20260317 Kaliforniens Irrweg

Age Verification

We have repeatedly spoken out against the EU’s so far futile attempts to enforce age verification on social networks. Not because we don’t want to protect children online, but because it is clear that all previous attempts will fail due to the technical ingenuity of young people. Now, we hear from Heise.de about an attempt by Colorado and California to enforce age verification within the operating system.

Colorado and, above all, California have stipulated in recently enacted laws that “operating system providers” must in future offer a mechanism for age verification, writes Heise.de in the linked article. The verification is to take place as soon as someone creates an account on the device.

As advocates of open source, particularly Linux operating systems, we are, of course, strongly opposed to the idea that creating an account should require government approval. We had already spoken out against Windows 10, which mandated an internet connection for installation. Now, it appears that any operating system will be required to cross-reference the data entered when creating a user profile with public databases. Although there are currently no plans to store this registration data, in our experience, that is only a small step away. This must not happen—it would spell the end of all anonymity — even outside the internet.

So far, the law has struggled to define who is legally responsible for its implementation, since, for example, Debian or Linux Mint are not companies, and other smaller Linux distributions certainly are not. But the path of such a law leads to total surveillance ... and is certainly unenforceable at the state level.