Politicians are using the guise of “protecting children” to build a massive, centralized database of adults. Handing the state your ID won’t stop porn addiction, but it will guarantee the death of online anonymity.

On May 13, the Missouri House of Representatives advanced a draconian mandate requiring adult websites to demand a government-issued ID from anyone accessing them within the state, threatening non-compliant companies with $10,000-a-day fines. The bill’s sponsor, Representative Sherri Gallick, literally stood on the House floor and compared the public to vermin, stating that the government must act as an “exterminator” to cut off the source.

The state has officially anointed itself the exterminator, but the trap they set isn’t catching pests; it is laying the foundation for a massive digital cage. When Missouri’s Attorney General first threatened this crackdown, major adult sites didn’t comply with the dystopian demand to hoard driver’s licenses; they simply geo-blocked the state while VPN signups predictably surged in the thousands of percent. Even Representative Eric Woods admitted on the floor that kids are smart enough to use VPNs to skirt the ban, yet the legislature still rubber-stamped the legislation in a landslide.

This proves what we at The Free Thought Project have been warning about for years: the point was never to stop the audience, but to build the surveillance infrastructure. A bill masquerading as a shield for children is always the first brick in a registry of adults. Once the state normalizes demanding your physical ID to access legal content, that database of preferences inevitably morphs into a convenient honeypot for blackmail and a list of dissidents. We have already seen how centralized databases of intimate habits become catastrophic liabilities, such as the infamous Ashley Madison data breach that resulted in ruined lives and suicides.

When the state forces companies to link your biometric or state-issued ID to your most private digital habits, they are creating a centralized repository of leverage just waiting to be weaponized by the same bureaucrats who wage endless wars and slaughter innocents. History proves that at least 25 states have now deployed this infrastructure, and places like Missouri are already introducing follow-up bills to ban social media for anyone under 14 and mandate parental consent up to 16. It is a slow, methodical march toward a Chinese-style social credit system where anonymity is criminalized and every click is cataloged.

If you actually want to keep children safe from the very real dangers of online pornography, outsourcing the job to a bloated, corrupt bureaucracy is the worst possible strategy. This is not a legislative issue; it is a profound parental responsibility that requires active, uncomfortable conversations in the home. With the average age of first exposure sitting around 12 years old, and up to 60 percent of that initial exposure happening entirely by accident through pop-ups or shared links, a government firewall will not save your kid. Experts advise that the solution is parents stepping up as calm first responders, stripping the shame from the conversation, and maintaining open communication so children know exactly what to do when they inevitably encounter this material, rather than hiding it out of fear of punishment.

As libertarians, we maintain that any behavior between two consenting adults, including the production and consumption of pornography, is absolutely none of the government’s business. However, acknowledging the legality of a vice does not mean we ignore the societal rot fueling the massive spike in pornography addiction, a sinkhole that rewires dopamine receptors and detaches a generation from genuine intimacy. Sustained consumption triggers dopamine spikes exceeding 250 percent—higher than the effects of nicotine—which can literally shrink the brain’s grey matter and impair the prefrontal cortex, leading to a loss of impulse control known as hypofrontality. Young men and women are falling into this trap not because of a lack of laws, but because of a catastrophic breakdown in societal values.

Our recent guest on the TFTP Podcast, Sarah from Operation Gideon’s Army, laid bare the grim reality of how these cultural forces are actively destroying lives. As a survivor of childhood exploitation who now leads tactical rescues for trafficking victims, she explained how the left’s anti-marriage narrative and the right’s toxic “manosphere” create a cultural feedback loop that feeds the exploitation industry.

This societal failure has cultivated a booming market for digital pimps who prey on vulnerable girls starting OnlyFans accounts, tricking them into a modern form of slavery. These underlying societal diseases cannot be cured by a politician holding a gavel and demanding your driver’s license. Handing the state the power to monitor our private, digital lives in the name of safety is a guaranteed fast track to totalitarianism. True safety and liberty require courageous individuals taking direct action in their own homes and communities, rendering the state’s surveillance apparatus entirely obsolete.

Article posted with permission from Matt Agorist