Privacy
Maintaining kids’ privacy while keeping them safe and connected online is vital. However, misguided legislation in Congress would counterintuitively weaken privacy protections for kids and all internet users. Requiring kids to disclose even more personal information than they do now to meet age-verification would mandate that they submit sensitive personal information like government IDs and biometrics to access online platforms. Many online platforms would also have to stop offering privacy protective technologies like end-to-end encryption. Congress should prioritize kids’ privacy and safety without making them more vulnerable, and instead empower parents to be active participants in how their children operate online.
Kids And All Internet Users Would Have INCREASED Privacy Concerns
Taken together, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), STOP CSAM Act, Children and Teens’ Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act (EARN IT Act), and Protecting Kids on Social Media Act would force kids and all internet users to give more personally identifiable information to enable the age-verification, resulting in less privacy and more vulnerability to data breaches. Other liability provisions would almost certainly mark the end of widely-used privacy protective technologies like end-to-end encryption and force platforms to surveil users.
To Enable Age-Verification, Kids, And All Other Internet Users, Would Have To Trade Their Privacy and Become More Vulnerable Online
Compliance with age-verification requirements will force online platforms to collect users’ personally identifiable information including date of birth and government-issued identification documents, which would threaten users’ privacy, especially the risk of data breaches, making them more vulnerable. The legislative language would apply this to all websites kids could conceivably access: essentially the entire internet.
End-to-End Encryption, A Critical Privacy Tool, Could Not Be Used
Some bills make platforms legally liable for any user-generated content they are unaware of, such as private messages that platforms don’t monitor. This provision could stop platforms from offering end-to-end encryption out of reasonable fear that courts will find merely offering these services to be negligent, since users’ encrypted communications are private by design.
Platforms Would Be Forced To Monitor and Surveil Users’ Speech, Possibly Censor Even Legal Speech
Platforms will be liable for what their users do on their platforms. Compliance likely means platforms would be required to step up user monitoring. Certain platforms could use this as a pretext to censor even legal speech they do not agree with.
More than 130 privacy and civil liberties organizations - including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Fight for the Future - officially oppose some or all of the proposed bills that jeopardize the privacy and data of kids and all internet users.
Parents and Advocates Know These Bills Undermine Kids’ Privacy
“Just as we buckle them into seatbelts and make regular doctors visits, we keep tabs on what they’re doing online, using tools like encryption to protect them from danger. That’s why we’re so worried about proposals like the EARN IT Act, the STOP CSAM Act, and the Kids Online Safety Act in the U.S. These proposals erode the best tool we have for keeping our kids’ information—like where they live and go to school—private and secure.” - Internet Society
“If enacted, EARN IT will put massive legal pressure on internet companies both large and small to stop using true end-to-end encryption and instead scan all user messages, photos, and files.” - Electronic Frontier Foundation