WASHINGTON – The conservative newspaper The Washington Times published an op-ed Tuesday by the executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance criticizing KOSA on constitutional grounds.
KOSA, wrote TPA’s Patrick Hedger, “has been circulating for years, and the legislation’s sponsors have been trying all along to outmaneuver criticism of their bill. Unfortunately, as so often happens, that maneuvering was political and not substantive. As such, concerns remain about censorship, politicized enforcement, and the First Amendment. The element that is not getting enough attention is the near certainty that this child safety law, if passed, will undermine the safety of children.”
According to Hedger, politicians were “unable to navigate the clash of philosophical principles and policy details,” so they ultimately drafted KOSA, a bill “that vastly undermines children’s online privacy while placing an out-of-control Federal Trade Commission , with zero relevant expertise in child development, responsible for speech on the Internet.” That bill is called the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).
As XBIZ reported, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) marketed KOSA as a bipartisan effort and sold it to their colleagues as a “protect the children” measure.
In February, Blackburn and Blumenthal released a new version of the bill, which they said would address privacy and censorship issues noted by opponents. However, critics emphasize that the revised version still poses insurmountable problems.
Industry attorney and free speech specialist Lawrence Walters of the Walters Law Group explained in February that KOSA would “give the government new powers to interfere with the First Amendment rights of online platforms generally, threatening anonymous speech and the introduction of age verification for all. users.”
The bill would also “restrict access to adult material for adults and is constitutionally suspect,” he told XBIZ, urging anyone who cares about online freedom to oppose the bill.
“Congress has put significant pressure on social media sites to accept government regulation, so it’s no surprise that some major platforms are bowing to that pressure – just as they did when it came to FOSTA/SESTA,” Walters noted.
Hedger’s article in the Washington Times makes the same argument on conservative grounds. “If protecting children online is such a major priority for lawmakers, they should act as such,” he writes. “If there is a real crisis of mental and emotional well-being in this country, then we must marshal the resources necessary to tackle that problem. Instead, we have politicians putting forward ideas that they already know won’t work. They have already seen the courts step in to block similar bills. By now, lawmakers should have learned from that experience, convened relevant stakeholders and shifted their legislation from constitutional and privacy issues to solutions that would directly address mental health and child exploitation.”