Civil Society Organizations Warn E.U. Member States of AV Laws

BRUSSELS—European Union civil society groups submitted an open letter Monday to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, urging the bloc to encourage member states to refrain from adopting age verification laws. The letter features signatures of over 60 major civil society groups. "Children and young people are some of the most at-risk users of online services, and they deserve age-appropriate online environments that safeguard their well-being," reads a statement announcing the letter from an NGO civil liberties organization called European Digital Rights (EDRi). "However, as policymakers across the European Union push for EU-wide rules to mandate age verification tools on social media, civil society’s concerns are growing about the impact on fundamental rights." The letter urges the European Union and its member states to take a "holistic approach that prioritizes child safety and ensures our privacy." Organizations that signed the letter include the Wikimedia Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Civil Liberties Union of Europe, and sex workers' rights groups, among others. The sex workers' rights groups that signed onto the open letter include the European Sex Workers Rights Alliance, the SekswerkExpertise group of The Netherlands, the Sex Workers Empowerment Network of Greece, and Red Umbrella Sweden. Privacy rights groups also signed in support, including the Privacy & Access Council of Canada. "There is a legitimate and crucial need to keep children safe online," the letter reads. "At the same time, there is a lack of evidence that existing online age verification tools are able to achieve this goal. Instead, we have seen how age verification tools undermine the fundamental rights of all users, exacerbate structural discrimination, and create a false sense of security." The organizations added, "By pursuing age verification as a silver bullet to the complex challenge of addressing children’s needs online, policymakers risk undermining the fundamental rights of children and adults alike while failing to improve their safety and wellbeing." Here, the coalition of groups refers to determinations made by the governments of E.U. member states, like France, that highlight the existing limitations of age verification. Note, they point to the French data protection authority Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés having found that most commercially-available age verification approaches are "circumventable and disproportionately intrusive of people’s privacy." The Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA), led by Iain Corby, has remained confident that E.U. authorities are doing the right thing by adopting digital identification provisions in the various benchmark online privacy laws adopted by the Parliament in recent years. For example, the AVPA is involved in E.U.-funded efforts to develop interoperability for age verification and parental consent processes for E.U.-regulated digital spaces. AVPA remains active in lobbying for age verification laws in the United States alongside far-right organizations who have voiced interest in banning pornography. Adult industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition has challenged a Texas age verification law before the U.S. Supreme Court.