Senate Hearing on Fentanyl Crisis Becomes a Push for Online Censorship, Surveillance, and Encryption Backdoors

By now, we all know how these Senate hearings go. A bunch of well-fed politicians, most of whom still struggle to operate their own email accounts, gather in a wood-paneled room to express performative outrage over the internet. This time, the excuse was fentanyl—a devastating crisis, no doubt, but also a convenient pretext for pushing the same old agenda: more censorship, more surveillance, and more corporate control.

What started as a discussion about stopping online drug sales quickly veered into the usual dystopian wishlist — gutting encryption, dismantling Section 230, and introducing age verification measures that would put the NSA’s wildest dreams to shame. But don’t worry, they tell us — it’s all to “protect the children.”

A number of participants - witnesses and senators - who took part in a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing dedicated to the fentanyl crisis used the opportunity to criticize social media companies and go after Section 230, and encryption.

At the same time, arguments were made in favor of online age verification and restricted access to adult sites.

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