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âWonât someone think of the poor children?â they say, clutching their pearls as they enact another stupid law that will harm the privacy of every adult on Earth and create Prior Restraint that inhibits the freedom of speech in liberal democracies.
If youâre totally ignorant of how things work, the proposal of âverifying youâre an adultâ before you access adult content sounds, superficially, like a reasonable thing to do. But itâs a patently stupid idea at every level.
In meatspace, if you wanted to go to the adult section of a movie store, you would need to show a clerk your government issued photo ID. They would check that your date of birth was before (current date â 18 years), and if so, they would admit you. This is the sort of experience that people who do not understand technology use to build an intuition for how laws like this operate.
The Internet is not like meatspace. When you supply your government ID to a website in order to verify your identity, at least two of the following security and privacy risks introduced at once:
Thatâs a lot of risk for the public to take on. But what are they getting in exchange for it?
Well, a lot fewer adults will choose to share their photo ID to look at pornography, which will likely increase sexual aggression since pornography use by adults inversely correlates with sexual assault in every society science has observed.
(âŠ) the increasing availability of pornography appears to be associated with a decline in rape.
Part of this is deliberate: The anti-porn lobby is largely christofascists and theyâre all following the same playbook as the authors of Project 2025. Yâknow, the same clowns that want to ban sex education.
The Christian nationalists behind these movements also want to classify all forms of queer expression as sexual, and therefore pornographic, to force us back into the closet (lest we be prosecuted as sexual predators for daring to be visibly queer âin front of childrenâ).
Transgender people are at the top of their target list, but make no mistake, they hate cisgender gay and lesbian Americans just as much.
Sometimes what can be explained by stupidity is better explained with malice. This is doubly so with right-wing politics. The cruelty is the point.
This is not a uniquely American problem: Puritanical attitudes towards sex have penetrated every society. The UKâs Online Safety Act aims to accomplish the same end goals as the fascists across the pond. The recent ban waves of adult content on Steam and itch.io were caused by an Australian âfeministâ group that used extralegal pressure through payment processors to achieve their goals.
Needless to say, the attempts to control adult content have been a complete clusterfuck.
If it wasnât clear already, the anti-porn laws are stupid, wrong, and harmful. You should absolutely call your representatives and get these stupid laws overturned if you live in an affected jurisdiction.
But they are, nonetheless, the law in those jurisdictions.
Until they can be repealed by a more competent electorate, we have to operate on the assumption that âage verificationâ will be a stupid thing we have to live with.
To that end, cryptography actually provides us with an interesting tool for limiting the risks of age verification. Theyâre called zero-knowledge proofs.
I will not mince words: zero-knowledge proofs straddle the line between genius and madness.
Sure, you can grok the basic idea of them pretty easily: You can prove that you have knowledge without revealing what that knowledge is. There have been lots of YouTube videos that explain this pretty intuitively. Hereâs one from Numberphile:
But then you get into the art of turning interactive proofs (as described in the video) into non-interactive proofs. This usually involves a Fiat-Shamir transform, which comes with many subtle footguns.
The most basic kind of non-interactive proof youâre likely to run into in the real world is an Schnorr proofâwhich is the basis for Ed25519 signatures. The signatures are succinct proofs of knowledge of a particular secret number (the private key).
But then you have the madness: Algebraic circuits, polynomial commitments, trusted setups versus recursive proofs, motherfucking zero-knowledge VMs!
If you stare at the introductory material for zero-knowledge proofs for long enough, you will come to appreciate Platoâs account of Socrates in a new light.
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
Your brain on zero knowledge
Why am I describing zero-knowledge proofs this way? Because I want you to appreciate how much they are a departure from the simple world of âshould I use AES-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305 here?â level cryptography protocol design that most developers find themselves in.
Look, I can sort of explain my job to strangers, even if they have no technical expertise. It usually goes something like, âYâknow that padlock icon in your browser when you connect to your bankâs website? Well, I test the padlocks.â
That analogy works way better than having to explain for the 10,000th time that I do not work in blockchain.
Nobody knows what âcryptoâ is, but they think it involves speculative investment. Thanks for nothing, blockchainiacs.
I cannot explain âencode your program as a polynomial and use it in this algebraic circuitâ to a mere mortal. And until Iâm able to do so, I will always feel like I do not adequately understand this topic within cryptography.
I generally wouldnât wish this sort of complexity on anyone unsuspecting, but Iâm going to make an exception for the governments that pass these privacy-averse age verification laws.
Google recently published an open source library that proves a userâs age in a way that preserves privacy. This library is undergoing two independent security reviews, but should be production-ready in the near future.
If weâre going to force websites to implement some kind of age verification for adult content, we should demand the governments that pass these laws provide the zero-knowledge proof technologies to satisfy the law.
After all, theyâre the entities that vend identity credentials (passports, driverâs licenses, and other photo IDs) in the first place.
If this technology must exist, then let the governments own the risk of this technology, not individual website operators or Internet users.
If nothing else, elected officials struggling to articulate PLONK vs R1CS would make for some excellent blooper reels.
Earlier this year, the paid search engine Kagi adopted PrivacyPass (see also: this set of IETF RFCs and other documents) so they can verify that users are allowed to submit queries (i.e., theyâre paying customers) without their backend service being able to know which customer is performing the query.
This involves vending buckets of single-use tokens constructed out of blind signatures to their users.
We could do something similar here for verifying that a user is 18 or older. We would need existing identity verification services (e.g., ID.me in the USA) to vend PrivacyPass tokens that can be redeemed on third party websites.
Then, the onus is on those services to verify your identity. Later, when a porn site inevitably gets hacked, this will not give the attacker any information about usersâ real identities.
This is a much more robust approach than outsourcing the identity document verification to a third-party company and hoping for the best.
Although I keep the art on this blog 100% worksafe, I do not buy into the false narratives about pornographyâs supposed harms.
(Also: porn addiction isnât a real thing, and anyone who calls themselves a âporn addictâ is either misinformed or outright lying because thatâs not how addiction works. Further reading.)
If weâre going to require adult content be gatekept by some age verification mechanism, we should at least implement it securely in a way that respects user privacy.
Reject any technology that doesnât respect user privacy. VPN services arenât a real security tool like their marketing claims imply them to be, but they can be useful for circumventing these regional restrictions.
However, I will not recommend any in particular, and no VPN company on Earth could possibly pay me enough money to endorse them.
Header art by CMYKat.
IndyFurCon Adventurers!
The iFC 2025: Roll âFurâ Initiative Schedule is now LIVE 
So start planning and previewing what panels, events, and convention adventures you and your adventuring party want to get into today!
iFC 2025 Schedule: https://indyfurcon2025.sched.com
Car Furries⊠itâs the moment youâve all been waiting for⊠
Our 2025 Car Show Form is now LIVE! Get your engines started to come show off your favorite or coolest rides at iFC by using the Sign-Up Form below!
Car Show Form: https://forms.gle/qBeZcPdMCH1Kwk2w5
I made a point about the time to remind everyone to be patient.
As promised here is the details
$100 â through November 25, 2025
$110 â at the door
Purchasing a Standard Membership includes:
$225
A Sponsorship shows that you think the con is kind of awesome and youâd like to help us make it happen. As a Sponsor, you will receive all of the benefits of a Standard Membership, as well as the following gifts:
$450
A Shiny Sponsorship is for those who not only really, really like the convention, but wish to provide that something extra to help us continue to bring you the best convention that we possibly can! As a Shiny Sponsor, you will receive all of the benefits of a Sponsor membership, as well as the following gifts:
UPDATE
I see Shiny Sponsor went down by $100. But still $450 is it worth it?
So what exactly opens today
Ever wondered how they decide what sponsors get? The Board actually votes on it. A combination between what fits in the theme and and what they can get on time.
There has been a couple of rumors of items not gotten due to shipping times and makers dates.
Finally the LINK your looking for https://www.furfest.org/attend/register
Donating money for the con charity saves lives
Donated rations come to those in need!
The rations collected during this yearâs Brazil Furfest edition are already being given to the protectors of Santos, who take care of the beloved pets of the coastal city BFFâs cradle. 
In total, 352 kg of dog and 212 kg of cat food were collected, bringing a total of 564 kg of food, in addition to 118 sachets and 8 cans of food this year, a new record! 
And there are more! During the event, we managed to raise R$46,100.00, a record amount that will help even more animals in Santos. This amount will be allocated for rescues, fosters and treatments, ensuring a better life for our four-legged friends. 
Thanks to the efforts of SOS Coastal Pet Life, the first deliveries are already happening, bringing food and hope to the animals taken in by local shelters. Each pack of food makes all the difference in these petsâ routine, ensuring they have a more comfortable and loved life.
Without the help of BFF participants, it would not be possible. Together, we are making a difference in the lives of these animals and those who care for them! 
Brasil FurFest
Friends for Life
Art: 
