GUARD Act risks eroding First Amendment rights, warns John Coleman
The post GUARD Act risks eroding First Amendment rights, warns John Coleman appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com. A Senate bill designed to protect children from AI chatbots is drawing fire from civil liberties advocates who say it would do something far more dangerous: build the infrastructure for identity-linked online surveillance while restricting access to constitutionally protected speech. The GUARD Act, introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley, would mandate age verification for accessing “AI companions,” the category of AI systems designed for human-like conversational interactions. Users under 18 would be banned entirely. What the GUARD Act actually requires The bill’s core mechanism is mandatory age verification, but not the kind where you click a checkbox confirming you’re over 18. Self-attestation is explicitly ruled out. Instead, the GUARD Act demands real-world identifiers. Think financial records, government-issued documents, or other identity-linked data points. In English: to cha