California Law says All OSes Need Age Verification

[dmpogo]

Enforcement will come when sobody complains: I bought my kid laptop with this Linux and it doesnt provide the mechanism to inform about the age

... after which they'll fine (choose one):

• the store who sold the laptop
• the vendor/manufacturer of the laptop
• software developers of the preinstalled OS
• software developers of the alternative OS which the customer chose to install

We'll see, they will find somebody, or perhaps all of the above

[sublogic]

Further coverage in the register:
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/10/ ... /?td=rt-3a

including a reference to an excellent reddit thread,
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... state_age/

Summary:

1. Colorado may consider exempting open-source. (But don't hold your breath.)
2. It's an organized effort. (Not that it wasn't obvious, but the author follows the trail.)

[mark4]

Also, I think the California, Colorado, and New York statutes may violate the U.S. Constitution via the Overbreadth doctrine.

It is also compelled speech.

I see no difference between this and when Nevada enacted a tax against a railroad corp based on passenger counts. SCOTUS ruled (crandall v. Nevada) that this was a direct tax against the travelers and that the state was merely using the corp as the agency for the collection of that tax. It was a direct tax on peoples right to travel and was shot down by SCOTUS.

This asinine law is attempting to use operating system developers / vendors as the agency for a the collection of private, personal information simply so they can circumvent the 4th amendment.

[monkeyboy537]

Also, New York has a similar law in a senate committee which appears to, also, outlaws selling computers without an already installed compliant OS, outlaws installing a third-party OS (or even reinstalling the one the computer came with), and even outlaws building your own computer from parts.

Hopefully New York doesn’t pass it and no other state is as bad as New York. Are there other states that are as bad?

[mark4]

Also, New York has a similar law in a senate committee which appears to, also, outlaws selling computers without an already installed compliant OS, outlaws installing a third-party OS (or even reinstalling the one the computer came with), and even outlaws building your own computer from parts.

Hopefully New York doesn’t pass it and no other state is as bad as New York. Are there other states that are as bad?

CA has enacted it, I believe CO and NY are considering it

its for the kids!

[mirekm]

I have been following this thread and I see that everyone is focusing on the most visible part of the problem. No one is looking at the context and source of such regulations.
The main question is: why is such verification necessary, which will ultimately be carried out by third parties? After verification, the person in question will no longer be anonymous. This means that all of that person's online activities will be known to governments/authorities. And that, IMHO, is the main reason for such regulations. Talking about protecting children, etc., is just a distraction.

[monkeyboy537]

I have been following this thread and I see that everyone is focusing on the most visible part of the problem. No one is looking at the context and source of such regulations.
The main question is: why is such verification necessary, which will ultimately be carried out by third parties? After verification, the person in question will no longer be anonymous. This means that all of that person's online activities will be known to governments/authorities. And that, IMHO, is the main reason for such regulations. Talking about protecting children, etc., is just a distraction.

I think the ball started rolling when parents were suing social media companies for things on their platform that shouldn’t be shown to kids. The parents who are too lazy to actually parent and just want big tech to do it instead and the government noticed an opportunity to add surveillance. That’s my view though. I’m pretty sure China does the same thing (verification on who you are) but instead of age it’s just surveillance.

[sublogic]

I have been following this thread and I see that everyone is focusing on the most visible part of the problem. No one is looking at the context and source of such regulations.
The main question is: why is such verification necessary, which will ultimately be carried out by third parties?

See the reddit thread referenced in my post above. Seems one of the motivations is Meta wanting to shift liability from itself to Apple/Google.

[Hu]

LWN now has a piece up about this - California's Digital Age Assurance Act and Linux distributions.

[rab0171610]

LWN now has a piece up about this - California's Digital Age Assurance Act and Linux distributions.

Subscription required
or:
"Alternatively, this item will become freely available on March 19, 2026".

[dmpogo]

I have been following this thread and I see that everyone is focusing on the most visible part of the problem. No one is looking at the context and source of such regulations.
The main question is: why is such verification necessary, which will ultimately be carried out by third parties?

See the reddit thread referenced in my post above. Seems one of the motivations is Meta wanting to shift liability from itself to Apple/Google.

And that is an important danger. Once you collect age information, you may be help liable for not acting on this information. Imagine some parent suing OS distributor - "I bought my kid a Linux conmputer, OS asked for his age, but then I see porn on his screen - why OS allowed it, given that it knows the age ?"

[Shadowmancer]

Brazil has a similar law requiring compliance by the 17th of this month.

Also, New York has a similar law in a senate committee which appears to, also, outlaws selling computers without an already installed compliant OS, outlaws installing a third-party OS (or even reinstalling the one the computer came with), and even outlaws building your own computer from parts.

Colombia and Uruguay are soon to follow: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202603/ ... ent-online

What's your source about New York State's version of these laws? NYS's version seems to be very extreme.

[JustAnother]

I'm reading that a certain purveyor of operating systems want to suck all of your local files into the cloud, for safe keeping no doubt. Very thoughtful of them.

It seems to me that there is signal starting to rise up out of the noise. It's just the nature of their game.

[b11n]

a similar law change in Big-New Zealand appears to have had no effect (paywall): https://www.crikey.com.au/2026/03/13/te ... platforms/

Most teens on social media pre-ban are still on those platforms, new data suggests
Data provided to Crikey by parental monitoring company Qustodio shows usage among under-16s during the first three months of Australia’s teen social media ban dropped only marginally more than the pre-ban seasonal dip.

[Goverp]

LWN now has a piece up about this - California's Digital Age Assurance Act and Linux distributions.

Subscription required
or:
"Alternatively, this item will become freely available on March 19, 2026".

Actually, the LWN article is basically a link to the actual article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260313143 ... ts_and_45/
It's a fascinating read, and impressive bit of research.

[Hu]

LWN now has a piece up about this - California's Digital Age Assurance Act and Linux distributions.

Actually, the LWN article is basically a link to the actual article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260313143 ... ts_and_45/
It's a fascinating read, and impressive bit of research.

LWN now has a second piece up. The first, which I linked, is paywalled for a few days yet. The second is An investigation of the forces behind the age-verification bills; it is immediately free to read is marked as [Briefs], and yes, is mostly just the Wayback->Reddit link you posted, plus a pointer to the article I had originally linked.

[saturnalia0]

Surely what matters here are the effects it may have for the Gentoo Foundation, Inc., no?

As an open source project maintained and mirrored by people from different sovereign countries under various legislation, the potential liability from a US law is to the legal entity incorporated in the US who owns the trademark and some infrastructure, no?

Yes politicians are evil and on the rise, that's a matter for one's local political forum. Seems like what's relevant for this forum is whether the Gentoo Foundation will have to take any steps to comply, which appears to remain unclear, and so the answer for now is no...

If it becomes a yes then the relevant discussion is how those not interested in complying can re-organize.

[Banana]

Surely what matters here are the effects it may have for the Gentoo Foundation, Inc., no?

As an open source project maintained and mirrored by people from different sovereign countries under various legislation, the potential liability from a US law is to the legal entity incorporated in the US who owns the trademark and some infrastructure, no?

Yes politicians are evil and on the rise, that's a matter for one's local political forum. Seems like what's relevant for this forum is whether the Gentoo Foundation will have to take any steps to comply, which appears to remain unclear, and so the answer for now is no...

If it becomes a yes then the relevant discussion is how those not interested in complying can re-organize.

As [post=8881108]Neddy already said[/post], Gentoo itself does provide a "framework" to build an operating system based on available software. Even if this law should have any effect, the software itself should implement it and not Gentoo.

[NeddySeagoon]

saturnalia0,

We already have an example of how this stupidity fails.
Think Phil? Zimmerman and Pretty Good Privacy in the early days.
It was developed in the USA but strong encrytion in machine readable form was classed as a munition, thus it's export was illegal.
PGP was hosted outside the USA.

Printing it on a T-shirt was OK, even when wearing it for all to see.

[Zucca]

Actually, the LWN article is basically a link to the actual article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260313143 ... ts_and_45/
It's a fascinating read, and impressive bit of research.

Git repo of the research.

[no101]

In 1995, Phil Zimmerman published the PGP source code as a book (MIT Press) and then exported the book, which is clearly allowed under the 1st amendment (freedom of speech). Phil was not prosecuted.

Also in 1995, DJ Bernstein (djb) sued the US government over the "code is speech" issue, which is now firmly established in US law. Thanks djb!

There's more to the story of course but you can get an overview on wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein ... ted_States
An interesting note there is

Apple cited Bernstein v. US in its refusal to hack the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, arguing that they could not be compelled to "speak" (write code).

I'm not a lawyer but there are precedents to fight this in the US courts. I'm not saying that Gentoo should be the group to take this fight because it sure wouldn't be cheap. Not to mention that it wouldn't help with the laws of countries like Brazil and Australia and whoever is next.

[JustAnother]

Is Redhat saying much about AB 1043? I searched a bit and did not find anything.

[Spanik]

LWN now has a piece up about this - California's Digital Age Assurance Act and Linux distributions.

Subscription required
or:
"Alternatively, this item will become freely available on March 19, 2026".

Actually, the LWN article is basically a link to the actual article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260313143 ... ts_and_45/
It's a fascinating read, and impressive bit of research.

Now this is "funny"... I read what is in the link and one of the companies mentioned is Antropic. Today I read in one of our newspapers (in Dutch) that Antropic is concerned about privacy. https://www.hln.be/tech/amerikaanse-tec ... ~a5d873fa/ Other companies (almost all also mentioned in the same link) support Antropic in a lawsuit agains the US government because it wants to use its tech to "spy on its citizens".

It becomes all a bit cynical isn't it?

[gjy0724]

Is Redhat saying much about AB 1043? I searched a bit and did not find anything.

Apparently its official that age verification components will be part of systemd...guess who is pushing systemd. Like I needed another reason not to use it! SystemD/Age Verification

Age verification is going to be a gateway to the surveillance state. Eventually it will be required and verified...therefore removal of anonymity AND privacy on the Internet. Because parents are lazy and blaming BigTech, Google/Amazon/Meta (especially the latter) are pushing it up the pyramid to the top of the software stack (the OS) and the OSes are not only saying 'yes, Masta' they are complying willingly. Sadly, I suspect that it will be required everywhere and the little guys, unfortunately like Gentoo, will comply or die...forcing their users to use OSes that bowed the knee.

It's sick and disgusting where our society has gotten to; however, that is where we are.

I have been a Gentoo user for a very long time and I truly hope it holds out on this topic for as long as possible. Although. I have heard though, that in order for an OS to be fingered as not complying with the "law" someone has to complain to the "authorities" who would then go after that OS. I'm not sure how true that is as I have not read any of the "laws"

[pietinger]

There is a Linux distribution that already meets - or even exceeds - these legal requirements: Red Star OS ->

https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7174-liftin ... ed_star_os

For those who aren't familiar with the Chaos Computer Club: "The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is Europe's largest association of [white hat] hackers."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Computer_Club


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS says:

The operating system comes pre-installed with a number of applications that monitor its users.

If a user tries to disable security functions, an error message will appear on the computer, or the operating system will crash and reboot.

In addition, a watermarking tool integrated into the system marks all media content with the hard drive's serial number, allowing the North Korean authorities to trace the spread of files.

The system also has hidden "antivirus" software that is capable of removing censored files that are remotely stored by the North Korean Secret Service.

[...]

In 2015, two German researchers speaking at the Chaos Communication Congress[10] described the internal operation of the OS.[31] The system is known to watermark all files on portable media attached to computers[32] in order to aid in tracking the underground market of USB flash drives used to exchange foreign films, music and writing.

Oh, we're so far behind ... they're miles ahead of us ... it's really time we caught up with the technological gap ...