Thread by @matthew_d_green

We’re pretty rapidly and consciously heading towards a future where everything you do on the Internet requires government ID, with basically no attention paid to the consequences of that (indeed, the consequences of that may be the whole point.)

https://twitter.com/evan_greer/status/1787844723102626299

I’ve become a little bit despairing that we can fight this. The pressure on all sides seems much too intense. But we also have very little tech in place to make this safe: and realistically the only people who can develop it work in Cupertino and Mountain View.

So what does a future involving age verification look like? As a first step it’s going to involve installing government ID on your phone. The ID will be tied to your biometrics (face). Apple is already deploying something like this, but it can’t be used for web browsing — yet.

Once that’s widely deployed, there will need to be protocols deployed to perform age verification directly. The best possible outcome is that we’ll get something privacy-preserving (some kind of anonymous credential) where random websites will learn your age and not your name.

But I’m pessimistic that real privacy-preserving protocols will be allowed. Once this is in place, law enforcement will want to use this tech to precisely identify site visitors (using warrants if we’re lucky.) We’ll be told it’s necessary to stop terrorism and child abuse.

We’ll be told that because the data exists it’s immoral for random tech firms to prevent us from reading it. We’ll have a whole debate about it in which every participant will be forced to pretend that “presenting your ID to read a website” has always been a thing in the US.

I’m hoping this will be a fight for the next generation because I’m tired of fighting a creeping surveillance regime that never gives up. But I expect this debate to kick off around 2028-29 and maybe sooner if we’re unlucky.