Defence in depth, versus leaks
Defence in depth, versus leaks
Posted Mar 11, 2026 19:16 UTC (Wed) by davecb (subscriber, #1574)Parent article: California's Digital Age Assurance Act and Linux distributions
In the California scheme, and for any given operating system, there has to be a source of the age. In a phone or laptop bought by a parent for a child, this can be a "assertation" by the purchaser.
Given that, an age requirement can function if an only if
- the child is young enough, and
- they have no-one who can help them reinstall.
For an older child, buying the their own phone or reinstalling Windows will defeat this kind of measure. The scheme fails for proprietary OSes just as it does for Linux.
For any child with root, creating another account will do the job in double-quick time. Guaranteed fail!
I've come to think that we're missing the real point by miles. We're banning the wrong thing, https://leaflessca.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/wrong-ban/
This is derived from M Fioretti's "Dear parents, social media are yesterday's battle", https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/dear-parents-social-medi...