Evil in the Name of Good

Age Verification

Many people are quite concerned about “Digital IDs”. Digital IDs aren’t evil in themselves, it’s how they are used that is the critical concern. The concerns are very valid, but overlook the fact that we already have digital IDs. Cell phones, drivers licenses, passports, bank accounts, credit card numbers, and browser fingerprints.

Do I need to go into detail on why these can be used in the manner people fear digital IDs?

The latest, and in my opinion, very real concern is something painted as “good” so that it has popular support: “Age Verification”.

While we all want to protect our children, we need to stop and consider what this really is. “Age Verification” means identifying everyone on the Internet, not just children. The Internet remains one of the rare places we can be anonymous to a certain extent. However it’s more and more difficult to actually be anonymous on the Internet. You may use a VPN thinking that masks who you are, however your browser’s “fingerprint” identifies you (unless you are using a browser that anonymizes your fingerprint).

“Age Verification” can not truly be implemented without at some point identifying who a person is in the real world. Trying to do age verification is an amazingly difficult technical challenge. Even if a website requires a photo of a driver’s license, there is little to stop a clever child from “borrowing” their parent’s driver’s license and using that.

State after state is putting these requirements into law. This is no longer a theoretical problem. Perhaps everyone is aware that the UK has done this. But in freedom loving America, this is becoming a growing problem. Mississippi law is perhaps the worst, but slightly more reasonable are states like South Dakota and Wyoming soon to be followed by Ohio.

Interestingly these laws seem to primarily impact the small companies (that lack the finances to effectively fight them), major social media like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook seem to be ignoring these laws.

Texas law, set to go into effect on January 1, 2026 brings this to Texas where people in Texas will no longer be able to download an app to their phone without identifying who they are.

What can we do about this? First of all, we need to realize this is not protecting our children. It’s not the government’s job to protect our kids. Parents need to step up and take on this role. Nobody should be more concerned about their children than parents!

Edit:

If you think there is nothing to worry about submitting your government ID for age verification, keep in mind that just this month Discord admitted that around 70,000 government IDs were stolen in a security breach of their servers. Even if your behavior isn’t controlled, there is still the risk of your confidential data being exposed.