UK Age verification.

[vmb]

I still have working 5 inch floppies from my Apple // systems.

They must be around 40 years old!

 

[vmb]

little do lawmakers realize that they're opening up a significant surveillance opportunity.

Law makers just get paid to do what they are told. They rarely read or understand the law they make.

Don’t Be Silly: Lawmakers “Rarely” Read Legislation and Oftentimes Don’t Understand It . . . But That’s Okay – Penn State Law Review

www.pennstatelawreview.org

 

[vmb]

It still needs a conspiracy. I expect all of the US, UK and EU internet providers will suddenly launch a networking standard that involves an isolated ID channel which will be the enforcement. No ID, no connection.
Pretty much 1 giant firmware update for all consumer phones and modems...

I doubt a firmware update is needed. They have been able to do this for more than twenty years.

Carrier IQ - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[penguinslayer]

The oldest CD-ROM I can find here today is one from 1994, 'Internet Tools' from InfoMagic. I think it has packet drivers and other DOS programs and source code.

You have me beat. The oldest CD-ROM I have is Corel Linux, which came with the book, "Corel Linux For Dummies." It was Debian based and was a nice try, though M$ killed it. It was from 1999/2000 I believe.

 

[blackbird9]

As Steve Gibson on Security Now put it, little do lawmakers realize that they're opening up a significant surveillance opportunity.

They do know...

 

[blackbird9]

Apart from older versions of freebsd... there are still historic versions of slackware available. For example, on utah univ. ftp site they have iso's for all versions of slackware from 3.2 onwards.
lftp slackware.cs.utah.edu:/pub/slackware/slackware-iso/slackware-3.2-iso> ls
drwxr-xr-x -- ..
-rw-r--r-- 650M 2004-05-07 21:38 slackware-3.2-install.iso
-rw-r--r-- 60 2005-09-28 01:36 slackware-3.2-install.iso.md5

Also available on archive.org https://archive.org/details/linux-slackware-3.2
That was released in 1997.

As for hardware... perhaps a thinkpad 760, which were based on P90 cpu's. AFAIK, that generation of cpu did not contain an ME.

IBM ThinkPad 760 Series - MacDat

Specifications and other info about the IBM ThinkPad 760C, 760CD, 760L, 760LD, 760E, 760EL, 760ELD, 760XD, and 760XL.

macdat.net

Actually you may not need to go that far back. The ME was introduced in the Q965 chipset, so anything based on Q945 should not contain an ME. Q965 was introduced in 2008, according to this link:-

A Semi-Comprehensive Guide to The Intel Management Engine and Circumvention Thereof (+ AMD PSP Notes)

For almost two years now, I have avoided all Intel systems with the 965 chipset and newer, instead opting to stay with the 945 chipset and older in order to bypass the security issues surrounding the Intel Management Engine within the unclear 2006 to 2008 general period of initiation. However...

forums.macrumors.com

So a PII box may be ok.

 

[AlfredoLlaquet]

The intend was good

I never believe any politician's intention is good. For them, everything is just a means to secure their power or obtain more.

 

[penguinslayer]

We should open a thread to talk about assorted retro computer stuff

I have created a retro computing megathread. Now we have some place on-topic to discuss the good old days.

 

[vslash]

The intention is bad; it's all about surveillance and the real-name requirement. The children are just being used as a pretext.

Yep

 

[kpedersen]

I personally think this law is (indirectly) good. Its going to forcibly create an entire generation who know how to anonymise and protect themselves online.

My generation don't seem to care. However being disallowed access to sites is a great incentive for the next to learn. Ultimately it will also make things a little more difficult for advertisers to build up a profile from random IPs.

In many ways, this is closer to how the internet should have been. They can no longer demonize individuals for being "secretive" when an entire generation is now doing it.

(Tor and VPN services will also become stronger as a result and they can't ban them because what specifically classifies as a VPN can be blurred very, very easily. Legislation can't touch it)

 

[vmb]

Ultimately it will also make things a little more difficult for advertisers to build up a profile from random IPs.

IP addresses play a minor part in profiling and have done for many years, see for yourself at https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

The internet has already been replaced with surveillancenet. There is no going back unless something as significant as global nuclear war is sufficiently disruptive to bring it all to an end. It may well already be unlikely for someone that is fully conversant in OSINT to remain anonymous, for the average person to believe it is still possible is simply delusional.

Tor and VPN services will also become stronger as a result and they can't ban them because what specifically classifies as a VPN can be blurred very, very easily. Legislation can't touch it

If a surveillance entity has access to every VPN entry point and exit point, the private keys of every certificate authority, TOR and VPNs become irrelevant for https traffic.

 

[MG]

IP addresses play a minor part in profiling and have done for many years, see for yourself at https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

The internet has already been replaced with surveillancenet. There is no going back unless something as significant as global nuclear war is sufficiently disruptive to bring it all to an end. It may well already be unlikely for someone that is fully conversant in OSINT to remain anonymous, for the average person to believe it is still possible is simply delusional.


If a surveillance entity has access to every VPN entry point and exit point, the private keys of every certificate authority, TOR and VPNs become irrelevant for https traffic.

It still depends a lot on the right of direct encrypted communication. Tor and similar networks will have to generate a constant flow of random network data to hide the clients in. The problem starts when participation becomes suspicion

 

[Crivens]

I personally think this law is (indirectly) good. Its going to forcibly create an entire generation who know how to anonymise and protect themselves online.

That is what I hope, too.

My generation don't seem to care.

My generation does, but we had first hand experience with supressive regimes. You know, when you told a good joke over the phone you heard someone chuckle? When you told a bad joke, you went missing? Those who came later don't care. Now with the online harrasment, the younglings are being careful again. And so the cycle continues.