1. United States
2. R.I.
3. Letter

I write to you regarding the current 18-bill online safety package in the House Energy and Commerce committee, which includes KOSA. I urge you to vote NO. The main issue I have is that most of the bills are age verification bills, which are an incredible safety concern. We are already see the issues in other countries that have similar legislation. The UK, which passed the Online Safety Act earlier this year, now forces people to provide proof of their identity online, and thousands have already had their personal information stolen, because the websites and third party age verification companies they have to give their information to are vulnerable to hacking. Furthermore, how are minors, (or anyone, for that matter), supposed to be protected from harm if everyone is going to be forced to upload all of their government information to the same Big Tech companies they need protection from? How is giving companies like Meta, Google and X/Twitter access to even more sensitive, private data of millions of users across the country, protecting anybody? No reasonable parent would want to hand over their child's personal information like that, and no reasonable person would want to provide their government ID to a website if there's no telling what will be done to properly safeguard their personal information. We absolutely need to hold Big Tech accountable for the dangers that have been allowed to fester online, but KOSA is not the answer. How is Big Tech against this "solution," if Apple, Microsoft, Snapchat, and X/Twitter all support it? It only gives them more power and access to people's private data. Passing censorship bills would also only give the government unprecedented control over what's allowed to be accessed on the Internet, and that is an incredible misstep, especially under our current administration. Do we honestly want Republican state lawyers deciding what can and can’t be allowed online? Is it truly a reasonable decision to allow our current administration this kind of control? When they have already shown the lengths they will go to to censor other forms of media? That is why Republicans support KOSA. This is massive, irresponsible government overreach, and these bills will absolutely be used to restrict information on LGBTQ and reproductive care, activism, education, history, and any other topic that our current administration would want to censor. Countries like China massively restrict its citizens' Internet access, allowing them only access to certain state-approved websites and information. How are these bills any better? I completely understand the desire to take action to safeguard minors online. We need legislation that actually protects children by creating better security measures instead of more censorship and surveillance. This bill package is not it. There are also already online tools in place, that parents just aren't using. There are Safe Search options, filtering and blocking, parental controls, and ways to block entire websites to keep kids off and safe in online spaces. People have the right to access information and topics that the government may find ugly or uncomfortable. People have the right to privacy, and to have their personal information protected. If censorship and age verification bills pass under this administration, it is the death of the Internet as we know it. These bills are not for the safety of anyone, they would only serve to censor our access to the Internet, while increasing the collection of our data and compromising our personal information. So much of everyday life has come to revolve around the Internet, and while it certainly is not perfect, taking a sledgehammer to its foundations does not benefit anyone in the long term. It only makes the average person more vulnerable. Please do not support these censorship bills. Please vote NO. Thank you.