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valid ids some laws allow platforms to ask for financial documents like credit cards or mortgage records instead but they still overlook the fact that nearly 35 of u s adults also don t own homes and close to 20 of households don t have credit cards immigrants regardless of legal status may also be unable to obtain credit cards or other financial documentation 2 communities of color face higher error rates platforms that rely on ai based age estimation systems often use a webcam selfie to guess users ages but these algorithms don t work equally well for everyone research has consistently shown that they are less accurate for people with black asian indigenous and southeast asian backgrounds that they often misclassify those adults as being under 18 and sometimes take longer to process creating unequal access to online spaces this mirrors the well documented racial bias in facial recognition technologies the result is that technology s inherent biases can block people from speaking online or accessing others speech 3 people with disabilities face more barriers age verification mandates most harshly affect people with disabilities facial recognition systems routinely fail to recognize faces with physical differences affecting an estimated 100 million people worldwide who live with facial differences and liveness detection can exclude folks with limited mobility as these technologies become gatekeepers to online spaces people with disabilities find themselves increasingly blocked from essential services and platforms with no specified appeals processes that account for disability document based systems also don t solve this problem as mentioned earlier people with disabilities are also less likely to possess current driver s licenses so document based age gating technologies are equally exclusionary 4 transgender and non binary people are put at risk age estimation technologies perform worse on transgender individuals and cannot classify non binary genders at all for the 43 of transgender americans who lack identity documents that correctly reflect their name or gender age verification creates an impossible choice provide documents with dead names and incorrect gender markers potentially outing themselves in the process or lose access to online platforms entirely a risk that no one should be forced to take just to use social media or access legal content 5 anonymity becomes a casualty age verification systems are at their core surveillance systems by requiring identity verification to access basic online services we risk creating an internet where anonymity is a thing of the past for people who rely on anonymity for safety this is a serious issue domestic abuse survivors need to stay anonymous to hide from abusers who could track them through their online activities journalists activists and whistleblowers regularly use anonymity to protect sources and organize without facing retaliation or government surveillance and in countries under authoritarian rule anonymity is often the only way to access banned resources or share information without being silenced age verification systems that demand government ids or biometric data would strip away these protections leaving the most vulnerable exposed 6 young people lose access to essential information because state imposed age verification rules either block young people from social media or require them to get parental permission before logging on they can deprive minors of access to important information about their health sexuality and gender many u s states mandate abstinence only sexual health education making the internet a key resource for education and self discovery but age verification laws can end up blocking young people from accessing that critical information and this isn t just about porn it s about sex education mental health resources and even important literature some states and countries may start going after content they deem harmful to minors which could include anything from books on sexual health to art history and even award winning novels and let s be clear these laws often get used to target anything that challenges certain political or cultural narratives from diverse educational materials to media that simply includes themes of sexuality or gender diversity what begins as a protection for kids could easily turn into a full on censorship movement blocking content that s actually vital for minors development education and well being this is also especially harmful to homeschoolers who rely on the internet for research online courses and exams for many the internet is central to their education and social lives the internet is also crucial for homeschoolers mental health as many already struggle with isolation age verification laws would restrict access to resources that are essential for their education and well being 7 lgbtq youth are denied vital lifelines for many lgbtq young people especially those with unsupportive or abusive families the internet can be a lifeline for young people facing family rejection or violence due to their sexuality or gender identity social media platforms often provide crucial access to support networks mental health resources and communities that affirm their identities age verification systems that require parental consent threaten to cut them from these crucial supports when parents must consent to or monitor their children s social media accounts lgbtq youth who lack family support lose these vital connections lgbtq youth are also disproportionately likely to be unhoused and lack access to identification or parental consent further marginalizing them 8 youth in foster care systems are completely left out age verification bills that require parental consent fail to account for young people in foster care particularly those in group homes without legal guardians who can provide consent or with temporary foster parents who cannot prove guardianship these systems effectively exclude some of the most vulnerable young people from accessing online platforms and resources they may desperately need 9 all of our personal data is put at risk an age verification system also creates acute privacy risks for adults and young people requiring users to upload sensitive personal information like government issued ids or biometric data to verify their age creates serious privacy and security risks under these laws users would not just momentarily display their id like one does when accessing a liquor store for example instead they d submit their id to third party companies raising major concerns over who receives stores and controls that data once uploaded this personal information could be exposed mishandled or even breached as we ve seen with past data hacks age verification systems are no strangers to being compromised companies like au10tix and platforms like discord have faced high profile data breaches exposing users most sensitive information for months or even years the more places personal data passes through the higher the chances of it being misused or stolen users are left with little control over their own privacy once they hand over these immutable details making this approach to age verification a serious risk for identity theft blackmail and other privacy violations children are already a major target for identity theft and these mandates perversely increase the risk that they will be harmed 10 all of our free speech rights are trampled the internet is today s public square the main place where people come together to share ideas organize learn and build community even the supreme court has recognized that social media platforms are among the most powerful tools ordinary people have to be heard age verification systems inevitably block some adults from accessing lawful speech and allow some young people under 18 users to slip through anyway because the systems are both over inclusive blocking adults and under inclusive failing to block people under 18 they restrict lawful speech in ways that violate the first amendment the bottom line age verification mandates create barriers along lines of race disability gender identity sexual orientation immigration status and socioeconomic class while these requirements threaten everyone s privacy and free speech rights they fall heaviest on communities already facing systemic obstacles the internet is essential to how people speak learn and participate in public life when access depends on flawed technology or hard to obtain documents we don t just inconvenience users we deepen existing inequalities and silence the people who most need these platforms as outlined every available method facial age estimation document checks financial records or parental consent systematically excludes or harms marginalized people the real question isn t whether these systems discriminate but how extensively republished from the eff s deeplinks blog filed under access to information age verification anonymity free speech privacy 29 comments expand collapse read more uk law enforcement pushed hard to maintain access to deeply flawed facial recognition tech mis uses of technology from the but the good stuff works too well dept wed dec 24th 2025 03 41pm tim cushing while each iteration presents a chance to improve there are some very real reasons why facial recognition tech will do a bit of stagnating and that reason is the biggest market for this tech law enforcement agencies in 2019 the us national institute for science and technology studied 189 different facial recognition algorithms the results were conclusive every single one of them performed worse when asked to recognize anything other than white male faces asians and african americans were more than 100 times more likely to be misidentified by the tech while some were a little bit better the average across the board was bad news for people who ve already been subjected to decades of biased policing adding tech to existing biases only allows them to compound the inequities faster that s something that was pointed out less than a year later to the eu parliament allowing cops to control both the input and the output just means the systems will generate plausible deniability for racist policing rather than create a playing field that s a bit more level not only does facial recognition tech have a built in bias problem it also seems to have a problem with recognizing faces no matter what color those faces are police forces in the uk have seen this happen repeatedly racking up alarming false positive rates during tech rollouts despite these failures and the unacknowledged flip side of false positives false negatives the uk government has continued to expand facial recognition programs the uk s version of the nist the national physical laboratory npl performed its own examination of tech currently being used by uk law enforcement its conclusions were just as unsurprising uk forces use the police national database pnd to conduct retrospective facial recognition searches whereby a probe image of a suspect is compared to a database of more than 19 million custody photos for potential matches the home office admitted last week that the technology was biased after a review by the national physical laboratory npl found it misidentified black and asian people and women at significantly higher rates than white men and said it had acted on the findings these findings were passed on to law enforcement by the home office last september the national police chiefs council npcc responded about as well as it could it ordered any users of the tech examined by the npl to adjust sensitivity settings to raise the confidence threshold for matches this order was meant to counteract to a point the false positives generated by the tech s inability to accurately match images involving women black people and pretty much anyone of any race under the age of 40 whew that s a lot of failure well that apparently angered a whole lot of uk officers and supervisors with the threshold raised fewer matches and presumably fewer incorrect matches were being generated rather than recognize this was part of necessary compromise needed to offset faulty tech they decided to get bitchy about not being given enough false positives to act on that decision was reversed the following month after forces complained the system was producing fewer investigative leads npcc documents show that the higher threshold reduced the number of searches resulting in potential matches from 56 to 14 yep the npcc rolled this decision back because officers weren t getting as many matches as they were used to getting sure the matches they were generating were likely much better than the ones they had generated in the past but accuracy doesn t seem to matter to uk law enforcement it collectively pushed back hard enough to get this order reversed allowing uk agencies to once again exploit the known scientifically studied limitations of the facial recognition tech they were using they valued quantity over quality the sort of thing that naturally lends itself to the biased policing efforts these officers prefer to engage in chief constable amanda blakeman an npcc lead claims there s a tradeoff being made here that will ultimately benefit the public even if it means more of them will be falsely arrested and the increase in false negatives will mean more criminals will escape justice the decision to revert to the original algorithm threshold was not taken lightly and was made to best protect the public from those who could cause harm illustrating the balance that must be struck in policing s use of facial recognition blakeman insists additional training is all that s needed to overcome the known limitations of the tech anyone who has ever attended mandatory training knows this simply isn t true all that means is that a bunch of people will doze or daydream through these sessions and pencil whip whatever form is given to them that will supposedly verify that all the training they never paid attention to has been put to use blakeman even said some of this training will be reissued which makes it clear no one was paying any attention to it the first time around it s fucking amazing when confronted with the fact that their tech is flawed uk law enforcement agencies demanded everything be reverted back to the fully broken normal they d been allowed to abuse since the tech s inception and now that this is all out in the open police spokespeople are back to pretending law enforcement has anything to do with competently and carefully enforcing laws filed under biased policing facial recognition false positives home office national physical laboratory national police chiefs council uk 4 comments expand collapse read more lg forces tv owners to use microsoft ai copilot app you can t uninstall and nobody asked for mis uses of technology from the our sad desperation means the product is good dept wed dec 24th 2025 01 33pm kar...