Hello,

I was gonna post this on Ask Lemmy, but then I thought maybe Technology would be a better fit for the theme. But then I saw it’s mostly news, so I thought perhaps Ask Lemmy would indeed be a better fit. If this is not the case, please point me to the right direction.

As a heads-up, I am not 'Murican, and never been to 'Murica, so keep that in mind.

Seeing the recent news with France trying to age-restrict pornographic material online, I was wondering and have sort of an idea, that I wonder if it is actually doable and actually good.

Hear me out: the gobermint likely already has your data, right? At least stuff like name, date of birth, etc. The gobirment could have a private and secure service, which websites and services could use to confirm certain requirements.

For instance: A website wants to confirm if you’re over 18. The website essentially asks the official gob. service, “is this user at least 18 years of age?”. The official gob. service essentially has to answer “yes, your requirements are met” or “no, your requirements are not met”, without giving away information on a person. The user gets prompted, being told what information is being required and whether they wish to share that. The official service wouldn’t know where the request is coming from, but the original website requesting the information generates and shows a temporary code, which is not related to the website at all and is sent to the gob. service, so that the user can confirm it is indeed the website they were using that is requesting this, and not a hijack of some kind. The gob. service, if allowed by the user, sends out this confirmation to the original website, without the gob. service knowing the website and without the website knowing the user’s info. The website then knows whether their requirements are met and can then act accordingly, such as by not allowing someone to access adult material if they do not meet the age requirement.

Does this make sense? Is it doable? Could it be a potential private and secure way of confirming user information without either party having access to the other’s information? Obviously, the idea could be worked on and polished, but as a starting point.

Edit: so, what I’m gathering from comments here:

  1. Som’o’y’all didn’t get it (no, you don’t got to log in to your porn tube of choice with an official gob. account)
  2. This cannot be done
  3. This could be done
  4. This is already a thing being worked on
  • smiletolerantly@awful.systems
    6·
    1 day ago

    I think that at the bare minumum, the PORN<->GOV connection must not occur. How about this (simplified):

    • USER visits porn site
    • PORN site encrypts random nonce + “is this user 18?” with GOV pubkey
    • PORN forwards that to USER
    • USER forwards that to GOV, together with something authenticating themselves (need to have GOV account)
    • GOV knows user is requesting, but not what for
    • GOV checks: is user 18?, concats answer with random nonce from PORN, hashes that with known algo, signs the entire thing with its private signing key
    • GOV returns that to USER
    • USER forwards that to PORN
    • PORN is able to verify that whoever made the request to visit PORN is verified as older than 18 by singing key holder / GOV, by checking certificate chain, and gets freshness guarantee from random nonce
    • but PORN does not know anything about the user

    There’s probably glaring issues with this, this is just from the top of my head to solve the problem of “GOV should know nothing”.

    • lemmyknow@lemmy.todayOP
      3·
      1 day ago

      Hmm… sounds good, other than the amount of work getting and sending stuff everywhere. Though I guess if it were a one-time thing, that’d be fine. I’m used to no cookies and the cookies pop-up always coming back cuz the website never remembers, so my mind just went “too much work” but it could work if the website were to not prompt every time

    • nao@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      1 day ago

      In step 2, why encrypt nonce + question? As user, I would like to see what I’m asking gov to sign for me.