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George Orwell warned us that Big Brother was always watching, but while the dystopian writer penned Nineteen Eighty-Four as a look at our supposedly grim future all the way back in 1949, it's becoming more relevant than ever in 2026.
This was recently amplified by Anthropic's concerns that its landmark deal with the Pentagon could lead to artificial intelligence being used for mass surveillance against US citizens. With OpenAI stepping up after President Donald Trump blacklisted Anthropic, CEO Sam Altman has reassured critics that this won't be the case.
Now, Congress has suggested that the beady eyes of the government will soon be on us more than ever, with it discussing the removal of online anonymity.
Let's be honest, with the ability to trace IP addresses and track down bad actors, nothing you really do online is that anonymous anyway.
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Still, there are reports that we could soon be less anonymous than ever online due to a dozen 'child online safety' bills being pushed forward in the House of Representatives with support from the Republicans and the Democrats.
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is supposed to protect children from harmful content, sexual exploitation, and online bullying, serving as an extension of recent rules that pornographic websites have to include third-party verification to confirm a user's age. That can be in the form of a passport or credit card details, but as reported by The Intercept, the problem lies in the fact that there's no way to verify someone's age without losing their anonymity. Even if not directly stored by a specific site and handled by a separate vendor, the outlet reminds us: "A user’s offline identity is forever linked with their online behavior."
Referring to this as a sweeping rollback to civil rights, there's a debate about mass surveillance and censorship where the most marginalized members of society could become even easier targets.
Elsewhere, whistleblowers looking to expose corporate corruption could be tracked, government employees speaking out on shady dealings could be prosecuted more easily, and even protests like the ones we've seen against Immigration and Customs Enforcement could be stopped before people are able to take to the streets.
This comes in the aftermath of the Federal Trade Commission announcing it wouldn't enforce the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, instead encouraging sites to adopt their own age verification technologies.
It's argued that Conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly Morality in Media) have been pushing for these kinds of laws, with them having their own agendas about online anonymity fuelling pornography and 'general moral decay'.
There are obvious concerns, with Evan Greer, director of digital rights group Fight for the Future, posting on BlueSky and suggesting that "online protest, documenting war crimes, even news articles could be suppressed."
Among KOSA's supporters are tech giants like Elon Musk, while Meta's Mark Zuckerberg recently shifted the blame to Apple and Google by suggesting they should verify someone's identity at a device level.
When the issue spilled over onto Reddit, there was notable outrage as one critic complained: "How many of these a**holes are gonna leave their own digital identity wide-open to the internet?
“The rest of us are getting our sh*t stolen left & right and doxxed while we're at it, knowing damn well each and every one of these a**holes is hiding behind layers of anonymity."
Another added: "The right to privacy really ought to be added to the Constitution. For all the talk about freedom, you really do not feel free when Big Brother is watching your every move."
Someone else concluded: "Then I guess I'll either be a pirate or won't go online. These f**kers do not realize how stubborn we are when it comes to our personal identity and guess what I'm sure there's more than enough people out there that will gladly flip the script on the politicians and their privacy. Whats good for us is good for them right?"
