Re: [Taler] [address@hidden: 'Oh, that's an idea...': U.S. parents respond to China screen time ban]

[Jacob Bachmeyer]

Jeff Burdges wrote:



> > On 6 Sep 2021, at 05:11, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> >     
> > > > There is however a problem of authenticating the context, but what I’d suggest 
> > > > there is that TLS certificates embed whatever attributes like age the site 
> > > > requests. In other words, if a site wants over 18 then they must say so in 
> > > > their TLS certificate and users not over 18 could not create anonymous identity 
> > > > on that site because their own browser would not do so.
> > > >         
> > > And how is this supposed to work with Free software?  The user's program 
> > > refuses to do what the user wants; this looks suspiciously like DRM.
> > >       
> > Indeed, if the browser is free software, users could modify it to disregard the 
> > server's demands.
> >     
>
> I already debunked Jacob's statement upthread:  You cannot modify a browser to 
> make a zero-knowledge proof of a false statement.  It’s like forging a 
> signature.

Your rebuttal is not your original statement.  Your original statement 
was worded to imply that the browser would _refuse_ to do so rather than 
that the user would not be able to complete a zero-knowledge proof to 
validate the transaction.

I will defer to RMS on the possibility of this being not much better 
than DRM, or perhaps even worse if the server can now make demands that 
the user cryptographically _cannot_ discard.


-- Jacob