This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Thursday, December 14th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown. It was a jaw-dropping moment in a recent

Republican debate, a candidate for president of the United States,

Nicky Haley, asserting that any American who wants to get online ought to be easily identifiable.

It's an affront to the First Amendment, the right of privacy, and anonymous speech.

Edward Long of the James Madison Institute discusses the big problems in compelling everyone online to tell you who they are.

Congress doesn't really know what it wants to do with respect to protecting young people

online, but they know they must do something.

And that's a terrible combination.

So I always say the most dangerous thing a lawmaker can say

is I want to do something.

And we're hearing a lot of that in both the halls of Congress

and state legislatures across the country. And that's leading to some really bad

bills concerning teen online safety. Okay so now with respect to one presidential candidate, Nicky Haley, what was it exactly that she suggested?

So one of the things she suggested was that Americans, you know, who enjoy First Amendment rights and also contained within that the right to anonymous speech, verify themselves with social media platforms. She sort of wrapped this up in kind of the

National Security framework because again why come up with a reasonable argument

for something when you can just slate it down to national security.

Okay so and she was calling for age verification for... So not just age verification but

also sort of name verification so you know you can put a

literal name to the face on social media platforms. All right now I'm trying to

understand her rationale here if this here. If this what is it about the government not knowing who I am when I speak online? What about that is a national security threat?

So put very simply I don't know.

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