The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux

[khrys@mamot.fr]

The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux

https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-verification-into-linux-5/

The lasting damage was knowing it could happen at all: that a single contributor with no stated organizational backing could submit compliance infrastructure for surveillance law directly into the software that boots your computer, get it merged by two Microsoft employees, and have the creator of systemd personally block the removal.

[aaribaud@mastodon.art]

@Khrys (disclaimer: IANALAIDEPOOTV)

One remark and one comment:

Remark: the title says "tried to", the article says did -- and Poettering blocked a revert.

Comment: in countries where the GDPR applies, the feature appears contrary to article 5 as overbroad, even probably purposeless *per se* ; maybe also contrary to recent European decisions against generalized citizen data collection, too.

[cyphersephiroth@piaille.fr]

@aaribaud @Khrys et donc ? quel est le rapport avec se poser la question du qui et du pourquoi ?

[sebsauvage@framapiaf.org]

@Khrys
I just don't know what do to with this information. 🤔

[biggrizzly@framapiaf.org]

@sebsauvage @Khrys Comme je le commentais sur SeenThis dans la semaine, c'est la première vraie démonstration qu'il y a un problème avec systemd et que ce n'est donc finalement pas qu'un problème technique, et qu'il y a aussi un problème politique.

https://seenthis.net/messages/1163717

[mcv@friendica.opensocial.space]

@Khrys

I don't understand what the fuss is about. This is exactly the right way to comply with that law: an optional birth date field. You don't want to have to submit an idea to your OS or implement facial recognition, and you certainly don't want to tie account creation to external services for those things, but now parents can fill in the birth date for their kids, and everybody else can ignore it. This kind of thing needs to be in the hands of parents, not external companies.

So I don't really see the problem here.

[mcv@friendica.opensocial.space]

@Khrys

The lasting damage was knowing it could happen at all: that a single contributor with no stated organizational backing could submit compliance infrastructure for surveillance law directly into the software that boots your computer, get it merged by two Microsoft employees, and have the creator of systemd personally block the removal.

What the hell is the issue here? Do you need to be a member of an organization to submit a PR? And if the lack of organisational backing would be a problem, why is it a problem that the people merging it do work for an organisation? The only thing that matters is that an official committer approves it.

This whole article sounds like pointless fear mongering. If there's anything else to it that I'm missing, I'd love for someone to explain it.

[fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk]

@Khrys we like to think of FOSS as some sort of anarchist collective°. it never has been.

it's run by a series of people with absolute power, for the most part. the benefit is that it's a lot of tiny dictators rather than a few big ones; that in theory anyone can become one, you don't need to be rich; and that these dictators tend to have technical knowledge.

but they can still be arseholes.

° i mean, we might not CALL it that.

[julesbl@mastodon.me.uk]

@mcv @Khrys
I do, it was done unilaterally without discussion.
Even if it was technically correct and maybe we need to look at this, a single person making the decision and forcing it into the code is not the way this should be done.

[aaribaud@mastodon.art]

@CypherSephiroth

Je ne crois pas avoir suggéré un rapport (encore moins spécifiquement avec une question "du qui et du pourquoi" dont j'ignorais qu'elle était posée), mais pour éviter toute confusion, j'edite mon post.

@Khrys

[mcv@friendica.opensocial.space]

@julesbl @Khrys

But no single person can force this into the code, right? Someone submitted a PR, and two committers approved it, one of them the creator of the project, as far as I understand. If that's not good enough, then what is?

Of course discussion about this important, but can we do that without panic and fear mongering?

[lienrag@mastodon.tedomum.net]

@sebsauvage

Que le libre fonctionne comme il est censé le faire ?
Un contributeur voit un problème (réel : les lois sur la vérification de l'âge, poussée par Meta), propose une solution (bonne ou mauvaise, à débattre) qui est acceptée par certains projets, ce qui déclenche une shitstorm (bon cet aspect là est moins "comme le libre est censé fonctionner" que "comme il fonctionne en vrai") et le BDL ferme le ticket en disant "c'est optionnel donc chacun reste libre".

@Khrys

[fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net]

@Khrys what do you mean, tried? He succeeded, with the complicity of even bigger idiot Poettering.

[cyphersephiroth@piaille.fr]

@aaribaud À mon avis, cet article a comme sujet "Ce type décide d'ajouter une pseudo-fonctionnalité de vérification d'âge par collaboration. Dans quel but ?", pas "La législation de vérification d'âge ne respecte pas la limitation de collecte généralisée de données sur les citoyens, européens ou non."

[aaribaud@mastodon.art]

@CypherSephiroth Ton avis semble fondé. Mais en quoi le supposé angle de l'article sur les faits décrits interdit-il de faire des commentaires sur ces faits sous un autre angle ?

[julesbl@mastodon.me.uk]

@mcv @Khrys
If you think that is a way that things are discussed and implemented then I guess that is all fine and dandy, yes three people implementing a change which affects millions, perfectly fine

[guilg@piaille.fr]

@Khrys https://agelesslinux.org/ je préfère cette approche

[bayo@me.dm]

@Khrys Open source's entire threat model assumed contributors act toward user freedom. The surveillance state runs on volunteers: people who do the implementation work for free, out of genuine conviction, with no paper trail connecting them to the money that wrote the laws.

[kbm0@mastodon.social]

@onepict @Khrys Although I agree this is very bad, I don't approve of the doxxing.

[jeffmcneill@hachyderm.io]

@Khrys @pluralistic best argument for removing systemd (and I actually like systemd).