Across the country, an array of new state and federal surveillance bills pose an unprecedented and existential threat to privacy, safety, and the promise of an open internet. This legislative wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing is framed around a noble goal: protecting children. Sadly, these laws are just the latest example of misguided tech policies built on a fundamental misunderstanding of the thing lawmakers seek to regulate—harming the very communities officials seek to protect.

The key flaw of these state surveillance bills is that they create a two-tiered internet, one for children, and one for adults. This is an intuitive step, but one that simply cannot be implemented in practice, as there is no effective, let alone privacy-preserving way, to determine users’ identities. These laws mandate or coerce the use of new, invasive measures that verify users’ legal name, age, and address for nearly every internet service they use. Suddenly, every online purchase and search engine query will come with state-mandated tracking, and anonymity will be a thing of the past. This change would be invasive and insecure for every user, but it would pose a particularly potent threat to undocumented communities, LGBTQ+ communities, and those seeking reproductive care. The data would be a ticking time bomb, a powerful new surveillance source for police, prosecutors, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and private anti-choice groups.

By Albert Fox Cahn, Esq., Brooke Cordes, Nina Loshkajian, David Siffert, Eleni Manis, PHD, MPA, Sarah Roth, and Gabriel Quagliata

We’re at an inflection point in the design of American internet as a new wave of laws seeks to dramatically expand government surveillance of everything from social media to libraries, all in the name of protecting children. But while few objectives are as laudable as keeping kids safe, the rhetoric of child protection frequently masks a far darker reality: an effort to use immense new surveillance powers to attack LGBTQ+ youth and the institutions that serve them. In recent years, far-right lawmakers have used this child protection narrative to pass a patchwork of new measures at the state level that are already radically remaking what content is available in their jurisdictions. But perhaps the most alarming discovery is how growing numbers of liberal lawmakers are now following suit, joining in to expand surveillance and control of internet platforms in ways that undermine anonymity and endanger the open internet. Of course, these newest progressive proponents of internet tracking don’t share their conservative counterparts’ anti-LGBTQ+ ideology. Instead, they’ve come to view expanded government surveillance of internet platforms as a corrective to platforms’ unethical misuse of children’s data and use of dangerous features. Unfortunately, while many of the measures making their way through statehouses are poorly positioned to address the real drivers of social media harms, they will unintentionally strengthen this far-right attack on the LGBTQ+ internet resources.