Even with the Zero Knowledge approach, you will still run an app on a phone (what if I don’t have one) that will make some call to the government’s servers, which will most likely know what website you’re trying to access. We’re moving the data mining from some third party to the government, which can be wrongly used later if some idiot comes into power. If it’s not making a call to a government’s servers, I would be surprised, since you could imagine someone just bypassing this to always return “Over 18”.
Even funnier (read “sad”), this initiative will probably rely on Google and Apple to keep it robust, and will likely have no availability on rooted phones or non-Google Play Services ones. It’s premature at best to deploy this in a meaningfully safe way.
The app (or desktop application BTW, incl. Linux) reads your national ID’s NFC tag, once. When you need to prove your age, the app locally computes a zkp that only tells the site “at least 18yo yes/no”.
Note that every EU country has a form of national ID, and the digital capabilities of these IDs are already used for a bunch of stuff (e.g. taxes, bank account creation,…). This doesn’t worsen the privacy situation for EU citizens, but instead ensures that no privacy-unfriendly solutions emerge.
There must be something that ensures the response is legitimate. Otherwise, if it’s client-side and fully offline, I can just spoof the app to return the response “Yes, over 18”. If it’s not the government doing the verification, it’s Google or Apple, which will give them access to all the “adult” websites you visit. Also, another reason for the EU to push for strict device attestation, without any DIY stuff (i.e., no more GrapheneOS, LineageOS, etc).
I couldn’t find a desktop app on the EU’s GitHub (another red flag, btw, using GitHub for this). All that seems to be available is code for the Android or iOS apps. Could you share it, if you can?
What I understood is that the code of the app would be open so it can be Independently checked. It sucks that it comes to this and there will be a choice between plague and cholera, but I would rather have this approach than use 3rd party age verification services.
It’s better than nothing, but there’s also the issue of certifying that the code that’s open, is actually the code in the app. Also the vast majority of people do not posses the knowledge to actually read and understand the code to be able to verify it. So to most people, it being open is of little benefit.
Even with the Zero Knowledge approach, you will still run an app on a phone (what if I don’t have one) that will make some call to the government’s servers, which will most likely know what website you’re trying to access. We’re moving the data mining from some third party to the government, which can be wrongly used later if some idiot comes into power. If it’s not making a call to a government’s servers, I would be surprised, since you could imagine someone just bypassing this to always return “Over 18”.
Even funnier (read “sad”), this initiative will probably rely on Google and Apple to keep it robust, and will likely have no availability on rooted phones or non-Google Play Services ones. It’s premature at best to deploy this in a meaningfully safe way.
This doesn’t make a call to government servers.
The app (or desktop application BTW, incl. Linux) reads your national ID’s NFC tag, once. When you need to prove your age, the app locally computes a zkp that only tells the site “at least 18yo yes/no”.
Note that every EU country has a form of national ID, and the digital capabilities of these IDs are already used for a bunch of stuff (e.g. taxes, bank account creation,…). This doesn’t worsen the privacy situation for EU citizens, but instead ensures that no privacy-unfriendly solutions emerge.
There must be something that ensures the response is legitimate. Otherwise, if it’s client-side and fully offline, I can just spoof the app to return the response “Yes, over 18”. If it’s not the government doing the verification, it’s Google or Apple, which will give them access to all the “adult” websites you visit. Also, another reason for the EU to push for strict device attestation, without any DIY stuff (i.e., no more GrapheneOS, LineageOS, etc).
I couldn’t find a desktop app on the EU’s GitHub (another red flag, btw, using GitHub for this). All that seems to be available is code for the Android or iOS apps. Could you share it, if you can?
What I understood is that the code of the app would be open so it can be Independently checked. It sucks that it comes to this and there will be a choice between plague and cholera, but I would rather have this approach than use 3rd party age verification services.
It’s better than nothing, but there’s also the issue of certifying that the code that’s open, is actually the code in the app. Also the vast majority of people do not posses the knowledge to actually read and understand the code to be able to verify it. So to most people, it being open is of little benefit.