[NTLUG:Discuss] [Discuss] age verification in systemd

[Leroy Tennison]

 OK, can you find/provide details about that fork and how to implement it?
    On Tuesday, March 24, 2026 at 12:20:55 PM CDT, Cornelius Keck via Discuss <discuss at dfwuug.org> wrote:   

 Isn't that the Microslime-affiliated dude who came up with that piece of 
useless unwanted junk to begin with?

Why am I not surprised. Have to dig this up, but IIRC I've seen a FB 
post where somebody forked that junk to remove that "feature".

This is what one gets if one lets induhvidials with little technical 
understanding pass laws with dumb excuses.

On 2026-03-23 17:09, stuart yarus wrote:
> 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. "
> 
> 

-- 
Discuss mailing list
Discuss at dfwuug.org
https://www.dfwuug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss