Forty state attorneys general (AGs) last week urged federal lawmakers to pass a bill that could ultimately require people to digitally verify their identity to access the internet, according to privacy and free speech watchdog group Reclaim The Net.
In a Feb. 10 letter, the AGs backed the U.S. Senate version of the Kids Online Safety Act. They did not support the U.S. House of Representatives version, which differs in key ways.
If passed, the Senate bill would require government officials and agencies to figure out how computers, cellphones and operating systems could verify people’s age. The bill states:
“The Secretary of Commerce, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, 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.”
The federal officials and agencies would be required to submit a report of their findings to Congress within a year.
Designing cellphones and computer operating systems to verify a user’s age would bring the U.S. another step closer to cementing a digital ID system, Reclaim The Net reported. In an article titled “40 State Attorneys General Want To Tie Online Access to ID,” it wrote:
“Device-level verification would likely depend on digital identity checks tied to government-issued identification, third-party age verification vendors, or persistent account authentication systems. …
“… Once age checks are embedded at the operating system level, the boundary between verifying age and verifying identity becomes difficult to maintain.”
Greg Glaser, a digital privacy expert and attorney, agreed. “By embedding identity checks into apps, hardware, or operating systems, the bill would create a de facto digital ID checkpoint for broad internet use,” he said.
Hellbound and Down 