KIDS Act: Backdoor to digital ID, mass surveillance, and government control
Within the next week, Congress is preparing to vote on the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, a sprawling package of legislation that will ultimately become a back door to digital ID, mass surveillance, and complete government control of our internet usage, including content.
The KIDS Act includes a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) combined with a collection of other internet bills, study bills, reporting requirements, and new regulations. And instead of debating these proposals on their individual merits, the Republican/Democrat duopoly will try to put them all in an ultra-expedited process (via Electronic Frontier Foundation):
The package of cobbled-together bills is a mess, with different age-gating schemes for different services, using different standards. It’s a lot of complexity, and a lot of legal risk. Faced with that, many companies will conclude that the safest option is restrictive age-checking practices across their entire platforms.
Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation policies for online speech, and even create new rules about private and encrypted communications. While supporters continue to claim this bill protects minors online, its requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data. (Emphasis mine)
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) has been a pet project of Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn. According to the devout Trumpist and current candidate for Governor of Tennessee, KOSA — a bill first introduced in 2022 and co-sponsored by Democrat Richard Blumenthal — is necessary because only government can be trusted to “protect” children from internet harm (via USA Today):
By now, it ought to be crystal clear that Big Tech cannot be trusted to regulate itself. It cannot even be trusted to tell the truth about the way its products harm young users. Parents are rightfully outraged. In a survey released Feb. 17 by the Tech Oversight Project, 86 percent of Americans said they want tech companies to be held accountable for their role in the social media addiction crisis.
There is also overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress to rein in Big Tech. I introduced the Kids Online Safety Act, which passed the Senate 91-3 last Congress but stalled in the House after leadership there would not allow a vote. KOSA would place a “duty of care” on tech companies to ensure minors have strong protections by default. Just this week, Vice President JD Vance drew attention to the need to pass KOSA, calling my bill a “great piece of legislation about child safety online.”
To my fellow legislators, I have one simple question: Will you side with moguls like Mark Zuckerberg? Or will you side with the 86 percent of Americans who are demanding we stand up to Big Tech for preying on our children? (Emphasis mine)
A side note: wouldn’t it be great if Blackburn challenged her “fellow legislators” to stand up to Donald Trump for protecting his buddies in the Epstein files, documents that are full evidence showing the rich and powerful “preying on our children”? Asking for a friend.
Conveniently left out of Blackburn’s praise of KOSA and legislation like it is the fact that there is no way for social media to ensure age verification and that the only way to solve that problem is through something like . . . oh, I don’t know . . . digital ID maybe? At least that is what Zuckerburg seemed to imply during his February trial on charges that he designed social media to be addictive to children (via The Free Thought Project):
The trial is framed as a child safety case. What it is actually doing, especially through Zuckerberg’s own testimony, is laying the political and legal groundwork for mandatory identity verification across the internet. And Zuckerberg, rather than pushing back on that outcome, offered the court his preferred implementation plan.
Multiple times during his testimony, Zuckerberg argued that age verification should be handled not by individual apps but at the operating system level, by Apple and Google. He told jurors that operating system providers “were better positioned to implement age verification tools, since they control the software that runs most smartphones.”
“Doing it at the level of the phone is just a lot cleaner than having every single app out there have to do this separately,” he said. He added that it “would be pretty easy for them” to implement. (Emphasis mine)
On the surface, the KIDS Act, KOSA, and other Orwellian legislation like them appear beneficial; but in classic “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” fashion, you and I will ultimately be required to get a digital ID to function in the technocratic world being pushed by both parties.
If the KIDS Act becomes law, your identity will be exposed to Big Tech at a whole new level. Every app on your phone. Every website accessed. Every communication sent through an app on your phone. And in case you haven’t noticed, Big Tech hasn’t been all that keen on protecting your privacy; they’re quick to hand over data to the government on a whim — just ask former-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
Donald Trump has been using the border security issue as an excuse to launch mandatory digital ID, and his AI Stargate Project” — a government/private sector partnership between Donald Trump and Big Tech bro Larry Ellison — will make it happen.
Ellison’s involvement significant; he was instrumental in the UK’s roll out of a mandatory AI-based digital ID last year. Using his status as a big-money donor to Tony Blair’s Global Institute of Change, Ellison is positioned to profit from the millions of adults who will be forced to sign up for digital ID — making millions in the process. In discussions with Blair earlier this year, Ellison expressed his ultimate goal:
“The NHS (National Health Service) in the UK has an incredible amount of population data, but it’s fragmented. It’s not easily accessible by AI models. We have to take all of this data we have in our country and move it into a single, if you will, unified data platform… The secret is to get all of that data in one place.” (Emphasis mine)
According to soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, mandatory digital ID will provide safer borders and stronger national security. Conveniently left out of Starmer’s list of benefits is the fact that digital ID will, eventually, give government control of nearly every aspect of daily life (via Times Now News):
The digital ID will include residency status, name, date of birth, nationality, and a photograph. Employers and landlords will be required to verify the ID before hiring or renting to someone, replacing paper-based checks like National Insurance numbers.
Ministers say the digital ID will eventually simplify access to services such as driving licenses, childcare, welfare, and tax records, while making government processes more efficient and reducing fraud. (Emphasis mine)
Any doubts that such an outcome is Larry Ellison’s goal when it comes to digital ID were erased in September 2024 when the Big Tech billionaire predicted at a meeting with Oracle financial analysts that mass surveillance and government control would be inevitable:
“Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly watching and recording everything that’s going on.” (Emphasis mine)
It should also be noted that Tony Blair is no stranger to the digital ID. The New World Order advocate made attempts during the so-called pandemic to introduce them as a way to ensure compliance with COVID mandates. And about a year ago, Blair declared that people needed to be willing to surrender their liberty in favor of a digital ID system run by AI.
The KIDS Act won’t only bring us mandatory digital ID, mass surveillance, and government control, it will also lead to the elimination of free speech and other God-given, constitutionally protected rights, as we see in this example provided by Australia (via CATO.org):
Whenever discussing age verification, it is essential to recognize that this doesn’t just mean that children will need to prove their identity. Everyone will need to prove their identity because platforms don’t know if a user is 6, 16, or 61. And while the law demands that platforms provide multiple ways to authenticate the age of a user, the reality is that it may be very difficult to distinguish between a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old without essentially requiring ID checks for all or many users. The point is that this age assurance regime will require users of all ages to provide platforms, some of which previously allowed anonymous or pseudonymous accounts and speech, with some significant degree of personal information and documentation.
But requiring such information immediately puts anonymous speech at risk. (Emphasis mine
As I make clear in my book, The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty, partnerships like the one between Blackburn and Blumenthal to seize control of the internet and keep children “safe” aren’t unique. A previous example involves Lindsey Graham (a man with a long history of favoring government-controlled speech) who created a similar partnership with Blumenthal in 2022 to co-sponsor the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act — a bill they claimed would protect children from online sexual predators but would have, instead, furthered government’s insatiable desire to control the internet and free speech.
The KIDS Act is supposed to be necessary for the “safety” of children, but the reality is that it will become the backdoor to digital ID, mass surveillance, and government control.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative and the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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