The quest of big governments and even bigger big tech companies to invade what little privacy we have continues unabated. Yesterday, some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful CEOs convened before Congress to explain why Americans should have to show identification when surfing the web. As always, these plans to take away our online sovereignty are despicable and are being pushed around in vague calls to protect our children.
The appetite from U.S. lawmakers for online ID and age verification, and the support of technology company CEOs for these measures, signals a major shift in the approach to online privacy and anonymity.
Proposals for broader online age verification standards, particularly Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s proposal to impose age verification at the app store level, are significant. Enforcing such measures could dramatically change the landscape of online interactions and make it difficult to participate in online activities without associating with an official identity. While these measures are intended to protect minors, they also pose risks of totalitarian surveillance and potential censorship, and discourage whistleblowing efforts by linking real-world identities to all online activity. may be hindered.
These nanny state policies violate constitutional rights to free speech and privacy. The First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously. The right to speak anonymously has been a cornerstone of democratic debate since the founding of the Republic. Remember how many Founding Fathers wrote essays attacking the British monarch under pseudonyms? Plus, a safe age that doesn’t violate your privacy or expose your sensitive personal information to potential misuse? There are concerns about the technical and practical challenges of implementing a verification process. Spoiler alert: this is not possible.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel have announced their support for legislation aimed at improving online safety for children, including the Kids Online Safety Act and the Cooper-Davis Act. highlights the tech industry’s cynical support for regulatory efforts to protect minors. But these bills signal potentially major changes in how privacy, encryption, and anonymity are handled online.
of Kids online safety law aims to expand online age verification requirements, which could have a major impact on how children interact with online content. The idea of protecting children from porn and her ISIS videos is not a terrible impulse, but destroying the right of adults to post their thoughts anonymously is a terrible idea.
of Cooper-Davis methodtargets private messaging apps and potentially prohibits end-to-end encryption, posing a direct challenge to secure and private communications. End-to-end encryption is the basis of digital privacy, ensuring that messages cannot be intercepted by third parties, including service providers, and can only be read by the sender and recipient. Weakening this technology would expose users to increased surveillance, data breaches, and malicious actors, while also exposing journalists, activists, and insiders who rely on encrypted communications to protect their sources and themselves. The whistleblower’s activities will be hindered.
This is a backdoor to Chinese-style surveillance
Anyone familiar with the world of technology can immediately see the Chinese-style security wall this creates. In China, a digital ID is required to access the censored web. This makes it much easier to identify dissidents and oppressive enemies of the regime. Again, here are some of the very negative implications of requiring (digital) papers:
- Online age verification raises serious privacy issues. Verifying your age typically requires robust personal data such as date of birth and residence details. This will facilitate exponential data collection with limited oversight.
- This program prevents anonymous online activity. From political opponents to victims of domestic violence, anonymity provides safety for many Internet users. Required age verification could chill this important internet freedom.
- This measure may limit open access information resources. Sites with peer-reviewed research articles, health advice, and educational materials require unimpeded and fair access, a factor that can be compromised by age verification.
- The financial burden on website operators is clear. The requirement to install and operate age verification systems can limit smaller platforms that lack the necessary resources.
- The directive falsely upholds content censorship precedent and could threaten free speech.
The Kids Online Safety Act has nothing to do with children or safety. It is about suppressing our collective ability to criticize those in power. Some of the regime’s most articulate and intelligent critics have had to resort to tweeting and writing anonymously. Because we live in a primitive techno-Soviet environment, where if you oppose “what is now,” you lose your job, are exploited, and are excluded from polite society. Protecting the rights of those who post shit online is an urgent need that cannot be sacrificed to appease the brute force of “Won’t you think about our children?” fool.
