Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

Online Age Verification Law Could Kill Whistleblowing

A House bill ostensibly aimed at protecting children will raise the risk for journalists, dissidents, and whistleblowers.

Caitlin Vogus is a senior adviser to the Freedom of the Press Foundation and a First Amendment attorney.

Aliya Bhatia is a senior policy analyst with the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Free Expression Project. 

Democrats and Republicans in Congress have struck a deal on a bill they say will help keep children and teens safe online. The KIDS Act could pass on the House floor as soon as next week; if enacted, it would fundamentally change the way everyone — not just kids — accesses the internet.

At stake is your ability to use many social media platforms without revealing your identity. 

That’s because the KIDS Act at least strongly incentivizes — and, for some services, outright requires — age verification. Many platforms will turn to age verification to avoid potential liability under the law. Companies like X, video-sharing services like Vimeo, and others with a history of users’ populating social feeds with edgy content may be required to verify users’ ages because they host a certain amount of content deemed “sexual material harmful to minors,” a term that the KIDS Act defines broadly. 

Congress Is Considering Abolishing Your Right to Be Anonymous Online

That’s a big problem for people who need to be able to use the internet anonymously, since, as Taylor Lorenz has previously written about in The Intercept, “there’s no way to reliably verify someone’s age without verifying who they are.” 

Threats to online anonymity harm everyone, but one group is often overlooked: journalists and the sources who talk to them. Age verification requirements will help the Trump administration carry out its vendetta against the press by creating new avenues to identify journalists’ confidential sources.  

Age verification laws will create a new pool of data that the government can demand when it’s hunting for information about the people who may have spoken to the press.

Age verification laws will create a new pool of data that the government can demand when it’s hunting for information about the people who may have spoken to the press.

Trump’s administration has made no secret of the fact that it wants to destroy journalism that holds it to account, including by unmasking sources and punishing them. This week, for instance, news broke that the Department of Justice had unsuccessfully subpoenaed reporters from the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, likely as part of a leak investigation.

But what if it could skip the journalists and simply demand that tech companies identify sources who may have spoken to reporters using their platforms?

Washington Post Raid Is a Frightening Reminder: Turn Off Your Phone’s Biometrics........

© The Intercept