The UK's war on anonymity has come to America, an Effort investigation finds

British non-governmental organisations that helped pass the UK's digital identity and age-verification laws are now running the same campaign in the United States, according to an investigation published by Effort on 11 August. The outlet identified five foreign NGOs and their US affiliates working to influence American lawmakers, using the rhetoric of child safety to argue for rules that would prevent adults from using the internet anonymously.

The playbook crosses the Atlantic

In Britain those laws are already in force, and Effort describes a system that it says is used to surveil, arrest and jail people over online speech. The investigation says the same groups are now pushing a patchwork of digital ID bills in 21 states and in the US Congress.

One of them, 5Rights, registered under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act but failed to file critical information about its foreign leadership, the article reports. The organisation engaged on 42 bills across 18 states, 11 of which became law, and paid the lobbying firm Capitol Connection $50,000 for work in the California legislature from May to September 2022 — a payment disclosed as foreign-agent lobbying only in 2024, more than a year after the bill passed. California's AB 2273 was co-designed by 5Rights; its authors and the foundation said in a joint statement that the bill drew on the UK's Age Appropriate Design Code. 5Rights was founded by Baroness Beeban Kidron, a member of the House of Lords, who now argues for banning VPNs — a step taken by Russia, China and North Korea.

Money and filings

Effort also traces the Center for Countering Digital Hate, founded by British Labour consultants Imran Ahmed and Morgan McSweeney, which reported $5,698.31 in in-house federal lobbying in the first quarter of 2026 on Section 230 reform, the Sunset Section 230 Act, the DEFIANCE Act and the AI LEAD Act. Earlier filings show US lobbying on misinformation and hate speech by the firm Lot Sixteen, at $20,000 a quarter in late 2021 and $10,000 in early 2022. America First Legal accused CCDH in 2024 of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act; the Justice Department has not publicly announced an investigation and did not respond to a request for comment.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue sits at the centre of the network, with more than $17m in contracts from the US State Department, the European Union and several UK ministries — $11.21m from US bodies, $5.54m from the EU and $0.72m from the UK. Reset Tech's US affiliate, Reset Tech Action, reported $1,352,800 of lobbying from 2024 through the second quarter of 2026; four of the six bills it lobbied on overlap with 5Rights' work, AB 2273 among them. Its EU arm received €4.9m as part of a consortium led by ISD.

Why it matters

The article argues that age-verification rules should be judged by who is writing them and where they have already been applied. When foreign principals lobby for such laws while those laws suppress political speech at home, Effort writes, it cannot be a surprise if they are used for the same purpose in America.