Senate adopts age-verification measure for adult websites with privacy protections

The Senate on May 11 adopted a house committee substitute for a package (House Bills 18 39, 29 21 and 30 15) that would require online age verification for sites whose content is predominantly adult and potentially harmful to minors. The sponsor, senator from Saint Francis, said the bill allows commercially available verification methods and explicitly bars third-party verifiers from retaining identifying information.

Senators questioned privacy mechanisms and how quickly verification data would be deleted. The sponsor replied that verification should be instantaneous and that no identifying data would be retained after access is granted. "A third party that performs the age verification under this section shall not retain any identifying information of the individual," the sponsor said when asked about mechanisms for deletion.

The Senate approved a technical amendment (Senate amendment 1), which the sponsor described as removing an extraneous word; the amended bill passed the Senate on a recorded vote reported as 32 ayes, 0 no. The sponsor and colleagues said they worked with legal counsel and the attorney general's office on privacy language and enforcement authority.

Why it matters: the measure seeks to restrict minors' access to pornographic materials online while attempting to balance privacy and data-protection concerns through a statutory prohibition on retained identifying information by verification providers. The attorney general would enforce the law; websites that fail to implement compliant age verification could face penalties.