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IBM Red Hat Promotes Age Surveillance Inside the OS
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The Register UK ☛ Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field
The contents of the field will be protected from modification except by users with root privileges.
The change comes after the recent release of systemd 260 but unless it is reverted for some reason, it will be part of systemd 261. One of the justifications is to facilitate the new parental controls in Flatpak, which are still in the draft stage.
The change comes after the various bits of new legislation to bring age checks into operating systems, which The Reg covered recently. We also reported on how System76 is pushing back against the legislation.
The ripples are still spreading across the Linux world.
GrapheneOS is a de-Googled version of Android for privacy-centric smartphones, which may appear on Motorola phones next year. The Canadian nonprofit behind the OS posted on X: "GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone around the world without requiring personal information, identification or an account. GrapheneOS and our services will remain available internationally. If GrapheneOS devices can't be sold in a region due to their regulations, so be it."
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It's FOSS ☛ Fedora Project Leader Suggests GNU/Linux Distros Could Adopt Apple's Age Verification API [Ed: IBM Red Hat still hating users' freedom]
He thinks a cross-distro API standard can be a practical solution to tackle age verification.
Age verification laws don't seem to be stopping. California, Colorado, and Brazil, all have some version of the same requirement where OS providers must collect age data at account setup and expose it to apps through a real-time API.
Governments call it child safety, but plenty of people in the open source space call it something else entirely. The reactions have ranged from protest distros to a systemd fork to a BSD project that straight up banned users in affected regions.