This bill proposes to “card” people when they visit certain websites by requiring age verification for people to access websites with content deemed “material harmful to minors.”
Under the bill, age verification could be conducted by checking a website-user’s government-issued identification card or “by using any commercially reasonable method that uses public or private transactional data gathered about the individual.” That means blocking access to content without first uploading your ID, jumping on a quick zoom call showing that you face matches your ID, AI facial-recognition software or other biometric identification, or uploading a credit card number for AI to scrape consumer data from the internet to identify your age.
While intended to protect minors, this bill exposes adult Wisconsinites to harmful surveillance and raises significant First Amendment concerns, by requiring internet users to provide personal information to companies or applications that purport to be able to verify their ages.
By requiring someone to present an official ID to merely visit a website, this may block some people–for example, those who lack government identification or whose age is misidentified by the relevant technology–from accessing the sites altogether.
The bill also prohibits an entity from “publish[ing] or distribut[ing]...obscene material on the Internet,” and allows anyone to file a lawsuit alleging content is “obscene.”
