Durbin Claims CSAM Bill Bolsters Privacy, Despite Encryption Concerns
Legislation that would allow individuals to sue tech platforms for hosting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) increases privacy protections for victims, Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Tuesday.
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Several consumer advocacy groups have opposed the legislation, arguing its content monitoring provisions will weaken privacy and encryption standards.
Senate Crime Subcommittee Chairman Josh Hawley, R-Mo., hosted a hearing on the Strengthening Transparency and Obligation to Protect Children Suffering from Abuse and Mistreatment (Stop CSAM) Act on Tuesday. Hawley is lead Republican on the bill.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Privacy Information Center and Public Knowledge have all opposed bill provisions they say would weaken encryption standards. EFF repeated its opposition Tuesday in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which unanimously passed the bill in May 2023.
The legislation’s “broad terms” could be interpreted to penalize “passive conduct, like merely providing” encrypted applications, said EFF Federal Affairs Director India McKinney. “Giving states and private litigants the power to threaten private companies with criminal prosecution and costly civil litigation unless they scan all users’ private messages shows blatant disregard for the millions of law-abiding people who depend on secure messaging to safely communicate.”
McKinney argued the FTC has authority to police CSAM-related deceptive conduct under the FTC Act. “To the extent providers make promises to their users about removing CSAM, the FTC can enforce those promises by investigating any claims that providers failed to follow their own content policies,” said McKinney.
A significant portion of the bill actually protects privacy by strengthening victims’ ability to keep CSAM under seal in legal proceedings, said Durbin. These “enhanced privacy protections” extend to the victims even when they reach adulthood, he said.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Child Rescue Coalition, Center to End Online Sexual Exploitation of Children, Raven and CSAM victim Taylor Sines testified in support of the bill at Tuesday’s hearing.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., spoke in support of his Kids Online Safety Act (see 2501130057), a duty-of-care-based bill that has drawn privacy concerns due to its age-verification requirements. The bill passed the Senate 91-3 in 2024, he noted, saying it’s a “tragedy” that House Republicans didn’t take up the measure. Tech companies support the concept publicly and then work “behind the scenes” to kill the legislation, he said.
Hawley said the Stop CSAM Act is necessary given a company like Facebook didn’t “change its behavior” even after its $5 billion privacy settlement with the FTC in 2019. Tech platforms claim they don’t have the resources to police CSAM at scale, but Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon earn tens of billions of dollars in profits, not revenue, annually, said Hawley.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., spoke in support of her Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks (Take It Down) Act (see 2503050017). Introduced with Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the Take It Down Act passed the Senate unanimously on Feb. 13. It’s also drawn encryption-related privacy concerns. Klobuchar at Tuesday’s hearing cited support from President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.