California, Brazil, UK issue...my 2 cents

Zare

Zare

In all these jurisdictions the foundation should employ lawyers to contact relevant agencies. The foundation should work with lawyers to outline what FreeBSD is, and how it is used and what is the difference between accessing online services from a FreeBSD computer as opposed to a vendor-based smartphone. The letters should not be a statement, but explanation, and way to ask for cooperation on the matter, next steps, and a platform to legitimize FreeBSD in these areas.

It should be also explained that all data is mutable on FreeBSD by design. The owner of the installation controls everything, unlike the owner of the smartphone. The owner of the smartphone cannot access Firefox or Discord data directly. The owner of FreeBSD can.

I believe the reason for these laws is to stop the influx of personal data of children towards social network companies, enabled by these smart-device vendors.

At every level of comparison, FreeBSD fails to compare to ecosystems that these laws are targeting. Let's compare Android - it harvests user data per default. FreeBSD doesn't. Nor it has any provisions to do so, on the installations and at the foundation infrastructure. Google includes this harvested data in its business model. Again, the Foundation is not a commercial entity.

If these laws are there to remove capability of commercial entities to profit on private information of children, yes for us it is downright absurd to claim FreeBSD has anything to do with this, it's not apples oranges but apples vs chainsaws, wholly different sport. But lawmakers are for sure not aware of that and neither are their technical 'experts'.

At these official, legal comm, it should be underlined that FreeBSD is the polar opposite of the mindset of these commercial companies. The operating system is there to allow the owner to control each, and every aspect of the computers inner workings. For the child's parent, who is an IT expert, FreeBSD is as safe as a toddlers toy.

100% truth is that people who are experts in the trade and who want to protect their children from digital threats only give them access to devices they fully control. FreeBSD, Linux, plays great part here. Closing emphasis would come down to killing off FreeBSD/Linux users with these laws makes them revert back to same companies these lawmakers are currently pissed at.
 
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FWIW, as I mentioned in the CA thread I did eventually send snail mail to Governor Newsom. I made the points that these would probably not deter young people, that they did give an advantage to MS and other large companies, and that in a way it seemed like a first step to intrusive surveillance. I added something like in the opinion of many on technical forums, and had to throw in that if he does run for president, clever Republicans can easily use this against him. I doubt it will even get past the aide who opens it, but ya never know. (Yes I realize I'm being absurdly optimistic).
 
Zare said:
In all these jurisdictions the foundation should employ lawyers to contact relevant agencies.
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Agencies? In California, the laws were passed by the legislature. It can only be changed by the legislature. So you need to contact about 120 elected legislators. Note that because of short term limits (6 years for the lower house, 12 for the upper house), many of the legislators will no longer be in office, and even less likely to be in office when a new law that changes the current one is to be passed.

The law was approved by the governor, but he has no influence on the content, nor on how it is enforced. Our current governor (Gavin Newsom) will only be in office for the rest of the year, and can't be reelected.

The law can be enforced by the state attorney general (AG), or by any of the district attorneys (DA) of the the 58 counties in California. You could contact all 59 of them. They would ignore you, or politely reply that no criminal prosecution involving the law is current pending.

There is no "relevant agency". I assume in Brasil the situation is similar.

The rest of your post is not wrong, but irrelevant. The law is in force. The fact that you think it should not apply is nice, but not important. Whether I personally agree with you, my opinion is also not relevant.

scottro said:
FWIW, as I mentioned in the CA thread I did eventually send snail mail to Governor Newsom.
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Governor Newsom signes about 1000 laws per year. He has staff, but given that he is from the same party as the overwhelming majority of the legislature (and all the agency heads), they don't check each other very much (he does veto some laws). He is also not in charge of enforcing this law. Your letter might have had a small effect if sent before the law was signed by him, but I doubt. The point to fight this law was a few years ago, when the legislature was discussing it. Where were the staff lobbyists for the FreeBSD foundation (and the Linux infrastructure and ...) at that time? They should have been in the hallways of the Sacramento legislature at the time. Oh wait, the FreeBSD foundation doesn't even have a staff lobbyist? Never mind then.

And I'm by the way not at all being facetious. I have done lobbying work for some of my other hobbies (for example school funding and other issues), testified before the state Board of Education, visited a handful of legislators and a few dozen staff members. This is where people have actual power.
 
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I think the children are a selected defense because nobody can reject it with a straight face. The actual goal is control of public information. It's 1 following phase after the ban on p2p information sharing. Everything must be commercialized. 1 public word not exploited is financial loss of the giants.
This also complies with the AI hype. Non-profit sharing of real knowledge is the Enemy.
 
"the children" in this case means all adults being required to prove they're not children. This will likely be put into practice by signing in with an "approved" provider's account. The approved providers will of course be the usual suspects (Microsoft, google, etc). For the likes of Microsoft and others, the thinking may be that this may achieve what "secure boot" failed to. In reality it could have the opposite effect - pushing more towards alternatives.

Though it's really just another move towards the surveillance state and should be resisted - it likely won't be however, because there are those who will see this in a positive light (exactly as intended). It's opponents will be obviously be cast as those not wanting to protect children, etc.
 
So a optional PAM module that set a environmental variables and then internet approaching tools can send that along if and only if it is set? Those tools already send language preferences in a Accept-Language header. kid@localhost logs in, get USERAGE_Under18_US_CA=true and USERAGE_Under18=true. Then the browser can look at that and send it along or even do its own pam access to get the value should the kids ever figure out how to unset it. This should be sufficient to so that USERAGE_Under16_AU_vic=true curl https://www.tiktok.com would redirect to the "go away kid" page the law said they should be sending out.
 
rbranco said:
Why not let these stupid governments fix the mess that they themselves created?
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By my heart, I would still do that. But from my current perspective, which is an outsider one.

I decided post this from a more even perspective, realizing I may not know the (financial) consequences on the project.

Example, a big funder of FreeBSD gets affected and can't use FreeBSD as base tech any more, cuts the funding. Yes of course, you could say, its up to them to fund the changes then. Sure. But it is just one of hundreds of unknown cases that might be going on, that I (or we) don't know.

Second reason to post this is - the "protect the children" stuff won't go away anytime soon. Globally. The impact of digital worlds on our lives is only going to grow, by current trends, and it is exactly that impact that sets children to harms way more and more.

I believe FreeBSD to stand at the opposite side of the spectrum. The data gathering and impact on personal lives is the consequence of proprietary computer software and services, non-open, non-reviewable, etc. It is all we stand against. Maybe make an effort now, so we don't get thrown in same box with them when second, third and seventeenth iteration of child-protection laws arrive.

AlfredoLlaquet said:
Maybe you are right, but the mere fact that FOSS has to spend its little money on layers is harmful for FOSS.
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Yes it is but it is the way the system is set up.
I did not imply Foundation would spend money on a lawyer firm and the case. As we're talking different territories obviously you need a legal lingo translator service.

Example. I am a Croat. Croatian and Serbian are functionally the same. I even know a lot of their words, even regional slangs and such. But in any sort of legal affair I would need to use a legal-speech translator. 2nd example, our constitution is written in such a lingo, anytime important matters are being evaluated against it, there are official 'constitution experts' that translate between meaning of those legal speech to everyday speech. And the differences are sometimes big.

The point is obviously someone from FreeBSD should do the expert analysis of how FreeBSD actually enables child-protection on the Internet, as opposed to ruining it, no lawyer can or should do that, but you really need lawyers or legal experts to address the lawmakers correctly.
 
ralphbsz said:
The rest of your post is not wrong, but irrelevant. The law is in force. The fact that you think it should not apply is nice, but not important. Whether I personally agree with you, my opinion is also not relevant.
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Sadly, I do agree.
However I still think we should ring all bells about it. We are protecting the children, lawmakers aren't.
FreeBSD and alike enable self-sufficient technical users that control 100% of their hardware. Those users can set up perfectly safe computer environments for their children.

Microsoft, Apple, Google, et al, absolutely do not. They work against it, they work against the "root".

Still believe proper choice is to address them using proper legal language, tell them nicely they're fucktards protecting the corporations that harm everyone, including the kids.
 
Zare said:
Second reason to post this is - the "protect the children" stuff won't go away anytime soon. Globally. The impact of digital worlds on our lives is only going to grow, by current trends, and it is exactly that impact that sets children to harms way more and more.
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The Internet is sure full of smut, but the Alpha Generation is more celibate and uses less alcohol & drugs. Sure, there is the risk of gaming & social-media addiction, but this is way overblown. I don't trust in a Nanny state doing the parenting.

This is all about preventing kids from getting "wrong" political opinions.
 
I disagree. Social networks enable completely new ways to bully someone even if they're not part of it. I believe this things should be regulated.

I don't know what you mean by nanny state. Is nanny state a country that intervenes when parents are neglecting children's basic needs? Well I certainly hope that happens and I approve of such a nanny state. And such a country, if it can intervene in personal lives on the claim of someone harming others (or even themselves!), it can obviously set up some corporate regulation.

I do not claim USA isn't just using children scare to force political sides. Like I said I believe these things will come up across the globe. And everyone is going to use the same argument. Now, the fact that I believe argument is correct (internet harms children, regulate) doesn't mean governments won't hide their true agendas behind it. For some other than USA territories I believe the agenda is cutting the influx of data from that territories to American corporations.

This is going quite offtopic but just to clarify regulation; products and services intentionally designed for children, rogue marketing methods, prohibited in many territories but a multi billion dollar industry none the less. Just one example. Parenting by the state != state protecting parenting from rogue elements. You have to be aware people get bags of money to invent marketing psy-fuckups literally targeting children and exploiting children's influence on parents buying and consuming choices. Again not saying there is a kid eater cabal out there, the money hungry people will do everything, kids as young as 4 are just target audience to them. They exploit elderly too.
 
Zare said:
I disagree. Social networks enable completely new ways to bully someone even if they're not part of it. I believe this things should be regulated.

I don't know what you mean by nanny state. Is nanny state a country that intervenes when parents are neglecting children's basic needs? Well I certainly hope that happens and I approve of such a nanny state. And such a country, if it can intervene in personal lives on the claim of someone harming others (or even themselves!), it can obviously set up some corporate regulation.
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I have no interest in pushing my views on anyone but you asked me a question, so here it goes:

To me, the nanny state is obsessed over our personal lives wasting resources on victimless crimes. As I age, I lean more and more to anarchist views and see the government as a parasitic entity that creates more problems than it solves. I'm right now a minarchist but I hope to retire fully autonomous off-grid. But I hope the Libertarian Left & Right coincide sometime in the future. We must create autonomous communities because we can't do much as individual atoms.
 
I appreciate the answer.
We can continue this discussion elsewhere when it is appropriate :)
 
FOSS flies in the face of the ultimate goal: all things in life being a"service" that can be regulated/restricted/monetized. The day will come when computers will not be programmable at all by the common man, but only by those blessed by the device creators.
 
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