An interesting letter from Ofcom, about the UK's proposed social media ban for children / age verification of everyone.
The letter stops quite a way short of saying that the plan is feasible.
The most that Ofcom says is that it "*should* be technically feasible" - not "is" or "will be", but merely "should".
It then goes on to explain various technical challenges.
"The evidence does not yet show that these [age inference] models can deliver an effective, privacy-preserving solution for an under 16 ban."
The "yet" is an absolute joke. I'd say the evidence is quite clear that the models are super inaccurate and if provided by 3rd parties don't preserve privacy at all, including leaks that already occurred.
@neil There are a great many things which *should* be technically feasible. @TheBreadmonkey having £1M, for example.
However, actually *making* things feasible is something for which the typical government bureaucracy is poorly equipped to accomplish.
Alas.
@neil I said very early on in the OSA debacle, Ofcom, as supposed domain experts, have an unwritten duty to refuse instructions from Parliament that are not feasible to execute.
It's slightly reassuring to see some push-back here, but I still feel like we're going to end up in a situation where Parliament demands something ridiculous, ineffective and infeasible and Ofcom mindlessly complies, side-effects be damned.
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