1. United States
2. Letter

To the honorable Justices of the Supreme Court: I'm aware that the opinions have already been made regarding several high-profile cases that have been brought to you over the past several months. One of those is FSC v Paxton. I understand that there are some among you that have a low opinion of pornography, believing that it isn't deserving of First Amendment protections, and that something should be done about the proliferation of it on the Internet to protect children. I understand that most of you are parents who are frustrated with the ever-changing nature of parental controls and apps meant to provide adequate safeguards for children. No one is arguing for children to be exposed to explicit material. That kind of argument is nowhere in the amicus briefs sent to the Court because the groups filing them are comprised of members who also have children. Reading this, you may believe that they would willingly put their kids in danger, or that they would be terrible parents. They don't want to expose their kids to that kind of material as much as any other parent doesn't want that for their child. The truth is that age verification is largely ineffective, invasive, and even one of the proponents of age verification, the AVPA (Age verification providers association), admitted that it wasn't an effective solution and that it wasn't guaranteed to protect sensitive data. Just recently, an unfortunate incident that happened in Canada involving the theft of a 12-year-old's data resulted in CSAM being made of them. Age verification laws in France blocking access to pornography resulted in the increase of VPN usage while accounts were hacked that used AV. If a minor could be endangered by mandatory AV laws, and be exploited in such a way with these hacks, then age verification is not a good way to keep children safe. We all want children to be protected. No one is saying nothing should be done, but they are saying that age verification has a long way to go before it can be used effectively. That is why strict scrutiny needs to be applied to laws like these, so that the effects can be anticipated and amended to avoid situations like those I mentioned previously.