Marshall Scholar tells BU Podcast how to fix the age assurance debate

Ben Fischer wants to help privacy, online safety communities find common ground

Mar 27, 2026, 10:54 am EDT | Joel R. McConvey

Marshall Scholar tells BU Podcast how to fix the age assurance debate

Ben Fischer is a Marshall Scholar studying the technical and social implications of privacy preserving age assurance at the University of Edinburgh. He had a chance to sign an open letter from a group of scientists calling for a moratorium on age assurance laws globally. He chose not to sign it.

The reason? In a word, optimism. While Fischer says he agrees with much of what’s in the letter, he doesn’t believe abandoning the project is the way to go – because he sees a path forward for age assurance laws and technology, even if the final destination is a ways off.

“I think that we really can get there over time and with steadfast and clever combinations of targeted policy and thoughtful cybersecurity integrated technology,” he says. “We’re not quite there yet, mostly as a factor of openness.”

“We’re seeing in real time battle lines being drawn for what age assurance means in the coming years, and it can feel right now in some ways limiting that you’re either staunchly in this privacy and civil liberties camp, which makes you feel like you’re at odds with the safety-first community, or you’re in that safety-first community – this community of advocates, of policymakers, and parents and the public who want something better for themselves or for their kids. And that camp feels, too, like in order to fully embrace their own position, they have to somehow end up at odds with this other well-meaning group.”

“And I think that right now we’re at a point when the privacy and the safety communities are kind of speaking past each other, or at least speaking over the level of what implementations actually look like and can actually mean. I hope to sort of help be a bridge.”