Georgia bill specifies age verification with digital ID for sites with mature content

In Georgia, a bill may require users for some websites to submit identification in order to gain access. The legislation proposed refers explicitly to the use of “digitized identification cards.”

The state launched mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) supplied by Idemia last year.

House Bill 910 cleared a House vote on February 29th by a 165-to-1 margin, and a Senate reading took place on March 4, according to Government Technology.

“Before allowing access to a public website that contains a substantial portion of material that is harmful to minors, a commercial entity shall use a reasonable age verification method,” the bill reads.

Those who violate this rule are liable for damages that are a result of a minor accessing age-inappropriate content.

As the bill currently stands, material that is “harmful to minors” include depictions of actual sexual activity as well as those that are “simulated” or “animated.”

The bill uses the “SLAPS test” for categorizing obscene content. The sexual content must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value in order to be obscene, as determined by the Miller v. California case of the 1970s. The bill adds another element to the SLAPS test by requiring that the sexual content must only lack these categories of value for minors and not the general population more broadly.

Another condition in the bill is that age verification must only be required when at least one third of the content on a site is inappropriate.

The age verification methods would need to meet NIST Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2) standard, the U.S. government’s identity proofing standard. IAL2 requires that identity verification be performed either in-person or through a biometric match.

Age estimation, which typically involves biometrics without an ID document for greater privacy protection, would not meet the requirements of the bill. This approach stands in contrast to other states like Nebraska.

In the text, a digital ID card is defined as “a data file available on a mobile device with connectivity to the internet that contains all of the data elements visible on the face and back of a driver’s license or identification card.”

Third parties and commercial entities would not be allowed to store PII from those who go through the age verification process.

Internet service providers and search engines are not considered to be violating the subsection by providing the connectivity used to store PII. Entities that violate this may face a fine of $10,000 per violation.

Georgia’s proposed legislation follows states like Mississippi, Virginia, and Utah passing their own child protection laws.

Article Topics

age verification  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  Georgia  |  IAL2  |  identity assurance  |  legislation