400+ Computer Scientists Sound Alarm on Global Age Check Privacy Trap

Our Take

Credit to Verified Privacy VPN for surfacing this letter, because the pattern it describes should sound familiar to anyone who's tracked how Flock Safety sold license plate cameras as a narrow tool for finding stolen cars and missing kids, then quietly expanded into a nationwide database that police departments share and query without warrants. Age verification mandates follow the same playbook: a sympathetic goal (protect kids online) becomes the excuse for building identity-checking infrastructure that touches every single user, adult or minor, and that infrastructure doesn't go away once the narrow justification stops making sense.

The detail about AB 1043 pushing OS-level age checks that favor big tech while squeezing out open-source alternatives is the real tell. Centralized verification systems need centralized chokepoints, and centralized chokepoints are exactly what surveillance states are built from. Once you've normalized the idea that you have to prove who you are before you can access basic services, whether that's a website or a public road monitored by ALPR cameras, you've handed someone a permanent record of your movements and habits, with no sunset clause and no real accountability for how it gets used or who it gets sold to.

We cover physical surveillance, not digital age gates, but the underlying fight is identical: infrastructure built in the name of safety rarely stays limited to its original purpose. If you want to see how that plays out with license plate readers in your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on expanding surveillance mandates, our take-action page has concrete steps.