The US Senate Votes on Four “Child-Protection” Bills — EFF Says No

This week the US Senate Commerce Committee is holding votes on four bills at once, all of them regulating the internet: KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act), the SCREEN Act, the Youth AI Privacy Act and the CHATBOT Act. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights organization, opposes all four, calling them censorial and an intrusion on privacy.

The EFF counts it as a plus that the committee is considering the measures individually rather than as a single package. But the overall message, in the organization's view, remains troubling: the authorities intend to require websites to verify users' ages and to restrict teenagers' access to lawful content — in effect putting an age gate at the entrance to the internet.

Good goals, dubious means

Each of the bills is billed as a way to protect children and teenagers from dangers online and off — a goal the EFF considers worthy. The problem lies in the proposed mechanisms. By the organization's assessment, they are unlikely to make minors any safer, while they would create sweeping new threats to privacy and data security, and would force platforms to impose unconstitutional limits on the content they host — for adults as well as teenagers.

The common thrust of all four initiatives, the EFF stresses, points in the wrong direction: more information collected, more surveillance and less privacy for internet users of every age. The Youth AI Privacy Act, for instance, would require companies working with AI to draw up separate privacy rules for children and to build in so-called “safety by design” features — which, like the other three bills, means collecting additional data.

What the EFF proposes instead

Rather than these bills, the organization argues, the committee would do better to take up a nationwide consumer data protection law that would safeguard every user of the web, or to ban behavioral advertising that tracks people across the entire web — again, regardless of age.

The EFF has sent the committee a letter laying out its objections and said it hopes to keep working with lawmakers to find a path that protects all users. At the same time, the organization is urging citizens to contact Congress and demand that age verification not be imposed on the whole internet.

Source: EFF Deeplinks