Oppose the GUARD Act (S. 3062) — A Surveillance Mandate, Not Child Safety

Vote no on the GUARD Act (S. 3062). This bill doesn't protect children — it builds a national identity verification system for the internet, using child safety as cover. Requiring every American to submit a government ID, biometric scan, or bank account just to use a chatbot is a surveillance mandate, full stop. The security risks alone should kill this bill. NetChoice has already flagged that an EU age verification app was hacked within two minutes of launch. Forcing companies to collect this data creates exactly the kind of massive breach target that puts millions of Americans at risk. And the people locked out entirely — those without government ID, bank accounts, or reliable internet access — are already among the most vulnerable: students, elderly Americans with expired IDs, people experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities. The First Amendment problems are just as serious. Conditioning access to legal speech on government ID submission is a prior restraint, and Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011) makes clear that broad content restrictions targeting minors don't survive constitutional scrutiny. The bill's vague definition of covered AI systems is broad enough to sweep in airline chatbots and search tools. The $250,000-per-violation penalties will push companies to disable conversational features entirely rather than risk liability. That's not protecting anyone — that's chilling speech at scale. Please oppose this bill.