this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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FYI, I am not a lawyer.
Have you actually read the bill itself? Nowhere in it does it mention any of the things that you mentioned. It doesn't even mention ID cards at all.
What it does say is operating system providers shall "Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device". What we should look out for is that the law does not forbid OS providers from requiring IDs.
It does however require that OS providers "Send only the minimum amount of information necessary to comply with this title and shall not share the digital signal information with a third party for a purpose not required by this title." (emphasis mine)
I wonder how much this is news outlets overreacting to a proposed bill that is not actually that bad, or if this is some marketing against the bill by some Corp.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
I've only skimmed but:
They don't even define "account." They have a definition of "account holder" that makes no sense.
Are all devices required to have user accounts? There was a time when home computers did not have such things.
No, it is bad.
Suppose it's used to verify your age when visiting Pornhub. How is Pornhub going to trust the user's computer didn't lie about the user's age? A "just trust me bro" sent by the browser isn't going to suffice; teenagers would find a way around that.
Thr attestation will have to be cryptographically signed by some trusted party—and that's either going to be the government, or the operating system vendor.
If it's the government holding the signing keys: the website can now verify that you're a resident of $state in $country and use that for fingerprinting and targeted advertising. And what if your country doesn't participate, or if Pornhub doesn't trust the signing keys used by the government of Estonia? Tough shit, no porn for you! It would be impractical to manage all those keys, though, so why not instead leave it up to the operating system vendor?
If it is left the operating system vendor, it's going to end up being exactly the same as Google Play Service's SafetyNet "feature". If you're not using an approved operating system (a.k.a. Windows, MacOS, stock Android, iOS) you're not visiting Pornhub. Or a banking app. Or applying for jobs. Etc.
This bill is a poison pill for device ownership and FOSS operating systems being handed to corporations on a silver platter.
What do you mean, that's horrible on its own. None of this information should be necessary to run a computer. The computer shouldn't have to process this locally, let alone be mandated to upload it to someone's server.
Age verification is identity collection.
So everyone's windows OS will be registered to Mike Hunt born 1/1/1970. Gotcha
How about "fuck off."