Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology to promote privacy in age assurance
6 points by ndr
6 points by ndr
Why would Google, a surveillance company, want to promote privacy in age assurance?
It gives people assurance using their products. Much like people talking on Signal or Whatsapp assuming their entirely conversation is private despite them offering their phone numbers up to participate.
It remains extremely obnoxious that people continue to try to design cryptographic solutions to this problem as if that solves the anonymity/anti-tracking problem.
The problem is not “proving this ID is for someone who is old enough to use a site”
The problem is proving the ID belongs to the person presenting it.
I think the easiest counter to literally every magic-crypto dusting of age identification is a very simple question:
If this ID scheme was embedded in a physical card, just like a drivers license or whatever, but did not have a photo on it would you be able to use it as an ID in the real world?
Exactly, if ID-cards that only stated "this card was issued to a person who is over 18" were a thing then either no bar would allow them, or a tonne of high schoolers would get dozens of them to hand out to their friends who were too young to drink.
Assuming that the same wouldn't happen for internet access is inane.
Does this system prevent me from sharing my ZKP with thousands of people?
Yeah - ZKP for this purpose is a trojan horse for identity tracking and device attestation, as those are hard prerequisites for avoiding this scenario.
It works for contract signing and payments, because there is a built in alignment of incentives there, but not for age attestation.