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Coco McShevitz's avatar

One risk is that Section 9 of the bill (reproduced below) looks like a Trojan horse for requiring everyone (adults and children) to verify their identity before using social media and other Internet services, as I don’t see how verification of age can be done without requiring everyone to identify themselves a priori. While I can envision ways to do this while maintaining anonymity, I am deeply skeptical that a study conducted by the government would err on the side of user privacy over government access. If ID is required to access social media, this of course would be a great boon to authoritarian regimes everywhere as the ability to dissent anonymously a la Thomas Paine would be largely eliminated if people’s real world ID is tied to every post. Any thoughts on this aspect?

SEC. 9. AGE VERIFICATION STUDY AND REPORT.

(a) Study.—The Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and the Secretary of Commerce, shall conduct a study evaluating the most technologically feasible methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.

(b) Contents.—Such study shall consider —

(1) the benefits of creating a device or operating system level age verification system;

(2) what information may need to be collected to create this type of age verification system;

(3) the accuracy of such systems and their impact or steps to improve accessibility, including for individuals with disabilities;

(4) how such a system or systems could verify age while mitigating risks to user privacy and data security and safeguarding minors' personal data, emphasizing minimizing the amount of data collected and processed by covered platforms and age verification providers for such a system; and

(5) the technical feasibility, including the need for potential hardware and software changes, including for devices currently in commerce and owned by consumers.

(c) Report.—Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the agencies described in subsection (a) shall submit a report containing the results of the study conducted under such subsection to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives.

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cat's avatar

I learned my lesson with the Patriot Act.

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