Steelman · slot A
The universal ID-check Trojan horse
A digital civil liberties advocate would argue —Read the GUARD Act's text, not its press release. It requires every provider of an AI chatbot to make every user create an age-verified account — and chatbots are now embedded in search, customer service, comment sections, and ordering a burrito. That means a federal mandate to hand government ID or a face scan to a sketchy third-party verifier just to use the modern internet. We've already watched these verification vendors leak thousands of users' data. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that burdening adult speech to shield minors fails strict scrutiny, and this bill burdens the speech of every American interacting with the dominant information technology of the decade. Call it what it is: an online ID mandate, smuggled in under a child-safety label.