Privacy Protections Should Be Both Strong and Constitutional if They are to Protect Anyone. In House Kids’ Safety Bills, Many Are Neither
In advance of the House Energy and Commerce markup of bills intended to protect children online, CDT sent a letter explaining some of the privacy and free expression risks presented by several of the pieces of legislation before the Committee. The analysis follows our testimony and separateletters related to CDT’s concerns about the bills.
The letter again explains that many of the bills, including COPPA 2.0 and KOSA, would either require or incentivize the implementation of age verification for all users of online services. Not only do these requirements raise constitutional concerns, they also lack sufficient safeguards to prevent data breaches and protect sensitive information.
The letter also expresses concerns about Sammy’s Law, the Safe Messaging for Kids Act and the App Store Accountability Act. Each bill, in addition to raising age verification concerns, would create new and overbroad access to children’s data, and would create a chilling effect for the use of essential communications services by children and adults in many circumstances. We urge the Committee to make changes to address these concerns and continue to work to mitigate them before they reach the House floor.
On September 15, 2026, the Center for Democracy & Technology and Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus brief along with the Wikimedia Foundation in Meta Platforms v. Bonta, challenging California’s SB 976.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
CDT Joins Letter Defending First Amendment Rights Amid Attack on Center for American Progress
The Center for Democracy & Technology joined more than 150 civil society, advocacy, and nonpartisan organizations in a joint statement led by Nonprofits Together supporting the Center for American Progress amid a recent legal action by the Trump administration. The statement emphasizes that independent organizations have a First Amendment right to publish evidence-based analysis and critique government policies, regardless of which administration is in power.
Op-Ed: France’s Constitutional Council Ruling Tests the Limits of Social Media Bans
Read our analysis the legal and policy significance of the Constitutional Council’s decision on ongoing social media age restriction and age assurance debates ahead of the most-anticipated EU-wide approach on child online safety due by December 2026.
