1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

Today I’m writing and urge you to Vote NO on the KIDS Act. (Kids Online Safety Act - KOSA) This legislation would require every website and app to verify users' ages using government IDs, biometric scans, or algorithmic facial analysis — methods that force Americans to hand over sensitive personal data just to browse the internet. Age verification providers have already been breached. Mandating this at scale creates a surveillance infrastructure waiting to be hacked or abused by cybercriminals and/or nation states. The bill also pressures platforms to police lawful speech, which can only lead to more censorship by authoritarian-led administrations such as we are currently experiencing. Under the revised KOSA language, companies must "establish, implement, maintain, and enforce" policies around content like gambling or substance use. That means a teenager searching for help with a parent's addiction could get blocked. When platforms face regulatory liability for content moderation, they over-delete. That's a speech problem, not a safety solution. If Congress actually wants to protect young people online, they would enact these rules the the providers of search and social media, not on the users. For instance, we need a ban behavioral advertising that tracks all users across the web. That's the real threat. A strong, comprehensive federal privacy law would do more for kids than any age-gating scheme. Please reject the KIDS Act and push for real privacy legislation instead. Thank you.