue worked out how it could be bypassed within about 30 seconds, and realised many of the privacy issues well within that. Government, though, took .... what? 4 years?

Sounds about right.

I was looking forward to it. They really just dropped the whole idea? Wow.

I guess we will have to look forward to teens being teens.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster

Many places already know who you are and what sort of filth you watch.

---

If it remains many places then that's fine, well it's not but i hope you get what i mean, it's when a single place, and worst yet a government, knows who i am and what sort of filth i watch (I'm not sure cat videos are filth ;)) that it gets worrying for me. There are so many flaws in such practices, the single point of failure, a possible future government (either extreme right or left wing) using that information against you, and labelling anyone who circumvents such restrictions as criminals or having acted unlawfully, to name but a few.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Corky34

I'm not sure cat videos are filth

---

Rule 34.......

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Corky34

There are so many flaws in such practices, the single point of failure, a possible future government using that information against you, and labelling anyone who circumvents such restrictions as criminals or having acted unlawfully, to name but a few.

---

But at the same time, when you're out in your PC boat in the middle of an ocean of internet data, which would you prefer - One notably sizable hole in your hull, which you are aware of, is a common ocurrence and that you can work to manage... or a load of other holes, some of which you're utterly unaware of and in parts of your boat that you didn't even know existed?

IMO, the government can do all this if they really choose to anyway.
I'm more worried about everyone else being able to do it, from John Lewis to Banggood, to AmbulanceChasers.com, to Arabian Princes in emails, to that guy in the BMW this morning who was being a bell and ended up getting trapped behind me while I obeyed the speed limit and positioned myself so he couldn't overtake without hitting oncoming traffic....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster

But at the same time, when you're out in your PC boat in the middle of an ocean of internet data, which would you prefer - One notably sizable hole in your hull, which you are aware of, is a common ocurrence and that you can work to manage... or a load of other holes, some of which you're utterly unaware of and in parts of your boat that you didn't even know existed?

---

Personally I'd favour choosing the boat without holes in it. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Corky34

Personally I'd favour choosing the boat without holes in it. :)

---

One would need to be certain holes wouldn't and couldn't ever develop, though and you couldn't afford that level of guaranteed quality... Almost no-one on this planet can. In fact, no-one at all can actually afford it, and the only person who does have it is Chuck Norris!