Drew Harwell, The Washington Post ; A booming industry of AI age scanners, aimed at children’s faces
"Nineteen states, home to almost 140 million Americans, have passed or enacted laws requiring online age checks since the beginning of last year, including Virginia, Texas and Florida. For the companies, that’s created a gold mine: Employees at Incode, a San Francisco firm that runs more than 100 million verifications a year, now internally track state bills and contact local officials to, as senior director of strategy Fernanda Sottil said, “understand where … our tech fits in.”
But while the systems are promoted for safeguarding kids, they can only work by inspecting everyone — surveying faces, driver’s licenses and other sensitive data in vast quantities. Alex Stamos, the former security chief of Facebook, which uses Yoti, said “most age verification systems range from ‘somewhat privacy violating’ to ‘authoritarian nightmare.'”"
