The UK's War on Anonymity Has Come to America

An Effort investigation has identified a coordinated cognition to power American lawmakers by 5 overseas non-government organizations and their US affiliates. These NGOs person converged upon a unified strategy: usage the rhetoric of ‘child safety’ to advocator for integer ID laws that would forestall adults from utilizing the net anonymously.

In Britain, they succeeded successful passing those laws. They now shape portion of a strategy which surveils, arrests, and jails governmental dissidents. Digital ID laws are a cardinal constituent utilized to portion Brits of net anonymity, an different effective technological countermeasure against authoritarianism.

British NGOs are now replicating their playbook successful the United States of America, attempting to walk a patchwork of integer ID laws successful 21 states and the US Congress.

One British NGO, 5Rights, registered nether the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but has grounded to record captious accusation related to its overseas leadership. All 5 overseas NGOs person influenced American policy, either straight aliases utilizing American proxies pinch important overseas management.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) was founded by British Labour consultants Imran Ahmed and Morgan McSweeney2.

CCDH has already been progressive successful censorship scandals successful the US and UK. They led a boycott run against X instantly aft Elon Musk’s acquisition, sponsored awesome censorship authorities successful the UK, and often hosted events successful which US and UK authorities officials advocated for censorship.3

America First Legal, a rule patient connected pinch the Trump administration, accused CCDH of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) successful 2024. The US Department of Justice has not publically announced immoderate investigation into CCDH, and did not respond to our petition for comment.

Effort independently corroborated the halfway claims made successful this missive astir the nationalities and residences of CCDH activity — that Imran Ahmed is CEO of some organizations and is simply a British national, that Clark and Brookes are shared board of some US and UK entities, and that McNeill was a committee personnel until July 11, 2024.

CCDH supported bills pinch the definitive intent of importing British laws. A joint statement by Buffy Wicks, the lead writer of AB 2273, Jordan Cunningham, different AB 2273 author, and 5Rights Foundation states, “The Bill is practicable and realistic, drafting arsenic it does connected the UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code (AADC).”

AB 2273 was co-designed by 5Rights Foundation, a overseas main that paid to lobby for AB 2273, according to their ain Foreign Agents Registration Act filing.

5Rights is the starring NGO promoting the British Age Appropriate Design Code / AB 2273 exemplary crossed American states. 5Rights engaged connected 42 bills crossed 18 states, 11 of which person go law.

5Rights paid Capitol Connection $50,000 to lobby successful the California Legislature from May to September 2022. They did not disclose this lobbying connected behalf of a overseas supplier until 2024, complete a twelvemonth aft the measure they lobbied for passed.

In their disclosure, Capitol Connection denied that 5Rights was supervised, owned, directed, controlled, financed, aliases subsidized by a overseas government, overseas governmental party, aliases different overseas principal. They did not taxable immoderate accusation for mobility 12, which could person clarified what level of power Kidron, their laminitis and then-director, had complete 5Rights.

5Rights is simply a British nonprofit founded by Baroness Beeban Tania Kidron, who sits successful the British House of Lords, the precocious enclosure of the British Parliament.

Despite the British authorities utilizing these laws to target governmental dissidents, Baroness Kidron and 5Rights now advocator for VPN bans, a alteration that would adhd the UK to a mini number of authoritarian regimes — Russia, China, and North Korea — that prohibition VPNs.4

A cardinal node successful that British censorship ecosystem is the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. They person contracted pinch the US State Department, European Union, and respective UK ministries for a full of complete $17M US dollars.5

ISD’s contracts explicitly picture a ngo to power net speech. In the reports and argumentation recommendations produced for these contracts,6 ISD conflates governmental dissent pinch “misinformation”, “extremism”, “hate speech”, aliases moreover “violent extremism”, some justifying and enabling censorship by governments overseas and domestic.

ISD has lobbied federally successful the United States.7 Their report states that “a mostly of Board members beryllium connected some boards truthful that decisions tin beryllium taken collectively.”

Reset Tech is yet different world consortium pinch overlapping leadership. Reset describes its ain governance arsenic follows: “We are governed by a Board of Directors that oversees our world operations.”8

Reset Tech Action, Reset Tech’s US 501(c)4 affiliate, spent $1,352,800 lobbying Congress and authorities legislatures from 2024 done Q2 2026. Effort recovered important overlap betwixt Reset Tech and 5Rights: 4 of 6 bills it lobbied for are bills 5Rights engaged with, including AB 2273, the measure 5Rights besides lobbied for.9

Reset Tech is besides tied to ISD done their EU affiliate, Reset Tech GmbH, which received €4.9M from the EU authorities arsenic portion of the consortium led by ISD.

In theory, location whitethorn beryllium property verification laws which do not lend to authoritarian power of speech. However, erstwhile overseas principals are lobbying for property verification law, during a clip erstwhile those laws are being utilized to suppress governmental reside successful their location countries, it cannot beryllium a astonishment if those laws are utilized for the aforesaid purposes successful America.

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