Bear in mind that the law dictates what the OS devs have to do, not the user. There also would need to be a mechanism to ask the user what jurisdiction they’re in because what’s mandatory in one jurisdiction may illegal in another, and there’s no reliable way to geolocate a PC user for this purpose.
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Hi, thanks for answering!
I get where you and all devs are coming from.
There is not an easy answer that satisfies everyone.
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Written age-api, Security Impact just now.
Written Legal impact in case malware is tampering with the age API just now.
Wiki chapter which predated age API by years: Legal Issues
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Moderation comment
Nothing has been done yet. This is draft and discussion status only.
As a prerequisite for future postings here:
- Read the relevant law(s) in full. It makes no sense to comment without knowing what the law actually says.
- Read the current draft. Many important details are already documented: Age Signaling and Interface Documentation and Design for Kicksecure (and Whonix)
- Use search engines and existing documentation first. See: Utilize Search Engines, Documentation and AI
- (Optional) Discuss your idea with AI to sanity-check it and reduce back-and-forth.
- If you are convinced you have a great contribution to make, comment here with the relevant citations, links.
This is in line with: Development Discussion Policy
Goal: preserve developer time.
In case any changes are made, an announcement will be posted here: Follow Whonix Developments
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Hi Patrick, this post is in line with what you stated up there. these are supreme court cases:
Gibbons vs Ogden 1824
states do not have authority to regulate things so that they pose a restriction or difficylty in interstate commerce (court has said repeated ly that internet traffic counts just like cars and buses for “inter-state commerce.”)
Shekton(sp?) vs Tucker 1960
reinforced that any state interfering with or denying Constitutionally guaranteed rights is not able to do that. This clearly violates my 1st amendment right. I dont live in California and complying with their law infringes on my free speech. I never intended to share my age for example
Bush v. Gore 2000
focus on uniform standards; it stress that confusing or misleading laws will be stricken
Reno v. ACLU 1997
struck down procisions of CDA that imposed restrictions on online speech (CDA mean “communication decency act”)
Ft. worth v. Texas 2005
laws imposing restrictions on technology without clear justification could violate 1st amendment
Netherlands vs United States
dealt wth the limits on states ability as far as passing laws that reaches over their border
Edit: forgot to tell that california is violating its own law with this new law! They have something where code is “protected speech.” So, how can code as protected speech and the new law trying to force an unwilling change in that same code even co-exist?
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I think people reading and participating in this topic should keep in mind one more thing that is very important to understand.
The developers of Whonix can’t really openly discuss loop holes or anything similar to that because the law says that the developers have to make a good faith effort in their implementation. And discussing loop holes could be used in court as evidence of not acting in good faith.
The developers are not anonymous.
Another very important point about this what becomes obvious from this new law and how we react to it, is whonix is not censorship resistant. The OS has to follow the laws and politicians can destroy Whonix at any time by making a new law. Whonix devs are non anonymous so they would have to comply.
Fortunately, this new law is not the end of the world. But it does seem like a first step. A test. They’re planting the foundation which can be used to destroy us in the future in further steps.
So we should think about how it’s possible to bring in new whonix developers who are anonymous. And find ways to host and distribute Whonix that are censorship resistant. Maybe by using IPFS and p2p filesharing torrenting.
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I have read the bill once again and shall be a military language that shall be interpreted and understand what it means, necessarily. Based on the premise of Section F:
(f) This title does not apply to any of the following:
(1) A broadband internet access service, as defined in Section 3100.
(2) A telecommunications service, as defined in Section 153 of Title 47 of the United States Code.
(3) The delivery or use of a physical product.
It does not applied to physical items, ISPs, and phones for financing as such. It shall only apply to the Operating System levels in which they might encourage encrypted data/signal to those apps that they really needed.
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Additional notes:
- Based upon re-reading the bill, it’s a class-base system.
- It only given the design overall of what the bill’s intentions were.
- The bill only restrict the collection of age bracket data/signal whenever or whatever reasons that the applications necessary needed for.
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[… 8 lines elided]
Any implementation of age verification would be fully open-source and
treated identically to every other package in the system.
This doesn’t give relevant assurances to WhonixOS users. We are using
this OS for privacy features. I don’t care if a self-doxx system made
open source or not. It is a self-doxx system, and has no place in a
privacy OS.
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System76:
- Re: On the unfortunate need for an "age verification" API for legal compliance reasons in some U.S. states
- system76
- Illinois Bill IL SB3977 (Children’s Social Media Safety Act)
There is no magic solution to this. Getting new developers - anonymous or non-anonymous - would always be good - completely unrelated to any laws.
The issue is, there is no sustainable business model. Let alone, for a completely anonymously run project.
Related: Open Source Business Models
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Quoting an earlier post of mine from above:
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Looks like Ageless Linux is claiming Kicksecure and Whonix will be complying with the age verification API:
I am not authorized to formally/legally dispute this claim on behalf of Kicksecure and/or Whonix, so this post is merely a call-to-action for either you or @Patrick to address.
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Thanks, submitted a PR:
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who wait why do age verification when they use node js
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Who uses NodeJS?
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Quoting from our age-api research page on the Kicksecure wiki:
- Current assessment: Unlikely: Kicksecure and Whonix are currently unlikely to implement an age API.
- Possible revised assessment: This may later be updated to “highly unlikely” or “no changes planned”.
(Mainly posting this here so that people who come here elsewhere from the Internet don’t get confused.)
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Systemd has added age-related metadata. Not in itself verification, but the groundwork for age verification via systemd.
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rxt50c/systemd_has_merged_age_verification_measures_into/
Sorry if this has already been posted, but Discourse lazy loads and I can’t search for it.
Since Whonix is downstream from Debian, and Debian uses systemd, and Whonix has a “we don’t mess with upstream” policy, at least part of the age verification infrastructure will already be baked into Whonix. Nevertheless, as of now, it’s just a metadata field, like name and email address. It will be up to specific operating systems to decide what to do with it–unless more gets baked into systemd at the behest of corpo-Linux. We are in a frog in the pot moment, and we should stick to our principles. I’m prepared to contribute to the effort, in whatever modest way I can, in whatever direction Patrick decides.
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I got in contact with a representative from the Software Freedom Conservancy during the weekend. I had a discussion with them about the age verification API and what they can do to help Kicksecure and Whonix, and they said they are able to provide various fiscal sponsorship services, including basic legal advice/services, subject to joining SFC:
Software in the Public Interest (SPI) also offers similar fiscal sponsorship services:
You may already know about SPI as Debian is one of their associated projects, among other Linux distributions:
Otherwise, the SFC representative mentioned that there will be an age verification API article on the SFC website sometime in the near future, so I can add that as a reference to its respective Kicksecure Wiki page when it is eventually published.
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Other than Ageless Linux, there is another GitHub repository attempting to keep track of all of the Linux distributions’ compliance statuses with/against age verification:
Kicksecure and Whonix are mentioned in an issue, which references the pull request from the Ageless Linux GitHub repository earlier in this topic:
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