Letters to my MP: Age Verification

The following are two emails I sent to my member of parliament on March 13 and 18 respectively. I encourage everybody to read, copy, and take inspiration from these.

Hi <MP Name>

I’m writing to you today about the upcoming vote on the “online harms” bill. I believe you think you are doing the right thing; protecting the youth from the horrible things that can happen on the web. However, this legislation will not only do nothing to help kids, it will significantly harm the privacy of every Canadian, erode the quality of life for many marginalized people, and hand over shocking amounts of personal information to off-shore companies.

Age verification is technically possible, but doing so must collect massive amounts of data by necessity. Some solutions collect IDs, others biometrics, and some proposed solutions require Operating System level integration. All these share one thing in common - a method to personally identify every single visitor to every single website. It sounds good in theory, but in practice it means that the worst type of site you can think of will have a shocking amount of information on every visitor.

Worse, most of the services that offer “verification” are US companies. Almost all of them have some level of integration with big data companies like Palantir, making them funnels for personal info directly into the US military intelligence apparatus. Since February 2025 when President Trump first threatened our nation with invasion, we should look skeptically at any arm of the US military. The very data used to “protect our youth” very well could be used against us.

Another threat is black-hat hackers. Since these services are flush with valuable information, they can, have, and will be high value targets for criminal organizations. A large online platform, Discord, recently had their own ID verification service breached, with tens of thousands of peoples’ information leaked.

Finally, this will do tremendous damage to indigenous, disadvantaged, and LGBTQ+ people across the nation. Not everybody has access to these services, and many people have an ID that doesn’t match their chosen identity. A law requiring ID verification will effectively silence the voices of all these people.

As a concerned citizen, I’m asking that you vote against this bill, and seek further discussion about the true intent and externalities of laws like this.

Sincerely,

Hi <MP Name>

I recently wrote to you about why age verification technology is flawed, harms marginalized Canadians, and presents a nightmare scenario for privacy. Today I want to discuss what does work to protect children from online harms while preserving the safety and security of every Canadian. The two most important things to address are privacy and safety, and controlling harmful content.

Outside of the healthcare sector, Canada has woefully weak privacy regulations. This needs to change. If we are to become a world leader in online safety, we have to first deal with the massive dragnet surveillance systems that already exist. This means strong laws & strict enforcement, punishing hacking and data breaches, dismantling the data broker industry, limiting Ad-Tech, and making sure that all data collection and sharing is under strict user consent. At the same time, we need to put more responsibility on the industry to handle data responsibly; leaks happen constantly not because data security programmes are too complex and expensive, but because the consequences of failure are too low. For big corporations, leaking user data is the cost of doing business.

Another serious problem is the power, control, and negligence in the hands of the big tech and social media companies. The reason giants like Meta are backing age verification laws isn’t because they have an altruistic desire to help society, it’s because it abdicates their responsibility to moderate content. Meta knows exactly how much child abuse takes place on their platforms, but they want to deflect any and all responsibility. There is a massive industry that is taking advantage of young minds, and we need to address the root cause.

A major emerging problem is the rapid proliferation of disinformation driven by generative AI and large language models. This is a serious threat to both individual safety and national security, with many foreign state and non-state actors seeking to disrupt and degrade our democracy. A high-value target for this disinformation is the youth, and we’re seeing this play out right now. Curbing the spread of misleading generative AI content is critical to preserving the safety of our society.

Along with reigning in big American tech firms and strengthening data protection law, a reasonable compromise would be to pre-configure network devices (Rogers/Bell) with CIRA’s CanadianShield DNS service, an already existing system which can filter content in a responsible and privacy respectful way. This should be an opt-out service, with a “safe by default” posture. That would address the main part of the issue without introducing new surveillance.

At the end of the day, I know you want to do the right thing for your constituents. But it’s important to not get wrapped up in the fervor around age verification technology and take a deep look at the externalities of systems like this. None of the problems above can be solved with age verification, we need to take a proactive and realistic approach that takes into consideration the scope of the threats we’re up against.

Thank you for your care and attention as my member of parliament.

Sincerely,