date: Thu 16 Apr 2026 10:01:55 PM PDT
subj: surveillance privacy
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Late February .. early March of 2026, I learned the state of
California via the governor put forth a bill for age attestation
for computers at the operating system (OS) level. That fried my
nerves for awhile. I thought how could such a stupidly written
bill actually make it to be an official document of the state.
Right around that time other states in the US started doing
similar things, as well as other countries. Yesterday I learned
the US Federal Government has put forth some legislation for
something similar; age verification at the OS level on all
computers. The method delegated to the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) to handle the implementation. You might have seen such
logos on products. I find it odd that bills/legislations exist
to compel people working on software for operating systems to
write a program specifically, even in the face of past cases
that have determined that software is a form of speech. 

The early days of computing politicians had little knowledge of
how they worked and what they were for, so they passed silly
laws that are still in existence today, that make no sense. It
seems a new fad has arrived that politicians desire to latch
onto that will get them attention for votes. 

I imagine a world in the future where every thing a person looks
at on a computer is known by some external entity, tracked,
saved, and queried against for use is some class based system.

My mind thinks of generations of people who have no idea what
the free computing era was like, or even about. The days where
software installed on a computer was a choice made by the
computer owner/operator, not controlled or decided by some
corporation. When a computer was purchased and it had no
software on it at all excluding the BIOS. These days might be
coming to an end. 

Will the retro computers become black-market commodities to be
used by those who need some form of privacy in a world where
everything is tracked and accounted for? The operating systems
pre 2026 connected through. Will computers in the coming days be
allowed to operating without a network connection. Will modern
operating systems connect to a government operated centrally
controlled system for login and identity? Will early 8 bit
systems be allowed to operate on and through modern networks?
Will the governments compel ISP feed all communications through
surveillance systems? 

Why are various governments seeking to track and identify
aspects of computer users, given they don't own or operate
a majority of the services on the internet?