What happened to personal responsibility? And judicial precedent ? this court is really going to overturn any other supreme court ruling just to fit whatever agenda they want to push.
Several members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed deeply skeptical of a challenge to a Texas law that seeks to limit minors’ access to pornography, peppering a lawyer for the challengers with exceptionally hostile questions.
The lawyer, Derek L. Shaffer, said the law violated the First Amendment by requiring age verification measures like the submission of government-issued IDs that placed an unconstitutional burden on adults seeking to view sexually explicit materials. He said parents could protect their children by using content-filtering software.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was incredulous. “Do you know a lot of parents who are more tech savvy than their 15-year-old children?” He added that “there’s a huge volume of evidence that filtering doesn’t work.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has seven children, said “kids can get online porn through gaming systems, tablets, phones, computers.”
She added, “Content filtering for all those different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with.”
Much of the argument concerned whether the appeals court had erred in using a relaxed form of judicial scrutiny to block the law. Several justices indicated that a more demanding standard applied even as they suggested that the Texas law satisfied it.
What happened to personal responsibility? And judicial precedent ? this court is really going to overturn any other supreme court ruling just to fit whatever agenda they want to push.
I'm sure you know this, but the current SCOTUS has already been overturning other Supreme Court rulings to fit their own personal agendas - and women and folks requiring OB/GYN care, abortion...
I'm sure you know this, but the current SCOTUS has already been overturning other Supreme Court rulings to fit their own personal agendas - and women and folks requiring OB/GYN care, abortion access, and the like are dying because of it.
Some interesting discussion from the SupremeCourt subreddit. One of the important points: the actual question at the heart of the case is: (The Court of Appeals in this case is the conservative...
One of the important points: the actual question at the heart of the case is:
Whether the court of appeals erred as a matter of law in applying rational-basis review to a law burdening adults' access to protected speech, instead of strict scrutiny as this Court and other circuits have consistently done.
(The Court of Appeals in this case is the conservative Fifth Circuit.)
For those who don’t know, rational basis review seeks to determine if whether a law is "rationally related" to a "legitimate" government interest, whether real or hypothetical. Whereas strict scrutiny holds the challenged law as presumptively invalid unless the government can demonstrate that the law or regulation is necessary to achieve a "compelling state interest". The government must also demonstrate that the law is "narrowly tailored" to achieve that compelling purpose, and that it uses the "least restrictive means" to achieve that purpose. [Borrowed from Wikipedia]
Good thing the first reply to that post is someone disagreeing with the OP, cause really his opinion at the end is laughable, technology has gotten good enough so that the government can now block...
Good thing the first reply to that post is someone disagreeing with the OP, cause really his opinion at the end is laughable, technology has gotten good enough so that the government can now block access to information? Those databases are going to be prime targets for hackers and every country’s alphabet soup agencies.
The same way you can’t have a secure backdoor, you cannot have privacy if you have to verify your age with an 3rd party every time you open a porn site, and you know they are not limiting this to porn.
Nothing. Though being that this is particularly about Texas, I'm not sure why they won't go one step further and take that same BS strategy they did with abortions and make it so any company...
Nothing. Though being that this is particularly about Texas, I'm not sure why they won't go one step further and take that same BS strategy they did with abortions and make it so any company suspected of 'aiding' minors in viewing pornography can be sued in court, and they might narrowly tailor it to VPNs or such to make it so VPN providers that are worried about US lawsuits won't serve any IP address that originates in Texas.
It's how the age is verified that's the problem. Every method I can think of leaves some trace connecting to your real, actual identity. And it's virtually guaranteed every time that method is...
It's how the age is verified that's the problem. Every method I can think of leaves some trace connecting to your real, actual identity. And it's virtually guaranteed every time that method is used to access anything, that would be recorded in a database somewhere. While it's starting with porn, this can quickly devolve into tracking activity on sites for a variety of other topics like seeking abortion information, information about LGBTQ+ topics, even "radical" political sites that the government deem a threat.
Unless people are deliberately obscuring their tracks, being on the internet leaves traces to their real actual identity. Most sites can pull my IP address and that'll get you my name and address....
Unless people are deliberately obscuring their tracks, being on the internet leaves traces to their real actual identity. Most sites can pull my IP address and that'll get you my name and address. My ISP keeps logs too.
I don't find slippery slope arguments convincing. You can always 'what if' anything to make it sound terrible, doesn't mean it's going to happen. Also if a malicious state wants to block "radical" stuff, they don't need a public excuse where they set up a mechanism under the guise of protecting the kids, they can just.. do it. That's part of what makes them malicious.
I'm not sure I agree with enforced porn age validation because I feel like that's probably a parent's job, but I do wonder how the 'but privacy' people feel about enforced social media age verification, which is exactly the same thing.
I live in a country that has a nationwide block list for known CSA content, some level of which is enforced by law - some is voluntary but most major network providers use it. Have had it for years. No known feature creep and our last government were pretty malicious (as in they nearly enforced a backdoor in WhatsApp!). I can still look up any kind of "radical" content I want.
My concern has a couple parts, in that the methods would likely tie back to a singular, central database. The incoming American administration is very hostile, and I'm currently inclined to assume...
My concern has a couple parts, in that the methods would likely tie back to a singular, central database.
The incoming American administration is very hostile, and I'm currently inclined to assume the worst just in case. In the absolute worst case scenario, I would not put it past them to use a database to pick out dissidents who visit certain sites to arrest, or at least flag them for some watch list. The FBI and/or CIA have watched people for far more mundane reasons. In a less dystopian vein, I can see them using political opponents' and activists' browsing histories to try to harm their reputation, or even use in a trial to claim they're morally repungent.
Databases are hackable. There have been plenty of massive leaks in just this past year. This would be one more avenue for potential identity theft, or blackmail opportunities by threatening to expose their histories. Even if the entire database isn't hacked, individual accounts can be. From there it would be easy to get blackmail material, or visit a number of sites to create a false profile of the person that can be flagged as suspicious in a dystopia scenario, or else manufacture blackmail material by threatening to expose the new browsing history. Even if it's quickly proven to be a hacker, the victim's "guilt" will be forever cemented in some people's mind.
I just remember watching a documentary in high school about Brandon Mayfield being falsely arrested for the Madrid bombings based on a partial fingerprint match. The part that stuck with me were the investigators citing his web history as supporting evidence. I can't remember the examples off the top of my head and all the links I can find are PDFs, but they were all fairly innocuous and could easily be explained by other things, but they could be combined to paint a specific interpretation of his guilt.
It was far from the only problem with that investigation, but it's left me highly aware of how information can be interpreted by malicious parties. That case wasn't even particularly malicious, it was investigators trying to justify their case with whatever they could.
So while for now the law is about porn, I don't like how much leeway it leaves for other topics to be age-restricted. Sites addressing those topics will either cut off access, or some new process will be made that inevitably leads to a database that can be potentially abused in the ways I described.
I don't think this is entirely accurate. Part of this is a matter of effort and cost. Could the IP address be used to locate a specific person? Probably. Is it trivial to do so? Not necessarily....
I don't think this is entirely accurate. Part of this is a matter of effort and cost. Could the IP address be used to locate a specific person? Probably.
Is it trivial to do so? Not necessarily.
Does the ISP provide dynamic IP addresses? How long ago was the event you are "tracking"? How long does the ISP keep logs? Does the site itself keep logs? Is the IP address behind a NAT or shared across a large number of users? If it's a single family home that the IP address is tied to, who lives in that home? Do guests use the wifi? Did they use a VPN/Proxy? Do they have malware installed that used them as a VPN/Proxy? Was it "public wifi" ?
All of this takes effort, investigation, and money.
Finding the right balance for freedom/privacy and security is tough. If you make something absolutely trivial and cheap to track down, it will be abused.
No it isn't. First off, slippery slope arguments don't work any better just because you've stated them the other way around. Frankly, I don't even like using the word 'argument' for such...
No it isn't. First off, slippery slope arguments don't work any better just because you've stated them the other way around. Frankly, I don't even like using the word 'argument' for such constructions because they're almost always fallacious.
Secondly, this is not even close to being the bottom of any kind of gradient. Age gating porn is not a terrible idea. I'm not remotely convinced that giving children access to countless hours of hardcore sex videos is something any society needs to "climb" towards. (fwiw I also don't think "but won't somebody think of the children" is all that strong an argument for many things, but sometimes it is good to at least consider the children)
How the age gate is put up matters, of course. Whether this implementation is good or not, I don't know. There is also the question as to whose responsibility that gate is - parents, the state, ISPs, etc. Also it's worth remembering that Texas, as a society, decided they wanted to do this. That's democracy, innit. You elect people and they do stuff.
You share it with an intermediary that doesn't share it with the website that needs age verification. The question then is how to make sure that the intermediary and the website don't know about...
You share it with an intermediary that doesn't share it with the website that needs age verification. The question then is how to make sure that the intermediary and the website don't know about each other, which could be done with another level of indirection.
There are already many organizations that know your date of birth (for example, your bank) and could vouch for you without any additional loss of privacy.
But then it's a question of who is going to build the systems and will they do a good job? Where is the technical working group and the RFC? I haven't heard of anyone working on this.
So this isn't a practical solution yet. I'm just saying that it doesn't appear to violate the laws of physics or anything.
What happened to personal responsibility? And judicial precedent ? this court is really going to overturn any other supreme court ruling just to fit whatever agenda they want to push.
That ship sailed a looooong time ago.
I'm sure you know this, but the current SCOTUS has already been overturning other Supreme Court rulings to fit their own personal agendas - and women and folks requiring OB/GYN care, abortion access, and the like are dying because of it.
Some interesting discussion from the SupremeCourt subreddit.
One of the important points: the actual question at the heart of the case is:
(The Court of Appeals in this case is the conservative Fifth Circuit.)
For those who don’t know, rational basis review seeks to determine if whether a law is "rationally related" to a "legitimate" government interest, whether real or hypothetical. Whereas strict scrutiny holds the challenged law as presumptively invalid unless the government can demonstrate that the law or regulation is necessary to achieve a "compelling state interest". The government must also demonstrate that the law is "narrowly tailored" to achieve that compelling purpose, and that it uses the "least restrictive means" to achieve that purpose. [Borrowed from Wikipedia]
Good thing the first reply to that post is someone disagreeing with the OP, cause really his opinion at the end is laughable, technology has gotten good enough so that the government can now block access to information? Those databases are going to be prime targets for hackers and every country’s alphabet soup agencies.
The same way you can’t have a secure backdoor, you cannot have privacy if you have to verify your age with an 3rd party every time you open a porn site, and you know they are not limiting this to porn.
My focus wasn’t on the back door side (I’m sympathetic to FSC), but on the law side of the case.
What would stop somebody from using a VPN to access a site from a country that didn't have the rule? I haven't read anything about that yet
Nothing. Though being that this is particularly about Texas, I'm not sure why they won't go one step further and take that same BS strategy they did with abortions and make it so any company suspected of 'aiding' minors in viewing pornography can be sued in court, and they might narrowly tailor it to VPNs or such to make it so VPN providers that are worried about US lawsuits won't serve any IP address that originates in Texas.
Whether or not someone is a child or an adult is not some deep dark secret. I don't see why this should be private at all.
It's how the age is verified that's the problem. Every method I can think of leaves some trace connecting to your real, actual identity. And it's virtually guaranteed every time that method is used to access anything, that would be recorded in a database somewhere. While it's starting with porn, this can quickly devolve into tracking activity on sites for a variety of other topics like seeking abortion information, information about LGBTQ+ topics, even "radical" political sites that the government deem a threat.
Unless people are deliberately obscuring their tracks, being on the internet leaves traces to their real actual identity. Most sites can pull my IP address and that'll get you my name and address. My ISP keeps logs too.
I don't find slippery slope arguments convincing. You can always 'what if' anything to make it sound terrible, doesn't mean it's going to happen. Also if a malicious state wants to block "radical" stuff, they don't need a public excuse where they set up a mechanism under the guise of protecting the kids, they can just.. do it. That's part of what makes them malicious.
I'm not sure I agree with enforced porn age validation because I feel like that's probably a parent's job, but I do wonder how the 'but privacy' people feel about enforced social media age verification, which is exactly the same thing.
I live in a country that has a nationwide block list for known CSA content, some level of which is enforced by law - some is voluntary but most major network providers use it. Have had it for years. No known feature creep and our last government were pretty malicious (as in they nearly enforced a backdoor in WhatsApp!). I can still look up any kind of "radical" content I want.
My concern has a couple parts, in that the methods would likely tie back to a singular, central database.
The incoming American administration is very hostile, and I'm currently inclined to assume the worst just in case. In the absolute worst case scenario, I would not put it past them to use a database to pick out dissidents who visit certain sites to arrest, or at least flag them for some watch list. The FBI and/or CIA have watched people for far more mundane reasons. In a less dystopian vein, I can see them using political opponents' and activists' browsing histories to try to harm their reputation, or even use in a trial to claim they're morally repungent.
Databases are hackable. There have been plenty of massive leaks in just this past year. This would be one more avenue for potential identity theft, or blackmail opportunities by threatening to expose their histories. Even if the entire database isn't hacked, individual accounts can be. From there it would be easy to get blackmail material, or visit a number of sites to create a false profile of the person that can be flagged as suspicious in a dystopia scenario, or else manufacture blackmail material by threatening to expose the new browsing history. Even if it's quickly proven to be a hacker, the victim's "guilt" will be forever cemented in some people's mind.
I just remember watching a documentary in high school about Brandon Mayfield being falsely arrested for the Madrid bombings based on a partial fingerprint match. The part that stuck with me were the investigators citing his web history as supporting evidence. I can't remember the examples off the top of my head and all the links I can find are PDFs, but they were all fairly innocuous and could easily be explained by other things, but they could be combined to paint a specific interpretation of his guilt.
It was far from the only problem with that investigation, but it's left me highly aware of how information can be interpreted by malicious parties. That case wasn't even particularly malicious, it was investigators trying to justify their case with whatever they could.
So while for now the law is about porn, I don't like how much leeway it leaves for other topics to be age-restricted. Sites addressing those topics will either cut off access, or some new process will be made that inevitably leads to a database that can be potentially abused in the ways I described.
I don't think this is entirely accurate. Part of this is a matter of effort and cost. Could the IP address be used to locate a specific person? Probably.
Is it trivial to do so? Not necessarily.
Does the ISP provide dynamic IP addresses? How long ago was the event you are "tracking"? How long does the ISP keep logs? Does the site itself keep logs? Is the IP address behind a NAT or shared across a large number of users? If it's a single family home that the IP address is tied to, who lives in that home? Do guests use the wifi? Did they use a VPN/Proxy? Do they have malware installed that used them as a VPN/Proxy? Was it "public wifi" ?
All of this takes effort, investigation, and money.
Finding the right balance for freedom/privacy and security is tough. If you make something absolutely trivial and cheap to track down, it will be abused.
This is saying “we’re already at the bottom of the slope, why desire to climb up?”
No it isn't. First off, slippery slope arguments don't work any better just because you've stated them the other way around. Frankly, I don't even like using the word 'argument' for such constructions because they're almost always fallacious.
Secondly, this is not even close to being the bottom of any kind of gradient. Age gating porn is not a terrible idea. I'm not remotely convinced that giving children access to countless hours of hardcore sex videos is something any society needs to "climb" towards. (fwiw I also don't think "but won't somebody think of the children" is all that strong an argument for many things, but sometimes it is good to at least consider the children)
How the age gate is put up matters, of course. Whether this implementation is good or not, I don't know. There is also the question as to whose responsibility that gate is - parents, the state, ISPs, etc. Also it's worth remembering that Texas, as a society, decided they wanted to do this. That's democracy, innit. You elect people and they do stuff.
“As a society”…
More like tyranny of the majority.
How do I prove that I'm an adult without sharing other information that is private, like my name?
You share it with an intermediary that doesn't share it with the website that needs age verification. The question then is how to make sure that the intermediary and the website don't know about each other, which could be done with another level of indirection.
There are already many organizations that know your date of birth (for example, your bank) and could vouch for you without any additional loss of privacy.
But then it's a question of who is going to build the systems and will they do a good job? Where is the technical working group and the RFC? I haven't heard of anyone working on this.
So this isn't a practical solution yet. I'm just saying that it doesn't appear to violate the laws of physics or anything.