Tennesseans could soon be required to provide a form of ID to access certain websites as a new bill moves through the legislature.
The bill titled the “Protect Tennessee Minors Act,” was recommended for passage from the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee with 10 ayes and zero nays Tuesday morning.
According to Sen. Becky Massey (R-Knoxville), who introduced the bill, the legislation looks at material that is “sexually explicit and harmful to minors,” or appeals to prurient interest. While it is not spelled out in the bill’s summary, this includes pornography.
“The Protect Tennessee Minors Act requires an individual or commercial entity that publishes or distributes in this state a website that contains a substantial portion of material harmful to minors perform reasonable age-verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material,” the bill reads.
Such entities would also be required to “retain at least seven years of historical anonymized age-verification data.” However, they are not allowed to store any personally identifying information.
Those who violate the act would face a Class C felony.
“The number of Class C felony convictions that may result from violations of the legislation’s requirements is unknown,” the fiscal memorandum reads. “Given the widespread nature of such content on the internet and the number of sites that distribute it, it is assumed that the increase in such convictions could be significant.”
Massey went on to say that this bill would have a similar process that alcohol sites use when asking users to confirm their age before entering the site, but with “higher standards.”
“You can enter a picture of a state-issued ID or an acceptable ID then you can be on this site for up to 60 minutes, and then you’d have to go off of the site if you’re not still actively using it,” Massey said.
Megan Moore, committee attorney, said that users would have to “match a photo of themselves,” that is “matched with a valid ID that is ‘a valid form of identification issued by the United States of America.’”
Moore added that if users do not have an ID there is a second method that can be used to verify age. This alternative is defined as “a commercially reasonable method relying on public or private transactional data to verify that the age of the person attempting to access the information is at least 18 or old.”
When asked by Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) what this information would be, Moore said they were unsure.
