Even worse laws may be underway. Draft amendment at the time of writing…
Quote: The New York State Senate: Senate Bill S8102A
(Bold added.)
To require devices to conduct commercially reasonable age assurance for users under the age of 18 at the point of device activation, unlocking the ability to enforce all other digital privacy and safety laws for underage users
Quote: (bold added)
- “Age assurance” shall mean any method to reasonably determine the age category of a user, using methods that reasonably prevent against circumvention. Such method may include a method that meets the requirements of article forty-five of this chapter, or may be a method that is identified pursuant to new regulations promulgated by the attorney general consistent with section fifteen hundred forty-five of this article
I will keep documenting new information in wiki chapter New York State Senate Bill S8102A as I get to it. More relevant quotes are there. It’s getting really tough legalize.
Whonix adding age verification? - Support - Whonix Forum
AB 1043 applies to any entity that qualifies as an “operating system provider” or “covered application store” under its definitions; it does not distinguish between “base” or “derivative” distributions; “hypervisor”, “dom0”, etc.
Whether a particular Linux or Xen (Qubes) distribution, derivative, or downstream project is an “operating system provider” may depend on who “develops, licenses, or controls” the OS software in practice, which is a fact‑specific inquiry rather than something the statute addresses directly.
Qubes (dom0) may be responsible, may have to comply with this before stable distributions such as Debian do something about this.
Due to the very high penalties, I would hope that Qubes will research this and/or take legal advice.
The answer may be “no” when doing a strict reading of What about privacy in non-Whonix qubes? but let’s see how things will develop.
I don’t see how “move to another operating system” helps against a potential legal issue that affects most operating systems.
Because “it’s a global issue”, not a Fedora issue.
I - as a non-lawyer - have looked in detail into that option.
Prohibiting California residents in the Terms of Service and Geo-Blocking
And concluded:
- Conclusion: A TOS / Geo-Blocking based California prohibition may lower risk in some scenarios, but it might not reliably prevent California use or contacts, and therefore may not be a dependable way to fully avoid legal exposure by itself.
Right. For now. But it may get worse. (The very top of this very post of mine.)