@CrypticCoffee Counter to that is obvious: DO NOT USE legal access modes, use Tor instead and access only sites that "block" the UK instead of complying.
Hopefully most porn sites will do exactly that, like Pornhub already did to US states that demand driver's license uploads (including Utah and Arkansa). When they attempted to comply with such a demand from Louisiana, open traffic from there dropped 80% and presumably VPN and Tor access jumped.
This told all porn sites that it's not worth the programmer time to even attempt to service legal traffic from such jurisdictions. Block non-Tor/non-VPN connections and enjoy immunity.
Best of all, it only takes ONE jurisdiction on the whole planet that won't censor porn to make these measures globally ineffective. Crack anywhere, play everywhere. This gives new meaning to saying "fuck you" to the government.
Any attempt by the UK to block Tor will fail: China can't reliably block it, and the Great Firewall of China has far more resources than "Hadrian's Firewall." Trying to jail people for using Tor would be nearly as difficult and would also face the legal obstacle of jury nullification. This will go the way of the failed 21 drinking age and 55 mph speed limits in the US.
As governments try to crack down on porn, on dissent, and on criticism of their Great Leaders, the clearnet will be of declining importance (possibly used only for shopping) and the darknet will become more important. Embrace the power of the darknet...
Tor can be compromised though, you just need someone watching a good portion of the end nodes and hosting the fastest intermediate nodes, then run a viterbi trace back to a source. Tor is also very slow.
I’m looking at IPFS and FreeNet as viable alternatives
@tetris11 Slow yes, but if you download videos rather than stream them, slow is much less of an issue.
Even the US is not capable of watching all Tor exit and guard nodes. The UK sure as hell is not. The Torproject by the way is always looking for and decommissioning malicious Tor nodes, so the risk to any one user is low.
The usual way to attack a Tor user is to get them to connect to Tor to destination site you have compromised with javascript ON, then send a malware installer to the real target's computer. The installer then downloads a rather standard payload that tells the computer to phone home on a non-Tor connection. The widely reported 2013 incident used a Windows-only payload, today they probably add iOS and Android. Stock android that is. If it was reasonably practical for cops to see through Tor they would not put so much effort in seeing around it instead.
Things like the Silk Road takedown were very time consuming and labor-intensive, and required a lot of old fashioned exploits and unskilled admins at the targets. In other words, Tor, Signal, anything else running on an untrusted device also become untrusted. Silk Road was still brutally difficult for the cops, and that was a major, motivated investigation that unlike UK or Utah porn cops wasn't going to run into a stone wall of non-extraditability or lack of jurisidiction on someone with zero local "business presence."
BTW, do not use Google Fiber to connect to Tor to use Google privately, because if you do, Google can see your device directly(being your ISP), and see the one exit node they are talking to, allowing a confirmation attack.
@CrypticCoffee
As for me, I will never, ever use any site that demands a drivers license or a face scan to get on. I'd sooner totally disconnect from the open Internet and move all my work to the darknet only.
I don’t think so. Porn is very much a mental thing too, not just a visual one. Knowing none of the subjects of the pictures and videos exist will ruin it for a lot of people.
Um, so, pretend you didn’t hear this from me, but there are LoRas you can use and even train yourself from a handful of sample images, for anyone in the world that you want to see.
That is not what they were asking. They were suggesting you use someone else’s ID (say, your parent’s) and a picture or video of the person the ID belongs to.
The headline is very misleading. Porn companies are considering facial recognition as an option for validating age. Governments are putting more pressure on porn websites to keep minors away from the content, but it’s very hard to thoroughly prove your identity online. A government issued photo ID is useless if you have nothing to compare it to visually. That’s why many websites use bank/credit card info as opposed to an ID.
It is definitely a privacy concern if you worry about it being known that you watch porn, but I don’t think it’s right to fault the company.
They would just exempt themselves from it as they did with both reporting on people accessing porn using the HoP network and with the investigatory powers bill.
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