[NTLUG:Discuss] age verification in systemd

[stuart yarus]

Hi,

>From distrowatch dot com / weekly.php?issue=20260323#news:

"Last week we talked about age verification laws
<https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20260316#qa>, what they are and
the issues surrounding these surveillance efforts. This week a new age
tracking feature was added to systemd
<https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954>: "[This change] stores the
user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in
California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.
The xdg-desktop-portal project is adding an age verification portal
<https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/pull/1922> that needs a data
source for the user's age. userdb already stores personal metadata
(emailAddress, realName, location) so birthDate is a natural fit." The
birthdate field can be set by the administrator only, but can be read by
the user and the user's applications. "

"Update: Following strong feedback from the community, an attempt was made
to revert the change <https://distrowatch.com/<a href=>. The attempted
reversal of the change includes a comment: "Introducing birth date storage
or age queries (even local-only) creates a new class of sensitive user data
in the OS that didn't exist before. It risks normalizing permission-like
checks inside the desktop session and could be extended to far more
invasive controls in the future." The reversal was denied by project leader
Pottering, who insists the tracking feature will remain. "


-- 
Stuart Yarus