Show HN: Use Their Dd – Use your local UK MP's ID for the online safety act

Labour thought Tory version was not going far enough.

That happens all over the place, conservatives pass a time bomb bill, they lose control of congress/house, time bomb is about to become effective, they now fight to overturn it and place the blame on the current ruling folks.

I think it's fun when the elected government doesn't do what the people who elected them want. Like a middle finger to democracy.

> Reform, whilst all over the news for being against it, voted for it.

Just as a slight correction – the only "Reform MP" that voted for it is James McMurdock, but he's no longer a Reform MP and I'm not sure why he is still listed as one here.

Most Reform MPs did not vote at all!

Neither did a lot of conservatives and labour, interestingly.

Greens and Lib Dems voted no, which raises my opinion of them.

Agreed its a mess.

This is misleading. Labour's only objection was that the policy was not going far enough!

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Clamping down on freedoms is not conservative policy.

Crap like Communications Act 2003 and Ofcom has been Labour policy for decades.

Wow this shows labour has too many MPs and the impacts of voting for labour

You can have "read" access anonymously (with a big asterisk, see the end), but as soon as you need "write" access, the service provider (the website etc) is legally required to verify your ID. It's why there's no pseudo-anonymous discussion forum in China, at least legally.

Source: https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2016-11/07/content_5129723.htm

> Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China, Article 24: When network operators provide users with network access, domain name registration services, fixed-line and mobile phone network access procedures, or provide users with information publishing, instant messaging and other services, they shall require users to provide real identity information when signing an agreement with the user or confirming the provision of services. If the user does not provide real identity information, the network operator shall not provide the relevant services to the user.

The big asterisk: there's no anonymous internet service in China, you have to ID yourself to get access to the internet (article 24), and the service provider are required to keep record of you (IP and everything) (article 21), and they are also required to cooperate with the authority (no surprise here) (article 28). And using VPN or Tor is likely illegal (article 27).

Don't listen to the sibling commenter who doesn't know what they're talking about.

No, you don't need ID verification to use search engine or read news in China.

However, sites that depend on user-generated content (like forums) would ask for at least your phone number.

No, but some features are locked until you do. For example, you can join voice chat rooms on Xiaohongshu, but can’t turn on your camera until you verify ID. You can join others’ broadcasts but you can’t create your own, etc

Yes. You need an ID to use the internet.

This reminds me: I've noticed that Starbucks now requires a few pieces of information to use their WiFi network. One is email and they are doing some sort of validation which will reject emails like whoopsileanedonxxxxxxxx@aol.com but will accept other, legit AOL emails. How are they deciding what is/not a valid email? Are they using a compiled list of emails that have been seen in the wild? What if it's a brand new address, though? Presumably AOL isn't exposing a service for them to use in realtime. I haven't tested this extensively or with other providers.

It's obvious that they care (to some extent) that they're getting valid emails, so why not use a basic regex on the FE and an OTP which gets sent to the provided address?

As a Canadian I was lost and confused when visiting the States (in the before time) and a gas pump asked for my zip code. So I put in the one and only zip code I know. I bet you can guess.

XXX-867-5309 still works everywhere I try it, where "XXX" is the local area code.

I used 888-888-8888 at Target yesterday. Shhh.

Have they researched how many of these "age check" companies are actually run by Russian intelligence services?

I certainly agree!

However, I doubt that's a strong legal argument.

It's literally just sticking the MPs name into an AI and asking for it to generate a mock ID for them. None of their real data is being used (e.g. their face, their DoB, the address) and the mock IDs wouldn't fool anyone for a second. I'd love if someone who understands the law would weigh in though

It's not just a joke, it's parody and political commentary right?

You could go with misuse of computers, but unless the ID’s are actually used by yourself it’s not identity theft right?

The generated addresses aren't real. It gave a London address for my MP; I know where he lives and it isn't London.

Most MPs' home addresses are actually quite easy to find. Mine's was printed below his name on the ballot paper last election – a nice reminder of how we used to have a high-trust society. I doubt this practice will be continued for much longer.

>The only way you'd ever get found out is if the affected MP was lying to the public and the identity documents do indeed get retained...

I'm more talking about the developer of the site rather than the users. And the developer could potentially be found out if they posted it on a popular hacking website and used a known alias and registered the domain in the UK.

But, if they're comfortable, all the more power to them. As I said, I do really like the spirit of the site.

> I don't think anyone is going to be seriously fooled by this.

Do you think porn sites are more interested in a) correctly preventing unauthorized people from accessing their site, or b) selling as many subscriptions as they can while nominally complying with the law?

I wouldn't say they’re “obviously” AI fakes.

I’m not from the UK, so I’m not familiar with what their IDs are supposed to look like.

I was suspicious, though—the hands holding the ID cards looked kind of “crispy.” But at the same time, I thought, “woah, where did the website owner even get these photos?” It wasn’t until I read the Hacker News post that I realized they were all AI-generated (and now cached).

And here’s the thing: I’m an engineer at Apple with decades of experience in the tech industry—I’m not exactly new to this stuff. If I got fooled even for a couple of seconds, imagine how easy it would be to trick someone who isn’t technical.

I wish there was a modern day version of "Yes, [Prime] Minister" for this kind of stuff. It's like the episodes could write themselves by the week.

Not really. I was a civil servant and gave advice on this.

Civil servants aren't there to say whether a policy is good, sensible, or a vote-winner. The CS policy profeasion is there, in part, to advise on risks. Ministers decide whether to accept those risks.

There were plenty of people (like me) who would have pointed out the various risks and problems. Some of which caused policy to change, and some were accepted.

I don't think I've ever seen in recent years the CS be blamed for something like this.

Sure, if you offer to pay the bill for the Image generation, I'm sure they would love to implement this feature