Political Memes

Oh, that's simple. Just have the law require all end user OSes to have government-verified ID check functionality that is out of the user's control and the integrity of it protected by Secure Boot.

Accessing any online service with an operating system capable of manipulating or bypassing the check will be considered some flavor of hacking or fraud.

Boom, done. All the privacy activists go into the slammer and Microsoft gets to sell a new version of Windows to everyone.

@pennomi@lemmy.world @politicalmemes@lemmy.ca

How will they force online checks

In case of Brazil, it'd be through the full power of the corpo-state full with regulatory agencies, judiciary, financial system, and police force.

Either companies and platforms comply, or the telecommunication agency (ANATEL, Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações) would simply subpoena all Brazilian ISPs to block IP addresses and DNS entries, alongside the courts applying daily fines for disobedience shall those have any Brazilian bank accounts.

Big corps such as Google and Meta and Apple, with enough money to burn on Persona and au10tix KYC services, won't even be needed to be forced to comply: they got a fresh golden goose of tracking data!

It's the small companies and orgs who'll either: go bankrupt trying to get the KYC on their systems, cease activities altogether, geoblock Brazilian users, or going the Non Serviam way with the risk of having the wrath of the state.

As for the end user, the whole weight of this conundrum between state + big corps + cheerleading herds of complying citizens vs any company and org who dares not to comply will push them into compliance, because we live in a sick world where one must have a damn smartphone to be allowed to "live in society". Brazil heavily rely on digital payments ("Pix") and many things have been digital-only since the COVID-19 pandemics.

Dissidents such as me, who managed to convince themselves of a quasi-Luddite way of life, the item "living in society" ruled out from "living plans card", well, who knows what will happen? I got no money for them to seize because I've been long unemployed, no belongings to get auctioned, nothing I could lose, except for the reminiscent illusion of mundane freedom which is not being inside a jail yet...

just have the OS lie.

Even if the OS and browser managed to trick apps and websites with fake KYC authorization tokens, that would be illegal.

you should already be on a VPN regardless.

Before this law existed, there's precedent for past legal decisions where VPN was explicitly prohibited by Supreme Court, and people were somehow discovered using VPN (packet sniffing from ISPs, I guess) and were fined for doing so (not mere "you owe to the State": banks are subpoenaed to lock assets, and the fines get autopaid).

Also, if we zoom out and look at the forest, it's spreading worldwide. If enough countries pass their flavors of this "age validation", eventually there'll be nowhere left for a VPN to circumvent anymore. VPNs must be in some country to operate.

I mean, don't get me wrong: I'm not complying, I'm currently using an outdated Linux on an old laptop, I haven't updated for a while (thing is expected to get at the OS level) so I won't have any age check mechanism anytime soon on PC. But I know how it'll eventually get me one way (coercion by social comformity) or the other (coercion by force).

Maybe I'm exaggerating, I don't know... This world is truly depressing.

You would need an ID reader or something, but you could generate a key from scanning your ID, and have that used to authenticate on major online platforms. This is basically how most companies manage network access, so all the essential technology is widely available.

Wasn't that how systems was implementing it? You just enter your age.

54m3 h3r3...