Understanding the UK Online Safety Act: Exploring Technical Solutions for Privacy and Verification
Greetings to our UK readership,
Recent discussions surrounding the UK’s Online Safety Act have sparked important debates about online regulation, privacy, and safety. As a computer scientist, I’d like to provide a technical perspective on how digital identity verification can be implemented in a way that balances safety with user privacy. This overview aims to inform discussions and highlight potential technological pathways that could serve both individual rights and regulatory objectives.
The Challenge: Verifying Age Without Compromising Anonymity
A common concern in online safety legislation is the need to confirm a user’s age—particularly whether they are over 18—without unnecessarily exposing personal data or enabling tracking. Is it possible to design a system that accomplishes this?
A Technical Framework for Privacy-Preserving Age Verification
Yes. Modern cryptography offers solutions that enable individuals to prove specific attributes (such as being over 18) without revealing their full identity. Here’s a conceptual outline:
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Initial Verification with a Trusted Authority:
Users submit their ID and face photo to a trusted, transparent, and ideally open-source identity provider—potentially a government-run or independent organization. This entity verifies the documents and confirms the user’s age. -
Issuance of a Cryptographic Credential (Token):
Instead of issuing a traditional certificate, the authority creates a cryptographic token using advanced techniques like blind signatures or zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). Key points include: - The user’s identity and age are encrypted or “blinded” during signing, preventing the issuer from seeing the actual data.
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The resulting credential proves “over 18” status without revealing personal info.
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Using the Credential for Online Proofs:
When users access websites requiring age verification, their devices generate a cryptographic proof from the credential. The website verifies the proof, confirming age without learning who the user is.
Advantages of This Approach
- Privacy Preservation: Users do not need to share more data than necessary.
- Preventing Tracking: Since credentials are non-linkable and cryptographically secured, repeated uses cannot be correlated, maintaining user anonymity.
- No Centralized Data Storage: Proper implementation avoids centralized logs that could be exploited.
Ensuring Trustworthiness and Security
For such a system to truly protect user privacy, several conditions are essential:
- Open-Source Client Software: