Spain Introduces 'Porn Passport' To Stop Kids From Watching Porn 125
The Spanish government is introducing a porn passport to help porn platforms verify users' ages. Slashdot reader fjo3 shares a report from Politico: Officially (and drily) called the Digital Wallet Beta (Cartera Digital Beta), the app Madrid unveiled on Monday would allow internet platforms to check whether a prospective smut-watcher is over 18. Porn-viewers will be asked to use the app to verify their age. Once verified, they'll receive 30 generated "porn credits" with a one-month validity granting them access to adult content. Enthusiasts will be able to request extra credits.
While the tool has been criticized for its complexity, the government says the credit-based model is more privacy-friendly, ensuring that users' online activities are not easily traceable. The system will be available by the end of the summer. It will be voluntary, as online platforms can rely on other age-verification methods to screen out inappropriate viewers. It heralds an EU law going into force in October 2027, which will require websites to stop minors from accessing porn. Eventually, Madrid's porn passport is likely to be replaced by the EU's very own digital identity system (eIDAS2) -- a so-called wallet app allowing people to access a smorgasbord of public and private services across the whole bloc.
While the tool has been criticized for its complexity, the government says the credit-based model is more privacy-friendly, ensuring that users' online activities are not easily traceable. The system will be available by the end of the summer. It will be voluntary, as online platforms can rely on other age-verification methods to screen out inappropriate viewers. It heralds an EU law going into force in October 2027, which will require websites to stop minors from accessing porn. Eventually, Madrid's porn passport is likely to be replaced by the EU's very own digital identity system (eIDAS2) -- a so-called wallet app allowing people to access a smorgasbord of public and private services across the whole bloc.
Wow. It doesnâ(TM)t get much worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Weird pron-surveillance system bro (Score:5, Interesting)
Can someone explain why the credits had to be part of this? why not just verify someone and be done with it?
Maybe an authenticator instead? (Score:2, Interesting)
The credits-thing sounds really dumb, but using an app may not be the worst idea and could be used for more than just porn.
Why not just use an authenticator app like Google Authenticator, except everyone gets the same code. The government already knows your age, so you just download their app, and the 6-digit code you get for any given 30 seconds is the same one everyone gets who is whatever age they are trying to verify. That way, there's no tracking of an individual. You could even do different codes for
Re:Maybe an authenticator instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
On children finding a way around it: If I was still a kid and they had this in place, well, man, my mom's been watching a lot of lesbian porn as far as they're concerned.
That might actually be the reason for the credit thing: If you have kids and your credits suddenly went from 17 down to 10, you know to go investigating. Theoretically.
Re: Maybe an authenticator instead? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Do you really want more stupid people having sex with humans?
Re: (Score:2)
A stupid person downvoted me. LOL
Re: (Score:2)
Given that even as a kid I was better at math than like 99% of the adult population, I doubt it would have really slowed me down.
Re: Maybe an authenticator instead? (Score:2)
Or just sign up for any of the many VPNs (Score:2)
Re:Maybe an authenticator instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, gonna tell you guys and gals a bit of a secret I've gleaned from talking to actual young people, including my wife, who is 26.
Kids these days pass around a LOT of dark web material right now, as in, porn they've saved to their Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. (that's a big % of what the dark web is). And that can't be prohibited or gatekeeped because the government can't see it, and doesn't know it exists. And yes, kids are super technically astute and are know when to encrypt files. However, you probably won't even know they have such accounts, and there are a LOT of cloud storage providers.
So you're not going to accomplish anything with these kind of online ID measures except enabling the government to invade the bedrooms of adults and irreparably harming everyone's privacy.
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't been to a "porn site" in ages. Not since the credit-card system bans took out a round of them a few years back. I would certainly not register for any "passport" to get access back.
If I'm interested in a real person sexually I will ask them for the freaky pictures myself.
Disclaimer: I'm a furry so I mostly beat off to cartoons. We're over here hoping this BS doesn't spill over into our sphere. There would be an entirely new dark net created just to trade yiff, if it does.
This is going to accomplish a lot (Score:3)
Assuming this bullshit is allowed to continue. I suspect as the old bitter nasty farts and right-wing douches pushing this age out the younger generations will know better. This is the digital equivalent of the government getting your libra
Re: (Score:2)
It's a trend right now in the furthest right states, and it will end very badly for them.
Re: (Score:1)
The dark web is technically anything you don't personally have the ability to access regardless of it's legality or secrecy.
Re: (Score:3)
Because time based coded are not anonymous. They require the site to identify the user so they can match up with their codes. You can't give everyone the same codes or they would immediately be published online somewhere.
The credits, really cryptographically signed tokens, are anonymous but also not re-usable or sharable.
Re: (Score:2)
The other side of this argument is that there seem to already be a massive number of people who
Re:Weird pron-surveillance system bro (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone explain why the credits had to be part of this? why not just verify someone and be done with it?
Because politicians are incompetent at software design. They're using a limited number of tokens so that adults can't easily give those tokens to kids to use. They're using tokens because they need something that is verifiable, and they have no clue how to verify a token in a privacy-protecting fashion, so they're just doing it in the most technically simple way possible.
The minimum acceptable standard that provides adequate privacy protection must guarantee all of the following:
Break any one of those assumptions, and you're violating people's privacy. The extent to which privacy is violated depends on how much any of those assumptions is violated.
The right way to do this, IMO, is with some sort of non-interactive (permanent/universal) zero-knowledge proof that is shared across a large population of people. For example:
Because the tokens are global, rather than per-site, per-user, or per-transaction, because the timing of token changes is deliberately randomly permuted, and because the browser ensures that tokens are no
Re: (Score:3)
I am not Spanish and I didn't read this law but I am trying to speculate why this might be a good thing for privacy (very well I could misunderstand everything about it): if the porn site do the age verification, then it can know your identity. If the process is split in two, there is an entity where you buy credits, and this entity may learn your identity, but won't easily know which porn sites do you visit. Then the porn sites don't have to verify your age or identity, they just have to verify you have en
Re: (Score:3)
Don't worry, porn sites are usually run by fine, upstanding criminals who would not do that.
Re: (Score:3)
National ID cards are already mandatory & the digital online part is just an extension of that. Spanish govt institutions & tech companies have a lot more experie
Re: (Score:2)
I.e. You had to spend Y credits to view XXX content. (Fill in XXX with your favorite fetish.)
This allows the government to build a database of porn watchers and their fetishes, in addition to shaping and controlling the public's fetishes and thus the market by making some fetish's content more expensive to consume. I.e. The "credits" can be used to leverage porn producers into making only government approved porn.
Re:Weird pron-surveillance system bro (Score:4, Insightful)
So to have a porn site now, which is protected speech, you now have to correctly implement this complex scheme (very akin to OAuth2), which now carries with it lengthy jail time if you fail. All to keep kids from accessing smut, which no one has shown is actually hurting them at all. A system which will definitely be hacked, changed, and expanded in the future to allow everyone, government partisans and companies (not just criminals) access to your identity.
Great priorities, there, democracies of the world!
Re: Weird pron-surveillance system bro (Score:2)
The EU has a long standing ban on restricting minors from accessing porn. And yes, it has been scientifically proven that the younger you access it, the more problems you will have later in life with amongst other things, building long lasting relationships and ED.
Re: (Score:3)
Prove it. Also, ED just means you've used it a lot. On your death bed, what use are you gonna have with a boner? Don't answer that.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean, the 50 studies selected by (and summarized by) a Christian anti-porn activist site?
Re: (Score:2)
You mean Gary Wilson, the known anti-science fraud and violent anti-porn activist?
https://medium.com/@nicole.pra... [medium.com]
Re: (Score:2)
All to keep kids from accessing smut, which no one has shown is actually hurting them at all.
I think this guy has been damaged (verbally NSFW) :- https://youtu.be/qgkZnu28P9k [youtu.be]
Re: (Score:2)
That dude is freaking hysterical.
Re: (Score:2)
So to have a porn site now, which is protected speech,
It is not.
Protected speech means you can "attack" the government or its representatives with year speech, and they can not prosecute you for it.
A web site is a web site. And the government can put what ever law the parliament passes on it.
Why people want to restrict porn sites from kids, is beyond me anyway.
There actually should be special porn sites for kids: education videos how to do it and how to be safe.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's protected speech.
Re: (Score:2)
Can someone explain why the credits had to be part of this? why not just verify someone and be done with it?
Because porn is evil and think of the children - conservative politicians.
Re: (Score:2)
The credits prevent the government from seeing what sites you access.
When you visit a porn site, instead of the site contacting the government and asking if your account is allowed to access it, you hand them a pre-generated token. The token is cryptographically signed by the government so cannot be forged, and is single use. The porn site only needs to validate that the token is correctly signed and it hasn't been used before, no need to contact government servers at all. The tokens are anonymous, they con
Re: (Score:2)
The tokens are anonymous, they contain no personal info or identifiers.
You are clearly thinking that these tokens are issued anonymously to an anonymous persona... which is very *clearly* not the case.
Have you been hiding from The Internets for the last 20 years or is technology just... hard?
Re: (Score:3)
No, that's exactly the case. The credits are generated locally on your device, they are never sent to the government. An app validates you are an adult with the government, and the porn sites have to register with the government to get a certificate that lets then validate the credits. The credits themselves though are truly anonymous.
And yes, that means that the app which generates them is vulnerable to attack. Someone could hack it to remove the age validation. Same as locks can be picked, cracks can acti
Re: (Score:2)
Can someone explain why the credits had to be part of this? why not just verify someone and be done with it?
You act as if the tactic of giving something away for free to addicts only to charge them later for it, is some kind of new thing.
From drug dealers to casinos..
Re: (Score:3)
Please go back on your meds.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Wow. It doesnâ(TM)t get much worse (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you in the USA? Here, people had to share their email during CoViD: It became a tracking Id. (People already accessed government services via email, so it didn't benefit the government.) Local businesses that sent spam to your 'tracking Id.' were fined: The government worked to keep the trust of the people.
Re: (Score:3)
I doubt this will survive EU privacy law scrutiny for more than a week.
Why would it? Germany already has a similar law to "protect" minors from video games, which can injure the fragile little minds of die kinder. A lot of Germans get pissed because Steam doesn't want to implement such a thing, and they have it in their head that it can somehow be anonymized without being rendered completely useless and ultimately pointless just because they're convinced it actually works for cigarette vending machines, which are apparently still a thing there even in places accessible to the
Re: Wow. It doesnâ(TM)t get much worse (Score:2)
Actually it has not.
Then what is the purpose of your taboo index?
https://steamcommunity.com/dis... [steamcommunity.com]
https://usk.de/en/the-usk/faqs... [usk.de]
Germany hater much? What did Germany do to your "Kinders"?
Oh nothing, you guys are just incredibly easy to troll. I mean, if I lived in a country that had a flag representing the colors of shit, blood and urine, then I would be ashamed to fly it too.
What the actual fuck (Score:2, Funny)
So you have to ask permission to watch porn every month, and you only get a certain number of tokens. Gonna be a LOT of frustrated Spaniards.
Re: (Score:2)
The last time something like this happened (The Spanish Inquisition, 1478 - 1834) Spain discovered the Americas and colonized it to escape from their theocracy.
Re: (Score:2)
And all the others use a VPN and simply do not care. No idea what this porn-obsession is that some politicos have. If porn was even remotely as dangerous as they claim, we would have several generations of massively screwed up kids by now. Instead, it seems to be pretty mich business as usual and hence the whole thing is a lie.
Re: (Score:2)
And all the others use a VPN and simply do not care. No idea what this porn-obsession is that some politicos have. If porn was even remotely as dangerous as they claim, we would have several generations of massively screwed up kids by now. Instead, it seems to be pretty mich business as usual and hence the whole thing is a lie.
The obsession is probably projection, because a lot of politicians greatly enjoy pR0n, especially of the kind they rail against in public.
But yes, the idea where a image of a nekkid person is somehow bad, or that the act of procreation is likewise evilz is a little odd.
The "over-use" of porn is not a disease, rather it is a symptom of something else, even if over-use is hard to define.
Perhaps a person has a sex drive, but is not attractive to the world.
Another issue is that men do not lose their
Re: What the actual fuck (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Found the stud.
Re: (Score:2)
If porn was even remotely as dangerous as they claim, we would have several generations of massively screwed up kids by now. Instead, it seems to be pretty mich business as usual and hence the whole thing is a lie.
The general view is that kids now are indeed massively screwed up. We are told that the white and east Asian population numbers are on the point of "imploding" and one factor used to explain it is how much porn those demographics watch as a substitute for dating and partnerships. There are now millions of incels, MGTOWs, wanking to porn. There has been no marriage in my circle of relations for years, except for one gay one. Doesn't sound like business as usual.
Moreover, explicit porn has never been as e
Re: (Score:2)
I think you can blame social media for that.
Re: (Score:2)
People love to take anything they don't like (why don't I have any grandkids???) and associate it with anything else they don't like (it's gotta be the pornz!). If it's kinda truthy, all the better (making grandkids involves boinking and so does porn! QED!).
Fertility is very well studied. It's affected by lots of social factors, the primary one being women's education. You may note that many countries decided maybe girls should be allowed to go to school quite a bit before we invented the Internet.
Summary:
h [springer.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's affected by lots of social factors, the primary one being women's education. You may note that many countries decided maybe girls should be allowed to go to school quite a bit before we invented the Internet.
I entirely agree with you that there are numerous factors involved. The "equality" of women is a major one, because in the West at least they are no longer looking for a breadwinner husband, and after a fling or two many leave men behind them to concentrate on their careers.
Also, "implosion." Lol.
Notice I said We are told that ... . Implosion is a word used by Elon Musk, a man I loathe, but there is a point that the numbers of whites and east Asians will be falling while the brown and black numbers continue to "explode". So alth
Re: (Score:2)
That's quite a tour, from prissy moralizing through incel misogyny, Musk hate and casual racism to depressingly standard declinism.
I replied to the first one. You're on your own with the shit filling the sandwich, but I'll comment on the last one too, because what the hell. The world today is better in almost all objective ways (especially sociologically) than it was 50 years ago. Or 20. Or 10.
Although if you consider things like lower infant mortality, less violence, increased life expectancy, better educa
Re: (Score:2)
That's quite a tour, from prissy moralizing through incel misogyny, Musk hate and casual racism to depressingly standard declinism.
I'm not an incel.
The world today is better in almost all objective ways (especially sociologically) than it was 50 years ago. Or 20. Or 10.
Although if you consider things like lower infant mortality, less violence, increased life expectancy, better education, more equality, improved standard of living and better health bad because the biggest gains affect mostly "the brown and black numbers" and those fling-having independent women, YMMV.
IDK how you can claim that. While undoubtedly there are some things better, like medical treatments (if you can afford it, because the once efficient UK National Health System probably can't provide it), there is now more violence, worse education, less equality within communities, and worse standard of living - the latter depending on how you measure it. Perhaps better for city basement dwellers and party-goers, but not for anyone who dislikes crowds or likes some space around them.
My
Re: (Score:2)
What really riled me was the OP's claim that everything is "business as usual"
Which is not what I claimed. What I claimed is that I do not see how porn being available to kids could be a major factor. And you have really not delivered any arguments that say differently.
Unless you see preventing kids from having access to porn as a stepping-stone to preventing adults from having that access?
Re: (Score:2)
What really riled me was the OP's claim that everything is "business as usual"
Which is not what I claimed.
I'm sure you wrote :
Instead, it seems to be pretty mich business as usual and hence the whole thing is a lie.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure you wrote :
Instead, it seems to be pretty mich business as usual and hence the whole thing is a lie.
I did. That statement has a _very_ specific context and obviously is not a general one. Do you have some reading comprehension issue?
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Women having education and options and hence deciding not to have kids or to have fewer is the main factor and was reliably identified long before the Internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Does not sound like there is a real connection to kids having access here. Remember that we are not talking about cutting off access to adults.
Re: What the actual fuck (Score:1)
Porn is already banned from minors in all of the EU, currently you have to hand over an ID in order to (legally) access porn if you are within the EU.
This makes the ID check more privacy aware (you donâ(TM)t have to provide ID, but this token instead) and slightly more convoluted.
Re: (Score:2)
IF that were the case, Spain wouldn't be doing this.
Re: (Score:2)
The only reason they're doing this is because currently they're using government ID or bank information to verify ID, there are obvious issues with this, this is fixing that issue with semi-anonymous tokens.
That may be the case, but your original assertion:
currently you have to hand over an ID in order to (legally) access porn if you are within the EU.
Is a complete lie.
Re: (Score:2)
The National Review. HAHAHAHA. Somehow I knew this was where you were coming from.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? Presumably they'll just get their porn from the same place their kids already do: bit torrent, Reddit, free streaming sites, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a joke, dude.
Re: (Score:2)
So's mine, Tio. Also true though.
Re: (Score:2)
From what my wifey says, they trade cloud drive links and USB drives heavily. This gets around anything their parents or the government could hope to do.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. Kids are clever that way. We used to trade floppies or CDs full of warez and porn the same way.
Porn must be the most pirated thing in the world. The idea that you're going to prevent anybody from getting it with laws is pretty silly.
Curious to hear reason for the "credits" system. (Score:3)
They aren't a digital currency to pay for content on sites (which would actually be a useful way of financially supporting companies without giving them direct access to your credit card info). It just sounds like an access token with restricted usage. Guess the government feels they should get to ration adults' access to private third-party services like some Big Brother-esque guardian.
Re: (Score:2)
The "credits" are tokens that let you anonymously connect to porn service provider.
You could sell these credits on the internet, but I assume that would be treated as a crime, like distributing porn to minors.
The rationing is to limit the resale market for tokens. You can request more, but if you want to jerk off 500 times/month, it may raise eyebrows.
Re: (Score:2)
What if I have to watch 3-4 videos before I ejaculate? What if I jerk off more than the approved number of times?
Who will think of the sex addicts?
Re: (Score:2)
What if I have to watch 3-4 videos before I ejaculate? What if I jerk off more than the approved number of times?
Who will think of the sex addicts?
I always thought the term "sex addict" was pretty awkward. If a person has a sex drive where they want sex every day, but use pR0n they are an addict. But if a husband and wife share the same drive and enjoy sex every day, that isn't addiction. But if a guy goes out to a bar and picks up lots of different women, he is an addict. But the women that frequent such places and have a crazy high body count are not.
Something tells me the plethora of false news is a much bigger problem than seeing a piccy of a n
they had me at.. (Score:3)
I love it. Guys? Seems pretty legit, doesn't it?
You had me at... (Score:3)
Spanish Politicians (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
why ...how (Score:1)
Enthusiast? (Score:1)
That word is a bit undignified and doesn't capture the fine taste and refined aspect of the pastime, I prefer connoisseur or aficionado.
Well there's a bad idea (Score:1)
eIDAS 2 meets business (Score:2)
This seems to be the Spanish implementation of EU eIDAS 2 digitial wallet standard.
eIDAS is an EU trust services framework. The first version is 10 years old now, and it failed miserably. There was no use cases for it, and Google / Facebook owned the identity management market with their simple OAuth based login.
Now EU is trying again... and harder.
More wasted time, energy, and money (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
How many times have nosy governments tried some version of a 'net nanny'? I've lost count. This is no different than every other time it's been tried, though: it will fail miserably and end up being abandoned as the stupid idea it is. Kids will get access to porn one way or another no matter what you do, and all attempts like this accomplish is to invade the privacy of the people it's not aimed at. You can't even ban pornography entirely, they'll still find a way to get around the ban -- and by the way, Spain, not all internet porn sites are based in Spain, and you can't enforce your national laws on sites that aren't based in Spain.
As a person that entered adolescence in the late 1960's, the Sears catalog sufficed. If it was still around today, apparently Spain would require credits to access it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For me it was photography magazines in the back of the barber shop my father always took me to, which is also relevant: no one has been able to define in legal terms what is and is not 'pornography', and you just reminded me of that, this is yet another way that legislation like this falls on it's face sooner or later. Any art site that happens to have depictions of women in various stages of undress, even if it's in a non-sexual context, could be deemed 'pornographic' as well. Hell, pictures of African tribal women from old issues of National Geographic could be considered pornographic. There's a whole list of things that you've now reminded me of that could be deemed pornographic, and none of them would include anything sexual.
This is true, regarding the nebulous nature of pornography. On the other end, non-nude, non sex act face of it - some people's porn might be pictures of feet, finding them arousing, yet for most of us there is nothing sexual about feet. Or even so called "upskirts" - fully clothed women, just from a different angle.
A recent trend also seems to be yoga poses. My Pinterest feed is full of it. All fully clothed women, but apparently these poses were inspired by the Kama Sutra.
pR0n is in the eye of the be
El Pajaporte (Score:3)
In Spain, Passport is translated as "Pasaporte", so many people have started calling this "El Pajaporte", that could be translated like "Wankport". In english "Wankport" does not sound very funny, but "Pajaporte" sounds almost like "Pasaporte" ^_^U
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was amused that Mitsubishi decided "pajero" was a good name for an SUV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In Europe and the Americas they called it the Montero (hunter).
Re: (Score:2)
TBH 'Wankport' sounds pretty funny, and could be used to refer to a number of different English towns.
Why so complex (Score:2)
There are plenty of viable technical solutions that would allow that, without any intrusive parts. A basic claim of "I'm over 18" stored in a digitally signed file, authenticated by a government PKI would allow any site to check the validity of the claim without disclosing anything of the user to anyone.
It could be cheap, simple, ef
Torrents finally illegal (Score:2)
So I guess downloading torrents is finally gonna be deemed illegal. And the sites themselves will go offline entirely.
What about accessing files on your cloud drive? Is that now a crime in Texas and Spain?
Why does it need credits? (Score:2)
If its only about age verification, why does it need to provide a limited number of credits?
On the subject of porn ... (Score:2)
... Slashdotters are suddenly libertarians again, partying like it's 1999, lol!
Restriction on actual words, mind you, even or especially political words (the other side's, of course), they are fine with, and have been for quite awhile. No chilling effect is too cold, no technical hurdles too great, not there.
But nakkie pics are sacrosanct, lol Just like the authors of the first amendment intended ... (rolls eyes).
Should not be specific (Score:2)
assuming (Score:1)
it can just be bypassed by using a vpn?
Re: (Score:2)
it can just be bypassed by using a vpn?
Assuming the sites aren't geoblocking the country your VPN claims to be from.
How better for the nanny state to track you (Score:1)
What does this solve? (Score:2)
This reeks like something someone will turn into a cryptocurrency, and I can see the same thing happening with "porn credits" as what happened with ration stamps... a black market. All the while, the kids will just VPN over to another country and ogle there, like people do in the US if they live in certain states.
All this work isn't going to do anything but maybe line some pockets. There are ways to have an anonymity system in place with zero knowledge proofs to ensure someone viewing is of the right age,
This means they will block the ones they know... (Score:2)
And kids will more likely be exposed to the sites that the government is just too old to know.
It will be funny when they elect a furry prime minister or something.
Missing details! (Score:2)
How many entries is it good for? Can you enter and re-enter as much as you like? What's the punishment if you overstay your visa? (Ooh, probably a spanking!)
When entering the porn border, do you put down that your visit is business or pleasure?
I'm investing in VPNs! (Score:2)
WTF!
Little Dutch Boy, much?
Is it really a problem? (Score:2)
Is it really a problem if kids watch porn? Are there any studies showing such correlation?