Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for privacy. But between setting up the birthdate when creating my children’s local account on their computers, and having to send a copy of their ID to every platform under the sun, I’d easily chose the former.
I’d even agree to a simple protocol (HTTP X-Over-18 / X-Over-21 headers?) to that.
This is perfectly reasonable, but my feeling is that the real world isn’t reasonable in this way.
Consider all the infractions of liberty that have been approved in the name of combating “terrorism.” The no-fly lists. The universal warrant-less searches. All domestic communications recorded and archived for who-knows how long. The pervasive surveillance. The huge extension of CBP power to do things like raid Greyhound busses that aren’t even crossing borders.
None of these steps were prevented with the argument “But we’re already doing something about that issue.” That argument never even came up, to any noteworthy degree, in the public discourse.
Look at it this way: All sorts of websites that aren’t for kids already have banners requiring the visitor to affirm that they’re legal adults. So, we’re there: “We already have that.” But no one is seriously making that argument. Because, of course, those banners do next to nothing: Visitors can just lie. So it will probably be for OS level age verification. Thus, in creating a system that doesn’t work, the excuse for extending the system, to exert more control in the future, is built in from the start.
People who are interested in asserting more control over others are never content with the amount of control they have. They always want more. It is the gaining of more control that motivates them.
I actually used this same example further up. Yes the GWOT made some terrible legislation that has done real damage, but it wasnt a slippery slope. They didnt make laws a little bit invasive but generally ok before slowly nudging it further until it got to the point where it was able to be used for ill. They went in hard and fast with abusable legislation which could be criticised for what it actually was, not what it would lead to in further legislation down the line (and it was criticised at the time).
I disagree.
There was a certain (large) amount of government surveillance and eavesdropping going on before the GWOT, which was used as an excuse to massively expand it. There was already inspection and security and traveler record-keeping at airports before the GWOT, which was used as an excuse to expand those. CBP had long had the legislative authority to do all kinds of nastiness within 100 miles of a border before the GWOT, which was used as an excuse to step their activities up, to legal limits and beyond.
In every case, an initial claim of urgent, exceptional authority was used to create both the physical infrastructure and the cultural permission required to make later, expanded claims of urgent, exceptional authority much easier to implement when an excuse presented itself. That is the slippery slope, we really slid way down it, it’s a real phenomenon. It doesn’t have to be smooth or gradual, it can happen in jerks and waves. It doesn’t have to come as a result of a plot, a plan, a deliberate conspiracy, it can be an accretion of individually opportunistic acts.