Digital Identities and the Future of Age Verification in Europe

www.eff.org Digital Identities and the Future of Age Verification in Europe

This is the first part of a three-part series about age verification in the European Union. In this blog post, we give an overview of the political debate around age verification and explore the age verification proposal introduced by the European Commission, based on digital identities. Part two...

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child clearly expresses that minors have rights to freedom of expression and access to information online, as well as the right to privacy.

These rights would be steamrolled by age verification requirements.

Technology @beehaw.org

Digital Identities and the Future of Age Verification in Europe

www.eff.org /deeplinks/2025/04/digital-identities-and-future-age-verification-europe

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Privacy @lemmy.dbzer0.com

Digital Identities and the Future of Age Verification in Europe

www.eff.org /deeplinks/2025/04/digital-identities-and-future-age-verification-europe

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Privacy @europe.pub

Digital Identities and the Future of Age Verification in Europe

www.eff.org /deeplinks/2025/04/digital-identities-and-future-age-verification-europe

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39 comments

Am I age verified if the first thing that popped into my mind upon seeing that logo was "GameCube!"
- no, the GameCube intro is iconic and the government overreach is chronic

Is there realistically any way to stop 1984 from becoming fully realized or is it already too far along into the landslide for humanity to save itself?

No, these rights work perfectly well with age verification systems in general. It's the planned implementation that is bullshit. And that's not a coincidence but intentional to -again- sell us surveilance through the back door.
(For reference: No one but the EU and member's governments are more qualified to produce an actual, working age verification system in the form of "Yes, that person has the required age. No, you don't need to know any other personal information because we already checked and certified it". Because they already have the data base neccessary. But you can't outsource such a system to private companies that actually want to get paid mainly in aquired data...)
- The point of an age verification system is to make sure that certain classes of people cannot access certain categories of information.
  Is there really no problem there?
  
  In case of minors and pornography, most societies have come to the conclusion that there is no problem with that.
  If some people want to fight this, they should fight this issue (this would be very much a losing battle in all places in my opinion), not age verification systems, because the second would not exist without laws like the first one.
- There is no way to remotely verify someone's age across the Internet without violating their privacy. If there was, there would be no way to use it that doesn't violate their other rights.
  
  It security engineer here: zero knowledge proofs are exactly that. Proof your age isg higher than X, but not even how much higher. They can't even profile you based on that information as they can't recognize you across visits.
  Some government identity cards already support that. For everybody else there are companies that offer that service.
  BTW I'm against age verification. We had access to porn at a certain age, I want my children to be able to look when that gets interesting to them. But then again I'm pretty progressive and open with sexuality in general and I take time out of my day to actually talk to my kids about dangers on the internet.
  
  Your government... you know... the people that already have all your data and issue your passport... cannot include a flag (properly cryptographically signed by them) that tells a service "Yes, the guy that just inserted this valid passport is an adult. You don't need to get any other info. We already checked for you.", no other connection or transfer of data neccessary?
  
  What do you mean by violating privacy?
  If you have a passport, citizenship, or birth certificate your age is already documented.
- No one but the EU and member's governments are more qualified to produce an actual, working age verification system […]
  Because they already have the data base neccessary
  Just imagine that every time you watch cat videos, the cat video website sends a request to your government's servers to verify your age.
  Of course, this can also be done without accessing any database. E. g. the German electronic identity card supports verifying your age without revealing any other personal information.
  
  Just imagine your passport just has a separate set of information saved "This person is legally an adult" signed of by the government issueing them. No transfer of any other data neccessary. You don't need to know their name, their age or anything else. And you don't need some database to be queried. You just get the certified "I have the proper age to access this"-card build into their regular papers.

If it is about protecting children, just create age based VPNs and whitelist the services with appropriate content.
This must be used above all to track the activity of every adult among all popular services. Having to proof adultness cannot be done without creating a link between the identify of the adult and the account at the service.
In theory, it's possible, if the age verification authority keeps the link secret. But that's impossible to uphold.
What are the elites planning to do that requires this huge amount of surveillance? The article says that they need it already in the second quarter of 2025. We will find out soon.
- Having to proof adultness cannot be done without creating a link between the identify of the adult and the account at the service.
  It can be done.
  Do you really have no other complaints?
  
  How can it be done?

39 comments