Among the new laws that went into effect on July 1st in the Handmaid State was one requiring age verification for access to internet pornography.
House Bill 498 requires that any website hosting pornography must acquire from its viewers proof-of-age documentation, such as scanning in one’s driver’s license or credit card to the porn site, or by allowing the porn site to access one’s social media account.
The law is modeled after a similar law in Texas and ones adopted in a fifteen others. It passed with unanimous votes, aside from three House and two Senate absences, because who wants to vote against keeping minors away from porn?
Me. I would have voted to kill this bill.
First, it does not keep minors away from porn. People who have a “20” in their birthyear are well aware of this little technology called Virtual Private Networking (VPN) that disguises and encrypts your internet traffic. With a VPN, a kid in Nampa, Idaho, beams his request through a VPN server in Seattle, Washington, and as far as the porn site knows, that’s a computer in Seattle to send porn to without asking for ID.
Second, scrupulous porn sites (yes, such exist) are going to follow these state laws, but not by asking their viewers for their personally identifying information. They’re just going to ban viewers who aren’t using VPNs to disguise that they’re from Idaho. But unscrupulous porn sites—or those phishing for your info by pretending to be a scrupulous porn site—would be more than happy to collect your drivers license or credit card or social media info and use that for a range of crimes, like identity theft and sexual extortion.
Third, this is clearly suppression of free speech for adults in the guise of protecting children. Given the free-range fascism we’re experiencing, asking adults to provide a personal record of every porn video they’ve watched to a corporate entity that might be compelled to release that information through a subpoena from the Trump Justice Department is going to have a chilling effect.
Fourth, as Hustler’s Larry Flynt once remarked about his First Amendment case at the Supreme Court, “If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, it will protect all of you.” Porn is the canary in the coal mine for what an oppressive regime will do to other “dangerous” forms of speech. You’ll need age verification to learn about transgender info, to research communism, or any subject the government deems too harmful to young minds—ask Socrates.
Fifth, this government overreach is unnecessary, because actual effective tools at blocking minors from viewing pornography exist, even if they are using a VPN. However, and I hope this isn’t controversial, they require the application of parenting. Parents can choose between many free and paid software packages that block porn at your home wifi router and at your child’s phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer.
So, in short, Idaho, you just enacted a law that doesn’t stop kids with VPNs from visiting scrupulous porn sites that ban illegal material, you’ve funneled business to unscrupulous porn websites that traffic in illegal material, you’ve created a new opportunity for phishing sites to steal identities and commit extortion, you’ve opened the door to the censorship and tracking of other kinds of information, and you’ve given parents an excuse to not pay attention to securing their home internet at the router and device level.
