Biometric Update: Patchwork of age check, online safety legislation grows across US

The nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has expressed support for California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (CAADC). The law has faced two preliminary injunctions over questions about First Amendment violations. But MLex reports on EPIC’s comment to a U.S. appeals court that affirming those rulings – which argue the law’s definition of coverage make it entirely content-based – would risk destabilizing a broad swath of data protection law. 

“Many foundational and noncontroversial data protection laws, most notably the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), contain similar types of coverage definitions,” EPIC says. “Legislatures often write data protection laws to narrowly regulate specific industries and entities for common-sense reasons related to relevance and narrow tailoring, not to censor certain topics or viewpoints.”

Read more here.