John,

Imagine trying to check the news, navigate to your favorite recipe, log on to play a game, or scroll for advice on a forum, and instead finding a digital checkpoint you can only pass through by handing over your most sensitive information: your driver's license, birth certificate, credit card, or even a scan of your face. A growing wave of online ID check bills are trying to make this our reality—and it threatens our privacy, our ability to engage online, and our essential rights. Will you take action to stop online ID check bills before they invade our privacy and ruin the internet?

SIGN THE PETITION

Online ID check bills have been introduced in more than 20 states and US Congress, proposing government-mandated ID checks on websites under the guise of “child safety.” But online ID checks would only make the internet less safe—for everyone.¹

These laws would require websites to store a massive amount of our sensitive data, often through third parties that are frequently hacked² and could share data with cops without a warrant.³ That means everyone would be forced to open themselves up to surveillance and leaks just to navigate the internet. That’s dangerous for all of us, especially communities disproportionately targeted by surveillance and censorship like women, people of color, queer people, and kids.

Plus, these privacy violations will make it even harder than ever to access information and community online. People are way less likely to access content that requires an ID check.⁴ The lawmakers pushing these bills are well aware of that fact– that’s why they’ve given themselves dangerously broad leeway to decide which websites to restrict as “harmful to minors,”⁵ using eerily similar rhetoric to the rightwing actors pushing to ban drag shows,⁶ books about LGBTQ+ people and people of color,⁷ and anything else they deem too “obscene.”

With gender-affirming healthcare and abortion access under threat, and young people increasingly politically active, ID check laws threaten to cut off young and marginalized people from access to lifesaving information and vital advocacy tools. After all, who’s to say that learning about the climate crisis or gun violence isn’t “harmful to minors”? We can’t let online ID check bills cut off access to the free flow of information and sabotage our control over our own data. Can you sign the petition today to stop these bills before it’s too late?

TAKE ACTION

We know what we need to do to make the internet safer, and it’s not forcing people to submit to ID checks. We’re fighting for lawmakers to stand up to Big Tech monopolies,⁸ pass comprehensive privacy legislation,⁹ and pursue real algorithmic justice, not invasive measures that do more harm than good. Join us in the struggle for a free and fair internet at StopOnlineIDChecks.org, and help stop these bills—while we still can.

Solidarity always,

Sarah at Fight for the Future

Footnotes:

1. The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/23721306/online-age-verification-privacy-laws-child-safety

2. 404 Media: https://www.404media.co/id-verification-service-for-tiktok-uber-x-exposed-driver-licenses-au10tix/

3. Perpetual Line Up: https://www.perpetuallineup.org/

4. The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/29/23849375/kosa-child-safety-free-speech-louisiana-utah-parental-consent

5. Advocate: https://www.advocate.com/politics/kansas-veto-age-verification-gender-affirming-care-abortion

6. USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/02/tennessee-drag-bill-ban-performances-nashville/11383928002/

7. Axios: https://www.axios.com/2024/04/09/book-bans-2023-most-challenged-list

8. STATEMENT: Breaking court decision says Google is a monopoly: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2024-08-05-statement-breaking-court-decision-says-google-is-a-monopoly/

9. Data Privacy Now: https://www.dataprivacynow.org/