Obviously the government knows it’s you. That’s the whole purpose. But they don’t know the site that’s requesting this, if the proxy hides that from them.
They might not know the list of sites you visit right away in the same way they could by contacting your ISP when you are not using a proxy, but that wasn’t my point.
My point is that they can check with a specific site that uses this verification method and see if you have an account on that site, and if you do, which account in particular. And in a way that is much more directly linked to you personally than an IP address (which might be linked to the household/internet access you’re using but that isn’t necessarily under your name).
So in this situation they can indeed know if you use any one particular site that they choose to target, as long as that site is requiring you to provide them with a document, regardless of how many layers of proxies you (or the site) choose to be under.
I’m not sure what you mean by “the site that’s requesting this”, the site does not need to request anything from the government, they just need to have previously agreed on a “secret” mathematical verification method that works for every document. The digital equivalent of a stamp/signature.
But getting that information from the USP or the site would require a warrant. Not to mention that the site doesn’t have to know your real identity either.
And the whole point of this exercise is to ensure that you don’t have to provide any document to the site.
What I mean by the site that’s requesting this, is exactly that: you need to prove to a site that you’re above a certain age. For that, the site redirects you to the proxy that redirects you to the eID site, with a request to confirm that you’re above a certain age.
The site has fulfilled its legal obligation to check your age, but doesn’t have to know your identity, and the government doesn’t have to know what site you’re visiting.
I feel like you’re misunderstanding the scenario we’re discussing.
I feel you are talking about a different thing now. My point was surrounding what you initially said:
The only right way to do this, is if governments provide their citizens with an eID that any site can ask “is this person 18+?” and get an accurate answer without any other identifiable info. And if you don’t want the government to know what sites you visit, have sites route the request through a proxy.
An eID is a digital document. You yourself are proposing that sites should request people to provide a document, one that’s issued by the government to you, personally.
Then later you said that using a proxy prevents the government to know what you visit.
My answer was that if you are providing a government-issued document/file to the service then the government (the issuer) can know if you visit the site just by keeping track of who did they issue each document for, even if the document itself does not say your name. And that’s regardless of how many proxy layers you use, since there’s traceability in the document. This makes you fundamentally less anonymous to the government than before (when you could have indeed used a proxy to prevent this), this makes proxies no longer a good defense.
The service does not know you, but that’s not the point, what you said is that the government can’t know if you visit the site, which is the one thing I disagreed with.
Obviously the government knows it’s you. That’s the whole purpose. But they don’t know the site that’s requesting this, if the proxy hides that from them.
They might not know the list of sites you visit right away in the same way they could by contacting your ISP when you are not using a proxy, but that wasn’t my point.
My point is that they can check with a specific site that uses this verification method and see if you have an account on that site, and if you do, which account in particular. And in a way that is much more directly linked to you personally than an IP address (which might be linked to the household/internet access you’re using but that isn’t necessarily under your name).
So in this situation they can indeed know if you use any one particular site that they choose to target, as long as that site is requiring you to provide them with a document, regardless of how many layers of proxies you (or the site) choose to be under.
I’m not sure what you mean by “the site that’s requesting this”, the site does not need to request anything from the government, they just need to have previously agreed on a “secret” mathematical verification method that works for every document. The digital equivalent of a stamp/signature.
But getting that information from the USP or the site would require a warrant. Not to mention that the site doesn’t have to know your real identity either.
And the whole point of this exercise is to ensure that you don’t have to provide any document to the site.
What I mean by the site that’s requesting this, is exactly that: you need to prove to a site that you’re above a certain age. For that, the site redirects you to the proxy that redirects you to the eID site, with a request to confirm that you’re above a certain age.
The site has fulfilled its legal obligation to check your age, but doesn’t have to know your identity, and the government doesn’t have to know what site you’re visiting.
I feel like you’re misunderstanding the scenario we’re discussing.
I feel you are talking about a different thing now. My point was surrounding what you initially said:
An eID is a digital document. You yourself are proposing that sites should request people to provide a document, one that’s issued by the government to you, personally. Then later you said that using a proxy prevents the government to know what you visit.
My answer was that if you are providing a government-issued document/file to the service then the government (the issuer) can know if you visit the site just by keeping track of who did they issue each document for, even if the document itself does not say your name. And that’s regardless of how many proxy layers you use, since there’s traceability in the document. This makes you fundamentally less anonymous to the government than before (when you could have indeed used a proxy to prevent this), this makes proxies no longer a good defense.
The service does not know you, but that’s not the point, what you said is that the government can’t know if you visit the site, which is the one thing I disagreed with.