Child Protection on The Internet

Child protection has remained elusive because it is based on trying to
determine the character and intention of the person on the other end of a
stream of nodes. It has always been a cops and robbers game, with the
robbers always a step ahead.

Imagine telling a school receptionist, "Please determine the intentions of
everyone who enters the building, and also determine whether they are good
or bad people." If you think that's an unreasonable request, and you know
how a building works, then you are better prepared to judge the current
approaches to information security than the information security experts.

Information security attempts to determine the intentions and character of
a person through a stream of bits. In most cases, that is impossible. You
cannot filter out the bad guys, because the bad guys know how to appear to
be good guys.

The problem at the root of online child protection and security problems
can be solved by focusing on Identity instead of character and intention.

Identity is the Foundation of Security. It establishes a foundational
understanding of who we all are. We and our partners create visual means
for people to determine the identity qualities of the people they interact
with online. In other words, If you want to be able to see whether or not a
person has had their identity validated in a face-to-face meeting with an
identity professional, you can. And if when your child is online you want
them to be able to interact only with children in a certain age group who
have had their identity validated in a face-to-face meeting with an
identity professional.

Dan Kioria